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On October 18 2019 04:30 Nouar wrote: So, hmmm, Mulvaney just admitted that the Ukraine aid was held back specifically on order from Trump as he wanted Ukraine to investigate the DNC server and Ukraine's involvment for democrats (???) in the 2016 election.
I'm... guessing that's not exactly the message he wanted to convey ? Or if that is not an issue for him, I'm surprised ? I mean, this IS a quid pro quo... I don't really know how they can spin it in a legal way, something like "the president asked for an investigation as it's illegal to have foreign aid in an election", that ship sailed when Trump asked publicly for aid against his political enemies to China etc, no court would ever uphold that... Sadly, the courts are not involved in an impeachment, it's the Senate...
Add to that Sondland that is scheduled to testify tomorrow that Giuliani wanted to investigate specifically the DNC server and Hunter Biden's company, Mulvaney's assessment that suspending the aid was not tied to Biden is... dubious at best.
...And meanwhile, Trump will host the G7 at one of his resorts. It's such a shameless self-dealing/promotion, I can't fathom...
Yeah this is pretty crazy. He's doing the guiliani thing of admitting to the crime and saying so what?
I just watched the press conference.
Mulvaney did not say or admit anything of the sort. The media reports are very misleading.
Here is the video if anyone is interested
Dunno what the fuck you watched. He admitted it, a reporter clarified to his face that he was admitting it, then he admitted it again.
“[Did] he also mention to me, in the past, that the corruption related to the DNC server?” Mulvaney said. “Absolutely, no question about that. But that’s it. And that’s why we held up the money. ... The look back to what happened in 2016 certainly was part of the thing that he was worried about in corruption with that nation. And that is absolutely appropriate.”
yea that’s video explicitly clarifies that it was in fact a quid pro quo and mulvaney goes on to say ‘we do it all the time,’ and then my favorite bit, ’get over it.’
start at 19 min for some background, 20 min for the meat.
ayaz succinctly quotes the relevant bit though, to the statement of ‘he says nothing of the sort,’ well, can you tell me then what you take away from ‘did trump mention the servers as part of the corruption? absolutely. and that’s why we did it.’
i don’t see a lot of interpretive leeway there but i’m excited to learn.
The argument he’s trying to use is that aid always has political demands attached. That’s generally not wrong, it’s how it’s used because it’s far cheaper to create dependence on cash and then use that for leverage than it is to bomb shit. Per $ spent it’s way more effective to pay people to do what you want than force people to do it. That’s all fine, everyone wins there. They get money they valued more than the political changes, we get political changes we valued more than the money.
The issue is that the demands here aren’t US foreign policy demands. This isn’t giving cash to Pakistan in exchange for them implementing US policy of bombing people on the Afghan border. This is settling Trump’s personal political scores using US taxpayer money as bribes. That’s why this is different. The US does not have a foreign policy interest in investigating the Biden family for corruption, Trump does.
He is refusing to make any distinction between the interests of the state and the interests of the leader, he is claiming they are one and the same. Furthermore he then justifies this as an embodiment of the will of the people with his insistence that elections have consequences, therefore the interests of the winner are the interests of the state, and therefore because Trump wants Biden investigated the people want Biden investigated. This justification is literally taken verbatim from Nazi Germany. They may not know that’s where they got it from, they may not know that the merging of the leader with the state through a claim of the embodiment of the people is called a Fuhrer, but it is.
This is what fascists look like. You don’t identify them by their armbands, you identify them by their political theory. He is arguing fascist political theory to defend the leader using the powers of the government to attack his opponents. He is insisting that it is not Trump who is behind the investigation, rather it is the people because Trump, the people, and the state are one.
On October 19 2019 01:22 KwarK wrote: The argument he’s trying to use is that aid always has political demands attached. That’s generally not wrong, it’s how it’s used because it’s far cheaper to create dependence on cash and then use that for leverage than it is to bomb shit. Per $ spent it’s way more effective to pay people to do what you want than force people to do it. That’s all fine, everyone wins there. They get money they valued more than the political changes, we get political changes we valued more than the money.
The issue is that the demands here aren’t US foreign policy demands. This isn’t giving cash to Pakistan in exchange for them implementing US policy of bombing people on the Afghan border. This is settling Trump’s personal political scores using US taxpayer money as bribes. That’s why this is different. The US does not have a foreign policy interest in investigating the Biden family for corruption, Trump does.
He is refusing to make any distinction between the interests of the state and the interests of the leader, he is claiming they are one and the same. Furthermore he then justifies this as an embodiment of the will of the people with his insistence that elections have consequences, therefore the interests of the winner are the interests of the state, and therefore because Trump wants Biden investigated the people want Biden investigated. This justification is literally taken verbatim from Nazi Germany. They may not know that’s where they got it from, they may not know that the merging of the leader with the state through a claim of the embodiment of the people is called a Fuhrer, but it is.
This is what fascists look like. You don’t identify them by their armbands, you identify them by their political theory. He is arguing fascist political theory to defend the leader using the powers of the government to attack his opponents. He is insisting that it is not Trump who is behind the investigation, rather it is the people because Trump, the people, and the state are one.
It’s a rather frustrating one to observe.
To my sensibilities Biden probably merits investigation, but it’s so transparent as to why Trump is pushing for it. It places advocates for transparency and accountability into rather a frustrating spot.
I think Trump operates by simply believing other people when they tell him things. World leaders. Pharmaceutical companies. Aides. Lawyers. It would explain so much, and explain why his defenses tend to boil down to "I said I didn't do it"-that's all you need to do to convince him you didn't do something.
On October 19 2019 01:51 Wombat_NI wrote: To my sensibilities Biden probably merits investigation, but it’s so transparent as to why Trump is pushing for it. It places advocates for transparency and accountability into rather a frustrating spot.
It really doesn't though. There's a clear line in the sand here, and it doesn't have to do with Trump's motivations.
It is completely fair to believe that Biden's connections to Ukraine merit investigation. It is likewise completely inappropriate for the President of the United States to personally carry out such an investigation while also using US foreign policy as a form of leverage to do so. The US government has multiple intelligence agencies with the ability and the authority to carry out such an investigation if it was deemed necessary, and if such an investigation were to actually be carried out, it would be the place of those organizations to do it. Trump trying to coerce a foreign leader into doing it is never the appropriate way to go about it.
There's no world in which it's appropriate for Trump to go off and do something like this on his own, regardless of why he's doing it. If the CIA were to carry out such an investigation with corresponding contact with the Ukrainian government, nobody would bat an eye, because that's what they're supposed to do.
On October 19 2019 01:51 Wombat_NI wrote: To my sensibilities Biden probably merits investigation, but it’s so transparent as to why Trump is pushing for it. It places advocates for transparency and accountability into rather a frustrating spot.
It really doesn't though. There's a clear line in the sand here, and it doesn't have to do with Trump's motivations.
It is completely fair to believe that Biden's connections to Ukraine merit investigation. It is likewise completely inappropriate for the President of the United States to personally carry out such an investigation while also using US foreign policy as a form of leverage to do so. The US government has multiple intelligence agencies with the ability and the authority to carry out such an investigation if it was deemed necessary, and if such an investigation were to actually be carried out, it would be the place of those organizations to do it. Trump trying to coerce a foreign leader into doing it is never the appropriate way to go about it.
There's no world in which it's appropriate for Trump to go off and do something like this on his own, regardless of why he's doing it. If the CIA were to carry out such an investigation with corresponding contact with the Ukrainian government, nobody would bat an eye, because that's what they're supposed to do.
I mean I agree but people are idiots.
‘Oh you said you’re for the scrutiny of government...’ etc
On October 19 2019 01:51 Wombat_NI wrote: To my sensibilities Biden probably merits investigation, but it’s so transparent as to why Trump is pushing for it. It places advocates for transparency and accountability into rather a frustrating spot.
It really doesn't though. There's a clear line in the sand here, and it doesn't have to do with Trump's motivations.
It is completely fair to believe that Biden's connections to Ukraine merit investigation. It is likewise completely inappropriate for the President of the United States to personally carry out such an investigation while also using US foreign policy as a form of leverage to do so. The US government has multiple intelligence agencies with the ability and the authority to carry out such an investigation if it was deemed necessary, and if such an investigation were to actually be carried out, it would be the place of those organizations to do it. Trump trying to coerce a foreign leader into doing it is never the appropriate way to go about it.
There's no world in which it's appropriate for Trump to go off and do something like this on his own, regardless of why he's doing it. If the CIA were to carry out such an investigation with corresponding contact with the Ukrainian government, nobody would bat an eye, because that's what they're supposed to do.
I mean I agree but people are idiots.
‘Oh you said you’re for the scrutiny of government...’ etc
Good luck having the CIA operate in a region of maximum Russian interest.
Add-on: What's the plan for the US to get out of the future political and economical isolation Trump is leading you into? Everything Trump does helps Russia make more friends. Only guys he hasn't shat on so far were the Japanese.
On October 19 2019 01:51 Wombat_NI wrote: To my sensibilities Biden probably merits investigation, but it’s so transparent as to why Trump is pushing for it. It places advocates for transparency and accountability into rather a frustrating spot.
It really doesn't though. There's a clear line in the sand here, and it doesn't have to do with Trump's motivations.
It is completely fair to believe that Biden's connections to Ukraine merit investigation. It is likewise completely inappropriate for the President of the United States to personally carry out such an investigation while also using US foreign policy as a form of leverage to do so. The US government has multiple intelligence agencies with the ability and the authority to carry out such an investigation if it was deemed necessary, and if such an investigation were to actually be carried out, it would be the place of those organizations to do it. Trump trying to coerce a foreign leader into doing it is never the appropriate way to go about it.
There's no world in which it's appropriate for Trump to go off and do something like this on his own, regardless of why he's doing it. If the CIA were to carry out such an investigation with corresponding contact with the Ukrainian government, nobody would bat an eye, because that's what they're supposed to do.
I mean I agree but people are idiots.
‘Oh you said you’re for the scrutiny of government...’ etc
Good luck having the CIA operate in a region of maximum Russian interest.
Add-on: What's the plan for the US to get out of the future political and economical isolation Trump is leading you into? Everything Trump does helps Russia make more friends. Only guys he hasn't shat on so far were the Japanese.
Get a new president, say "Sorry, that was weird, here are some structural changes we made so that doesn't happen again" and everyone will be like "Yeah well Germany had the whole Hitler thing and now we're cool, everyone has their fuck ups"
On October 19 2019 01:51 Wombat_NI wrote: To my sensibilities Biden probably merits investigation, but it’s so transparent as to why Trump is pushing for it. It places advocates for transparency and accountability into rather a frustrating spot.
It really doesn't though. There's a clear line in the sand here, and it doesn't have to do with Trump's motivations.
It is completely fair to believe that Biden's connections to Ukraine merit investigation. It is likewise completely inappropriate for the President of the United States to personally carry out such an investigation while also using US foreign policy as a form of leverage to do so. The US government has multiple intelligence agencies with the ability and the authority to carry out such an investigation if it was deemed necessary, and if such an investigation were to actually be carried out, it would be the place of those organizations to do it. Trump trying to coerce a foreign leader into doing it is never the appropriate way to go about it.
There's no world in which it's appropriate for Trump to go off and do something like this on his own, regardless of why he's doing it. If the CIA were to carry out such an investigation with corresponding contact with the Ukrainian government, nobody would bat an eye, because that's what they're supposed to do.
I mean I agree but people are idiots.
‘Oh you said you’re for the scrutiny of government...’ etc
Good luck having the CIA operate in a region of maximum Russian interest.
Add-on: What's the plan for the US to get out of the future political and economical isolation Trump is leading you into? Everything Trump does helps Russia make more friends. Only guys he hasn't shat on so far were the Japanese.
Get a new president, say "Sorry, that was weird, here are some structural changes we made so that doesn't happen again" and everyone will be like "Yeah well Germany had the whole Hitler thing and now we're cool, everyone has their fuck ups"
That works better when you dont have to repeat the entire thing every second president in a more escalated version.
On October 19 2019 01:51 Wombat_NI wrote: To my sensibilities Biden probably merits investigation, but it’s so transparent as to why Trump is pushing for it. It places advocates for transparency and accountability into rather a frustrating spot.
It really doesn't though. There's a clear line in the sand here, and it doesn't have to do with Trump's motivations.
It is completely fair to believe that Biden's connections to Ukraine merit investigation. It is likewise completely inappropriate for the President of the United States to personally carry out such an investigation while also using US foreign policy as a form of leverage to do so. The US government has multiple intelligence agencies with the ability and the authority to carry out such an investigation if it was deemed necessary, and if such an investigation were to actually be carried out, it would be the place of those organizations to do it. Trump trying to coerce a foreign leader into doing it is never the appropriate way to go about it.
There's no world in which it's appropriate for Trump to go off and do something like this on his own, regardless of why he's doing it. If the CIA were to carry out such an investigation with corresponding contact with the Ukrainian government, nobody would bat an eye, because that's what they're supposed to do.
I mean I agree but people are idiots.
‘Oh you said you’re for the scrutiny of government...’ etc
Good luck having the CIA operate in a region of maximum Russian interest.
Add-on: What's the plan for the US to get out of the future political and economical isolation Trump is leading you into? Everything Trump does helps Russia make more friends. Only guys he hasn't shat on so far were the Japanese.
Get a new president, say "Sorry, that was weird, here are some structural changes we made so that doesn't happen again" and everyone will be like "Yeah well Germany had the whole Hitler thing and now we're cool, everyone has their fuck ups"
What structural changes do you think are coming or are even possible?
On October 19 2019 01:51 Wombat_NI wrote: To my sensibilities Biden probably merits investigation, but it’s so transparent as to why Trump is pushing for it. It places advocates for transparency and accountability into rather a frustrating spot.
It really doesn't though. There's a clear line in the sand here, and it doesn't have to do with Trump's motivations.
It is completely fair to believe that Biden's connections to Ukraine merit investigation. It is likewise completely inappropriate for the President of the United States to personally carry out such an investigation while also using US foreign policy as a form of leverage to do so. The US government has multiple intelligence agencies with the ability and the authority to carry out such an investigation if it was deemed necessary, and if such an investigation were to actually be carried out, it would be the place of those organizations to do it. Trump trying to coerce a foreign leader into doing it is never the appropriate way to go about it.
There's no world in which it's appropriate for Trump to go off and do something like this on his own, regardless of why he's doing it. If the CIA were to carry out such an investigation with corresponding contact with the Ukrainian government, nobody would bat an eye, because that's what they're supposed to do.
I mean I agree but people are idiots.
‘Oh you said you’re for the scrutiny of government...’ etc
Good luck having the CIA operate in a region of maximum Russian interest.
Add-on: What's the plan for the US to get out of the future political and economical isolation Trump is leading you into? Everything Trump does helps Russia make more friends. Only guys he hasn't shat on so far were the Japanese.
Get a new president, say "Sorry, that was weird, here are some structural changes we made so that doesn't happen again" and everyone will be like "Yeah well Germany had the whole Hitler thing and now we're cool, everyone has their fuck ups"
What structural changes do you think are coming or are even possible?
None or very few as far as I can tell. Perhaps you Americans have ears closer to the ground and have seen things I haven’t though.
The prevailing wisdom regarding structural issues seems to be more ‘get our person in next time’ rather than addressing certain issues in a way that approaches genuine reform.
The Supreme Court being a prime example. There’s the usual handwringing and editorials about stacking the court and the rather morbid ‘will x person die during this President’s term’ and moaning if it goes the way people don’t like. There’s little talk of actually imposing term limits or altering the appointment process itself.
On October 20 2019 04:01 farvacola wrote: Term limits are not the answer, the focus should be on reforming the Senate and it’s relationship to the appointment confirmation process.
That’s absolutely a better reform for sure, in the absence of any kind of reforms though at least a term limit would make Presidential nominees slightly less charged and long-term impactful
Term limits with the Senate/House should also be in the conversation. Can't have people in senate or the house for 60 years making laws. Keep fresh blood and fresh minds in there.
The whole purpose of serving in government was always supposed to be a voluntary, temporary service, before returning to your regular life. We should never have allowed for people to be career politicians, because then the name of the game is how to keep your seat and benefit from it, not how to make your 15 minutes matter.
However, now that we're here, it's not the most realistic platform. Now we have hundreds, or even thousands of extremely powerful people with a vested interest in elected officials never leaving office.
Term limits, particularly in the legislative context, guarantee that the only parties with a long term seat at the lawmaking table are lobbyists and private interests, and any close look at states where they’ve been adopted reveals this. Nearly every single piece of monumental federal legislation turned on the maneuvering and negotiation of long term senior Senators and Congresspeople. Term limits are quintessential fools gold. Problems like model legislation and the prevalence of ALEC only get worse when you guarantee that no one in the house or senate have been there longer than 8 years or so.
Relatively similar principles apply in the judicial context, where revolving door judges only worsen the problem of the entrenched appeals and high court firms who basically serve as the primary gatekeepers for anyone who wants to bring a case.
There are much better solutions than term limits in either context, namely lobbying reform and access to the courts. Only after those have been accomplished does considering term limits make any sense, and even then, the regimented loss of institutional memory is a huge problem.
To me, the no-brainers are: - supreme court appointments require supermajority - electoral boundaries drawn transparently by some independent body - get the hell rid of FPTP
I can't see how any of these will ever happen. The supreme court has now been stacked for a generation, and any attempts by the dems to reform the process will move the court even further right in the medium term by making eg. RBG's replacement more moderate. That is simply too punishing given the timescale required to wash out kavanaugh and friends. The other two rely on all the people in power taking steps that risk or remove their own personal power, which will simply never happen without a massive zeitgeist behind it. Also something something states rights, I'm sure.
The upshot is that the US can't and won't be trusted by its partners to the same degree ever again.
As Farvacola said, though, short term limits just guts the experience and expertise of the only party at the table that has even the pretense of representing the public good, rather than powerful private interests. Term limits set at around 50 years sounds sort of reasonable, because it would just get rid of past-retirement politicians who are never going to leave office until they die. But it's probably still bad. The bad politicians forced out of office would probably find ways to continue influencing Congress better than the good ones forced out of office.
Supreme court appointments used to require a supermajority. Eight years ago, everything in the Senate required a supermajority, and then at some point Mitch McConnell decided that President Obama wasn't getting to appoint any more justices to anything. Eventually, Democrats got sick of this and got rid of the filibuster, but the GOP won a majority in the Senate in 2014 and that was it for court appointments. Trump took office with a record number of judicial vacancies because of this, and filling them has been his biggest impact on the country.
But for the Supreme Court, McConnell blockaded Merrick Garland without a hearing for a year, and Democrats filibustered the rather far right Gorsuch that was put up in his place. The GOP got rid of the filibuster for Supreme Court appointments. Which was going to happen the moment Democrats tried to filibuster any Supreme Court nominee from Trump, because obviously McConnell wasn't going to let that fly.
Electoral boundaries being drawn by an independent body will only help so much. Overall, it will probably help Democrats at the moment, because the GOP had control of a lot of states after the 2010 census for the subsequent redistricting. It won't do shit about the inherent electoral boundary problem of the Senate, though.
Getting rid of TPTP could probably happen. I'm not sure that the constitution prohibits things like ranked choice voting, but the bigger problem is that I think each state would have to implement alternatives independently because the constitution delegates how elections are run to the states.
In the short term of things that could be accomplished and would help, automatic voter registration would be a pretty big improvement. So would legislation that makes voting less onerous. Something that forces more polling places to be opened in high population density areas so that people aren't waiting in excess of an hour to vote would help tremendously.
EPT
