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Garry Tan, the CEO of YC, accused me of unethical reporting

radleybalko.substack.com

211–220 of 231 posts

Re: Garry Tan, the CEO of YC, accused me of unethical reporting

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, you have basically no control over law enforcement if they decide to arbitrarily slow down arrests or protest your leadership. This has been one of the more consistent issues in American politics and you can see it when the police union doesn't get their way they have a huge tantrum and make things worse for everyone involved. This isn't really a statement on Boudin did or did not do since I don't have that k…

The flip side I've heard is that LE doesn't arbitrarily slow down arrests due to a difference in ideology. It seems more simple than that. Who wants to go through the effort of making arrests if the DA is letting them free. The LEO will see them commit the same event the next day. I don't think anyone would want that in their day to day job, much less law & order. It's like writing a PR/MR every day [by hand] and hav…

Maybe so, but the difference is that my job is my job; if I don't do my job I get fired. If the police don't do their job they get rewarded with more funding because people see the effect and not the cause.

You could make the argument that it discourages them from making the effort, but they're still getting paid and supported by my tax dollars and so should do their damn job.

Re: Garry Tan, the CEO of YC, accused me of unethical reporting

#213
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I thought Tan & co. solved crime in San Francisco with their super PAC four years ago? I mean, kind of? You can definitely point at certain quantified types of crime falling since Boudin left office in 2022: https://sfstandard.com/2026/01/02/san-francisco-2025-crime-s... . (Of course progressives wave their hands and say, it's random, or caused by structural oppression, or whatever.) And Lurie seems to be taking st…

> Of course progressives wave their hands and say, it's random, or caused by structural oppression, or whatever. Or part of a nationwide trend that couldn’t possibly be caused by Boudin or Tan https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/fbi-releases-2024-re...

Sure, sure. The important part is it isn't falsifiable.

Re: Garry Tan, the CEO of YC, accused me of unethical reporting

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That principle is not only logical, it’s a core premise of the civil rights laws, as the supreme court reaffirmed 9-0 in a decision recently: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/23-1039_c0n2.pdf . Two wrongs don’t make a right. I guess it’s not illegal to have a publishing house that promotes white authors. I’m no expert in that area.

It's logic that is incompatible with about 60 years of affirmative action policies that the United States has carried out.

That’s a common misconception. Nobody serious has ever doubted that the Civil Rights Act creates a colorblind system. Any contrary treatment has always been justified as exceptions. Even Lawrence v. Bakke in 1973 struck down the racial preferences at issue in that case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regents_of_the_University_of_C....

I think people got this misconception that affirmative action was legal because universities practiced it. But the EEOC guidance for example has been consistent since the Carter administration. “Under Title VII, there is no separate legal concept of ‘reverse discrimination.’ Discrimination against any individual on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin violates Title VII.”

The only exception was that employers who had practiced segregation could take measures to undo the effects of that in their workplace. That’s what “affirmative action” meant. It was not sanctioned as way to address perceived disparities in society at large.

Re: Garry Tan, the CEO of YC, accused me of unethical reporting

#215

> Lim’s book, called Amplified, was published by Third State Books, a company started by Tan’s wife, Stephanie Lim, to provide a voice for Asian-American authors. How is this even legal? Surely the article means it’s a company focused on stories relating to Asian Americans, regardless of the race of the author.

> How is this even legal? Title VII doesn’t apply to independent contractors. If you want to argue that authors should count as their publisher’s employees, go sue TSB in some complicit jurisdiction.

Gotcha. That was the gist of my question. Like I said, I’m not an expert on this. I can’t keep the roman numerals straight. It’s interesting there’s not something that applies to contractors. I expect that’s also how OpenTable and whatnot get around these promoting “minority owned businesses.”

Re: Garry Tan, the CEO of YC, accused me of unethical reporting

#216
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would depend on exactly how the records were obtained. If hypothetically she paid a nurse $100 for it (and had done so many times in the past), that could be criminally liable. In practice, no-one would prosecute over a single x-ray. But when a reporter gets legally protected medical information "somehow", an insinuation that a legal violation took place at some point to effect that is not unreasonable.

It's strange to find myself so clearly on the side of tctapek here but yes it is super unreasonable for a district attorneys office to accuse reporters of things without a solid set of facts supporting it. There should be absolutely no abuse of the power of the office and of every official, the lawyers should be most likely to get this right. A functioning justice system MATTERS and being trustworthy is one of the co…

I somewhat agree that the whole document is sloppy, but I also think this conversation overemphasizes what is wrong with it. It is not as if the document simply accuses the journalist and leaves it there; it actually elaborates on what it means by “violated HIPAA” in that context (and please don’t make me start comparing it with current administration behavior).

There is also a broader question of how to properly handle what are, quite honestly, likely bad-faith actors — the journalist in this case. Should the office simply ignore the smearing campaign and the lies? Maybe. But this is already an issue even before accounting for the significant amount of money — pushed by a very small number of people — being spent against the attorney’s office.

Re: Garry Tan, the CEO of YC, accused me of unethical reporting

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Violating HIPAA rights and “ violating HIPAA ” aren’t the same thing. The rights granted by HIPAA are universal, everybody’s got them and anybody can violate them, it’s just that healthcare professionals are bound to not do that. You could violate my HIPAA “rights” all day and not get in trouble, because the law around protecting those rights does not apply to you. I could still write in a memo that the associated be…

There's a whole subthread that already covered this ground. The passage obviously implicates Lim --- the subject of the entire document --- a reporter, in lawbreaking, without alleging facts sufficient to establish that liability, and was written by the DA's office. When Trump's DOJ does this sort of thing, we all (rightly) freak the fuck out.

DOJ puts an accusation with clarifying text in semi private document? They don’t do this, they do much worse things (and get, rightly, much worse response).

This document isn’t great, but comparing it to Trump administration actions isn’t great either. As well as focusing on it rather than on a substance of the article in question (which is, about Garry Tan accusations in a first place).

Thank you for your comment though it made me go back and reread the linked text more critically.

Re: Garry Tan, the CEO of YC, accused me of unethical reporting

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> prosecution decisions were being made not just on justice, safety, or public policy more broadly, but simply on a triage basis. > When you start losing significant numbers of people, you lose the ability to set your own execution priorities; circumstances are making prosecutorial decisions. Foxx tried to put a brave face on it, but nobody was buying it. So, circumstances were making prosecutorial decisions, and the…

The office was running. Not in a way the voters wanted but they were competent in accomplishing their goals. Then the new DA was elected and tons of people left and now the office isn’t running.

That is not my understanding.

Re: Garry Tan, the CEO of YC, accused me of unethical reporting

#219
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> prosecution decisions were being made not just on justice, safety, or public policy more broadly, but simply on a triage basis. > When you start losing significant numbers of people, you lose the ability to set your own execution priorities; circumstances are making prosecutorial decisions. Foxx tried to put a brave face on it, but nobody was buying it. So, circumstances were making prosecutorial decisions, and the…

If you assume office and things get worse, that is in fact on you! I'm not saying Foxx's predecessor was good; Foxx's predecessor was Anita Alvarez , who was herself a trainwreck in the opposite direction. A problem I see all the time in these kinds of public policy debates is that people have ideological rooting interests. That isn't going to get you anywhere in a debate about a major metro prosecutor's office. You…

A problem I see all the time is that you are responding to a hell of a lot that I didn’t say.

Re: Garry Tan, the CEO of YC, accused me of unethical reporting

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"George Floyd's community is better off with him gone" is absolutely not OK on this site.

[flagged]

What’s interesting is that you take a felon who held a woman at gunpoint while robbing her, and sympathize with him based on his skin color.

I’ve never read a story about “brown” terrorists and felt any connection to the terrorists. Not even based on shared humanity, much less ethnicity. Indeed, I’m sad we got rid of the lady who was mowing them down in Bangladesh.

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