Indiana To Give Religious Business Owners The Right To Discriminate Against Gays
Indiana is about to become the latest state to grants special rights to religious business owners.
Indiana is set to become the next state to pass a bill that would give business owners the ability to evade liability under laws banning discrimination based on sexual orientation by claiming that complying with the law violates their religious beliefs:
Controversial religious freedom legislation that could protect business owners who don’t want to provide services for same-sex couples is poised to become law in Indiana.
The Republican-controlled Indiana House approved the measure Monday on a 63-31 vote, largely along party lines. Five Republicans joined 26 Democrats in opposing the bill.
The vote likely clears a path for the hot-button legislation to become law. The Senate already approved a slightly different version of the bill last month and Senate author Dennis Kruse, R-Auburn, said he plans to concur with the House version, possibly later this week.
The bill will then go to Gov. Mike Pence, who said Monday he plans to sign the legislation.
Senate Bill 101 would prevent state and local governments from “substantially burdening” a person’s exercise of religion unless the government can prove it has a compelling interest and is doing so in the least restrictive means.
Supporters say the measure would protect people and business owners with strong religious beliefs from government intrusion.
“It’s important that we allow our citizens to hold religious beliefs, maybe even those we might be appalled by, and to be able to express those,” said Rep. Tom Washburne, R-Inglefield.
Opponents say it would license discrimination, particularly against gays and lesbians.
“It basically says to a group of people you’re second rate, you don’t matter, and if you walk into my store, I don’t have to serve you,” said Minority Leader Scott Pelath, D-Michigan City.
Social conservatives have pushed hard for such measures across the country following recent federal court rulings that legalized same-sex marriage in Indiana and other states.
The proposal is modeled on a 22-year-old federal law known as the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act. That law played a key role in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that allowed Hobby Lobby and other closely held corporations with religious objections to opt out of an Affordable Care Act requirement that they cover certain contraceptives for women.
Nineteen other states have adopted similar “religious freedom” laws, and several others are considering legislation.
Gay rights groups and several major Indiana employers — including Salesforce, Cummins, and Eskenazi Health — have opposed the measure, fearing it will encourage discrimination and hurt Indiana’s reputation as a welcoming state.
This is a legal and political battle that has been heating up as the legal battle over same-sex marriage has moved forward and the forces opposed to marriage equality have suffered loss after loss in the courthouse and at the ballot box. Two years ago a florist in Washington state was charged with violations of laws forbidding discrimination based on sexual orientation when she refused to provide services for a wedding between two gay men. A Colorado baker ended up in similar legal trouble last year over his refusal to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding ceremony. In New York, a couple that owned a farm which they rented out for wedding ceremonies and receptions was charged with violations of state anti-discrimination laws when they refused to rent the facility to a lesbian couple. A New Jersey church found itself in similar legal trouble over its refusal to provide access to a beach facility it owned and made available to the public generally to a gay couple for their ceremony. The most famous recent case of this type, of course, involved a photographer in New Mexico who refused to provide services for a same-sex wedding and was found to have violated a municipal anti-discrimination law. The New Mexico Supreme Court upheld that ruling, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal that was filed in that case. Unsurprisingly, these cases have raised much hire among those on the religious right, with claims that they involve attacks on religious liberty and fevered speculation about whether religious liberty will “survive” the legalization of same-sex marriage.
In response to these cases, Republicans in general and religious conservatives in particular have embarked on a vigorous effort to pass legislation at the state level that would essentially give business owners immunity from laws forbidding discrimination based on sexual orientation if they claim a religious basis for their objection. Such a bill was passed by a wide majority in Arizona’s legislature last year, but failed to become law thanks only to the fact that former Governor Jan Brewer decided to veto the bill after the state came under a high degree of criticism and national businesses, including the National Football League, made clear that such a bill would cause them to reconsider the state as a site for conventions and events in the future. There hasn’t been quite the national uproar about the Indiana bill, at least not yet, but Governor Mike Pence seems committed to signing the bill into law. So, absent a court challenge down the line, it appears that Indiana will join nineteen other states in giving business owners who claim to have religious objections to homosexuality an exception to an otherwise generally applicable law that no other business owner in the Hoosier State would be entitled to. This is a bad law, and bad precedent.
In many respects, of course, the Indiana law is similar to the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act that was at the center of last year’s Hobby Lobby case. That law was passed in response to the Supreme Court’s 1990 ruling Employment Division v. Smith, in which the Court ruled that a Native American could be denied unemployment benefits when he was fired after failing a drug test notwithstanding the fact that the drug in question was used as part of a Native American religious ceremony. Mainstream religious groups reacted negatively to the ruling, fearing that it could lead to a whole host of situations where pastors and parishioners would be punished for following their faith and, thanks to their lobbying, the RFRA was passed overwhelmingly by a Democratic Congress and signed into law by President Clinton. In the Hobby Lobby case, of course, the Supreme Court ruled that the RFRA barred the Federal Government from forcing a religious employer from providing coverage for certain types of birth control as part of their employee health plan. As I said at the time the decision was handed down, it was rather apparent that the majority’s reading of the law and it’s application to the facts of that case was correct. However, there is also a rather persuasive case that the RFRA itself is unconstitutional as an establishment of religion barred under the First Amendment.
State laws such as the one set to be passed in Indiana suffer from the same defects as the federal RFRA, and they are also particularly bad policy even if they are constitutional. At the outset, it’s worth noting that there is a sound libertarian case to be made against public accommodation laws in general that rests on the idea of private property rights and, indeed, ideally businesses and customers ought to be free to do business, or not do business, with whomever they wish for whatever reasons they wish. At the same time, though, I recognize the fact that there were very good reasons based in the 14th Amendment and the history of post Civil War America for the public accommodations laws that were passed at the Federal and state level in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement. Furthermore, it’s rather apparent that those laws are not going to be repealed any time soon, and it’s not entirely clear that doing so wouldn’t lead to a return of some kind of Jim Crow like system in at least some parts of the country.
Leaving that argument aside, though, there is simply no persuasive case based in individual rights for the types of laws being advanced in Indiana and elsewhere in response to the rapid legalization of same-sex marriage. These laws are not based in recognizing property rights, nor are they really about protecting anything approaching religious liberty. The last time I checked, the Bible didn’t say anything about how to run a flower shop, for example, nor did it say that believers should not do business with people they think are acting immorally. Instead, these laws are about creating special rights for a specific group of people that give them an exemption from laws that are otherwise applicable to the rest of the public. That’s not libertarian in any sense of the word, and it doesn’t really help to expand individual liberty. Religious liberty is an important concept, and the law should not discriminate against people based on their faith nor should it prevent them from practicing that faith, but that doesn’t mean that their faith gives them an exemption from laws that are applicable to anyone else. If Republicans in Indiana and elsewhere are as outraged about public accommodation laws as they say they are, then let them work to repeal those laws across the board. Otherwise, creating special rights for a small segment of society is quite simply hypocritical and discriminatory.
Discriminating against others is the Christian thing to do.
I mean…not according to Christ.
But according to Christians.
So, basically, Indiana is instituting Shariah law? Or, at the very least, giving the owners of businesses who want to use Shariah law to discriminate against gays, women, non-Muslims, etc. a legal justification to do so?
Maybe you should check again. Consider, for example, this bit from Isiaah 18: 5-6 on how to maintain a healthy floral display:
For before the harvest, as soon as the bud blossoms And the flower becomes a ripening grape, Then He will cut off the sprigs with pruning knives And remove and cut away the spreading branches.
Because in the entire history of the United States, there has never been a Generally Applicable Law whose intent was to discriminate? *cough*PollTax*cough*
Just because the majority doesn’t hold to a religious belief is not an excuse to limit the rights of those that do believe it.
Yes, I am aware of the First-Amendment argument for Gay Rights … too bad no one is arguing for it.
Rep. Bruce Borders, R-Jasonville, spoke about an anesthesiologist who didn’t want to anesthetize a woman in preparation for an abortion. Borders said he believes the Bible’s command to “do all things as unto the Lord” means religious believers need to be protected not just in church, but in their workplaces as well.
It’s a measure of how dumb right-wing Christians are that they don’t see how this will backfire on them. I think most people can live with flower shops and cakes and the bigots who sell them. Crossing the line into medicine and essential services is absolutely insane.
This should be illegal.
It’s actually even more insidious than that. The law doesn’t apply to business owners, IT APPLIES TO INDIVIDUAL EMPLOYEES. That is, if you own a business and are perfectly fine with serving gay people, but your cashier decides they aren’t, you’re now hostage to their religious objections.
One can perhaps make a libertarian case that all public accomodation laws should not apply to privately owned organizations, but it should be noted that in nearly all of these RFRA law, the goal is to remove public accomodations for some groups while continuing to enforce public accomodations for the religious. That can’t be defended.
I’d go further, Doug. These laws are about creating special rights for business to exercise religious discrimination.
Heh heh. Uhh. 🙂 There’s no way you meant to write that, right? No offense, but that’s way too funny in a gallows humor sort of way.
@J-Dub: Ah you bastard, you beat me to it.
On-topic, how precisely does a business owner identify as religious? Do they just claim it in court or do they have to file paperwork to apply for this specific status? I’m on the side of the latter since extra paperwork deters all sorts of people from getting things they don’t need.
Ooh, I wonder if the government can subpoena church registries to see if the business owner actually attends church. What a circus that could be.
@Stormy Dragon:
Stormy nails an important point, and one that has brought out nearly every major business in opposition to this bill. Theoretically, now, a construction worker could refuse to follow all safety guidelines if s/he claims a sincerely held belief.
Guidance counselors can refuse to help gay students get into college.
Hotel owners can refuse to rent rooms to unmarried couples. Or even just two bros roadtripping if they seem just a little too fay.
Some Christian child care services in this state have already stated verbally that they will use this law to get around caps on the amount of children they can safely supervise, as that cap violates their ability to spread the good word to small children.
My money, however, is on the fact that we’ll see a repeat of AZ (NM?) in which a cop refused to go to a call at a Muslim community center because of his religious beliefs and then stated sending ANY cop would violate his belief.
But that’s not all.
The Indiana legislator made sure to rectify Hobby Lobby (in which only closely held corporations were affected) by defining individual as all businesses of any size. Now anyone and any entity can claim religious refusal! Let liberty reign!
Now, all that has to happen for a person’s religious practices to be protected is for them to claim a RFRA, and then have the courts (government) decide the sincerity of their religious beliefs. Just like the founders intended.
But probably my favorite part of this bill is that the intention–to legalize LGBT discrimination–was already legal in Indiana. This bill was only passed to essentially remind Hoosiers of their discriminatory power.
Sorry if that came off a little punch-drunk. I work at the Indiana ACLU now. You can imagine we were a bit busy with this bill.
Many of us would say that calling abortion an essential service is absolutely insane.
@Tillman:
It is my understanding that the courts will have to decide on the sincerity of the belief of a person claiming RFRA. Seems to me that subpoena would be a logical step.
Good!
Private establishments should be able to run their businesses whoever they choose.
Why would gays want to do business with someone who doesn’t want their business.
If I owned a bakery and a court ordered me to sell a cake to two homosexuals I’d tell them that I’d make the cake and I probably won’t spit in it. I probably won’t “accidently” pour vinegar into the batter.
Why would they want to do business with me under those circumstances? Why not patronize another bakery who wants their business?
@Another Mike: It is if you have a dead fetus inside you.
But you never have to worry about that problem, and so therefore it’s perfectly fine to ignore, right?
Let market decide. If people object to businesses who don’t want to sell to homosexuals they should boycott that business. Like I said, let the market decide.
Indiana – Is it any wonder that Indiana is “fly over country”? Kansas, another state that feels disrespected by being referred to as “fly over country” is going all in on this stuff too.
@J-Dub:
Yes that was a rather unfortunate typo that I completely missed…… :/
@Stormy Dragon:
What protections exist to stop abuse on this? That sounds like a GREAT way to screw over an employer you hate – discriminate left and right to everybody you see, ruining their customer service reputation and not have to worry about getting fired or sued for it? So if a Christian bookstore has an employee telling all customers in a cheerful voice that they’ll freeze for eternity for insulting the ergi like his god Loki and refusing them service, can the business do anything about it? They really didn’t think this one through…..
@James P:
We could have avoided the Civil War, and the Civil Rights struggles 100 years later, if only we had taken that market-based approach to Slavery and Civil Rights.
You know, we had that market-based approach to Black citizens for over 150 years – their civil and human rights were denied for nearly 175 years until the “legal market” decided that enough was enough and we passed the Clvil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. The market eventually worked, right?
@James P :
So if some waiter pissed in your Pepsi due to a sincerely held belief you deserved it as a human being via instant karma even though the courts have consistently said they can’t, you’d be cool with it? Wouldn’t sue or whine – just not shop there anymore? Great! Be sure to tell them that – you’ll make their day. Viva la Food Service! 🙂
@KM:
Of course the businesses can do something about that. You think an elected judge is going to enforce this law when one of those phony non-Christian religions is trying to use it?
Of course abortion will be an essential service for you A. Mike when you need one.
These are exciting times to be a Pastafarian. Beer and strippers all around!
@James P:
Hi, James. As promised …
You claim to have received a PhD in London directed by Jesus Huerta de Soto, addressing “the effects of monetary policy on currency valuation”.
Dr. Huerta de Soto is not now, nor has he ever been, a faculty member of any educational institution in the UK.
Further, I am in possession of a concise list, directly supplied to me by Dr. Huerta de Soto, of all 23 doctoral recipients whose programs were directed by him. None of these 23 dissertations address “the effects of monetary policy on currency valuation”.
More to the point, none of the 23 people on this list are Americans.
Would you care to make a statement concerning your abject lie?
All religions are phony.
I’ll be excited when a Rastafarian (there are a few in this state) successfully challenges all of Indiana’s pot criminalization laws.
@ernieyeball:
*adjusts ernieyeball’s sarcasm detector*
@HarvardLaw92:
Could you post the link to James’s original lie, so we can all enjoy it? (If it’s not too much trouble finding it.)
@Neil Hudelson:
Absolutely 😀
Here you go
Great quote at the link:
@HarvardLaw92: Here’s a google job for you.
Try googling sabbatical. Do you know what a sabbatical is? Huerta was on sabbatical for eight months.
You are absolutely 100% correct that he has never been LSE faculty. Try educating yourself. Learn what a sabbatical is.
Visiting scholars on sabbatical l are not listed as faculty. Are you honestly this stupid?
You didn’t go to Harvard if you don’t know what a sabbatical is.
@James P: What the EFF does that have to do with anything?! You claimed that you had done a Ph.D. under him; he says not.
I know who I’m going to believe, and it isn’t some troll blowhard on the internets. While you’re at it, why don’t you claim to be a genius billionaire who runs a marathon under two hours?
Falsus in uno, falsus in toto.
Ouch!! That hurt!!
(I know U knew that’s what I meant.)
@James P:
Professors visiting on sabbaticals do not supervise PhD programs.
Dr. Huerta de Soto has assured me that the list of 23 programs supplied to me by him represents every doctoral program that he has supervised. All of them, without exception. All of them were conducted in Spain.
Doubling down on your lie will not work. You will either have to admit to it or have it follow you around here non-stop from this point forward.
We’ll abide blowhards to an extent, but we do not condone liars.
Interested readers should feel free to peruse the list supplied by Dr. Huerta de Soto
@HarvardLaw92: Considering that a sabbatical is one year, and the time required for research on a doctorate is many years long, you’d think that anyone who had any exposure to academia and Ph.D. programs would know better to claim having done his Ph.D. research under a professor on sabbatical. (Being a standard grad student and hanging around continuing one’s research while your prof is off somewhere else for one year, yeah, I can see that. But doing all your work under a prof. visiting on sabbatical? No go.)
So there’s circumstantial evidence James P. is even more of a liar than we thought. I doubt he ever even graduated from college.
@grumpy realist:
Oh, I know. I’m just adopting the “give the guy enough rope” strategy here.
I’d almost – ALMOST – respect the guy if he’d just admit he lied, but this doubling down thing? Nah, I’m out for blood now.
@grumpy realist: That’s how it works in the US — I didn’t go to school in the US.
The required time for a PhD in England is generally two years.
I specifically SWITCHED to Huerta when he came on for his sabbatical.. Huerta is the preeminent Austrian in the world so I had an obvious interest in working with him. My original adviser was entirely understanding.
I went to the school I did because it is one of the few places in the world in which Austrians are welcome. When Huerta came I obviously wanted to work with him. I didn’t know Huerta was coming before I went there.
You dance artfully, but no cigar.
Once again – Dr. Huerta de Soto, by his own assertion, has supervised 23 doctoral programs. Only 23. That’s it. He has supplied a concise list of all 23 programs, and in fact just confirmed via email that he has never supervised a program in the UK.
ALL 23 of them were conducted in Spain. 21 were awarded by Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. The other two were awarded by the Autonomous University of Madrid.
You’re not even smart enough to recognize when you’re cornered …
@HarvardLaw92: [“Professors visiting on sabbaticals do not supervise PhD programs.”]
Yes they do.
[“Dr. Huerta de Soto has assured me that the list of 23 programs supplied to me by him represents every doctoral program that he has supervised”]
Now I KNOW you are LYING. He does not refer to himself as “Dr. Huerta de Soto”. You clearly made that up.
Ha! You just exposed yourself!
[“We’ll abide blowhards to an extent, but we do not condone liars. “]
We? Are you the Queen of England now? You’re the liar. You did not speak with Huerta. You exposed yourself as the liar when you referred to him as “Dr. Huerta de Soto”. Only someone who has never had any interaction with him would refer to him as such.
I understand you disagree with my views. However, you don’t need to lie. Admit you are a BS artist who never contacted this “Dr. Huerta de Soto” person.
Only 23. That’s all you could make up?!?! He has supervised far more than 23. I guess you just need more time to create more.
@Neil Hudelson:
RBG noted that this was going to happen very clearly in her dissent to Hobby Lobby.
The SCOTUS is, in my view, the most critical issue in the 2016 race.
If a Scott Walker, or even a Jeb Bush, were allowed to appoint any Justices it would be a disaster this Republic may not recover from for many years.
How many Hobby Lobby’s, or McCutcheons, or Citizens United or other piss poor decisions do we want to suffer?
@James P:
Hey…did you give up your subsidized healthcare and subsidized housing yet, moocher?
P.S. I note that James P.’s claim to have received a Ph.D. from the U.K. in London came up in the same thread in which he was ranting about never having taken ANY support from the gov’t.
Considering how much U.K. universities are subsidized, even for foreign students, it looks like he’s a liar here as well. If he took any classes anywhere in any legitimate university in London, he was subsidized by the U.K. government. Period.
(Proud possessor of a M.A. from the University of London)
@James P:
He didn’t refer to himself in that way. I referred to him in that way.
The list is linked above. It speaks for itself.
@James P:
Thank you for this additional piece of information. I just emailed LSE as well, inquiring as to any doctoral programs supervised there by Dr. Huerta de Soto.
We both know what they are going to tell me though, don’t we?
@HarvardLaw92: You referred to him in that way because you have NEVER had any contact with him. Googling his site at Compultense does not qualify. I call him Huerta (never de Soto) there’s a reason for that.
Admit that you did not contact him. If you claim you did I have a way of PROVING you are lying about it.
You picked 23 names at Madrid – that proves NOTHING. You’re right about Madrid. I’ve never been there as anything other than a tourist. I guess that’s why my name isn’t on the Complutense website you found.
@James P: TWO years? Nice try, but no cigar. Maybe if you’re doing one of those University of Phoenix places where they give you “credit”, for “life experience”, but all of my classmates who went on to the Ph.D. program AFTER getting the M.A. took ANOTHER three years or more. What third-rate diploma mill did you get conned by, anyway?
My religion tells me to obey no one but my Gawd, & that Man’s Laws are Satan’s Laws.
Can I start ignoring stop signs, speed limits, court decisions & so on? And if not, why not?
@James P:
I am referring to him in that way because that is his name.
By all means, supply this proof. Please do …
Nope. Got them in an emailed document.
Interestingly, they are also posted on his personal webpage. I suppose now he’s lying too?
You’re a piece of work …
@HarvardLaw92: He’s not lying. YOU ARE. He didn’t email you a damn thing.
If you had contact with him you would know he does not go by “Dr. Huerta de Soto”. The fact that you referred to him in that manner is all the proof I need to know that you are a BS artist. He has never gone by his full legal name. I have plenty of old emails from him and not one of them has de Soto in it.
Yes, he posted them on his page. You just ADMITTED that you got the names form his webpage and that he did not email you a damn thing. You just implicated yourself in a lie. He didn’t email you anything (I know that as a FACT) – you stated he emailed you a list, then you slipped and admitted you got it from a website. YOU ARE A FRAUD!
He posted 23 names (perhaps from the last semester?). DO you think 23 is the sum total of students for his entire academic career? Do most teachers have more than 23 students for the entire course of their career?
All 23 names are from Madrid. Has he ever taught at any institution outside of Madrid? Why do only 23 names from Madrid appear? Have I ever claimed to have gone to Madrid?
You are a BS artist.
@James P:
But LSE says it takes 3 to 5 years
Are they lying too?
@grumpy realist: Third rate? LOL!!! It has a 7% acceptance rate and is ranked #2 in the world on the THES global survey.
It’s a three year joint MA-PhD program. If you have an MA it’s a two-year program. It you don’t it’s a three year program and you earn both an MA and PhD concurrently. I cited two years because that’s what the PhD is as a stand-alone program.
@HarvardLaw92: See my other post. I addressed that.
You have no idea what you are talking about.
The only one who is lying is you when you claimed that “Dr. Huerta de Soto” emailed you.
A compliment from the master artiste himself, no doubt.
I need more popcorn for this thread.
@James P:
Let’s try this again, for the learning impaired …
How he refers to himself, whether in person, via email or in writing, is immaterial. His name is what it is, and I choose to call him by that name because, well, it’s his name.
Seriously? This is what you come back with? The lists match. You are refusing to address the simple fact that your claims are NOT backed up by the information emailed by him, NOR ARE THEY BACKED UP BY THE INFORMATION HE POSTS ON HIS OWN WEBSITE.
Dance around provenance all you like. It’s the SUBSTANCE of the information that crucifies you.
The list , HIS LIST, spans 1997 to 2014, inclusive. 23 programs in 17 years.
@James P:
False. Everyone knows the preeminent Austrian in the world is Arnold Schwarzennegger.
@Surreal American:
He really is a piece of work, isn’t he? The guy is so invested in his lie that he’ll go to these ridiculous lengths to protect it. It’s sad …
@HarvardLaw92: 23 students in 17 years. OK, go with that. He has taught all over the world, but only lists Madrid. OK, go with that.
I’ve said what I have to say.
I don’t have a damn thing to prove to a hack like you.
You’re obviously jealous and I really don’t see the need to go down the rabbit hole of trying to disprove a negative.
You and I both know that “Dr. Hueta de Soto” did not email you.
I’m sure everyone else reading this likely believes you, but you know that “Dr. Hueta de Soto” did not email you a damn thing and I know that “Dr. Huerta de Soto” did not email you a damn thing. First you claim he emailed you, then you slip up and change your story and admit you got it from a website. Which is it? You can’t seem to keep your story straight.
We both know you googled him, found his website in Madrid, and found a partial list of 23 of his students from one of them many institutions at which he has taught.
You’re a fraud and you and I both know it. I’m done going down this rabbit hole with a liar.
@James P:
Yea, when you make an accusation and supply conclusive evidence to back it up, people tend to believe you … Funny how that works, isn’t it?
That said, if avoiding the accusation by throwing a tantrum gets you through the day, knock yourself out.
But until you admit that you lied, or leave, you can expect to have this discussion every time that you open your mouth on here.
Have a nice day, “Dr.”. 😀
@James P:
Technically, the claim was that the list on the web page matched the list originally received by email. For someone with a college degree, you seem to have a great deal of trouble with basic reading comprehension.
@HarvardLaw92: THe only person lying is the person who claimed to have received an email from “Dr. Huerta de Soto”.
If you’re going to lie you would be best served to do your homework. You exposed yourself as a liar when you claimed “Dr. Hueta de Soto” emailed you.
If you’re going to invent fictitious communications at least get the name of the person correct. If he used the name de Soto in an email with you, you would be the first and only person in the world with whom he used that name.
(I wrote a nice nasty post, but decided this troll’s gotten too boring. We’ve caught him in a bunch of lies, pinned him down on the mat, and the only thing we’re hearing is standard troll-bleating.)
(Too bad we can’t send a copy of this thread to his employer–if he has one. Claiming credentials you don’t have is a standard reason for termination.)
@James P: So you say you’re a PhD. How come you don’t act like one?
@James P:
Still flailing. At no point have I ever asserted that he called himself by any name. I have asserted that I call him by his given name.
Because it’s his name.
We’re done here …
@David M: HE claimed “Dr. Huerta de Soto” was very cordial. How could he glean that from a website?
Is he now claiming to be the Amazing Kreskin? How can he glean that “Dr. Hueta de Soto” is cordial and approachable to looking at a website?
He directly claimed that “Dr. Huerta de Soto” (Huerta NEVER goes by that name) emailed him. That’s an obvious lie.
He did not receive an email. He was directly caught in a lie. You people are just typical libs. You can’t argue any facts with a conservative so you devolve into personal attacks and you lie about them. This jerk got caught RED-HANDED in a lie.
He claimed “Dr. Huerta de Soto” emailed him.. THAT DID NOT HAPPEN. He lied.
@James P:
Whew, the irony in that statement … 😀
@James P: “You’re a fraud and you and I both know it. I’m done going down this rabbit hole with a liar.”
You’re more than welcome to leave at any time. Or go back to calling yourself Hoot. Whatever.
@David M: P.S. I don’t think he has a college degree. Not one involving logic or comprehension, that is. Very typical for people on the internets to try to squash discussion by pulling out claimed authority from a back pocket. And, as the man said, EVERYONE’s Ronnie Johnson on the internets…
Now that’s the troll’s been nicely filleted into sardine-size bits and reduced to incoherent sputtering, what shall we do for an encore?
Let Me Fix That For You, Doug.
Indiana To
GiveRestoreReligiousBusiness OwnersTheProperty Right ToDiscriminate Against GaysDetermine With Whom They Will Do BusinessP.P.S. HarvardLaw92–thank you for your elegant work. Please take a bow!
Liberalism truly is a form of mental illness. You people prove that.
This guy is caught in an OBVIOUSLY lie and you people want to deny reality and still give him credibility. That says more about you folks than it does me. I feel sorry for you.
He still can’t explain away his obvious lie about the email.
@James P: “You people are just typical libs. You can’t argue any facts with a conservative so you devolve into personal attacks and you lie about them. This jerk got caught RED-HANDED in a lie.”
It’s pretty impressive how quickly the manly man from Galt’s Gulch turned into a whiny ass titty baby the second he was directly challenged. You’d think that someone who had entirely created his own existence without any help from anyone ever would have a slightly thicker skin. But here he is, blubbering away that the mean man on the internet is picking of him.
I think of all the things I despise about hardcore right wingers, this is at the top of the list. They’re so invested in their masculinity because deep down they know they’re pathetic little powerless babies…
@James P:
I’ll try and use easier words this time, he received a list by email and it matched the list on the web page. Even for a person with only a high school diploma, you seem to have a great deal of trouble understanding basic sentences.
Picking on me? I exposed him as a liar. How is that whining?
@James P:
Keep flailing, Junior … 😀
This thread took a strange turn. I’m not religious but I try to empathize with people. But I have a hard time understanding why a small business owner would turn down business because a person happens to be a sinner. Aren’t we all?
@David M: He did not receive an email. He lied about that. Is that simple enough for you?
@HarvardLaw92: You did not receive an email from “Dr. Huerta de Soto”. Why do you persist in perpetuating what has PROVEN to be a bald faced lie? Only you and Obama believe your own lies.
That’s the trait of a psychopath.
Nothing more to see here folks. I think the head’s dead at this point.
Let him keep stomping his feet and throwing a tantrum. It won’t save him …
Where is Woody Allen when you need him?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wWUc8BZgWE
@grumpy realist:
@HarvardLaw92:
So the doctoral candidate’s mentor’s name is Dr. Huerta de Soto. Except that he doesn’t go by that name. However that’s the name he is known by. It’s also the version of his name that was used earlier on this website.
And he taught at LSE, but during sabbatical as a visiting professor who wasn’t listed as LSE faculty. Yet was able to approve a Ph.D. level degree awarded through LSE.
Makes perfect sense.
@Surreal American:
For a moment I thought I’d tuned in to General Hospital, agreed …
…and here the standard technique of trolls shows up again. Caught in a lie, totally tries to deflect the cold hard facts….and resorts to calling the people who unearthed the lie “liars.”
Well, what else can he do? Every claim he’s made we’ve made holes in large enough to let battleships through.
So…in conclusion: circumstantial evidence indicates NOT the holder of a Ph.D., NOT someone who attended LSE, NOT someone who studied under Dr. de Soto. Not someone who has had experience of graduate programs, period.
Thus endeth the lesson.
(P.S. we could have a bit more fun with him, given that I’ve got several friends who were at LSE, visited them regularly, and could ask the troll to describe bits and pieces of the LSE that I’m quite sure he’s never seen in his life, but as said above, we’ve sufficiently squashed his pretensions. I DO wish we could get this thread into the hands of any employer of his, past or present. Being a troll is one thing, but outright lying about credentials really pisses me off.)
@Keith:
“Small business owners” don’t do this. Evangelical “small business owners” don’t do this.
Assholes do this.
@James P:
At this point, I would say put up or shut up.
HL linked to his list.
Show us your transcript or your diploma or whatever Ph.D.’s get.
If you are being honest it’s easy to prove and shut that arrogant…. :0) ….sob up for good.
@James Pearce: This law is going to cause a hell of a lot of blowback, I bet. Imagine you’re a restaurant owner. You have several waiters. In comes a large Italian family, one of the daughters very very pregnant. They order one or more bottles of wine. The waiter who is supposed to serve the table refuses to take over to them the bottles of wine on the argument that the pregnant woman could possibly drink the wine and he’s pro-life and he’s protecting the fetus.
(Don’t think this is a stretched situation–I read about a case where this in fact happened.)
Now, in any common-sense world, the restaurant owner would be able to immediately fire the waiter on the grounds of attempted-mindreading and pissing off customers, but what now happens in Indiana? Given that the waiter can now shield his activities under this silly law, I think a lot of restaurant owners are dreading what can come down the pipeline.
@C. Clavin: Hell, you can go over to the website that has the LSE theses on line, put in “the effects of monetary policy on currency valuation” and get….bupkis. Zilch. Zero. Nada.
And since they have theses that go back to 1905, I don’t think the argument “but they didn’t put mine on line!” is going to work very well.
So: not listed by his putative advisor as being a supervised thesis, and the LSE has no record either. (I did a Google search for Ph.D. theses with that title and again pulled up bupkis.)
Game, set, match.
@James P:
Gee, I once heard that Conservatism is a form of mental colonoscopy. Maybe Michael Savage or Ann Coulter can use that as a title for their autobiographies?
@grumpy realist:
Agreed. A search for “huerta” produces 12 results. None of them are a listing of anyone named Huerta-anything as an advisor. They’re all inline citations.
James, would you care to comment on this exciting new development? 😀
@grumpy realist:
If I were in charge, I’d force Congress to replace the RFRA with the DYFJA.
It’s the “Do Your F’ing Job” Act.
When people were fighting to ban gay marriage, they had a semi-legitimate claim to some kind of religious belief. Too bad the Constitution prevents the establishment of religion, though. DOH!
But now that they’re fighting to discriminate economically against gay people (or any “other”) it’s not just religion. It’s rude and it’s unprofessional. It’s more “worst practices” than “best practices” and considering it has more to do with these people’s personalities than it does with their religious beliefs, I don’t see why we need to shield them under the law.
Just do your f’ing job.
@James P:
You know, I was open to believing that all that happened is that the Professor was on your dissertation committee for a year, or that you had written an MA thesis under him, or something like that, but the fact that you think that you think that a social sciences professor trains 23 PhD students in a single semester strongly indicates you had never attended graduate school.
Things have gotten very strange here at Outside the Beltway. Stay weird, everybody.
@humanoid.panda: And of course, anyone with a passing knowledge of academia knows that yes, training 23 PhD students in 17 years (17 years which presumably include sabbaticals and time before tenure) is a very respectable haul, in the social sciences and humanities at least.
@Another Mike:
Are you familiar with ectopic pregnancy? How about preeclampsia?
@humanoid.panda: it also conveniently ignores the fact that the year the degree was awarded is also listed. It’s certainly not all the same year.
@Grumpy Realist:
I didn’t have the heart to hit him with “the two email addresses I have for Dr. Huerta de Soto are jesus.huertadesoto@ *** and huertadesoto@ *** ”
The reply email came from “Jesus Huerta De Soto” as far as Outlook is concerned.
For it somehow not to be his name, he sure does use it a lot …
@Neil Hudelson: I certainly don’t want someone refusing me service if I am wearing a cross necklace or Christian themed t shirt.
@C. Clavin: The first amendment guarantees religious freedom. Hating God doesn’t trump the constitution.
@grumpy realist:
I think the fact that he doesn’t know his insurance and home are subsidized proves he doesn’t have a Ph.D in anything related to economics.
But he should have the opportunity to provide proof of his claim…no matter how dubious.
@HarvardLaw92:
And here I thought Professor Huerta signed all his correspondence as “Snuggums”
@Nan:
Religious freedom is not the freedom to impose your silly superstitions on others.
And understanding that an infinitely old, infinitely powerful, totally omniscient being for which there is exactly zero proof of doesn’t actually exist is not an emotion called hate.
Learn about what the Bible, a work of fiction, says about Christ. It will make you a better Christian.
Wow, this thread is comedy gold. I have a feeling that James P. will now cease to post on OTB, but after a decent interval, some new poster will come along with a style very much like James P. Of course the new poster will disavow all knowledge of James P. Presumably, he won’t again claim credentials he doesn’t have , but then the stupidity is particularly strong with this troll. Maybe he’ll claim a degree in physics next.
Well that was painful to read, but like a dissection you can’t help but read on.
Can we preserve this beautiful moment with damnatio memoriae and just pretend the accused doesn’t exist anymore?
Looking at you people who keep feeding it!
Using that line of reasoning, you must think it is perfectly acceptable for business owners to discriminate against people from different ethnic groups than themselves…who needs those pesky civil rights laws…after all, apparently for some people, they should not be enforced…
Getting back to the topic at hand, I suspect it won’t be very long before some business owner comes forward claiming that his faith won’t allow him to do business with interracial couples who want to marry, or couples who are currently living together in sin.
The plain fact is that these laws give business owners a license to discriminate on the basis of religion. Justice Alito pooh-poohed Justice Ginsburg’s concerns, but guess who will be proven right. Justice Ginsburg’s ” parade of horribles” are on their way to a court near you.
@Nan: the first amendment generally guarantees that governments won’t pass laws abridging individual religious belief, or create any sort of established state religion.
It does not exempt one from following generally applicable laws.
@HarvardLaw92:
Well isn’t that a naive pre-Hobby Libby outlook, now?
As someone who started (and then ran very fast away from) a Ph.D. in Business program, I have to extend my thanks to all of you who schooled that fool before I even had a chance to start reading the thread.
(A Ph.D. at LSE is a two-year program…. bah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah!)
I’m only sad that I didn’t get a chance to ask him for a link to his SSRN profile so I could read his working papers. *snerk*
@James P:
So how is the Sarah Palin blow up doll anyway? I’m assuming that’s who you were referring to when you referred to “my woman” recently.
@grumpy realist: I kind of think he’s so invested in the lie – it’s probably something he’s been telling people IRL for years, maybe even his employer – that he simply can’t stop. No one he’s ever told that lie to before probably knew anything about how the academy works.
@stonetools: Oooh, please, please, PLEASE!!!! I would have so much fun with him! That would be hilarious!
(Possessor of doctorate in physics–a real one)
@Blue Galangal: if there’s the chance that he’s been telling these lies to his employer, I’m almost tempted to call in one of my MIT hacker friends, track down who he really is and whom employed by, then send a copy of this thread to said employer.
I don’t think he has, however. Claiming a MA from some little-known Podunk university is one thing. Claiming to have a Ph.D from LSE is a completely different ball of wax–companies are much more likely to check up skeptically on such a claim. And if he’s anywhere near the sort of job where a PhD from a top economics dept. is required–yeouch. He’d give himself away just as much as if he had been plunked into Heian Japan.
Face it–this troll isn’t very bright. Look how easily we smoked him, and we weren’t even halfway trying.
And for those who think we’ve used a sledgehammer to squash an ant, think of it as our own small victory against the preponderance of lying and claiming qualifications that one doesn’t have. The Supreme Court considers it Freedom of Speech. Ok. But if we don’t push back against this sort of activity whenever we see it, it DOES become the norm. If you can decide to claim possession of a PhD whenever you feel like it, it allows you to unjustly claim the authority and gravitas of knowledge and experience that you have not had. When you say you have a PhD, you are saying you know how to do independent research. Furthermore, you are saying that you have signed on to a level of professionalism and ethics. That you will not fake data. That you will always double-check everything. And that if you run across data that contradicts your theory, you will throw out your theory, not your data. In short, are you really dedicated to truth, or to your own ego?
So when a jerk like James P. goes around waving his supposed PhD in our faces, he’s trying to claim belonging to a tradition of high professionalism and ethics–neither of which he demonstrates.
Here endeth the rant…
Wow… truly amazing. A toast to HL92!
@Grumpy Realist: My daughter (PhD, physiology and biochemistry) suggested letting Dr. Huerta de Soto know some barely-literate internet ignoramus is discrediting him by throwing his name around.
@Rafer Janders: “So, basically, Indiana is instituting Shariah law? Or, at the very least, giving the owners of businesses who want to use Shariah law to discriminate against gays, women, non-Muslims, etc. a legal justification to do so?”
The only problem which these people have with Shariah is that it’s the wrong brand.
@Tillman: “On-topic, how precisely does a business owner identify as religious? ”
1) Demonstrate skin color.
2) Talk right-wing.
Unless these laws will also cover people of non-right wing faith, which IMHO they rarely will.
@Another Mike: “Many of us would say that calling abortion an essential service is absolutely insane.”
Perhaps your reading comprehension is off today – the obvious point was that medical people could refuse to treat (and likely refuse to send others to treat) in any occasion which the could claim violates their right-wing beliefs.
@grumpy realist: “It is if you have a dead fetus inside you.”
Which cases do happen; in Michigan there’s a case where a woman was miscarrying at four months, and was twice sent home.
@C. Clavin:
Oh, don’t be so sure. Remember, he claims to be an Austrian school nutcase and one of the Austrian School’s founders claimed that data and facts can’t prove his theories are wrong.
But give a pass to a “marriage equality”Colorado baker who will not put a Bible quote on a cake.
http://reason.com/blog/2015/01/30/a-silly-fight-over-what-part-of-a-cake-c
@Keith: “But I have a hard time understanding why a small business owner would turn down business because a person happens to be a sinner. Aren’t we all?”
Some sins are more equal than others.
@Paul L.: Clearly we need a separation of church and cake.
@KM: @Paul L.: These sort of problems come up when it comes to servicing a wedding. A wedding photographer is as much an integral part of a wedding as the pastor and director, maybe even more so. The photograher must develop a close working relationship with the couple, and gets to know them weeks and months before the wedding. A couple would be foolish to obtain the services of a photographer who was even the slightest bit hesitant.
I heard about one photographer who now will only work at events held at the local churches. That certainly solves the possible risk of some misguided law suits.
In another case, a church took in a photographer as a partner in their ministry, which would protect them from legal actions.
Who is this James P. person???
“I am Elmer J. Fudd, millionaire. I own a
mansion and a yacht, I am Elmer J. Fudd, millionaire. I own a
mansion and a yacht, I am Elmer J. Fudd, millionaire. I own a
mansion and a yacht, I am Elmer J. Fudd, millionaire. I own a
mansion and a yacht,” I also have a PhD
@Mikey: If it isn’t the real Dr. de Soto who posted at the bottom of this thread, I think that would be a good idea. HL92, since you’ve been in contact with him already, will you do the honors?
(I know that if I were a professor with a bunch of grad students, I’d be pretty annoyed if some internet troll started trying to ride off my reputation.)
@Paul L.: Since when was “God hates fags” a Bible quote? Frankly, if you believe that dude came in with an innocuous Bible quote, you’re just gullible. The Azucar bakery exposes this movement for what it is:
It’s not about God-loving people seeking to practice their religion in peace. It’s about inconsiderate jerks wanting no constraints on their boorish behavior.
@grumpy realist:
@Jesús Huerta de Soto:
It was me. :o)
@Mikey:
He’s already aware. My initial contact with him explained in some detail the nature of my request – exposing a fraud who was trading on his good name. He was, to put it mildly, concerned.
@HarvardLaw92:
It occurs to me that if James P really knows this professor so well, all he should do is email him and ask him to confirm to you that they worked together.
Shouldn’t be too hard.
@HarvardLaw92: And THAT puts the total kibosh on James P.’s scholarly pretensions, sows them with dynamite, and blows them into smithereens. I hope he’s looking over his shoulder now for a good long time worried that “James P.” can be linked to a real individual and what effect this little escapade might have on his employment prospects.
A bas les trolls et les menteurs!
@grumpy realist:
Troll had to be nuked from orbit. Only way to be sure.
A truly strange turn of events.
@Surreal American: I have to say it was one of the most epic smackdowns I’ve seen in my 18 years on internet fora…
@Neil Hudelson:
True – and I think we both know why that will never happen 😀
@Mikey: And the cream of the joke? It’s well known that the London School of Economics has a history of the reddest of Marxist economic thought. (Ralph Miiliband, cough, cough) and still seems to have a strong anti-libertarian and pro-Marxist trend.
So this is like someone claiming to be a member of the French Communist Party and saying he worked for 3 years at AEI or Cato.
(giggle)
@grumpy realist:
That’s the part that really threw it over the edge for me. Austrian economics is regarded, as far as I can tell, with a decided sense of disdain by LSE – judging by their faculty publishing anyway.
Monetarism? Eh, maybe, and that’s being charitable, but Austrianisn? No way …
One would think this clown – were he a legitimate scholar of the field – would have just sought out the University of Chicago or NYU – you know, ground zero for Austrianism.
@HarvardLaw92:
I’m guessing LSE was chosen because Hayek taught there. In 1946.
@Tyrell:
What? Are you serious? The person documenting the occasion (which is optional) is more important then the officiant (who is certified by the state to formally and legally sign off of the marriage)? That’s like claiming the stewardess is more important to a successful flight then the pilot since you can build up a relationship with them on a long trip and not the pilot who’s actually flying the plane!!
This is why I don’t take these religious objections things seriously: they are entirely ego-based and have nothing to do with faith. Yes, photographers do good work that make a wonderful experience even more magical. No, they are not the most important people in the room – not even close. How many photographers stay in close contact with the newlyweds to maintain that relationship? It’s a business transaction – not a friendship. Maybe a more intimate one then buying jeans from Target but its still a temporary business transaction at its heart. In 10 years, they won’t remember that photographer’s name unless it’s on the damn photo somewhere.
@Modulo Myself:
Honestly, I think that LSE was selected because it sounded more prestigious. His goal was to lord his supposed degree over people in some lame attempt at argumentum ab auctoritate.
I’ve been accused of the same at times re: my username, and intellectually I can understand the basis for such an assertion.
I came up with the name rather spontaneously. I wanted to post and needed something somewhat meaningful and unique to me, but which would still serve to preserve anonymity given the number of crazy people on the internet. Looking around my office, the diploma was the first thing I saw, and bam, username decided.
In retrospect, it wasn’t the best choice, but I’m more or less stuck with it now. As a result, I’ve tried to overcome that by letting the quality of the arguments I present validate any degree of deference I might be shown.
@HarvardLaw92:
I wonder if James P. will come back and go the full Black Knight on us:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKhEw7nD9C4
@HarvardLaw92: I was, in fact, amazed at your patience. What really caused me to smell a rat is that James P. didn’t argue like someone who had experience of having to defend himself in a scholarly manner. He didn’t address your questions, nor did he answer your arguments. Notice how quickly he pulled the accusation that you had found the list of names on the internet and hadn’t ever actually contacted Prof. de Soto? Then he touted his accusation as fact and kept whining that he had “proven you a liar” when the only thing he had proven was….nothing. It was all whining and name-calling.
In short, he argued like a troll.
Quite some time ago I read an essay on distinguishing copies from originals in Japanese art (or paintings by students of the master rather than the master, given that they quite often use the same seals on the paintings.) The essayist said something that struck me deeply: “there is no line painted in this that makes you believe that this is a work of originality and artistry, rather than a copy.”
Here, it’s the same thing. We have someone who claims to have gone to one of the top economic institutes in the world. Yet he is unable to carry out an argument against a simple challenge of his credentials without acting like a troll. He literally cannot argue as an intellectual.
No matter how they try to hide it, trolls will always reveal themselves.
@KM: To be fair, that is the kind of relationship some wedding photographers offer the bride and groom when they’re planning months in advance. Sure, the smart people just buy a bunch of disposable cameras (wait, can you even get those anymore?!) and have guests do the photography as a gimmick, but some people with more money than sense absolutely go for the whole personal touch kind of thing.
My credibility on this is ironclad. I can totally link to a guy I knew in college (second from left, big guy) and several high school friends who all mysteriously went into photography as a career. Second most-represented career on my Facebook feed after massage therapist.
I understand this is happening under the deboning of a troll who told a similarly “out there” kind of story, but rest assured that I will stake my reputation – or earn one through this escapade – by stating here and now that it is a fact that if you email that guy and ask him if he remembers some kid named Tillman from a freshman orientation many years ago, he might very well.
@grumpy realist:
The fact that he had pictures of Sarah Palin and Ronald Reagan for his avatar was also an important clue.
@HarvardLaw92:
Maybe that’s it.
@grumpy realist: I got that, too. I’m no PhD, but I have an MS, which gives me some level of insight (I think…lol).
It was when I commented “I know PhDs, my daughter’s a PhD, this guy ain’t no PhD” that he came back with the whole “Dr Jesus Huerta de Soto” thing. It was late and I just went “yah whatever” and went to bed. When I on OTB the next morning, HL92 was well into The Dismantling.
Another thing that clued me in was what “James P” said his dissertation was on. First thing that came to mind was “that is an exceptionally broad and generic topic for a doctoral dissertation.”
@grumpy realist: Because his “questions” were predicated on a specious premise.
HE is the one who lied. He claimed to have received an email he didn’t. I’m not going to stipulate to his premise. He lied – he clearly lied. He is the ONLY one who lied.
I’ve said what I have to say. You folks are probably dumb enough that you believe Obama’s lies so it is unsurprising that you would believe the totally unsourced lies of someone with an internet handle.
I have lied about NOTHING.
@HarvardLaw92: It was “selected” because that’s where I attended. Simple enough?
@James P:
Going the full Black Knight? Seriously?
@HarvardLaw92: LSE was founded by Fabians but there are Austrian professors there. The majority are not, but some are.
I chose that school because it is better than Yale and Harvard (and Chicago and NYU).
@Surreal American: Except the contrary is true. The only person who was smashed was the liar claiming to have received an email he did not receive.
You people are seriously cracking me up.l
Bahahahahahah.
Damn it people, damnatio memoriae!
@Grumpy Realist: Fully agreed. An employer is very likely (say 100%) to verify a claim like that. You probably could get away with claiming an MA from Podunk U. A PhD from LSE – that’s going to be verified.
GOod thing I was telling the truth when I put that on my resume!
@James P:
You can’t possibly be serious. Even discounting the emails presented in this thread, your basic errors in elementary mathematics, reading comprehension and logic were already fairly conclusive evidence against your claims.
@Tillman:
My bad.
@Mikey: If I got into specifics it would be far above your ability to comprehend. I gave you a broad overview of the topic because the particulars would be way over your head.
@Surreal American:
Either that or the truth. It’s one of those two things. I don’t really see much of a middle ground.
@James P: Ok, big guy. Put up or shut up: What was the title of your dissertation? And did you or did you not get a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics?
@James P: Obvious troll is obvious.
LOL, sad. Just … sad …
James – LSE’s own theses portal (which indexes every one submitted to the institution since 1905) has no listing of any dissertation referencing Huerta de Soto as an advisor.
In fact, there are only 12 references there to “Huerta” in any context – all of them are either original authors or inline citations.
Are we supposed to believe that 1) you didn’t list your advisor, whom you supposedly revere, or acknowledge him in any way in your supposed dissertation, or 2) that LSE somehow lost your dissertation?
Seriously? You need to let this one go. You have been exposed. At this point you are just making yourself look even more pathetic, and that’s quite the accomplishment.
@HarvardLaw92: Admit that you are a liar. YOu did not receive an email. I know that you did not receive an email. You know you did not receive an email. I think everybody else (even if they disagree with my politics) knows you did not receive an email.
You are lying – you have no credibility. There is no reason to believe anything you say or go down any rabbit holes with you. They lost NOTHING. The only one who has lost anything is you —- credibility (although I am not stipulating to the premise that you ever had any in the first place).
I told you who the advisor is. You either can’t read or you’re just mental. You lied – OWN IT.
Question: If I create an internet handle that says Duke Law, is that proof that I attended Duke?
@James P: Ok, genius–state the two major fallacies in the assumptions made when deriving the Black-Scholes equation.
(That’s one nice thing about being a theoretical physicist–quantitative finance is a breeze.)
@HarvardLaw92:
Careful, he’ll bite your legs off.
@James P:
Then why isn’t it listed?
Why is there no reference to your claimed dissertation at the university you claim to have submitted it to?
Simple question, so answer it.
@Surreal American:
’tis only a flesh wound 😀
@James P: Dude, you still haven’t explained why there is no record of any dissertation with any title near the topic you claimed to have done your work on at the LSE. On on the internet, for that matter.
stop calling HarvardLaw93 a liar and address the question. He could be the biggest liar in the world and that does not solve the lack of your thesis. Or are you going to now claim that the CIA scrubbed everything from the internets?
While we’re on the subject, LSE responded to my inquiry. Jesus Huerta de Soto has never served, either as an advisor or as a committee member, for any PhD program at LSE.
Which is nicely borne out by the fact that there is no record of any dissertation in their online records which references him as such.
Seriously, guy, just give it up.
@grumpy realist:
HE HAS NOT BEEN IN CONTACT WITH HIM.
HE LIED!
I also find it hilarious that James P is babbling about how pro-Austrian the LSE is when anyone with even simple internet sleuthing skills can find out that the LSE is the exact opposite.
I guess James P just loves hanging around with those Marxist student groups on campus….
@HarvardLaw92: Obviously not. You’re lying about that too.
Either that of you did contact them and they lied to you. I think it’s more likely that you are lying. Either way the information is not false.
My bet is that you are lying about contacting them rather than them lying to you.
@grumpy realist: Unlike at American universities, there is diversity………….diversity of thought. Unlike at Harvard or Yale, everyone does not think alike there.
@James P: I have a deal for you.
I”m getting very bored with this. I came here to argue with liberals, but you obviously aren’t interested in that. You’d rather attack me because …………..because who knows why?
Jealousy?
My issue is I don’t want you to have the last word …….because I am the one telling the truth and you are lying.
I’m done with this site…………however, I need you to concede that you LIED about receiving the email before I go.
You can continue to slander me all you like – I don’t care – just admit that you LIED about receiving an email and I’ll go.
Edit: intended to be directed to the liar who claims to have allegedly attended Harvard
@James P:
So now LSE is lying too? Everybody – every single source which discounts your claims is lying? We’re supposed to believe that?
You still have not answered my question. Why is there no reference to this supposed dissertation in LSE’s records?
It’s a simple question, so answer it – if you can …
@James P:
@grumpy realist:
@HarvardLaw92:
I knew he would be back…sans proof.
Trolls do not have a pride gene.
If they did they wouldn’t be trolls.
@James P: Your thesis title, please?
C’mon, dude. Just give it up. Admit you made this all up in an attempt to have authority in your internet trolling. We’ve stripped you of all credibility, and the more you try to argue along these lines the more you just prove that you can’t argue EXCEPT like a troll. You haven’t addressed any of our questions or invalidated any of the material we’ve posted. You’re cooked.
@HarvardLaw92: The only “source” is you – and you LIED.
A lie is not a source. Admit that you lied about receiving an email and I’m gone.
@James P:
Absolutely not. There will be no quarter, no mercy, shown to you in the slightest.
Either admit you lied about having a PhD from LSE, or face this discussion every time you open your mouth on here.
Those are your choices.
@James P:
You didn’t answer the question. You (tried) to deflect. I was a prosecutor, good man. I’ve played this game before. It won’t work.
Why is there no record of your dissertation?
@HarvardLaw92: Mercy?
I’m kicking your a$$. I’ve exposed you as a LIAR. Any OBJECTIVE person reading this entire thread knows you lied.
I have been truthful about EVERYTHING. The only person who lied is the person who claims to have received an email he did not receive.
@James P:
Troll tactics – deflect and try to turn the discussion back on the accuser.
Won’t work.
Why is there no record of your dissertation? Stop dodging that question.
@James P: Dude, there’s a bloody internet portal. It’s a repository of all LSE theses. Which one is yours?
@James P:
Just like your heroine Sarah P, you can quit anytime.
@HarvardLaw92: Why is there no record of you being a prosecutor?
I don’t believe anything you say. You’re a proven liar.
If you were a prosecutor (not that I believe you were) you’d be disbarred if you conducted yourself like this in court. If you lie to a judge you’d be nailed.
You did not receive that email – you know it and I know it. If you made a misrepresentation like that to a judge in a case you’d be disbarred (ask Bill CLinton about the consequences of lying to a judge).
That’s why I don’t necessarily believe you were a prosecutor. An internet handle is not exactly proof that you went to law school.
On a related subject, I just looked up my father’s thesis for his doctorate degree from a State University here in the USA, from 1977 and found it online. Seems to be the obvious way for James P to resolve this issue.
@Surreal American: When the liar who claims to have attended Harvard admits that he LIED about receiving an email.
@James P:
You got that which you were seeking …
Because you lied.
I would imagine that is the issue you have with everyone you come into contact with.
Feel free to prove that I didn’t. After all, I did that to your claims about LSE, so turnabout is fair play. By all means, prove that I didn’t graduate from HLS.
(note: apoplectic assertions don’t count as proof. You’ll need evidence for that one …). Best of luck …
In the meantime, you still have not answered the question: Why is there no record of your dissertation? It won’t go away …
@HarvardLaw92: When the accuser is LYING, pointing that out in order to impugn is credibility is a perfectly valid defense.
Disproving a negative is going down a rabbit hole – pointing out that the accuser has been caught red handed in a lie is the best way to combat a false allegation.
Didn’t they teach you that when you went to law school? LOL! Maybe you’re lying about that too.
@James P:
Then by all means, present your evidence. Support your assertion.
In the meantime, you still have not answered the question: Why is there no record of your dissertation?
@James P:
LOL, no, calling him a liar without supplying any proof of the assertion is the best way to deflect attention away from a trap you can’t disarm.
Do you really, honestly, think everybody here is so stupid that they’re going to fall for this? We’ve seen trolls before. Your act is nothing new.
You still have not answered the question: Why is there no record of your dissertation?
@Mikey: Yes, usually dissertations have titles like “An Analysis of the Fish Markets in Fourteenth-Century Manchester.”
(Well, it’s been fun, but I have to get back to work. Please keep whacking the troll across the nose whenever he pokes it out again. )
@grumpy realist: That’s not a title – it’s a description. Are you really that stupid? Never mind, don’t answer that.
@James P:
You still have not answered the question: Why is there no record of your dissertation?
@HarvardLaw92:
Judging by the fact that more people are inclined to believe you than me, I would sadly have to answer that in the affirmative.
@James P:
They believe me because the overwhelming bulk of the evidence supports what I am asserting.
You still have not answered the question: Why is there no record of your dissertation?
@HarvardLaw92: Hell, he can’t even state what the title of his dissertation IS. Because if he did, we’d look it up via the search portal and show that it didn’t exist. And if he DOES try to lay claim to having authored one of the PhD theses there on line….I imagine that actual author would be very very interested to hear about it. And I WOULD be enticed to ask some of my hacker friends to start tracking down his real identity.
(Just a warning, James P–you can play games all you want in the vacancies of your own mind, but when you start filching other people’s work in the real world, people are gonna get REALLY pissed.)
@James P: Yup–deflect, deflect, deflect. Anything to stay away from actually stating what your thesis title was. Which we’ve asked you to provide several times.
Sad Cat Diary.
@grumpy realist: That’s why I’m pissed. People are calling into question my accomplishments in the real world.@HarvardLaw92:
People believe you because you are a liberal and I’m not.
If you go an “email” claiming I have five legs, three heads, and six arms, most people would believe you because it comports with their predisposition toward our relative political ideologies.
If we were having this discussion at Free Republic or Red State, 99% would think you are a liar (which you are) and be mercilessly grilling you over inventing fictitious emails which you never received.
The fact that people agree with you means that they are liberals – that’s all.
Care to carry this conversation over to Red State or Free Republic and see who most people believe?
I think my point is made.
@Obvious Troll:
No, you gave a “broad overview” because you were pulling something out of your ass and THERE IS NO DISSERTATION.
Again…obvious troll is obvious.
@Obvious Troll:
Impossible, because those “accomplishments” do not exist.
What high school do you attend?
@Mikey: Actually, this rhetorical style is much more likely from someone who would fill in the “some college” bubble.
@James P:
So why is there no record of your dissertation?
@James P:
No, they believe me because I’ve supplied evidence, further supported by evidence supplied by others, which validates my accusations against you.
They don’t believe you because you either can’t, or won’t, supply any evidence which supports your claims. Rather than easily end the discussion by supplying it, you’ve gone on for pages now attacking everybody else who had the temerity to call you out on your lies.
It won’t work …
Why is there no record of your dissertation?
@James P:
Feel free to do so at any time.
@Turgid Jacobian: meaning he dropped out…..
Yes indeed, obvious troll is obvious. Respect MAH AUTHORITAH! Absolutely refuses to answer any questions asked of him, tries to deflect, move goalposts, etc etc. and so forth.
And in spite of all of his claims of knowledge, can’t even recite the Black-Scholes equation. What a drip.
@KM: Agreed. Our wedding photographer was a friend of a friend. We met him once before the wedding, and went over what we he could offer and what we wanted. Then of course, we worked with him the day of the wedding. Then we met with him once after the wedding to look at the proofs and decide which photos we wanted developed, and which styles. We met one final time to pick up our order and pay him.
In contrast, we met with the minister who officiated our wedding, probably at least seven or eight times over a period of six months before the wedding for premarital counseling, planning the actual ceremony, and determination of the vows we planned to use. We also met again about a month after the wedding for a “how’s it going so far” discussion.
@James P:
“And you are toast! I’m get in the gym, get my lats back, and then Me and my friends from Cobra Kai are gonna take you DOWN, man!!”
Now re-reading all those posts in Stewie’s voice in mind. Good times, good times.
@HarvardLaw92: Actually I’m mocking you on my FB page. Most everybody thinks you are not a lawyer.
I’m agnostic as to whether or not you attended law school (it’s possible you did – it’s also possible you are lying), but most people think that because you lied about the email everything else about you is suspect. It’s a persuasive argument.
Some of my classmates are particularly amused by your claims.
@James P:
I assure you that I couldn’t care any less. I get paid either way. What lies you choose to tell / manage to sell elsewhere are not my concern.
You won’t get by with it here.
Why is there no record of your dissertation?
@HarvardLaw92: And I couldn’t care less if you want to continue your lies.
If you want to live in your own world that’s fine with me.
m not going to respond to you on any other thread. This one is polluted so I will correct any lies you tell but beyond that you are basically just a gnat that I swatted.
You know that you lied and that’s the bottom line.
@James P: What’s the title of your dissertation, james?
(We’re going to keep asking this question every time you post, you realize. You can call us liars as much as you want. The big fat stinkin’ honkin’ big fact is: you have no dissertation title because You. Did. Not. Write. A. Dissertation.)
@James P:
You won’t get by with it here.
Why is there no record of your dissertation?
@HarvardLaw92: P.S. Notice how the troll doesn’t respond to me, except to try to deflect me on to another topic? YOU he screams about and calls a liar, over, over, and over. Now he’s posting claims on his FB page (probably along the lines of “You should have seen how I trashed those libs and showed them fools!”) because he got shot down so devastatingly on this thread and continues to get shot down. So he runs away to his own little playpen.
(BTW, James P–what’s your dissertation title?)
@grumpy realist:
It’s really somewhat sad, assuming he’s even telling the truth about his FB claims.
Some lawyer he doesn’t know, and can’t identify, made him mad on an internet forum. The degree of fervor with which he’s flinging spittle is, I suppose, intended to make people believe he holds legitimate credentials and is enraged at being challenged.
It comes across more like his internet persona(s) are his invented reality. Without them, he goes back to being a nobody, ergo the fervent (but ineffective) deflection tactics defense.
People who genuinely have a life outside of the internet mostly don’t care if they are challenged – because it’s the internet.
Honestly, had he not claimed to have earned a PhD, I would have ignored him, but that claim offends me on a visceral level. I busted my behind for years in undergrad, grad school and law school earning my degrees. People who legitimately have earned PhDs did a lot more work than I did, I have no doubt. Letting his claims stand impugns all of that work we’ve done, and that I won’t stand for.
@grumpy realist: Where is the record of the email you received? There isn’t one because you didn’t receive an email. I”m starting to think you are a sociopath.
@James P:
You won’t get by with it here.
Why is there no record of your dissertation?
@James P: Now we know that you’re totally irrational. When did I ever claim I had received an email?
You’re starting to mix us up.
By the way, what’s the title of your dissertation? You know, the one you claim that you wrote for the PhD awarded you at the LSE?
@James P:
No, I don’t believe you because a) I work in business academia as a full-time Accounting instructor, b) have an MS in Accounting and did a semester in a Ph.D. program before I ran for the hills, and c) therefore can conclude based on what you’ve written that you have no experience in graduate school whatsoever.
– A Ph.D. program at *any* ranked research university does not take two years. Period. The LSE Economics Ph.D. takes four to five years *with* a previous masters degree. The degree plan can be seen right on their departmental website. The coursework alone for a Ph.D. in Business or Economics typically takes two years, and then a dissertation takes at least two years to shepherd along from start to finish.
– Visiting professors *do not* advise on dissertations. The whole purpose of take a visiting professorship on sabbatical is to have an opportunity to live and explore someplace different, to meet and interact with people outside of your normal domain, to have an opportunity to examine primary source documents that are unavailable to you at your academic home, and/or to potentially find new coauthors to develop working papers with that – hopefully – can turn into published work down the road without the burden of having to deal with administrative and service b.s.
It is not to take on some other university’s administrative crap.
– Anyone with a Ph.D. could provide, at minimum, an abstract of their dissertation as well as an online citation to it, and would be willing to provide it to anyone who asked. Your claim that none of us would understand your research so you won’t link to it is blatant b.s.
– But, really, your incredulity that a professor would “only” have supervised 23 dissertations in 17 years is the real tell that you have never set foot inside a research-based Economics department. What exactly do you suppose the Ph.D. student-to-academic advisor ratio is in Business and Economics programs? 50:1? 20:1? 10:1?
No. Not even close. Try somewhere between 1:1 and 3:1 at any point in time, possibly 5:1 at the very most in a time of departmental crisis, but that would not be sustainable over time.
If you want to prove me wrong, please provide at least two of the following:
Your ID on the Social Science Research Network.
A link to at least one of your current working papers.
One or more of your frequent coauthors along with an abstract of at least one piece of work.
The link your your dissertation at LSE’s portal.
Either a JSTOR reference to one or more of your published, peer-reviewed journal articles or a direct link at the journal’s website.
Or, really, at this point, just tell us what databases you used in developing your research, describes some of the variables used in the algorithms you developed to test your hypotheses, and talk about any difficulties you encountered in figuring out how to minimize the r2 of your multivariate regression modeling. Or, if you pursued a more behavioral economic model (which seems unlikely for a dissertation on monetary policy), how did you attempt to minimize the potential for Type I and Type II errors in your experiments?
@HarvardLaw92: I’ve ended up collecting a bunch of degrees. There’s a nice symmetry about it: two Bachelors, two masters, a Ph.D. and a J.D. One reason why I’ve said Enough!
Am now working on passing the Bar….
@HarvardLaw92:
I don’t necessarily believe you are a lawyer. You give yourself too much importance to say you made me mad. Amused would be a more accurate term.
It is you are is angry. You admitted it when you said
You’re angry. Actually I’d say you’re more jealous than angry.
I’m rapidly losing interest (you’re right that I don’t care), but I just want you to admit that you LIED about getting an email you did not receive.
For once we agree. A PhD does outrank a JD. It is much harder to obtain.
I think I’m going to change my handle to Duke Law 92. Hey, I went to Duke law school and my handle proves it. LOL!
@Gromitt Gunn: Grommit–nice try, but you know what the troll is going to do? he’s going to ignore everything, call HL92 a liar, and refuse to talk to you because you “only have a Master’s” and he’s got a Ph.D and thus you can’t possible understand the depth of his argument.
Trolls are trolls. Bullsh*tting is the only thing they know how to do.
Sad, really.
@James P: then as one Ph.D. to another, you should have the courtesy to answer my question: What’s the title of your dissertation?
@grumpy realist: He claims to have received an email he didn’t receive. He is a liar. I’m not going to let it drop until he admits he lied.
@James P:
And still he deflects. You are getting nowhere. I don’t care if you attack me. You can fling as much poo as you like, but it doesn’t solve your problem.
You won’t get by with lying here.
Why is there no record of your dissertation? What is the title? Link us to an abstract. Hell man, do SOMETHING besides being a poo flinging monkey.
@HarvardLaw92: Will you admit to having lied about receiving the email first?
@grumpy realist:
Yikes & jesus … One undergrad, one masters and a JD was quite more than enough for me. I’ve never been happier to have something completed. Your load would have killed me.
Which state (if it’s not too personal) are you trying for the bar in?
@grumpy realist: I understand that he’s a troll and don’t expect a cogent answer.
However, I decided that since I post online with a pseudonym, for what I consider to be legitimate reasons, I should at least extend the courtesy of providing a way to demonstrate he understands academic research based on economic theory without having to necessarily reveal his identity.
@grumpy realist: I’m sensing a Tiger Mom in someone’s past. Which string instrument do you play? 😉
@James P:
No, I won’t. Even assuming I would, which I’m not going to do, it would not solve the problem: your lie would remain.
You are not going to make this about me. If the preceding 40 eleven million comments have shown you anything, they should have shown you that your audience is not buying that tactic. It’s not working. Flinging poo rarely does.
Why is there no record of your dissertation? What is the title? Link us to an abstract. Hell man, do SOMETHING besides being a poo flinging monkey.
@HarvardLaw92: Illinois, as of right now. I keep getting charged up to study for the Bar, and then we get another client or lawyer joining the firm and things have to get pushed off while we sort all the new stuff into the local database. (grumble grandfathered in case grumble…)
I also keep asking myself why I’m doing this because am planning to jump back out into entrepreneurship but having “Esq.” after your name on a business card is often extremely useful in negotiations. At least I’ll never be scared of a Bill of Lading or a contract again!
@HarvardLaw92: It is ENTIRELY about you.
You have made (false) allegations and directly lied in an attempt to substantiate them.
The fact that you are unwilling to admit that you lied proves that you have no interest in any discussion – it is all about attacking me because I am a conservative.
That’s perfectly fine – it’s amusing to a degree, but it is absolutely all about you. You made an accusation – it fell flat – and then you lied to cover your tracks.
You did not receive that email and you know it.
@Gromitt Gunn: Lute!
Actually, my mom was the exact opposite of a Tiger Mom. More like a nice little fluffy kitten with a mind like a kitchen sink. She was a serious musician, hence my getting dragged into playing duets with her. (There’s now a fellowship fund in Music at Cornell established in her name.)
It was more of a problem dealing with my father. Professor at Cornell. Hence the Ph.D. in Physics. Arrrgh…
@grumpy realist:
That would be a tough balancing act, understood. Best of luck though – I’m sure you’ll have no problems.
Matrimonial & family was my bete noire. I just do not like it, so, of course, one of my 5 essay questions on the NY state part of the exam dealt with that arena. I wanted to scream … 😀
If you have poo, fling it now.
@James P:
There will be no future replies to you until you supply evidence supporting the existence of your PhD. What form that evidence takes is up to you, but expect it to be closely reviewed.
Until you can do that, you aren’t worth our time. Have fun talking to yourself.
Well, I think we’ve seen what’s going to happen from here on in: troll will continue to act like troll, continue to call HarvardLaw92 a liar, continue to refuse to answer any questions, and continue to insult the rest of us now and then.
And he’ll refuse to tell us the name of his thesis so we can look it up on the LSE website because he’s a stinkin’ coward that refuses to admit that he’s made up this entire story of having obtained a doctorate from LSE.
As said, trolls are trolls.
@HarvardLaw92: I am pleased to hear you will not be spamming my future comments – you seem to have received the message on other threads.
I;m also glad that you speak for everyone who posts, ever has posted, or ever will post. I don’t need your imprimatur — the school gave me that.
I think I just might invite my Red State and Free Republic friends here.
@HarvardLaw92: and now they’re adding all sorts of new subjects to the Illinis Bar essay questions. AND upping the point level necessary for passing. GROAN.
My bete noire is Constitutional Law–mainly because it makes little sense. All the other stuff (Commercial Paper, Administrative Law, Suretyship, etc.) is tedious and dry but at least I can have it make some sense in my head. Constitutional law–NO.
@James P:
Surprisingly enough, I never thought about threatening to get bullies to fling poo at people when people challenged me about my research. Must be an LSE thing.
@grumpy realist:
I learned to approach Con Law from the standpoint of precedent. Intellectually lazy, perhaps, but the bar examiners aren’t looking for a groundbreaking examination of, say, the 6th Amendment. They’re looking for you to apply precedent correctly.
It’s like calculus in that regard. Understanding it is nigh impossible unless you’re rain man, but applying the clearly delineated rules and formulas isn’t that difficult.
@humanoid.panda: My point is that if the audience were different people would agree with me and would be ripping the liar who claims to have attended Harvard for inventing a fictitious email.
Any OBJECTIVE person can see that he is lying.
@HarvardLaw92: Actually, calculus is very easy. It’s only dumb people like you who can’t understand it.
@James P:
The audience isn’t different, and you aren’t convincing this one.
For one simple reason:
You won’t answer the question. You can dodge and parry and try to make this about me all you like, but you still will not answer this simple question:
Why is there no record of your claimed dissertation at the London School of Economics?
Is it really that difficult to answer? I would think that a legitimate PhD would want to – hell, would WELCOME the chance to – substantiate the existence of his degree.
But you keep avoiding it. I wonder why … 😀
@HarvardLaw92: Well, at least for the Calculus I can highly recommend “Prof. E. McSquared Guide to the Calculus.”
I’ve been tempted to write a “Cartoon Guide to Commercial Paper and Suretyship.” Those seem to be the ones that really give fits to law students.
I had business law with Conviser (founder of BARBRI). It was great–he would give us a whole bunch of pragmatic, good common sense stries, then stop, give a sigh, say: “I guess it’s time for me to give you the Black-Letter law”, give us the law, and then go back to the stories. The rest of the students hated it, and were on pins and needles because we Didn’t Brief Cases. (I think we looked at 5 actual cases during the entire course.)
@James P: What’s the title of your dissertation, James?
@HarvardLaw92: I substantiated it to the school – I don’t need to substantiate anything to a liar like you.
Why won’t you just admit that you lied about receiving the email?
@James P: In that case, why don’t you explain why, if you are a PhD, you think a professor might train 23 PhD students in one semester. Trust me, for anyone who had been an academic for even a second, this is a flashing neon sign that you have no idea of what you speak.
@James P: Ok–if calculus is so easy, please explain the statement: “The polhode rolls without slipping on the herpelhode lying in the invariant plane.”
And you still haven’t told us what’s wrong with the assumptions made in the Black-Scholes equation.
Nor have you told us the title of your dissertation.
@James P:
And yet the school has no record of it. Nice try, but no cigar.
You’re free not to substantiate it, of course, but in so doing you validate our judgment of you.
Choice is yours. Can’t wiggle your way out of this one, pal. Good effort though. I’m sure it convinced the Freepers.
But we’re not the Freepers … 😀
@James P:
That’s very….doctorly of you.
This too:
Please don’t.
@HarvardLaw92: The school does have a record of it – that’s why they gave me a diploma.
You’d get your rear end kicked at Free Republic. You’re not bright enough to defend your arguments other than to a group of sycophants.
@James P: amused people DON’T use ALL caps AS much AS you DO.
What is the title of your diss, again?
@humanoid.panda: No prof has ever trained 23 students in one semester. I never said that — you did.
23 students would give maybe five or six years worth of work.
De-lurking. Ok, there’s that word “objective” again.
This is what I know objectively. Every comment on this site could be untrue for all I know. The only way for me to figure out whether a comment is true or not is to go to other sources that I believe to be truthful. Like, for example, the web site of Jesus Huerta de Soto, which (1) doesn’t list any doctorate advisees at LSE (2) doesn’t say anything about a stint visiting at LSE (although perhaps some academics don’t list their visiting stints on their CVs, most do).
I’m not sure it’s all that unusual to refer to him as “Huerta de Soto.” That’s what I would do. That’s what this guy did: http://mises.org/blog/video-jes%C3%BAs-huerta-de-soto-spanish-scholastics.
@grumpy realist:
That actually sounds like it would be enjoyable. I had Commercial under Kaufman, and enjoyed that too, but it’s my area of interest anyway. I ended up in M&A – go figure …
@HarvardLaw92:
Hell, for a while, I thought he was an MA student or a high level undergrad whom de Soto helped out with a paper when he was doing a sabattical, and is trying to bootsrap it on the internet, so he half-fooled me before the “23 students in one semester!” riff.
@James P:
Please point out that record here. They don’t seem to have any record of a dissertation directed by Huerta de Soto.
In fact, they don’t seem to have a record of any dissertations which list him by name at all.
None. Zero. Zippo. bupkis …
Again, the official records do not match your claims. It’s up to you to explain the disparity.
@Steve V: Others may well refer to him as de Soto, but he himself never does in his correspondence.
When the liar who claims to have gone to Harvard stated that he got an email from “De Soto” it was an automatic red flag that he was lying.
If someone had an autograph signed “Barack Hussein Obama” I would know that it is a forgery because BHO does not sign his middle name or initial (for obvious reasons). IF the autograph had a Hussein or H, we would know it is a fake. The same is true for any “email” from the professor in which he refers to himself as de Soto.
Yes, that’s his name and others may refer to him as such. Hussein is BHO’s name and others may refer to him as such (present company included). However neither refers to themselves as de Soto or Hussein — even though others may.
An email from “De Soto” is as fake as an autograph signed Barack Hussein Obama.
@Steve V:I did some googling, and found no record of de Soto being a visiting professor at LSE. He did give a Hayek memorial lecture there on October 28, 2010, so I can’t rule it out, but usually there is a record of these sorts of things.
@James P:
HarvardLaw92 did not claim that the professor referred to himself as “De Soto”. That is another claim you simply made up.
…I’m starting to see a pattern here.
@HarvardLaw92: P.S. The other reason that Calculus gets a bad rap is that it’s usually taught (badly) by people who don’t understand it.
My problem has always been with classical differential geometry and learning how to visualize stuff in higher dimensions. Which I needed to do for my PhD thesis, since I was essentially trying to tease out non-trivial mappings in the fifth dimension. (Sounds like something from Buckaroo Banzai, doesn’t in?) I was trying to figure out if high-temperature superconductivity could be explained by topological artifacts arising within the Hubbard model, and the definition of the topological artifacts depended on whether there were non trivial mappings of a fifth-dimensional sphere onto itself, once you had plowed through all the math. (I was hoping that if such topological artifacts existed, they could bind together with each other with bog-standard Cooper pairing. I was looking to rip apart the spin and electronic degrees of freedom, so we could have a topological artifact with an effective 1/2 spin but no charge, which meant positive attraction (Cooper pairing) but NO Coulomb repulsion (which is what happens with ordinary electrons.) Since there would be no Coulomb repulsion, the effect of the Cooper pairing would last to far higher temperatures, e.g. high-temperature superconductivity.
I finally gave up on visualizing it and modeled the whole sucker on a Connection Machine as a 4D grid with circular boundary connections. It was essentially a frustrated spin-glass model with a background magnetic field and I Monte-Carlo’d the grid to death looking for a hysteresis effect. Crank up the B field, and try again…. it was a bit of a hoot, using the world’s fastest supercomputer to do one’s thesis calculations, and I could set up the whole thing from Japan, which is where I was, let that sucker run for 5 hours, come back and download the results.
@David M: Except that he did make precisely that claim. That’s how I knew he was lying.
P.S. Now that’s a short explanation of what I did for MY doctoral thesis. If James P. wants to match me with an explanation, the door is always open.
but he won’t, because he didn’t do research for a doctoral thesis, nor did he write a Ph.D. thesis. As witnessed by his continued inability to even state the title of his doctoral thesis.
@James P:
No, he said he received an email reply from the professor. He did not say how the professor referred to himself. Reading comprehension failure again.
@James P: No, he didn’t make that claim. He did claim that he had an email exchange with him; he did not, however, claim that the professor referred to himself as “de Soto.” HL92 clearly referred to him as “Huerta de Soto,” but so what? That’s how I would refer to him too.
@James P:
Not to split hairs, but Huerta de Soto is his paternal family name. His email addresses are jesus.huertadesoto @ *** and huertadesoto@ ***
The insurance company he runs presents his name as “Jesus Huerta de Soto”
Mises calls him Huerta de Soto.
His university calls him Huerta de Soto.
In fact, it seems that the only person who DOESN’T call him that is YOU …
Even if we assume that every accusation you have made against me is true (they aren’t, but let’s play hypotheticals …) you still have not addressed the primary problem:
LSE has no record of any dissertation which mentions him by name, at all, in records going back to 1905.
You claim he directed your program, but there is no record of your dissertation.
You can’t avoid that question.
@HarvardLaw92: Kaufman’s still teaching for BARBRI. I had him for Illinois Admin Law this January. He’s a hoot as a lecturer! (I’ll never forget his “…constiTWOshun–count them, TWO–shunal…”)
@grumpy realist:
My brain just died reading that … 😀
@James P: “I’ve exposed you as a LIAR”
Actually, you’ve only claimed him as a liar. Now it’s consistent with your mode of argument — and by some shocking coincidence, Jenos’ — to make a claim and then insist that the claim itself serves as proof. But the only way you’ve “exposed” him as a liar is by shouting “you’re a liar and everyone knows it.”
You can prove him a liar. You can post the title of your disseration, for instance.
But since you’re lying and a troll and probably Jenos, you won’t.
@James P: What’s the title of your doctoral thesis?
@grumpy realist: Or, if you don’t want to expose your name, could you sum it up, or give the names of your other committee members?
@grumpy realist: ““The polhode rolls without slipping on the herpelhode lying in the invariant plane.””
I can’t speak for James P… but to me, it sounds dirty. In a good way.
@HarvardLaw92: You’d probably like what I did for my M.A. thesis better: an analysis of medieval treason law and its application to five cases of conspiracy in Florence. You wouldn’t believe the amount of legal Latin I had to plow through for that one, though. It was a relief when I could use the Hohenzolleran legal texts because they were both in Latin and Norman French. And aside from Baldus’s Commentaria (which had the original cases I was looking at) the main reference I used was this very weird book written by an Italian Marxist on Crimen Laesae Maiestatis. The book itself drove me nuts because the Italian Marxist kept shoving everything together regardless of the period (treason law in the 17th century is NOT the same as treason law in the 13th century!) but it had good juicy quotes from references of the period so I could at least know where to start looking.
I also remember it because I ended up reading a wonderful piece of legal snark (in Latin) from the 14th century by someone who had obviously been asked to bring a post-mortem accusation of treason against someone to break the inheritance just One Too many Times….
And reading Baldus’s Commentaria was an interesting mixture of legal Latin boilerplate and transcripts from the trial, all in Florentine Italian. And then back to the Latin boilerplate: (“…so he shall be condemned to be taken out to the marketplace and have his head cut off his shoulders so that his spirit depart fortwith.” I still remember that.)
@grumpy realist: I just had flashbacks to biophysical chemistry and using partial derivatives in three dimensional systems to calculate protein folding speeds of known amino acid codes in normal osmotic systems. I hated that class so much I almost changed my major. I have no idea how people can look at equations that span several wipe boards and not make a sign error or variable error without checking 100 times. I wish we could’ve just written code to actually just solve it for us like they probably teach now.
@grumpy realist:
That does sound more interesting, absolutely.
Guys…this thread is approaching 300 comments. I have to assume that HarvardLaw has a spouse, friends, or family that misses him/her. Turn of the lights, go home.
At least be sporting and give James P a night to try pretzel out a reason his dissertation isn’t on the website with all the other dissertations.
@HarvardLaw92: I’m still quite proud of it, because I figured out what legal historians covering that period have always felt to be a very bizarre decision by Baldus de Ubaldis. Those five cases of conspiracy in Florence I mentioned? After the defendants had all been put to the axe, some bright flunkey in the Florentine government decided to try to fill the holes in the city budget by bringing post-mortem accusations of treason against them. If convicted, this would allow the Florentine government to confiscate their estates. So said flunkey went to Baldus, known for his strong defense of the Italian City-State concept, and asked him for his legal opinion.
Baldus, in his Consilium, goes through all the testimony and all the relevant Florentine statutes. Then he goes onto Roman law (which is what they used if the local city-statutes didn’t have anything to cover the situation.) After all this quoting of everything (including Florence’s claiming to itself the rights and privileges of the Roman Empire) , he comes down very abruptly AGAINST the city. No, he says. Florence can claim all the rights and privileges its wants, but it is NOT the Roman Empire and does NOT get to bring post-mortem accusations of treason in such a case.
Now, historians have always found this a rather strange decision, especially since Baldus (student of the great Bartolus civitas sibi princeps and all that) is dead-set in other respects on the utmost validity of the authority of the city-state structure. What gives?
What I realized is that Baldus was working in that short period of medieval history before the collapse of treason into two levels–high and low treason (usually counterfeiting) in the 15th century. In Baldus’s time, there were many more levels of treason. And here was my realization (which I’m still proud of): Each level of treason went with a different level of authority. Under Roman law, the post-mortem accusations of treason was reserved for the very highest level of treason of all–that against the Emperor himself (Lex Julia, cough) or against the Roman Empire. And as Baldus said, Florence wasn’t at that level, and so therefore couldn’t use the highest levels of treason law. None of this was stated in writing because they took it for granted as something everyone already knew–I had to figure it out from the results of legal judgments alone.
It was one of those blinding insights that unfortunately happened just a week out from when the thesis was due, so the next week was definitely short on sleep. A very interesting experience, and I wouldn’t have missed it.
@Neil Hudelson:
Agreed. Good night, all!
My, this was an entertaining thread. Back on subject, if a business is going to discriminate on their religious beliefs, they ought to post them so everyone knows and can make an informed decision on whether to do business with them. Not that I think these laws should be passed, but if a state is going to have them, the businesses should own their bigotry.
Off topic, I have no idea if HL went to Harvard, but fairly confident that he is in deed a lawyer. He writes and reasons like one. I also have one, but from a smaller school (Creighton, 1991) and Alex Knapp who used to write posts here can confirm. So far all the hard evidence supports HL’s assertion that James P. Does not have a PHD as he claims. The only “evidence” in favor of James P’s assertion is his unsupported claim. He could fix that by simply giving the title of he thesis, but he has not, which is somewhat telling.
@C. Clavin: insert any religion, same deal.
side note- how would anyone know you’re a homosexual to begin with?!
@grumpy realist:
and THAT is the question that would seem to settle this, right?
@Neil Hudelson:
Right? Even I’m bored with it.
@C. Clavin: I think until he answers the question, we just ignore his comments. Don’t respond to them, just treat them as they don’t exist.
Once again, so many miss the obvious solution in their rush to show that they ARE MORE OUTRAGED!!!! THAN THOU!
Here’s what a gay rights group should say:
“We’d like to thank Indiana for passing this law. It will makie it so much easier for the bigots to self-identify, We’re also announcing that we will be assembling a list of any and all businesses who choose to exercise their right to practice discrimination so we can make damned certain that they will not have to serve those with whom they disapprove, along with anyone else who disagrees with their misguided beliefs. We’ll be setting up a web site where we will list these businesses, as well as taking reports from people who encounter this bigotry. We also invite these businesses to register themselves with our web site so gay people — and people who support the rights of gay people — can avoid inflicting their presence on these protesters.”
@David in KC: this is going to turn into one of those “what’s the frequency, Kenneth?” thingies I bet.
Oh well, off to dinner and taxes. ‘Night, all. It’s been an amusing afternoon.
@humanoid.panda: That’s kind of where I was too at first, until the claim that a PhD program was only two years. (As has been noted his reading comprehension is severely lacking, because it’s on their fricking website, yet he still makes that bizarre claim.) But this has me laughing so hard it’s almost impossible to read the rest of the smack down.
Do tell.
Outrageous, wrong and probably illegal under federal law. A public business means just that…Open to the public. The days of signs on the doors of “No Blacks. No Jews, No Irish” or the implied “No Gays” should be proscribed by law. The first obligation of any business is to the customers and the almighty dollar, not some misguided concept of almighty God hating some customers…
It’s good to admit that all religions are bigoted…well, their followers anyway…
Hmm…perhaps because you are married to someone of the same sex…
I think I have a way to solve this kerfuffle between James P and HarvardLaw92, with each of them accusing the other of lying. Since we have to provide a valid email address in order to register to comment, the moderators of the blog have some indication of who we really are. How about James and Harvard each email a copy of their respective degrees to Doug and he can then settle this by letting us know who is telling the truth, while still retaining the anonymous handles.
May the best man win!
@Moderate Mom:
Doesn’t solve anything. He could snap or steal a photo of a degree from anywhere / anyone, and there is no way for Doug to know if he’s lying or not.
As it is, he has made some very specific claims. He’s given:
1) The name of the school he ostensibly earned his PhD from’
2) The subject of his dissertation
3) Most importantly – the name of his advisor.
PhD dissertations are very public things. Their existence is independently verifiable – without the need of identity of the person making the claim – from the school that supposedly awarded them.
Dissertation subjects, indeed the dissertations themselves as well, are always published. Advisors, and indeed committee members, are customarily named in one’s dissertation and become part of the record of the degree if awarded – whether you want them to or not. You don’t get a choice.
The school which he asserts awarded him his PhD full text indexes all of its awarded PhD dissertations, without exception (the school makes no provision for exclusion) – and makes the index, dating back to 1905, freely available online. The index is current up to the present date – i.e. it covers the period from 1905 up through the date that one is searching.
Verifying his claims then becomes a matter of nothing more than searching that index for a dissertation which meets the criteria he himself has asserted in his comments on here as being accurate.
In other words, if his claims were accurate, there would be a record in that index which, at a minimum, shows the name of the professor that he asserts acted as his advisor.
No such record exists. There is no dissertation listed by the London School of Economics, in the last 110 years, in which his his named professor acted as an advisor.
None – period – covering any subject at all. The plain fact is that, given the facts he has asserted, his degree can not exist, which means that either he lied about the facts of the degree or he lied about the degree’s existence entirely.
Either way, he lied, so he needs to answer for that.
It was an artful attempt at shoehorning validation of your own previously stated doubts about me into the discussion though. Were it necessary, I’d have no problem doing so – but it isn’t.
@Jenos Idanian #13: let the record reflect, I agree with Jenos’ last comment. However, I’m not sure how that squares with his outrage over efforts to expose supporters of California Prop 8.
@al-Ameda: You are asking me to give personally identifying information. If I post that I am as good as giving out my home address.
This is a message board filled with liberals. Liberals are inherently dangerous people. Liberals have violent tendencies – most are mentally ill and unstable.
If I give specific detailed (identifiable) information I can prove my credentials are what I say they are and make a fool of the liar who claims to have attended Harvard. I might enjoy the five minute I told you so part of it.
However, I would have plenty to lose. Because liberals are dangerous unbalanced potentially violent people I am risking one of these people showing up at my front door.
Do I have more to gain or to lose?
I don’t have anything to prove to people who don’t know me. Nobody hear uses their real name (for a reason) so why would I want to give out information which potentially personally identifies me.
I’m not that stupid and I am not willing to risk that in order for an I told you so moment with anonymous people I have never and will never meet in real life.
@HarvardLaw92: I suspect that you are hell bent on this because you want information with which to personally identify me. Frankly I suspect you are dangerous.
You did give me an idea. I think I’ll change my handle to DukeLaw92 —- the mere fact that that will be my handle will be proof that I went to Duke Law school.
@Blue Galangal: A PhD is two years if you already have a Masters. A joint MA-PhD program is longer. You need to read more carefully.
@Neil Hudelson: It is.
@wr: He said he got an email from a name that a guy does not use.
As I said in another comment, if you have an autograph signed Barack H Obama it is a fraud because he doesn’t sign his name that way.
He claimed he got an email he did not receive. I know this as fact because he got the name wrong.
IF someone says they have an autograph signed Barack H Obama do I need to see it to know that it is phony?
@Steve V: He said Huerta was cordial and engaging. Did he glean that from looking at his website?
He claimed to have received an email and that claim is a complete and total lie. That’s a prime facie case that he lied about it. He’s full of it. How can you trust any other claim he has made when it is established that he lied about receiving the email?
It’s astonishing to me that the rest of you folks are so trapped in your ideological bubble that you would believe an obvious liar simply because you agree with his politics.
Say, for example, where one attended university, who one’s PhD advisor was and what the subject of one’s dissertation was?
😀 ————> James <———— 😀
@James P:
Eh, maybe, IF one were pursuing a MPhil/PhD program. 2 years is the absolute minimum for someone already possessing a masters degree from LSE. It’s almost unheard of though.
The problem there is that LSE doesn’t offer a MPhil/PhD in Economics. They only offer an MRes/PhD in Economics, which takes 3 to 5 years, as laid out here.
They also don’t offer MA degrees. They only offer MSc degrees.
You’d think someone who claims to have graduated from LSE, – someone that would have spent years there as a result – would know that information. But you don’t.
I didn’t attend a single class there, indeed I’ve never set foot on their campus, yet it took me about 10 minutes to find it out.
Moral of the story – if you’re going to lie to people who do exhaustive research for a living, do your homework first.
Short version – you need to lie more carefully next time
Or just tell the truth from now on. What a concept 😀
Possibly the most bizarre claim I’ve ever seen someone make. Everyone can scroll up and easily see it’s bogus, but somehow that doesn’t stop him from making things up.
Also, linking to the actual thesis at LSE only would show a name, not an address. Even full names aren’t necessarily reliable for identifying people when we’re talking about a population of 300 million plus.
So what to believe? That the random internet poster who is best known for repeatedly making things up really has a PhD, or everyone else and their actual evidence?
@HarvardLaw92: He calls himself HUERTA DE SOTO in his own citations on his own articles (at, for example, the Cobden Centre). This is such an odd hill on which James P has chosen to make his stand.
HUERTA DE SOTO, J. 2003. “Nota crítica sobre la propuesta de reforma de las normas internacionales de contabilidad.” Partida Doble, no. 21, April, pp. 24-27.
HUERTA DE SOTO, J. 2009. “The Fatal Error of Solvency II”. Economic Affairs, 29, no. 2, pp. 74-77.
HUERTA DE SOTO, J. 2010. “Algunas reflexiones complementarias sobre la crisis económica y la teoría del ciclo.” Procesos de Mercado: Revista Europea de Economía Política, vol. 7, no. 2, autumn, pp. 193-203.
HUERTA DE SOTO, J. 2011. “Economic Recessions, Banking Reform and the Future of Capitalism.” Economic Affairs, vol. 31, no. 2, June, pp. 76-84.
HUERTA DE SOTO, J. 2012. Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles, 3rd revised edition, 2012. Auburn, Alabama, USA: Ludwig von Mises Institute. [First Spanish edition, 1998.]
@James P:
Then provide an elevator pitch of your dissertation- no personal information is required for that one.
@James P: Hogwash. Perhaps my graduate school friend, and distinguished economist Willem Buiter would disagree with you. He taught at LSE (and several other distinguished schools as well) and is now chief economist with Citigroup in London.
@Blue Galangal:
Trolls have this overriding, narcissistic belief that they are the smartest people in the room. Everybody else is stupid, and if they just shout loud enough, bluster enough or stamp their feed loudly enough – or repeat the same “my claim is evidence of my claim” circular reasoning over and over ad nauseum, they can win any debate. The motivator behind that is apparently their belief that the audience won’t read in enough detail to see that the emperor has no clothes.
He picked the wrong crowd to try to swindle. He couldn’t have selected a worse one if he’d tried.
Oh, look, the toxic tribalism has scored another great victory and silenced another minority voice, a voice of dissent, who dared disagree with the GroupThink.
Great job, folks. Tag-teaming him from all directions, until he makes the mistake of trying to pull a bluff and getting called on it. Or, perhaps, out-bluffed by someone who can count on the mob here to back up the bluff (I don’t particularly care which; the effect is the same).
I don’t have much sympathy for the loser here. He was foolish to play along with the My Credentials Are Bigger Than Yours game, and, to quote War Games, the only way to win is to not play. Sorry, James P. You shouldn’t have played their game at all, but if you do play it, you don’t play it that poorly.
But it’s odd how the cross examination and quest for absolute honesty is never turned on those who can be reliably counted upon to support the GroupThink of the commentariat here. And by “odd” I mean “pathetically predictable.” It’s how it’s done in tribes — Us Against Everyone Else.
Hell, you even have Cliffy and wr to perform the traditional “marking of the territory” duties.
I’m glad I’m nowhere near invested enough in this site that I can get caught up in these dishonest little games any more.
@Steve V: let the record reflect, I agree with Jenos’ last comment. However, I’m not sure how that squares with his outrage over efforts to expose supporters of California Prop 8.
There’s no parallel at all.
@HarvardLaw92: actually it is only half that. The other half is that they’re deeply ashamed of their lack of real-life distinction or accomplishment.
I think Michael Reynolds should write a novel – Portrait of the Bogus Phd as a Young Man- based on this thread.
Alternately, this thread could provide material for a late night comedy sketch.
Actually, he claimed to be an economics PhD on his fourth or fifth post, after I and another person pointed out that he was blatantly misreading BLS statistics. Thanks for playing though.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
“Play along with?” He fricking STARTED it when he came out with “you only have a JD therefore my PhD trumps” bullshit to HL92.
Certainly there was a lot of disagreement with his other statements, but that’s not why he’s getting slammed. He’s getting slammed because he lied about having a PhD, and when he was found out, didn’t admit to the obvious but instead chose to double down.
This is about as far from “guy gets crushed because groupthink” as it’s possible to get.
@James P: “I suspect that you are hell bent on this because you want information with which to personally identify me. Frankly I suspect you are dangerous.”
What a shock. The sock puppet comes up with a new way to deflect.
@Steve V: ” let the record reflect, I agree with Jenos’ last comment.”
Seriously? His idea is that we make discrimination legal, but allow the discriminated against to complain.
At that point, why not pass a law making theft legal, but leave the victims the freedom to start a Facebook page whining about it.
@Jenos Idanian #13: “Oh, look, the toxic tribalism has scored another great victory and silenced another minority voice, a voice of dissent, who dared disagree with the GroupThink.”
Now we’ve reached the high point of this whole thing — brave Jenos standing up in defense of his own sock puppet.
Once again, I am surprised at the generous computer privileges given to patients at the asylum…
Ahh, the Conservative Victimhood Tour strikes again…
So…even though you are a victim, you are still too cool and too above it all to care too much…
@An Interested Party:
Must be Thursday today.
@wr:
Jenos isn’t James P.
They do share some commonalities: they have the same first name, they’re pudgy, balding and single, and they both live in New England, albeit in different states. Jenos is a few years older than James P, and both his parents are deceased. James P still lives with his mother in the same town where he went to high school.
Jenos is a college dropout; elsewhere on the Internet, James P has claimed to have an MA in International Finance from LSE. While this is not a current program on offer, much may have changed since the 42yo Mr P was a student, so he may merely be lying about the PhD.
As far as I have been able to determine, Jenos does not have a criminal record. James P has had a brush with the law as recently as 2012 when, as a campaign volunteer for a Republican Congressional candidate, he was caught stealing a rival’s signage. Hardly the kind of thing that Sr. Huerta de Soto would condone, I’m sure.
@James P:
To be fair and balanced, I’ve heard it said that conservatives have a weapons fetish and are inherently mentally incompetent.
@wr: yeah, the sock puppet can’t even give an outline of his supposed PhD research the way I put out a thumbnail sketch of my PhD research. He’s already claimed that his work is “too high-level” for a crowd of low-lifes like us to understand (which is total B.S. because I’ll put the mathematical knowledge of someone like me up against that of an economist, even a Ph.D., at any point.)
It’s sad, really. I don’t know what he gets from his little antics here, but it’s not doing him any favors. He may think that he can “drop it at any point”, but the fact is, whether he realizes it or not, he’s been developing HABITS. Habits on how to argue, habits of what his brain thinks as logic, habits on interacting with people. And very little of the habits of a troll (arguing in bad faith, making things up, the way he tries to derail an argument) are going to be something you want to carry over to daily life. They don’t even work out anywhere as basic practice for any habits you want to carry over to work.
Whoever James P. is, he may think that the way he is arguing is practice for a career in law or politics. Mistake. A REAL lawyer argues the way HarvardLaw92 does: with facts and logic and poking holes in the other side’s arguments. Abusive language, wild accusations? Any judge who would have been following the above thread would have slapped him with contempt of court, and he would be reported to the ABA for his wild accusations. And in politics? He’s be filleted alive.
So–in short–he’s already trashing his own future by priming his own brain with these habits, whether he realizes it or not. At some point his troll habits are going to come out in the real world. I predict he’ll find himself lying on a job application, or a mortgage application, or something else that has real-world effects. And the expected result will occur.
Oh well–stupidity should hurt and in this case, it definitely will, sometime in the future.
@wr: just to be clear, I don’t like religious exemptions in general and I particularly don’t like gay-hating ones. So I don’t agree with him on that. But if they’re going to have these laws, then sure.
@Jenos Idanian #13: So you’re calling me a liar as well?
Interesting.
The tone of these comments would be completely different if the Westboro Baptist Church went to a gay owned bakery and tried to order a “God hates gays” cake.
@David Wheeler:
If some dim homophobe came into my bakery and ordered a god hates gays cake, I would take great pleasure in acting as camp as possible. Maybe call him lover or something or maybe try to sneak in a c–k on the cake. Gay people face real discrimination; baking a cake for an idiot is not that.
Note that I’m not a baker, and that I seem to be straight.
@HarvardLaw92: Well, he could have tried it on a website populated by LSE grads…..
The only thing that would have made this more amusing would have been if he had claimed to have gone to MIT for undergrad and claimed to have graduated with honors. What a howl that would have been–we could have demolished him in one line.
Anyway–thank you much for all your work and elegant arguments!
@David Wheeler:
Shorter David Wheeler: The tone of these comments would be completely different if an unlikely counter-factual hypothetical situation occurred.
Well yes, David, yes I supposed that would be the case.
@Modulo Myself:
My point is that gay people have rights, and should be able to refuse to serve someone who they disagree with if they have a non-publicly traded company, as should people of any religion. Should a Jew be able to sue a Halal food store for not providing Kosher food? People are making this all about Christan vs Gay, but if you read the bill, it’s not. It’s much more than that.
@Surreal American:
This comment shows that you can’t see past the gay vs Christian rhetoric.
@David Wheeler:
No, because the Halal food store, or any store, is not legally obligated to offer all goods and services of any kind at any time. A Jew would, however, be able to sue a Halal food store for not selling him any food solely because he is Jewish.
@David Wheeler:
My point is that people who fact actual discrimination behave in a way opposite to that of those who face no discrimination.
And your example is ridiculous. Being denied service is different than a place not having what you want. You can sue for the former; not the latter. Should a soul-food place be allowed to deny me service because I’m white? No. Can I sue them for not offering a glass of Pouilly-Fuse on their menu? No.
@David Wheeler:
Should I sue a hardware store for not stocking mens formal wear? I could, but the case would very likely be thrown out.
Should I sue the same hardware store because the owners/employees refuse service due to their religious objections against me?
I’ll give you three guesses and the first two don’t count.
@Surreal American:
Same point that someone else already made, and a valid one, but I believe a business should be allowed to deny service to anyone they want to as long as they are not publicly traded. I would only hope that if someone chose to do that, public opinion would put them out of business. I would never spend my money at a business that discriminates, but they have the right to do business in whatever way they want to.
@Surreal American:
But Muslims have sued other businesses for not providing Halal food.
@David Wheeler:
Your main problem is that people who ask for hateful or offensive cakes to be baked by those they offend are of no importance in our world. Maybe some neo-Nazi wants a swastika-shaped cake to celebrate Goebbel’s birthday, and maybe he would willingly go out of his way to order it at a Jewish-owned bakery, and maybe they would be like screw you, and refuse service. He has a right to sue, but it’s hardly important in the end. He’s dirt in the public eye.
What Christians are objecting to is that Congratulations Frank and Chad on a wedding cake is completely normal. The person who is dirt is the person who translates that into a swastika. That’s why you need to discriminate; to push reality and the world away. Oh, and to make gay people know their place.
@David Wheeler:
Examples of these suits, please.
@David Wheeler:
In your case, the point had to be made multiple times to counter your increasingly absurd scenarios.
@David Wheeler:
Have they sued and won? If so, please cite to these cases.
@David Wheeler: So, are you in favor of repealing the Civil Rights Act of 1965?
@David Wheeler: “Same point that someone else already made, and a valid one, but I believe a business should be allowed to deny service to anyone they want to as long as they are not publicly traded”
How nice for you. And when your beliefs contradict settled law and the constitution, should your little beliefs win? Because that’s what you’re saying here.
“Your honor, I know there are laws against discrimination by a public accomodation, but I belive that’s wrong, so I don’t have to serve anyone darker than Lady Gaga. Oh, and I am aware that the courts have said that “murder” is wrong, but I firmly believe that human sacrifice is a good thing, and since that’s a religious belief, it wins.”
@Modulo Myself:
What is normal to you may not be normal to a person of a particular faith. You’re assuming that your thinking should be what everyone thinks.
@S Holmes: That’s about 40% accurate.
That’s an attempt to goad me into disclosing personal and identifying information. Balding? Maybe a little? Overweight? No.
Live in a different state than the folks or my high school so that’s pretty far off base.
The residential information to listed is completely wrong (thank God).
Yes, I did get the MA before the PhD — that part is true. That’s why I claimed the PhD is a two year program —— it is if you already have the Masters.
@James P:
LSE doesn’t offer MA degrees. Only MSc degrees. Please try again.
@HarvardLaw92: He didn’t claim a MA from LSE. He said LSE accepted his credits and shortened the programme.
@Ebenezer_Arvigenius:
Actually, he did. He was responding to a comment by S Holmes which stated that elsewhere on the internet, James claims to have obtained an MA degree from LSE. That claim can not be true, as LSE doesn’t offer MA degrees. He may, and I stress MAY have obtained one elsewhere, which is fine if true, albeit unlikely. That doesn’t address the fact that for it to be true, he would have had to pursued a MPhil/PhD program.
LSE also doesn’t offer a MPhil/PhD program in Economics.
@James P:
Fuzz up the language from the abstract, then, and post it.
Also S Holmes is fake-Sherlocking you, there.
@HarvardLaw92: For possibly the first time in your sad miserable life you are correct.
LSE indeed does grant MSc degrees as opposed to MAs. IT is a degree unfamiliar to most Americans – I am unaware of any American university which offers such a degree (there may be – I am just unaware of any). I had never heard of an MSc prior to enrolling so it was my assumption that most other people had not either.
I simplified it to a generic masters so I would not be accused of inventing a fictitious degree, but you are indeed correct that it does not award MAs. It was an attempt to simplify matters for a fairly unsophisticated crowd as to an opposed to an attempt at deception.
Deception would be claiming to have received an email you did not receive.
@Ebenezer_Arvigenius: He also hasn’t given us his thesis title, nor has he provided a summary of his thesis research. Nor has he explained why his supposed thesis advisor is not on record as having overseen any theses while at the LSE.
In short, has James P. acted in any way that indicated he isn’t a big fat liar making up the entire thing?
No.
If you were to sashay up to me and state that you had a Ph.D. from MIT but didn’t even know where The Infinite Corridor was, I’d have a right to be suspicious.
If anyone can be Ronnie Johnson on the internets, why shouldn’t we request proof of credentials claimed?
(James P.: what’s the title of your Ph.D. thesis? )
@James P:
Whatever you say, Alex P. Keaton. “One cannot measure success in terms of happiness; just cash flow.” Hope that’s working out for you.
@James P:
So, in other words, you lied.
An MA is not a generic masters degree. It’s a Master of Arts degree.
One refers to a generic masters degree by saying “masters degree”.
Why is your claimed dissertation not listed on LSE’s theses index?
@HarvardLaw92: You’re right it doesn’t. I guess that’s why I didn’t claim to have that.
I have to back off because people are digging into my personal business. One guy had it 40% correct. I fear the day when someone comes close to 51% correct because one of you deranged loons will be at my front door.
Liberals are inherently dangerous and unbalanced so I need to be careful.
I merely want to reiterate that I have never backed off one inch from any of my claims. My leaving is not a concession to any of your absurd accusations. I maintain everything I have ever asserted is 100% factual and the only person who ever lied is you.
I came here to argue with liberals on issues. You people clearly aren’t interested in that. You can’t argue facts or ideas so you google search me and put out information which is 40% accurate. IT’s enough to unsettle me.
You did not drive me away – you did not prove anything I claimed false. I stand by everything I ever had and maintain that the only person who lied was you.
@David Wheeler:
Which has nothing to do with the law. In commercial circumstances, you can’t discriminate against people you think are not normal. That’s the law and it really requires nothing of us not to follow it.
@Turgid Jacobian:
The name is fake; the deductions are not.
@David Wheeler: Got a link for that? I read an article about Muslims in Minneapolis protesting to try to get local food banks, which receive city funding, to offer Halal food. That’s different in a number of ways:
– it’s a protest, not a lawsuit.
– They’re protesting a public service, supported by government funding, which should meet the needs of the entire community, including the very large Muslim population in that city.
@Turgid Jacobian: I suspect he is fake sherlocking me. I’m 95% sure he used the wrong middle initial.
He got the balding part correct (although I’m not overweight). He knows what state in which I live (although thankfully he has the town wrong) – it’s enough to be unsettling.
@James P:
Which you invited by making specious claims about your educational history through asserting a variety of publicly verifiable facts.
If you feel challenged now, perhaps you should rethink the merits of advancing fantastical, easily debunked claims on the internet.
@James P:
If you behave this way around real people, I suspect that the least of your problems is whether bored/amused/contemptuous internet people will show up at your door.
@HarvardLaw92:
I’m thinking that S Holmes is James P’s sock puppet and a way to leave here, in perfect style, martyred by liberals.
@James P:
I never mentioned the state, but thanks for the confirmation.
You’re not very good at this, are you?
So boring here without Moriarty.
@Ebenezer_Arvigenius: No. S Holmes claimed that James P had claimed so elsewhere without providing a link or verification. So far this point is unresolved.
P.S. The other thing that makes me absolutely certain that James P. is claiming something he hasn’t done is because I can’t remember ever meeting ANYONE who’s done a thesis at whatever level (B.S., M.A., or Ph.D.) who isn’t willing to talk for HOURS on What his research is, How he did his research, etc. etc. and so forth.
Try it. Go up to someone who has done a thesis and submitted it and get them talking. They may demur at the beginning because they think you’re “just being polite”–but sit them down on a couch and start asking questions. They will overflow. They will LOVE to talk to you about whatever is their baby, whether it be the latest results from Fermilab or tracking mercantile routs in East Bohemia in the 17th century. For hours and hours and hours.
And James P. hasn’t said a peep. He hasn’t even given us a thumbnail sketch. He’s spent more time and effort on calling HarvardLaw92 a liar and sputtering about how we’re all nasty liberals than in writing down a short, sweet paragraph on the stuff that he supposedly loved so much that he wrote a dissertation on. When said short sweet paragraph would be very good circumstantial evidence that he actually did the activities he claims to have carried out and would silence 99% of our skepticism..
You know why? Because he can’t.
@James P:
I think that maybe this part was directed at the mirror; self-stroking, if you will.
You can’t remotely think that the rest of us buy it. Leave if you like. Stay if you’re prepared to admit your mistakes and be an honest blowhard forthwith, but don’t try to waltz out the door playing the wounded doe. That’s nothing less than performance art.
@Modulo Myself:
That would be an ideal way out of this heffalump trap. Too bad he’s not as clever as that.
Shocking to think he has any postgraduate education.
@HarvardLaw92: The only person who made a specious claim is you when you lied about receiving an email.
Most normal people think an MA is a generic masters.
@Ebenezer_Arvigenius:
True, he failed to clarify, which is suggestive, but not determinative. Agreed.
@James P:
What is the U-6 unemployment rate?
Are there more people working now or when Obama was elected?
Who received more votes, McCain or Romney?
Does the government subsidize your employer provided health insurance policy?
@S Holmes: Being stalked? No, I guess I’m not. I have no experience with it.
If you’re such a great investigator you probably also know that I have a concealed carry permit – lest you get any ideas.
I’m glad you also missed the fact that I moved a LONG time ago from my original hometown.
@James P:
Really? Interesting suggestion. BS, but interesting dodge nonetheless.
That having been said, for you to have finished a PhD in two years at LSE, it would have to have been a MPhil/PhD program.
LSE doesn’t offer a MPhil/PhD program in economics either, so how can this be?
What say you?
@James P:
That you’re even trying to make us believe you have masters is a huge tell. I can think of nobody I know who has a PhD who even thought of getting a masters. The only exception I know is in analytic philosophy–Tufts offers what is basically a crash-course terminal MA that is designed to catch people up to speed in logic before they go on for the PhD.
@Ebenezer_Arvigenius:
I’m only interested in letting James P know that I know who he is. It would be impolite to expose his identity without his consent. And not nearly as much fun.
*headdesk*
Who was the regular who maintained that the hard-core righties / tough guys crowd are nearly always pantwetters. Another data point right here methinks.
@James P:
Yes, who DOESN’T have a concealed carry permit these days? Personally, I don’t touch firearms; I rely on Watson for that. His life’s been threatened more times than you’ve had hot dinners.
Anyway, fear not, sweaty one. I will not be showing up on your or your mummy’s doorstep. I find your part of the country too depressing.
@James P: What’s your thesis title, James?
Or if you feel that’s too identifying, write down a paragraph outlining what you did for your thesis research. An abstract.
In short, ANYTHING that indicates you actually did what you claimed to have done and aren’t some blowhard on the internet laying claim to credentials you never earned.
This habit WILL follow you around, you realize. You’re going to end up lying in real life–hell, you’re already lying in real life! It’s a pretty bad habit to get into when dealing with your fellow humans.
And lying on one’s resume is a bloody good way to get fired, even 20 years down the road.
Good luck, because you’re going to need it.
@humanoid.panda:
That’s a ridiculous irrelevant question.
@David Wheeler:
How so? You’ve pretty concisely argued in favor of repealing 42 U.S. Code Chapter 21, Subchapter II.
@Modulo Myself: Eh, that is not so rare. In my field (history) it is not so rare for people to get an MA as a way to get into a top 10 PhD program.
@grumpy realist: So you’re calling me a liar as well?
I certainly didn’t intend to call you a liar. This whole idiocy wasn’t worth my reading in detail to even offer a half-assed opinion on whether you were telling the truth or not, and I really don’t care.
If you inferred any kind of personal aspersion in my words, you were mistaken.
And as I believe I’ve shown no qualms about insulting you in the past, on other issues, you can take my word that I certainly had no intention of doing so in this context.
Hey, is there a betting pool on how long the Commentariat will be gloating over this incident? ‘Cuz I’d like to get in on that action. I see the masturbatory glee going on for at least the next 67 days….
@humanoid.panda: It is also not so rare for people with nad gre scores or undergrad gpa to get a leg up. Also I have a few friends that thought they would stop at their masters but went on. And a couple who met a collaborator at another institution in a tangential field go try something new in a different field they never initially would have thought of.
@David Wheeler: You said, and I quote:
The Civil Rights Act bans businesses from discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. If,as you say, you think any business should be able to discriminate as long as they are not publicly traded, then you ipso facto support a massive reduction of the scope of the Civil Rights Act. If you don’t support such a reduction, you will have to explain why you support the right to discriminate in theory, but a ban in practice. Anyway, my question is clearly not irrelevant.
@Dave D: @humanoid.panda:
Thanks for telling me this.
@HarvardLaw92: Maybe James P simplified his diploma from MacDonald’s Hamburger University to a PdD from the LSE so as not to confuse us.
@James P: “My leaving is not a concession to any of your absurd accusations. I ”
Just as the fact that Jenos popped up again and started posting in other threads at the very moment you were going away is a complete coincidence.
Astonishing place, the universe.
@humanoid.panda: And sometimes people get their MA and then decide to go on to the PhD.
@munchbox:
Hey, what can I say? I tried to speak to you in the only language you understand.
Somewhat relevant…
(Also read the comments. I especially liked the snarky one about “only getting suspicious when you said you had to water your Lamborghini tree.”)
@HarvardLaw92: I was recounting this story to my son on our drive in this morning.
“Doubled down, did he?” says my son.
“Oh, he’s way past doubled,” I said. “Maybe sextupled or octupled at this point.”
“Just call him Tro11,” my son said. “Since he took it all the way to 11.”
What happened to someone else who lied about having a Ph.D.
Here’s another
I’m not even going to scroll up. I saw Blue Galangal here so I can just sort of guess what’s up there.
I find this appropriate to cite.
@grumpy realist:
You know, the sad part about O’Bagy is that her work was apparently solid. She evidently had the knowledge and intelligence necessary to obtain such a degree, if she’d just followed through and actually obtained it.
And here’s a guy who lied about having a doctorate and ended up getting arrested for it because his salary as a prof. was over $100K (the grand larceny level)
Note also that companies get really pissed about people who lie about qualifications that double as certifications, because that opens the company up to liability.
(Not that I think the James P. ever dared to claim a PhD from LSE on a resume for any position that really needed one. He would have been immediately smoked.)
@HarvardLaw92: Yes. I understand the frustration of people who have learned their skills from experience and then slam head-on into the idiotic “credentialism” of places that insist on more and more degrees. I’m reminded of a friend of mine in C.S. (consultant) who was bounced from a job “because you don’t have a M.S.” even though he had written the very same software that the job was covering. And my business partner (whom I’ve mentioned before) has suffered incredibly because he “doesn’t have a degree in journalism” even though he was a radio news reporter for UPI for years and years.
@grumpy realist:
I meant it more in the flavor of she apparently did earn both a BA in Arabic and an MA in Arab Studies from CCAS (part of Georgetown as well), so she’s clearly at least on some level competent to discuss the subject matter she was hired to analyze.
I honestly have no idea whether ISW required a doctorate for the position. If so, I’d agree that it’s a bit of overkill and unwarranted credentialism.
I just think it’s sad when someone who is clearly talented, and I’d suspect able to have completed the PhD if she’d just tried, instead opts to take the fraud route. Notable contrast with someone like James, who clearly is neither.
Oddly though, McCain apparently hired her. Go figure …
@humanoid.panda:
Agreed. Law does it somewhat backwards. Not that it is a mandated path structure, by any means, but normally attorneys obtain a bachelor degree, then proceed to law school for the JD. From that point, if they are so inclined, they pursue an advanced study track (Taxation, International Law, etc.) leading to an LL.M, followed by the terminal SJD. (regarded as our equivalent of the PhD).
@grumpy realist: You know, that might finally be true of me. I had had it up to here with my advisor when I finished. I defended, made a few suggested additions to my diss, finished a pub ready for submission, emailed it to him, and left without seeing him again.
The whole thing left such a bitter taste in my mouth I for years demurred perhaps to excess.
But, sometimes that happens. I was applied, not theoretical physics.
Oh my, how ominous…has the FBI been notified? The Department of Homeland Security perhaps?
Why would some anonymous person care so much about what total strangers on the internet thought about him…
@Turgid Jacobian: I think that’s why some people never finally get the Ph.D. They do 99% of the work, but then the hassle of writing it up and getting it past an advisor who is a total jerk just doesn’t seem worth it. One of my friends ended up ABD because his advisor kept scampering off into the wilderness and then finally bolted completely from physics to move to Australia and start a winery. And another of my friends we’re trying to keep on track but it’s a slog because even with four published papers under his belt his advisor is still making ructions about “not having done enough for the thesis.”
What area of applied physics, if I may ask? (I know–in that case you’re having to deal with the breaking equipment all the time as well, which is a PITA.)
@HarvardLaw92: “BS=bull s_ _ _, MS = more of the same, PHD = piled higher and deeper ”
Ancient proverb
I’m in for 500
@grumpy realist: I worked on nonlinear optics in semiconductor microstructures. Design, fabrication, and characterization.
I ended up going into a field where they needed folks who weren’t bamboozled easily.
@Tyrell:
Disdain for education. Remind me again how you aren’t a Republican?
@HarvardLaw92:
Even though I found it amusing, initially I was a little saddened by the piling on. Not for James P, but for the overall unseemliness of the spectacle, him flopping around, unable to articulate a coherent response other than an occasional LIAR, LIAR. Then however I remembered his and most Republicans disdain for education, in fact their pride in being uneducated and my sadness went away.
As stated upstream, people work hard for their eduction, years upon years, thousands upon thousands of dollars and for some fool to try attempt to steal the credibility accrued from that hard work is criminal.
@HarvardLaw92: No, not disdain at all. I have had many great teachers and professors. I also had a few who had more education then they had sense.
Be careful of what you say on the internets, trolls: legal liability.
What I found interesting was the aside in the article implicating that anything that even passes through a server in England makes the colourable argument that said statement falls under English jurisdiction. And English libel law is particularly strict.
@Tyrell:
A tired ancient proverb of people who are envious of those who have achieved advanced levels of education.
@al-Ameda: also those who have achieved those levels and are cynical about the value 😉
@James P:dude, you don’t even know what prima favor IS….
@Grumpy Realist: bloody autocorrect. Prima facie.