US Politics Mega-thread - Page 95

On April 10 2018 07:05 Plansix wrote:

A simple majority is needed to invoke the articles of impeachment in both the Judiciary Committee and then the House at large. You are confusing impeachment with removal from office, which is a common mistake. Impeachment is the start of a trial of the President by the Senate, which can lead to removal from office. It can also lead to censure, in the most recent case of Bill Clinton.

On April 10 2018 07:11 GreenHorizons wrote:


I'm not confusing them, when people say 'impeach trump" they aren't calling for the house to start the proceedings. But I can concede that's what the word means. I would note that wouldn't qualify as "addressing the problem" in the eyes of most of the people calling for it either.

Again though, since nothing is going to come of it I'd prefer we move on to why the Democrats are standing firmly in the way of what you say is the only 100% sure way (only viable way really) to achieve the goal of removing Trump from office.

On April 10 2018 07:19 Plansix wrote:

I'm not most people, so it shouldn't really apply to statements I make. And I am not particularly interested in discussing the shortcomings of the Democratic party at this point. Especially in the context of the 2020 presidential elections. But I am sure someone will take you up on that evergreen debate.

On April 10 2018 07:28 Plansix wrote:
The only reason I discussed impeachment is because you asked and I wanted to be abundantly clear on my view. Elections are the sure route to removing elected officials.

On April 10 2018 06:34 Plansix wrote:

This congress will not impeach the President, even at the FBI’s report shows clear evidence of criminal wrongdoing.. If congress changes hands in November, then it could happen. But that might not result in Trump being removed from office. Impeachment and removal from office are political processes. If the public is not convinced Trump should go, Congress won’t remove him. I've never really said otherwise.

The only 100% sure way to remove Trump is to have a candidate with a positive approval rating in 2020.

On April 10 2018 08:01 Wulfey_LA wrote:
So John Edwards went down on campaign finance violations relating to his baby-momma payoffs. Feds dropped the charges eventually. Looks like FBI / NYAG have a pleadable case against Cohen for the Stormy payoffs. We don't know what the evidence is yet, but what Stormy has put forth taken as truth could form a plausible claim.

EDIT: what is with all this premature impeachment talk? Let the Mueller investigation proceed. Also, the real impeachable act would be DJT abusing his Presidential powers to protect himself (i.e., obstruction of justice). Nixon resigned once it was clear that he would face impeachment on obstruction of justice. Bill Clinton had obstruction of justice charges. Let's see how DJT reacts to all the stuff Mueller puts out there. All the Russia Collusion stuff is bad, and possibly criminal in its own right, but that wouldn't be an abuse of power that would satisfy "High Crimes and Misdemeanors" as intended in the constitution. Impeachment isn't for normal crimes, and especially isn't for crimes committed outside of holding office. It is about abusing the powers of the office. For instance, I don't think a sitting President can be indicted for a normal criminal offense. Say DJT gave Hope Hicks a black eye for smearing him in the press. I think DJT would be immune to prosecution for the punch and black eye. But using the powers of his office to shield himself and family members and/or enrich himself and family members? Hmmm, yess. Like if DJT shipped the bruised Hope Hicks off to Alaska and kept her penned up in a military base to keep her from talking. That would be an abuse of the power of his office. All this goes back to: let's wait and see if DJT fires Mueller. If he does, I think Dems should run on impeachment.

On April 10 2018 08:17 GreenHorizons wrote:


Under no (searching for a good word here) realistic (best I have atm) circumstances should Dems run on impeachment, which I would have hoped would be the least one could glean from that conversation.

On April 10 2018 08:21 Mohdoo wrote:


Agreed. Same with gun control and maybe abortion.

On April 10 2018 08:27 Plansix wrote:
The economy and reigning in an out of control executive branch that seems hell bent on wasting tax payers money is a better strategy. The only thing they should promise about the investigation is that they want to read the full report and to make sure the investigation is completed

On April 10 2018 08:01 Wulfey_LA wrote:
So John Edwards went down on campaign finance violations relating to his baby-momma payoffs. Feds dropped the charges eventually. Looks like FBI / NYAG have a pleadable case against Cohen for the Stormy payoffs. We don't know what the evidence is yet, but what Stormy has put forth taken as truth could form a plausible claim.

EDIT: what is with all this premature impeachment talk? Let the Mueller investigation proceed. Also, the real impeachable act would be DJT abusing his Presidential powers to protect himself (i.e., obstruction of justice). Nixon resigned once it was clear that he would face impeachment on obstruction of justice. Bill Clinton had obstruction of justice charges. Let's see how DJT reacts to all the stuff Mueller puts out there. All the Russia Collusion stuff is bad, and possibly criminal in its own right, but that wouldn't be an abuse of power that would satisfy "High Crimes and Misdemeanors" as intended in the constitution. Impeachment isn't for normal crimes, and especially isn't for crimes committed outside of holding office. It is about abusing the powers of the office. For instance, I don't think a sitting President can be indicted for a normal criminal offense. Say DJT gave Hope Hicks a black eye for smearing him in the press. I think DJT would be immune to prosecution for the punch and black eye. But using the powers of his office to shield himself and family members and/or enrich himself and family members? Hmmm, yess. Like if DJT shipped the bruised Hope Hicks off to Alaska and kept her penned up in a military base to keep her from talking. That would be an abuse of the power of his office. All this goes back to: let's wait and see if DJT fires Mueller. If he does, I think Dems should run on impeachment.

On April 10 2018 08:30 zlefin wrote:

I'm pretty sure impeachment can be done over plain ol' regular crimes (at least assuming they're of sufficient magnitude).
what are you using as a source for intent of the constitution in such matters?

A federal appeals court ruled Monday that employers cannot justify paying a woman less than a man doing similar work because of her salary history — a move advocates say will help close the wage gap between the sexes.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit sided Monday with the California math consultant at the center of Rizo vs. Fresno County Office of Education, which argued that considering prior compensation when setting a worker’s pay perpetuates gender disparities and defies the spirit of the Equal Pay Act.

“The Equal Pay Act stands for a principle as simple as it is just: Men and women should receive equal pay for equal work regardless of sex,” wrote Judge Stephen Reinhardt in the opinion. “The question before us is also simple: Can an employer justify a wage differential between male and female employees by relying on prior salary? Based on the text, history and purpose of the Equal Pay Act, the answer is clear: No.”

The United States faces a generational gap in wages with a very clear dividing line: between those who graduated before 2008, and those who finished college during and after that fateful year, which marked the depths of the Great Recession and global financial crisis.

That's because graduating during or in the immediate aftermath of the worst economic downturn since the 1930s meant sky-high unemployment rates — and rock-bottom wages for those lucky enough to get their foot in the door.

"Data on youth unemployment rates show a sharp rise during and after the 2008-09 recession - both on an absolute and relative basis," Spencer Hill, economist at Goldman Sachs, writes in new research report. "Unemployment rates in the 16-24-year-old segment rose by 7.9 percentage points to 19.0% between Q4 2007 and Q4 2009, compared to +5.1 percentage points to 9.9% for the population as a whole."

The average earnings discount for young workers widened by 4% to 6% in the years following the recession, Hill added.

"While youth underperformance is typical of recessions, the effects of the most recent downturn appeared larger and more long-lasting than average," said the report, ominously titled "The lost generation: recession graduates and labor market slack."

Weekly earnings for these unlucky millennials declined by 6% relative to the population during and after the recession on an age-adjusted basis, Goldman said.

"However, despite a partial recovery, the earnings gap remains: relative wages on this basis have only retraced a third of the post-recession decline."

Hill points to academic research that corroborates his findings.

A study from Lisa Kahn at Yale School of Management looked at an earlier generation of recession/weak economy graduates, those who finished school between 1979 and 1989.

Kahn finds "large, negative wage effects of graduating in a worse economy which persist for the entire period studied. I also find that cohorts who graduate in worse national economies are in lower-level occupations, have slightly higher tenure and higher educational attainment, while labor supply is unaffected."

Her results "suggest that the labor market consequences of graduating from college in a bad economy are large, negative and persistent."

Under Justice Department regulations governing the special counsel’s work, Mueller is required to consult with Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein if his team finds information worth investigating that does not fall under his mandate.

On April 10 2018 08:44 Wulfey_LA wrote:


Cass Sustein had a great talk on this with Sam Harris.
+ Show Spoiler +



Here are some passages from his book.
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/impeachment-american-style

No sitting President has been charged with a humdrum criminal offense. Impeachment needs a nexus with abuse of power of the office.

And yes, if DJT fires Mueller Dems must run on impeachment. I am against Dems saying the I-word right now. It looks like sour grapes and trying to undo the election (sort of true charges). But everything changes if DJT fires Mueller to protect himself and his cronies. Nixon did that and the country tossed him. DJT would have to be tossed as well. Remember that Nixon did not go down for the burglary, it was him liquidating the guys investigating the burglary.

EDIT: try gaming out DJT firing Mueller now. Mueller is into DJT's lawyer's files. That is breathing down DJT's own neck. At this point it should be super clear that DJT would be firing Mueller to protect himself, not some underling. That would be the classic abuse of powers of the office that Nixon did, Sustein described, and the founders imagined. How would a Democratic candidate respond to the question of "DJT fired Mueller to protect himself from investigation, what are you going to do about that?" Or more directly, "now that DJT has fired Mueller, do you support an impeachment proceeding on the basis of obstruction of justice?" How is NO a viable answer there? NO would be somewhere between a lie and an admission that the rules that bound the Presidency in that past (Nixon), no longer apply. "Let's see, I am not sure" would be rank cowardice and electoral suicide. YES is utterly premature now, but becomes necessary after the firing.

On April 10 2018 08:56 zlefin wrote:

interesting read; and it does seem to indicate that it'd be unlikely for an impeachment to be done without such a nexus; but it does not establish that there NEEDS to be such a nexus. and it seems pretty clear from reading further in that same article that such a standard has little real bearing or legal validity, and can be ignored entirely.

On April 10 2018 09:00 Wulfey_LA wrote:


Okay fine, sub in 'should' and/or 'you better have this if you want to pitch the country on doing the right thing' with regards to the abuse of power nexus. Yeah, impeachment can be for any old damn thing if you read it loosely and broadly. Imbecilic gadflies in congress do this all the time. You can find some wingnut on either party always calling for pointless impeachments. Contrast these wingnuts in the Bush2 era with Pelosi's correct and lawful insistence that impeachment was 'off the table' for Bush2. Bush2 really didn't have any specific abuses of power (nexus). But reading impeachment as intended (i.e., with the nexus) will be required to make the threat real and successfully pitch the country on the idea.

On April 10 2018 08:46 Kyadytim wrote:
www.washingtonpost.com
I am extremely happy about this decision. I hope it leads to a logical conclusion that employers can't consider prior salary at all because doing so perpetuates any discrimination that lead to lower wages at some point in the past.

Somewhat related, my graduating class is facing a permanent loss in wages relative to people who graduated a few years earlier, so banning consideration of prior wages would help basically everyone I know. We are all otherwise permanently fucked over by having the misfortune of having been born in the latter half of the 1980s and therefore having graduated with 4-year degrees right after the economy tanked in 2008.

www.businessinsider.com

On April 10 2018 09:00 Wulfey_LA wrote:


Okay fine, sub in 'should' and/or 'you better have this if you want to pitch the country on doing the right thing' with regards to the abuse of power nexus. Yeah, impeachment can be for any old damn thing if you read it loosely and broadly. Imbecilic gadflies in congress do this all the time. You can find some wingnut on either party always calling for pointless impeachments. Contrast these wingnuts in the Bush2 era with Pelosi's correct and lawful insistence that impeachment was 'off the table' for Bush2. Bush2 really didn't have any specific abuses of power (nexus). But reading impeachment as intended (i.e., with the nexus) will be required to make the threat real and successfully pitch the country on the idea.