US Politics Mega-thread - Page 7318

On April 12 2017 00:23 biology]major wrote:
Whether trump succeeds or fails in the short term or long term, politics has been unusually interesting, here and around the world. Wonder what will happen next.

On April 12 2017 00:37 KwarK wrote:
Trump thinks Russia is a superpower? He really has been drinking the Putin Kool-Aid.

On April 12 2017 00:43 Yurie wrote:


Depends on how you define it. Either the US is the only one or Russia is also one. They can project force over all their neighbours, excluding China. If you exclude other nations with strong alliances you can exclude Japan and NATO nations.

On April 12 2017 00:51 KwarK wrote:

My global power ranking goes something alone the lines of

US
China
Germany
Japan
France
UK
India
Russia
South Korea
Saudi Arabia

assuming that they have some kind of knowledge that a war is going to happen and can prepare. Obviously SK has a higher state of readiness than Germany for an immediate war but I'd bet on the Germans over the South Koreans if they were told they were gonna duke it out in 10 years.

On April 12 2017 00:28 KwarK wrote:

The problem is that "should" doesn't itself mean anything. The word "should" doesn't just mean a certain outcome is preferable, it means that a certain outcome is natural, the default state of affairs. That's fine for things like "an object should continue to move in the same direction at the same velocity until another force acts upon it" but it's much more hazy for things like "the United States should not discriminate against Muslim immigrants" and practically opaque by the time we reach "the Syrian Parliament's decision should be respected by the United States".

"Should" basically means "according to a set of predetermined assumptions that I am using about how the world ought to work this is what I think". My challenge to you was to start with "The Syrian government should make the decision" and work backwards to assemble a coherent philosophical argument for why that should be the case.

On April 12 2017 00:12 farvacola wrote:

Assuming that we're in chapter 7 (as folks in 13 aren't gonna lose their home nor be there on car debts), an individual debtor will almost never lose their home due to car debt, though bankruptcy is a game of fringe occurrences so it isn't inconceivable that someone could borrow on cars so heavy that a court is willing to kill their homestead exemption. In any case, I was more speaking on security interests in cars generally than the fucked up relationship between banks and real estate, so no disagreement from me on the latter front.

On April 12 2017 01:34 Broetchenholer wrote:
Germany might have the industrial capacity to be a military super power but it lacks the interest. You need people to fight a war and while we are probably not as open and tolerant as i would like, i am pretty sure we are lazy and peaceloving enough. The few people that actually feel inclined to go to the Bundeswehr are rare and particularly the academics don't go to the army. Even if someone told us that we would have to defend us or fight for a morally sound goal in x years, i doubt Germany could simply switch over to partially mobilization in a few years. There simply is no culture that would allow people to feel honorable in dying or killing and that is needed for people to feel comfortable in taking up arms.

But i might be wrong, i am usually too naive in regards to moral.

One of the most outspoken Republican congressmen on Capitol Hill is calling for a new “direction” from House Speaker Paul Ryan – or, failing that, a new speaker.

“We need either a change in direction from this speaker, or we need a new speaker,” Rep. Justin Amash, R-Michigan, said to a town hall crowd on Monday, according to CNN.

Amash, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, has already developed a reputation as a thorn in the side of President Donald Trump and Ryan. A fierce critic of the GOP’s planned Obamacare replacement, Amash went so far as to pick a fight with Mr. Trump on Twitter over the legislation.

Amash is currently barnstorming his district in Western Michigan, and took a few shots at Ryan and Mr. Trump, according to CNN.

“When we go home for the weekend, they give us a set of talking points. They say ‘here are your talking points’” Amash said Monday, holding up a sheet of paper. “That’s not the way you’re supposed to represent a community.”

Amash plans on holding two more town halls this week at a time when many Republican legislators are trying to avoid them.

On April 12 2017 02:09 xDaunt wrote:
I've never been one to place much stock in conspiracy theories surrounding the military-industrial complex, but WTF is going on. Not only has Trump done an about-face on his prior positions and is relentlessly beating the war drums, but now democrats are trying to get rid of Gabbard.

The impeachment investigation that led to Alabama’s Republican Gov. Robert Bentley’s resignation, arrest and conviction Monday surfaced more than just the alleged misuse of public funds to hide his affair with a top political aide, the cringe-y texts to his paramour, and the threats lobbed towards those who stood ready to expose their tryst.

The report released Friday shed light on another controversy that dogged his tenure: his administration’s decision to close 31 driver’s license offices, many in African-American-heavy counties, prompting a national outcry over how the closures would affect voting rights in the state, which requires a photo ID to vote.

The impeachment investigation report – which was compiled by a special counsel appointed by the legislature – concluded that the driver’s license office closures were politically motivated and ordained by the aide at the center of the scandal, Rebekah Mason, as a way to pressure state legislators into getting in line in support of the governor’s funding legislation.

Former Alabama Law Enforcement Agency head Spencer Collier, who oversaw the operations of the offices, told the impeachment investigators “that Mason proposed closing multiple driver’s license offices throughout the State and asked ALEA to put together a plan,” according to the report.

“It was Collier’s understanding that Mason intended the plan to be rolled out in a way that had limited impact on Governor Bentley’s political allies,” the report continued.

The closures had a disproportionate impact the state’s “Black Belt” – a reference to its dark topsoil and its African American population – and were widely denounced given that minority communities are already less likely to have the IDs required to vote and more reliant on public transport, making travel to obtain a license difficult. Propelled by the closures, civil rights rights groups ultimately sued Alabama over its photo voter ID law in a case that it still proceeding.

Whether making it harder for black people to vote was part of Mason’s motivation in ordering the closures – or a factor in how the governor’s office handled the fallout that ensued – is subject to debate. The findings in Friday’s report suggest that, regardless, the closures were not merely an effort to save money, as initially billed, but political hardball designed to squeeze legislators at the expense of their constituents’ access to the ballot box.

“It sort of goes to the ridiculousness of the closures initially, that this was talked about not just in terms of how we can save money, but it was talked about in terms of how we can benefit ourselves politically,” said Deuel Ross, an NAACP-LDF lawyer who is working on the voter ID lawsuit. “And then it was done in such a way that obviously harmed African Americans. “

According to Friday’s report, Mason acting as an intermediary between ALEA and the governor’s office was on its own noteworthy, as in years prior Collier met with Bentley directly to discuss strategies for dealing with potential budget cuts. Collier, according to the report, claimed to have expressed concerns at the time about the closures and even filed a report with the state Attorney General’s office, given the potential for a violation of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits voting policies that disproportionately burden minority communities.

(Alabama’s then-Attorney General Luther Strange is now a U.S. senator, having been chosen by Bentley to fill the seat vacated by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who is now in charge of enforcing the Voting Rights Act. Strange’s Senate office did not return TPM’s inquiry about the closures.)

Collier ultimately created his own “objective” scheme, based in “processed transactions per year” to justify the closures, according to the report. When a county represented by a political ally of Bentley, state Sen. Gerald Dial (R), was swept up in the metric, Bentley requested that the DMV office in his district not be among those closed, the report said.

Collier was ultimately fired by Bentley months later, in what resulted in a public back-and-forth between the two over the reasons he had been pushed out. Among other things, Collier claims he had been investigating Bentley’s alleged affair with Mason.

The impeachment report’s summary of Collier’s characterizations about the DMV closures is similar to the November 2016 deposition he gave in the NAACP-LDF lawsuit, where he, Bentley and other state officials were being sued for constitutional and VRA violations. Collier’s deposition also recounted his meeting with Mason about the potential for budget cuts.

“In that meeting, she recommended we need to get the attention of legislators that were not supporting the governor’s budget and tax increase,” Collier said, according to the court documents.

Collier said in the deposition that he asked his staff to “come up with a plan we can defend, it’s constitutional, it’s legal, and it has a matrix that we can stick by.”

He maintained communications, his deposition said, with the state legislators whose districts would be affected, particularly those in Alabama’s black legislative caucus, whom Collier recalled railing against the cuts in floor speeches.

“[M]embers of the black Caucus and the entire democratic Caucus, mentioned to us it was just unacceptable,” Collier said, according to the court docs. “I’ll be candid, I never thought that budget would pass. Of course, we had to prepare for the worse, and then we wound up doing it.”

He denied, however, that the decision to close to the closures was made with African American voting rights in mind, an assessment his lawyer, Kenneth Mendelsohn reiterated to TPM Monday.

“In Rebekah’s mind, I don’t think it had anything to do against voting or discriminating against people,” Mendelsohn told TPM over the phone. “It was to get the legislators to come over to her and her boyfriend’s state of mind about what they were proposing the legislators.”

Nevertheless the closures – which included DMV offices in eight of the 10 counties with the highest percentage of non-white voters – attracted national attention for their voting rights implications. Prominent civil rights leaders traveled to the state to highlight the issue. Alabama’s only black U.S. representative, Democrat Terri Sewell, requested a federal investigation into the closures. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while campaigning for president, called the closures a “blast from the Jim Crow past.”

Bentley denied that race was a factor in the decision-making and accused advocates of politicizing the issue. Alabama’s top elections official, Secretary of State John Merrill told TPM at the time that while the closures posed “a real inconvenience” for those seeking a driver’s license, voting rights weren’t being harmed because the state also offered a voter ID card available at local board of registrars offices.

The U.S. Department of Transportation opened a civil rights investigation into the closures that ultimately resulted in a deal between the feds and the state establishing minimum DMV operating hours in certain counties. That deal was reached in December, after the 2016 election.

Meanwhile, a bill pushed by Alabama state Sen. Hank Sanders (D) before the election that would have required the offices be open for at least two days per week was pocket-vetoed by Bentley last May. The proposal had passed the Alabama legislature with overwhelming, bipartisan support. But at the time of the pocket veto, Bentley’s office gave no reason for his refusal to sign the legislation.

Impeachment hearings were set to go through this week until Bentley on Monday resigned and pleaded guilty to two counts related to his use of campaign funds, after negotiating a plea deal with prosecutors.

Last week, the federal judge overseeing the NAACP-LDF case against the voter ID law denied the motion by Merrill to dismiss the case (Bentley and the other state officials have been dropped from the suit). The opinion also hinted that the DMV closures will be among the factors the court will be examining in determining whether Alabama’s voter ID law violated the Voting Rights Act.