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On September 21 2018 04:52 Gorsameth wrote:
SC judges are appointed for life so that they are not beholden to anyone. They don't need to worry about how their rulings effect job prospects 10 years from now.
Capping judges leads to corruption within the SC.
So then how about they can only serve a maximum amount of time? They serve for 10 years regardless of anything else.
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2 updates on Ford's possible testimony.
1. She is meeting with her attorneys today to discuss how they might be able to make testifying next week possible. However, it seems unlikely she would want to do it as early as Monday. If she said she was able and willing total testify say next Thursday, what are the chances Grassley would turn that down? Now that would look bad.
2. The Republicans in the committee are going to hire an outside counsel with experience in this field to question her if she testifies. They, correctly, figured it would look horrible for them to do it.
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On September 21 2018 04:59 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On September 21 2018 04:52 Gorsameth wrote:
SC judges are appointed for life so that they are not beholden to anyone. They don't need to worry about how their rulings effect job prospects 10 years from now.
Capping judges leads to corruption within the SC. So then how about they can only serve a maximum amount of time? They serve for 10 years regardless of anything else.
i think that’s the opposite point. 10 years means they’d probably have to find work afterwards, inhibiting their decisions on the court. more fair probably is an age cap of like 75 y/o and you’re out.
presumably they get a handsome pension so idk how relevant the whole argument really is.
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IMO, many of the best SC decisions can be traced, at least in part, to the insulation provided by lifetime appointments. Warren, Brennan, and Stevens could not have been as prolific and controversial without that kind of long-lasting job security, nor could they have defended their landscape changing decisions from newcomers had they aged out.
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On September 21 2018 05:01 On_Slaught wrote:
2 updates on Ford's possible testimony.
1. She is meeting with her attorneys today to discuss how they might be able to make testifying next week possible. However, it seems unlikely she would want to do it as early as Monday. If she said she was able and willing total testify say next Thursday, what are the chances Grassley would turn that down? Now that would look bad.
2. The Republicans in the committee are going to hire an outside counsel with experience in this field to question her if she testifies. They, correctly, figured it would look horrible for them to do it.
Ford’s attorney isn’t into the Monday time frame, which seems reasonable given that the Senate has yet to discuss the terms of the testimony. It is good that the discussion has moved from if hearings will take place to if the Senate is the right venue, or just a kangaroo court.
edit: also appointments for life are good and lead to long term public servants, rather than people who serve a 10 year gig before moving on to make the real money.
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I think, to reduce the occurence of partisan judges, instead of a SC age limit or term limit, the confirmation in the senate should be higher than 50 votes. Maybe 2/3 majority.
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Sure, that or maybe involving a cross-chamber appointment committee in some way. There are a lot of ways to make changes.
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NYT reporting that Ford has officially told the Senate that she is willing to testify next week, but not Monday. A lot of Republicans looked excited at the prospect that she wouldn't tetlstify since it makes things way worse for Kavanaugh and, by extension, them. Looks like their wish wont come true.
The ball is back in Grassley's court now. There's no way he says no to giving her a few more days to get everything in order, right?
Source:
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On September 20 2018 18:32 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2018 14:34 schaf wrote:
Wouldn't it be favourable to build a broad political coalition against the Venezuelan government? Military action will not lead to a positive outcome in my opinion but showing the people of that country that not only evil America but in fact Europe, Asia and their neighbouring countries have the same stance on Maduro should erode his support.
And as to the prime directive: it's not an alien civilisation contacted for the first time. That should be obvious. It also doesn't apply to the situation because the US government (especially under Trump) is clearly not well intentioned. By the way, I found this article the other day which claims that the US and Saudis collaborated to flood the oil market in order to "crash" the Russian and Iranian economies. One of the results was the collapse of the Venezuelan economy, since 96% of its exports consists of oil. I was reading about US-Venezuela relations and supposedly they're not quite so bad as they're sometimes claimed to be. 40% of its oil is exported to the US. And more of its population would view the US favorably than not. There wasn't anything comparable to the economic embargo against Cuba. I would speculate this is related to oil imports and the danger of disrupting this relationship. Venezuela has the world's largest proven oil reserves. But the relationship has drastically worsened since the Maduro presidency. There have been new sanctions, and there has been talk of invasion. John Bolton joined the administration and he is an advocate of some sort of regime change. And the US has become drastically less dependent on Venezuelan oil imports.
I wouldn't buy the 'oil conspiracy' line. US production increased in response to new technology and high prices (remember $100+ oil?). These are private producers too, so I'm not sure how the US gov would be pushing production higher anyways.
It's also not just price that hurt Venezuela. PDVSA was terribly managed by Chavez / Maduro. Oil output fell from something like 2.5M barrels per day to sub 2M. So they got whacked twice - both price and volume. Don't even get me started on what that would mean for margins.
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A part of me thinks about how it will help Democrats when Republicans are their usual garbage self during the hearing. GL to her.
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On September 21 2018 05:32 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2018 18:32 Grumbels wrote:On September 20 2018 14:34 schaf wrote:
Wouldn't it be favourable to build a broad political coalition against the Venezuelan government? Military action will not lead to a positive outcome in my opinion but showing the people of that country that not only evil America but in fact Europe, Asia and their neighbouring countries have the same stance on Maduro should erode his support.
And as to the prime directive: it's not an alien civilisation contacted for the first time. That should be obvious. It also doesn't apply to the situation because the US government (especially under Trump) is clearly not well intentioned. By the way, I found this article the other day which claims that the US and Saudis collaborated to flood the oil market in order to "crash" the Russian and Iranian economies. One of the results was the collapse of the Venezuelan economy, since 96% of its exports consists of oil. I was reading about US-Venezuela relations and supposedly they're not quite so bad as they're sometimes claimed to be. 40% of its oil is exported to the US. And more of its population would view the US favorably than not. There wasn't anything comparable to the economic embargo against Cuba. I would speculate this is related to oil imports and the danger of disrupting this relationship. Venezuela has the world's largest proven oil reserves. But the relationship has drastically worsened since the Maduro presidency. There have been new sanctions, and there has been talk of invasion. John Bolton joined the administration and he is an advocate of some sort of regime change. And the US has become drastically less dependent on Venezuelan oil imports. I wouldn't buy the 'oil conspiracy' line. US production increased in response to new technology and high prices (remember $100+ oil?). These are private producers too, so I'm not sure how the US gov would be pushing production higher anyways. It's also not just price that hurt Venezuela. PDVSA was terribly managed by Chavez / Maduro. Oil output fell from something like 2.5M barrels per day to sub 2M. So they got whacked twice - both price and volume. Don't even get me started on what that would mean for margins.
It’s about the Saudis increasing production, not the USA.
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The Saudis have a lock on most of the oil market in the Middle East and the other oil producers are willing to work with them, rather than undercut each other. It is easy to see how Venezuela to any price war started by Middle East actors. So much of their economy was based on oil income.
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I'm not a fan of Ford picking a Democratic political operative (Seidman, who worked with Biden and helped Sotomayor) to help her with the hearing. It paints her testimony with a political paint brush and feeds conservative angst with her story. There are countless lawyers eminently qualified she could have picked without that baggage. Disappointing, like much of the way this has been handled.
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I'm not sure there are countless lawyers with experience before the senate and at working relationship with senators. The second is more important, because the senate isn't a court of law. And her testimony is already has politically baggage, so I'm not sure its a factor most folks will notice.
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I think a worthwhile lesson here is to just assume that every high-level Republican politician is a criminal or sex creep of some sorts. The party is obviously completely okay with it, recall they supported Roy Moore and Donald Trump, both implicated with pedophilia and rape, and are now completely blasé about supporting a guy that coaches not one, but two girls basketball teams.
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Is it me or is it kind of weird the Republicans are hiring an outside party to help question a SCOTUS nominee and his accuser?
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They are feeding the narrative by treating it politically. I would have preferred she get some high power defense attorney (no doubt a bunch would line up to do this one for free) to focus her case the serious criminal aspect of it. She can get help from political operatives on the side (which this may be but it isnt clear), but when the person sitting right behind her in the hearing is basically just a Dem agent then it will be easy to twist it as a Democratic political hit. It would be like having McGahn represent somebody if the situation was flipped. It rubs me the wrong way, but maybe there just wasn't any other realistic choices. Dunno. Just my 2ct.
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On September 21 2018 06:53 ticklishmusic wrote:
Is it me or is it kind of weird the Republicans are hiring an outside party to help question a SCOTUS nominee and his accuser? As someone mentioned earlier, Republican Senators demonizing Ford on national tv is horrible optics so they might want an outsider to have an escape for public backlash.
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On September 21 2018 05:59 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On September 21 2018 05:32 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On September 20 2018 18:32 Grumbels wrote:On September 20 2018 14:34 schaf wrote:
Wouldn't it be favourable to build a broad political coalition against the Venezuelan government? Military action will not lead to a positive outcome in my opinion but showing the people of that country that not only evil America but in fact Europe, Asia and their neighbouring countries have the same stance on Maduro should erode his support.
And as to the prime directive: it's not an alien civilisation contacted for the first time. That should be obvious. It also doesn't apply to the situation because the US government (especially under Trump) is clearly not well intentioned. By the way, I found this article the other day which claims that the US and Saudis collaborated to flood the oil market in order to "crash" the Russian and Iranian economies. One of the results was the collapse of the Venezuelan economy, since 96% of its exports consists of oil. I was reading about US-Venezuela relations and supposedly they're not quite so bad as they're sometimes claimed to be. 40% of its oil is exported to the US. And more of its population would view the US favorably than not. There wasn't anything comparable to the economic embargo against Cuba. I would speculate this is related to oil imports and the danger of disrupting this relationship. Venezuela has the world's largest proven oil reserves. But the relationship has drastically worsened since the Maduro presidency. There have been new sanctions, and there has been talk of invasion. John Bolton joined the administration and he is an advocate of some sort of regime change. And the US has become drastically less dependent on Venezuelan oil imports. I wouldn't buy the 'oil conspiracy' line. US production increased in response to new technology and high prices (remember $100+ oil?). These are private producers too, so I'm not sure how the US gov would be pushing production higher anyways. It's also not just price that hurt Venezuela. PDVSA was terribly managed by Chavez / Maduro. Oil output fell from something like 2.5M barrels per day to sub 2M. So they got whacked twice - both price and volume. Don't even get me started on what that would mean for margins. It’s about the Saudis increasing production, not the USA.
But it's the US that's been increasing production...
https://money.cnn.com/2018/09/12/investing/us-oil-production-russia-saudi-arabia/index.html
For the first time since 1973, the United States is the world's largest producer of crude oil, according to preliminary estimates published on Wednesday by the Energy Department.
...
The EIA expects US oil production to stay ahead of Russia and Saudi Arabia through 2019.
Saudi oil production has been relatively stable over the past few decades.
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EPT
