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U.S. Politics: 5.7 Billion Problems But The House Ain't One


Jace, Extat

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1 hour ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

 

These outdated concepts of 'occupation' and 'regime change' won't survive the next conflict between major states.

These were proven outdated back about 40 years ago in Vietnam, the undeclared conveniently forgotten war (like until quite recently, the War of 1812, in which the US got its pants beaten off on its own ground; thank goodness for the water and the privateers!)

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Well, its that time of year again for the clowns at Davos to meet again, and sing we are the world and all that, but not really do anything.

https://promarket.org/davos-elites-advocate-equality-nothing-gets-done/

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Thousands of people with a combined wealth of several hundred billion dollars, perhaps even close to a trillion, are gathering this week in Davos. Never in world history, quite possibly, has the amount of wealth per square foot been so high. This year, for the seventh or eighth consecutive time, one of the principal topics addressed by these captains of industry, billionaires, employers of thousands of people across the four corners of the globe, is inequality. Even the new “hot” topics of the day—trade wars and populism—are in turn related, or even caused by inequality of income, wealth, or political power. 

 

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Neither will they publicly mention companies’ ability to ..................................use government ambulance services to carry workers who have fainted from the heat (to save expenses on air conditioning).

Yeah, we're looking at and pointing fingers at you Jeff Bozo.

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12 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Trump is about to make a statement from the WH.  It is believed he'll announce his willingness to sign a 3 week govt funding bill (without the wall).  Rumor is that he may also include something about invoking a national emergency after 3 weeks if he doesn't get his way. 

 

 

Better than nothing on the 3 weeks. The airline stuff has got to be the only reason this is getting done.

 

For the national emergency stuff, is this something he can debatably do, or is it something that has no chance of holding up in court? I think I slept through the executive powers portions of Con law. 

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Just now, sperry said:

 

Better than nothing on the 3 weeks. The airline stuff has got to be the only reason this is getting done.

 

For the national emergency stuff, is this something he can debatably do, or is it something that has no chance of holding up in court? I think I slept through the executive powers portions of Con law. 

He can certainly declare it. And he can move funds around. It remains to be seen on a whole lot of the rest of the law there, as it has never been challenged to any real degree - largely because POTUS has never declared an emergency to get policy stuff done that they were otherwise blocked on. 

The biggest sticking point will almost certainly be acquiring the land in any kind of legal manner. 

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15 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

No, I believe that would be a direct tax.  Just like everyone doesn't own real property but the federal government would not be permitted to impose a real property tax (that, I think, was one of the main reasons for the prohibition in the Constitution).  Direct tax is imposed in rem/or per capita, rather than an indirect tax, which is imposed on a transaction.  I think that the important part of Sebelius is that the court found that it was neither a capitation tax nor a tax on property.  

Ah. In that case you could probably tax it on the transactions and make it a pretty hefty part of that, including things like dividend payments, and I would imagine that would be okay. That's annoying - it means holding on to stock becomes oddly lucrative for some - but it also means that for the majority of those wealth holders who move stock around regularly, they'll get dinged. 

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5 minutes ago, Zorral said:

These were proven outdated back about 40 years ago in Vietnam, the undeclared conveniently forgotten war (like until quite recently, the War of 1812, in which the US got its pants beaten off on its own ground; thank goodness for the water and the privateers!)

In the 60s decision makers did not have the conventional weapons to do what their (thankfully) unused nukes could do. 

That is no longer the case. It is far more efficient to assign a predetermined payload per meter to effectuate positive control of anything the sun touches than to deploy expensive nuclear devices that are not convenient to (truly) mass produce. 

Building drones and bombs will be a lucrative business when subjugation of a significant state becomes necessary next. Because even the stupidest (non-Trump, he is below the stupidest) politician will comprehend "we can build more drones than they can cast bullets."

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2 hours ago, sperry said:

I've seen the approval numbers mentioned several times in this thread, but i doesn't seem like anything is jumping out. They are within the bands that Trump has fluctuated in the entire time. His base doesn't seem to care at all about this, which is not unexpected.

The fact his numbers didn't start approaching his lower threshold until this week is a large part of why the shutdown has lasted this long - and why there is considerable movement on behalf of Trump/GOP to end it this week.  There's basically no way to back this up, but I really think he benefitted from a lot of the public not really giving a shit about politics for ~ the first two weeks of the shutdown, which is why as I've said before I think this shutdown's length is rather inflated compared to others.

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Just now, Kalbear said:

He can certainly declare it. And he can move funds around. It remains to be seen on a whole lot of the rest of the law there, as it has never been challenged to any real degree - largely because POTUS has never declared an emergency to get policy stuff done that they were otherwise blocked on. 

The biggest sticking point will almost certainly be acquiring the land in any kind of legal manner. 

 

My understanding of acquiring the land is that if it's a legitimate emergency eminent domain would allow it. Now, the landowner's would certainly have standing to challenge the suit, and tha'ts probably where the case would originate, but I would think it would be down to the extent of executive power in discretion of declaring an emergency.

 

Also will be interesting to see how the Supreme Court would rule. Aside from Thomas and Kavanaugh, I wouldn't expect the rest to just rubber stamp anything Trump does.

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2 hours ago, Maithanet said:

Sort of.  His approval rating has fluctuated between 38% and 43% for his entire presidency (not counting the first month honeymoon).  In mid december, he was near the top of that range, ~42% approval.  He has been dropping, slowly but steadily, since then, and now he's nearing the bottom of his range.  So yes, this isn't unprecedented, he was definitely this unpopular before, namely at the worst of the Obamacare fiasco and jamming through the tax giveaway.  However, this situation is only going to get worse, and there's definitely reason to think that Trump's numbers will continue to decline.

There is a contingent of Trump's base that is with him to the end, although whether this accounts for 25% or 30% or 33% of the country is hard to say.  But it is definitely not 38%.  In addition, there have been some polls (such as the last CBS poll) where the drop in polling is occurring in Trump friendly groups (namely with independent and republican white men).  But breaking down polling by subgroups is difficult because sample sizes get unreliable and different polls break things down differently. 

The other to consider besides his approval ratings is his disapproval rating. The approval rating is a little lower than general, but seldom has the disapproval been higher, and usually only for a day or two at a time. (Currently the disapproval is just about 56% as per 538.)

A lot of people whose usual answer to whether they approve of Agent Orange or not is “Don’t know, don’t care, I spend every waking moment with my fingers in my ears and making noise loudly so I never hear the news or politics” have moved into the disapprove category.

Going from, say, 42% approval to 39.5% may rightly not seem like much... but simultaneously going from 50% disapproval to 56% is a pretty bad sign for someone in elected office, even with an overly compliant, “We need a horse race for our ratings!!1!!” media.

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25 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Trump is about to make a statement from the WH.  It is believed he'll announce his willingness to sign a 3 week govt funding bill (without the wall).  Rumor is that he may also include something about invoking a national emergency after 3 weeks if he doesn't get his way. 

 

He's a half hour late. I'm betting he's taking calls from Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter again, trying to determine how mad the base will be. 

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How is he going to sell a national emergency in court when illegal immigration has been decreasing for almost 2 decades?  There's no actual facts he can use to support this claim that this time in history demands presidential emergency powers to build a stupidly expensive wall, with no evidence it will actually solve any of the issues he's claiming are at emergency levels.

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1 minute ago, aceluby said:

How is he going to sell a national emergency in court when illegal immigration has been decreasing for almost 2 decades?  There's no actual facts he can use to support this claim that this time in history demands presidential emergency powers to build a stupidly expensive wall, with no evidence it will actually solve any of the issues he's claiming are at emergency levels.

Facts?

FACTS????

What reality are you living in where those words carry commonly agreed upon meaning?

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7 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

 

Building drones and bombs will be a lucrative business when subjugation of a significant state becomes necessary next. Because even the stupidest (non-Trump, he is below the stupidest) politician will comprehend "we can build more drones than they can cast bullets."

But, a huge but -- will the drones actually function?

In Vietnam the US military sophistication was enormous including infrared showing targets to bombers in the air.  It's merely a matter of more rather than different.  And again, everything since has been carefully in the desert.  Jungle covered mountains are quite different, as in Vietnam.  Also the sheer amount of enormously technologically superior military resources and weapons throw at the Vietcong was impossible to even do the accounting on.  Yet, those pajama clad, barefoot guys, who dug tunnels with shovels and machetes and bare hands sent the US running back home.

Maybe different in kind now, but as nearly 20 years of war in the mideast have shown, not different in effectiveness.

 

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17 minutes ago, aceluby said:

How is he going to sell a national emergency in court when illegal immigration has been decreasing for almost 2 decades?  There's no actual facts he can use to support this claim that this time in history demands presidential emergency powers to build a stupidly expensive wall, with no evidence it will actually solve any of the issues he's claiming are at emergency levels. 

It is definitely a sticky issue.  Congress has given the President extremely broad leeway in terms of declaring an emergency.  It looks like Congress didn't really consider whether the President might use emergency powers as just an end-around to get some policy issue that he can't get from Congress.  So it really depends on the courts, and nobody knows how it's going to go.  The SC has generally agreed that the President has broad leeway on this sort of matter, but broad leeway isn't infinite.  This border wall really stretches the boundary of "emergency".  I personally doubt that Trump will ever get his wall built using this path, but really nobody knows for sure. 

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