US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1061

On January 25 2019 07:28 Liquid`Drone wrote:


You up for nationalizing oil/natural resources? That's a very significant part of Norway's success. (Another is investing these funds wisely rather than spending them and overheating economy.)

Also, while I can get behind that the US has more progressive taxation than Norway (at least in theory, not sure how it works out with loopholes, although Norway does have loopholes too), Norway has extremely strong labor unions that over the past several decades have ensured very 'progressive' wage-levels. (the US has a higher average salary than Norway, by like 10% (source,) yet a lower median income. A 20 year old working in mcdonalds makes $18/hour at entry level and this is one of the lowest paying jobs we have here also).

Claims that Norway is 'socialist' is wrong. We're a mixed economy for sure. But there are elements of socialism present in our country which is not present in the US, and some of these elements are pretty instrumental in explaining why it's such a good country to live in. And if you were to juxtapose the Norway and the US in a 'which country is more socialist or capitalist than the other' then there's no question the US looks more capitalist overall..

Exclusive: White House preparing draft national emergency order, has identified $7 billion for wall

Washington (CNN)The White House is preparing a draft proclamation for President Donald Trump to declare a national emergency along the southern border and has identified more than $7 billion in potential funds for his signature border wall should he go that route, according to internal documents reviewed by CNN.

Trump has not ruled out using his authority to declare a national emergency and direct the Defense Department to construct a border wall as Congress and the White House fight over a deal to end the government shutdown. But while Trump's advisers remain divided on the issue, the White House has been moving forward with alternative plans that would bypass Congress.
"The massive amount of aliens who unlawfully enter the United States each day is a direct threat to the safety and security of our nation and constitutes a national emergency," a draft of a presidential proclamation reads.
"Now, therefore, I, Donald J. Trump, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C 1601, et seq.), hereby declare that a national emergency exists at the southern border of the United States," the draft adds.
The draft was updated as recently as last week, a US government official told CNN.
According to options being considered, the administration could pull: $681 million from Treasury forfeiture funds, $3.6 billion in military construction, $3 billion in Pentagon civil works funds, and $200 million in Department of Homeland Security funds, the official said.
As lawmakers discussed a short-term measure to fund the government Thursday, Trump again raised the prospect of other ways to fund a border wall without congressional approval.
"I have other alternatives if I have to and I'll use those alternatives if I have to," he told reporters.
"A lot of people who wants this to happen. The military wants this to happen. This is a virtual invasion of our country," Trump said.
The Defense Department referred a request for comment from CNN to the White House.
If the declaration is made, the US Army Corps of Engineers would be deployed to construct the wall, some of which could be built on private property and would therefore require the administration to seize the land, which is permitted if it's for public use.
The administration's plans acknowledge the possibility for lawsuits if they move forward with acquiring private property. The documents also reflect a sense of urgency with administration plans, noting that environmental reviews can be skipped and DHS can use waivers to bypass contracting laws.
If the President proceeds with the declaration, it'll likely be challenged in court and by Democrats in Congress, as critics have argued that Trump cannot use the national emergency authority to free up taxpayer funds and build the border wall he has long promised his political supporters.
The question of legality and court challenges is still one of the main hang-ups in using executive action to secure the wall funding. Trump's advisers have cautioned that taking that route would lead to certain legal challenge, meaning the wall construction would still be delayed.
The draft document cites Title 10 of the US Code, which allows Trump to unlock a stash of Pentagon funds that are earmarked but have no signed contracts for spending that money. That would give the President authority to pull from military construction funds and civil works projects, like infrastructure repair projects.
Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, tweeted earlier this month that acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, "assured Texans that he understood the deep concerns about using Harvey relief funds for the border." CNN previously reported that the Pentagon was asked to provide a list of those projects in anticipation of a national emergency.
The Pentagon has assisted the Department of Homeland Security in the past. For example, the Army Corps of Engineers, a federal agency within DOD that provides public engineering services, has helped evaluate prototypes of the border wall.
Options under consideration conceded that acquiring private property would take time. Even if voluntary, the land could take up to a year to be acquired. Land condemnation cases are known to take time because property owners have the right to sue. A national emergency declaration would not speed that process up, a government official says.
Customs and Border Protection has said that it would consider eminent domain in the future.
"It is always CBP's preference to acquire property through a voluntary, negotiated sale. The Government will attempt to negotiate an offer to sell using survey data and value estimates gleaned from the surveying process," reads an excerpt in a border wall Q&A on their site. "The Government will attempt to negotiate an offer to sell before moving forward with exercising eminent domain. However, if the Government and landowner are unable to reach a negotiated sale or if the Government is unable to obtain clean title, the Government will need to file an eminent domain action."

Roger Stone, Adviser to Trump, Is Indicted in Mueller Investigation

WASHINGTON — Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime informal adviser to President Trump who has spent decades plying the dark arts of scandal-mongering and dirty tricks to help influence American political campaigns, was indicted Friday in the special counsel investigation.

Mr. Stone was charged with seven counts, including obstruction of an official proceeding, making false statements and witness tampering, according to the special counsel’s office.

The indictment is the first public move in months by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who is investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and possible coordination with Trump associates.

[Read the indictment: https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/586-roger-stone-indictment/d34c762c3e142f844c2b/optimized/full.pdf#page=1 ]

Mr. Stone and his lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment.

Mr. Stone, a self-described dirty trickster who began his career as a campaign aide for Richard M. Nixon and has a tattoo of Nixon on his back, has long maintained that he had no connection to Russia’s attempts to disrupt the 2016 presidential election. He sometimes seemed to taunt American law enforcement agencies, daring them to find hard evidence to link him to the Russian meddling campaign.

His brash behavior made him less of a subject of news media scrutiny than other current and former aides to President Trump — like the character in a whodunit who readers immediately dismiss as too obvious to have committed the crime.

But the special counsel’s investigators spent months encircling Mr. Stone, renewing scrutiny about his role during the 2016 presidential race. Investigators interviewed former Trump campaign advisers and several of his associates about both about Mr. Stone’s fund-raising during the campaign and his contacts with WikiLeaks, one of the organizations that made thousands of Democratic emails public in the months before the election.

Three senior Trump campaign officials have told Mr. Mueller’s team that Mr. Stone created the impression that he was a conduit for inside information from WikiLeaks, according to people familiar with their witness interviews. One of them told investigators that Mr. Stone not only seemed to predict WikiLeaks’ actions, but also that he took credit afterward for the timing of its disclosures that damaged Hillary Clinton’s candidacy.

In social media posts and numerous interviews before the 2016 election, Mr. Stone indicated that he had advance knowledge that a trove of information damaging to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign might be about to spill into public, and even suggested that he had personally spoken to the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange.

Mr. Stone has changed his story in the months since, saying that he was not actually speaking to Mr. Assange and that he had no direct knowledge that Russians were responsible for the Democratic hackings. Still, it was revealed last year that, in the weeks before the election, Mr. Stone was messaging on Twitter with Guccifer 2.0, a pseudonym used by one or more operatives in the Russian intelligence scheme to steal the emails and funnel them to WikiLeaks.

Mr. Stone himself has said publicly that he was prepared for the possibility that he could be indicted, but he has long maintained that he is innocent and has often echoed Mr. Trump’s claims that Mr. Mueller’s investigation is a politically motivated witch hunt.

“This was supposed to be about Russian collusion, and it appears to be an effort to silence or punish the president’s supporters and his advocates,” he said last May on “Meet the Press.”

“It is not inconceivable now that Mr. Mueller and his team may seek to conjure up some extraneous crime pertaining to my business, or maybe not even pertaining to the 2016 election,” he said.

The tumultuous relationship between Mr. Stone and Mr. Trump goes back decades, with Mr. Stone acting as an informal adviser to Mr. Trump as he considered running for president several times. When Mr. Trump formally announced during the spring of 2015 that he was running for president, Mr. Stone was one of the first members of the team, but within months, he had a public dispute with Mr. Trump and left the campaign.

The two men have remained close, though, speaking often by telephone.

Mr. Stone revels in his public persona as a bête noire of American politics, and has taken credit for helping unearth scandals about Democratic politicians. In 2008, he played a role in revealing an affair between a prostitute and Eliot Spitzer, who was then the governor of New York. Mr. Spitzer immediately resigned from office.