US Politics: CPAC - Finding new ways to bring America to Rune.

[Fez]

Oh good, we've entered the performative tantrum stage of the legislative process...

 

[Jace, Extat]

15 minutes ago, DMC said:

Bipartisan senators introduce bill to strip Biden of war powers

While I'm perfectly fine with last week's strikes, as an institutionalist I am obviously all for this.  Of course, as an institutionalist I'm also extremely cynical about Congress actually sustaining an effort to wrest war powers back from the executive, but hey at least it's something.

Do it. I'll trade the 1.9 trillion thingy for a reduction in Presidential authority.

[Ran]

The weird thing is that the White House did not cite the AUMF and explicitly focused on the president's ability to act in self-defense of US personnel, both according to Article II authority and UN law. It's long been high time the old authorizations are rescinded, but I don't understand why Kaine isn't instead arguing that the ability to strike in self-defense without the authorizations is now reason to find that the authorizations are no longer necessary since we're not at war with anyone.

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

The weird thing is that the White House did not cite the AUMF and explicitly focused on the president's ability to act in self-defense of US personnel, both according to Article II authority and UN law. It's long been high time the old authorizations are rescinded, but I don't understand why Kaine isn't instead arguing that the ability to strike in self-defense without the authorizations is now reason to find that the authorizations are no longer necessary since we're not at war with anyone.

Well, one step at a time.  The AUMF(s) is often the fallback justification, but yes, citing Article II and/or Article 51 of the UN charter are also bullshit justifications to circumvent Congress.

[IheartIheartTesla]

59 minutes ago, Fez said:

Oh good, we've entered the performative tantrum stage of the legislative process...

 

Pardon my ignorance, but a) Wont Republican senators also be forced to listen for 10 hours and b) Does everyone have to be in the chamber for every moment of those 10 hours barring bio breaks and what have you?

[Fez]

10 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Pardon my ignorance, but a) Wont Republican senators also be forced to listen for 10 hours and b) Does everyone have to be in the chamber for every moment of those 10 hours barring bio breaks and what have you?

Nope. Almost no one will be there for it, except for whichever Democratic senator(s) draw the short end of the straw and have to be the presiding officer during it. Plus some unfortunate senate staffers. Other than impeachment trials, senators are never compelled to be in the chamber and usually aren't. Even during votes themselves its usually just a matter of ducking in for a couple minutes and then disappearing again. This accomplishes nothing except to push back the time frame for a few hours.

It's why so often senators are giving speeches to empty seats (and why the CSPAN camera stays zoomed in on the senator speaking).

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

So I just got home, T.V. is on mute on MSNBC in the background and the headline is Gov. Cuomo saying he never touched anyone inappropriately.

He's cooked, right?

[Mindwalker]

I guess it depends on how many other women speak out... He says he's not going to resign.

I notice he didn't talk about the nursing home deaths, or the general bullying...

[Ran]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

Well, one step at a time.  The AUMF(s) is often the fallback justification, but yes, citing Article II and/or Article 51 of the UN charter are also bullshit justifications to circumvent Congress.

I mean, Article 51 is pretty appropriately cited, and the War Powers Resolution explicitly permits acts to defend American armed forces. Hence the targeting of strikes. I see Kaine made fuller remarks where he fully supported the idea that the President needs some unilateral authority for self-defense. I'm not sure why he muddled things, other than a belief that the strikes were disproportionate or somehow offensive rather than defensive in nature ... or, alternatively, because he's just grasping at something to try and get the AUMFs repealed as he's long wanted (and he's right, but still, it has nothing to do with the strikes).

[Fragile Bird]

Now all the Retrumplicans are saying, "see, the Democrats know Biden has dementia, that's why they are doing this, what better proof do you need!"

[DMC]

25 minutes ago, Ran said:

I mean, Article 51 is pretty appropriately cited, and the War Powers Resolution explicitly permits acts to defend American armed forces. Hence the targeting of strikes. I see Kaine made fuller remarks where he fully supported the idea that the President needs some unilateral authority for self-defense. I'm not sure why he muddled things, other than a belief that the strikes were disproportionate or somehow offensive rather than defensive in nature ... or, alternatively, because he's just grasping at something to try and get the AUMFs repealed as he's long wanted (and he's right, but still, it has nothing to do with the strikes).

The War Powers Act specifically requires both consultation with and notification to Congress.  The issue is the AUMFs allow for the executive to employ a broad excuse/justification - these requirements are only necessary in the absence of declaration, statutory authorization, or emergency retaliatory action in self-defense (which obviously targeted strikes are not) - because the AUMFs, obviously, technically are statutory authorization.

As for Kaine not addressing the 73 War Powers Act, he did:

Quote

Kaine says “step three” is to update the 1974 War Powers Act.

“This instance shows us the War Powers Act of 1974 just isn’t enough in terms of requiring consultation, so I have a bill to rewrite the War Powers Act that is a longer-term reform that I think we’ll also be introducing in the first of the year with Republican colleagues,” he said.

It's just, you gotta rescind the AUMFs first.

Regarding Article 51 of the UN charter, the intent there is clearly attacks on any nation's sovereign soil/homeland.  Not strikes to defend troops stationed in another country they haven't even declared war upon.  That's an Alice in Wonderland interpretation of the intent on "self-defense."  Here's the text:

Quote

Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security

To be clear, it's hardly something to grab your pitchforks about that Biden did something that all post-WWII presidents have been granted broad discretion to do.  And the intent of the strike was clearly to defend our troops.  But if we're going to actually try and finally fix this, then the War Powers Act should be observed - at least notifying Congress when making targeted strikes.

[Mindwalker]

Inspector General’s Report Cites Elaine Chao for Misuse of Office

The Transportation Department’s inspector general asked the Justice Department in December to consider a criminal investigation into what it said was Elaine Chao’s misuse of her office as transportation secretary in the Trump administration to help promote her family’s shipping business, which is run by her sister and has extensive business ties with China.

In a report made public on Wednesday, the inspector general said the Justice Department’s criminal and public integrity divisions both declined to take up the matter in the closing weeks of the Trump administration, even after the inspector general found repeated examples of Ms. Chao using her staff and her office to help benefit her family and their business operations and revealed that staff members at the agency had raised ethics concerns.

“A formal investigation into potential misuses of position was warranted,” Mitch Behm, the department’s deputy inspector general, said on Tuesday in a letter to House lawmakers

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/03/us/politics/elaine-chao-inspector-general-report.html

 

Trump Served With Civil Rights Suit After Capitol Riot

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-served-with-rep-bennie-thompsons-civil-rights-lawsuit-after-capitol-riot

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

You see, @Mindwalker, her name wasn't Hunter Biden.  

[Fragile Bird]

That golden calf statue of Trump at CPAC? It was reported to have been made in Mexico, which was pretty damn funny.

Fake News!

The artist had confessed - it was made in China! Even funnier!

[Martell Spy]

Stockton’s Basic-Income Experiment Pays Off
A new study of the city’s program that sent cash to struggling individuals finds dramatic changes.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/stocktons-basic-income-experiment-pays-off/618174/

Quote

 

Most adults without children have no program to help them keep gas in the car and a roof over their head, no matter how poor they are. Most families with kids don’t have one either. In the United States, poverty is used as a cudgel to get people to work. We got rid of welfare for poor families’ and poor individuals’ own good, the argument goes. Give people money, and they stop working. They become dependent on welfare. They never sort out the problems in their life. The best route out of poverty is a hand up, not a handout.   

Stockton has now proved this false. An exclusive new analysis of data from the demonstration project shows that a lack of resources is its own miserable trap. The best way to get people out of poverty is just to get them out of poverty; the best way to offer families more resources is just to offer them more resources.

The researchers Stacia Martin-West of the University of Tennessee and Amy Castro Baker of the University of Pennsylvania collected and analyzed data from individuals who received $500 a month and from individuals who did not. Some of their findings are obvious. The cash transfer reduced income volatility, for one: Households getting the cash saw their month-to-month earnings fluctuate 46 percent, versus the control group’s 68 percent. The families receiving the $500 a month tended to spend the money on essentials, including food, home goods, utilities, and gas. (Less than 1 percent went to cigarettes and alcohol.) The cash also doubled the households’ capacity to pay unexpected bills, and allowed recipient families to pay down their debts. Individuals getting the cash were also better able to help their families and friends, providing financial stability to the broader community.  

“It let me pay off some credit cards that I had been living off of, because my household income wasn’t large enough,” one recipient named Laura Kidd-Plummer told me. “It helped me to be able to take care of my groceries without having to run to the food bank three times a month. That was very helpful.” During the study, Laura also experienced a spell of homelessness when the apartment building she was living in had a fire. The Stockton cash helped her secure a new apartment, ensuring that she could afford movers and a security deposit.

The researchers also found that the guaranteed income did not dissuade participants from working—adding to a large body of evidence showing that cash benefits do not dramatically shrink the labor force and in some cases help people work by giving them the stability they need to find and take a new job. In the Stockton study, the share of participants with a full-time job rose 12 percentage points, versus five percentage points in the control group. In an interview, Martin-West and Castro Baker suggested that the money created capacity for goal setting, risk taking, and personal investment.

 

 

[The Anti-Targ]

For $500/month to be of any use you need to be getting money from elsewhere as well. For any GMI or UBI to not still create an underclass of "miserable, lazy bludgers" who can still be political scapegoats it has to be set at a level which allows a person (and a family) to live a subsistence life solely on that GMI / UBI. That's why the U in UBI needs to disappear, because the amount you can politically justify giving to everyone is not enough on its own for anyone to be able to live.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

6 hours ago, Martell Spy said:

Stockton’s Basic-Income Experiment Pays Off
A new study of the city’s program that sent cash to struggling individuals finds dramatic changes.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/stocktons-basic-income-experiment-pays-off/618174/

 

This is great, and it shouldn't be "news." It took me far too long in life to realize that the myth of bullying people out of poverty was complete horseshit. 

3 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

For $500/month to be of any use you need to be getting money from elsewhere as well. For any GMI or UBI to not still create an underclass of "miserable, lazy bludgers" who can still be political scapegoats it has to be set at a level which allows a person (and a family) to live a subsistence life solely on that GMI / UBI. That's why the U in UBI needs to disappear, because the amount you can politically justify giving to everyone is not enough on its own for anyone to be able to live.

Agreed--500 a month for me right now would change my life. But I have a full time job. People struggling worse would need more, and should get more. That this is still in the "thought experiment" territory in the US is ridiculous. We should have seen this happening every month throughout COVID.

[Ormond]

21 hours ago, DMC said:

I'm not sure why you're so hung up on the hostage crisis in general, that wasn't my point at all.  Hell, for much of the time the hostage crisis helped Carter's popularity with the rally round the flag effect.  A lot, in fact - for about four months it boosted his approval 20%.  

My point is that foreign policy failures kill presidencies, again especially Democratic presidencies, more so than anything other than recessions.  I used that comparison, again, due to the aborted/failed mission similarity, but also because it would be an entirely self-inflicted wound - there's no responsibility attribution to share or diffuse.  

If you don't think such a failure would be that salient, fair enough, but I think you're wrong and am pretty confident in saying so.  If Biden lifted sanctions just to talk informally to Iran, got nothing out of it, and then had to reimpose the sanctions, it would clearly be a salient foreign policy failure.  He'd look like an idiot to virtually everybody, it would be a national and global embarrassment.  And especially considering Biden's soft support pretty much across the spectrum, it's easy to imagine most everyone abandoning him.  I mean, who would be sympathetic?  The left, which otherwise loathes him?

Maybe I am misreading you, but I think our disagreement is about degree here. I am not saying a failure wouldn't be "salient", just less salient than Carter's was. I think you seem to be saying that a failure of Biden's as you describe would be as bad politically as Carter's was for him. Everything you say in your last paragraph above could be true, but I still believe Carter's failure would have much more impact. Carter may have had a "rally round the flag" effect in the beginning, but I believe that was lost with the constant drumbeat of how many days the hostages had been held in the media, and then the failure of the military mission. I just don't see how lifting sanctions and then having to reimpose them could be anywhere near as damaging for Biden as the failure in the hostage crisis was for Carter. There isn't going to be the constant media attention on Iran for Biden there was for Carter, and there's no way a back and forth over sanctions is going to be AS much of an embarrassment as the hostage failure was. The average person just isn't going to pay attention to the sanctions issue the way people did to the hostage crisis. The average American doesn't have Iran on their radar screen to that extent and won't unless the Iranians do something like actually drop an atomic bomb somewhere, or openly attack a U.S. military base. 

And of course we do agree that Biden should NOT be sucked in to the scenario you describe. We agree on what he should do, just disagree on the degree of impact his actions might have. 

Maybe it's just that one has to have been an adult already in 1980 to remember what a big deal the hostage crisis was. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

48 minutes ago, Ormond said:

but I believe that was lost with the constant drumbeat of how many days the hostages had been held in the media,

I tend to agree with what @DMC is saying, that in general it's just a bad idea, and like you said, the differences here are minor, but this is a point worth exploring. The media was far more concentrated during Carter's presidency. Today, I'm not sure how the coverage would go. The right wing outlets are easy to predict, but the ones on the left and in the center are harder to accurately predict. I don't think such a scenario would consume Biden like it did Carter, but he would still take a massive hit for what in retrospect may have been a minor decision. 

Quote

The average American doesn't have Iran on their radar screen to that extent and won't unless the Iranians do something like actually drop an atomic bomb somewhere, or openly attack a U.S. military base. 

"Average American" is tricky here my friend. Most mainstream conservatives would identify as average Americans, and they all still largely argue that Obama gave Iran billions of dollars from U.S. tax payers, unaware or uncaring that he just unfrozen assets that were already theirs.

[DMC]

42 minutes ago, Ormond said:

Maybe I am misreading you, but I think our disagreement is about degree here.

You are misreading me.  The reason for the comparison - which I think I've been pretty clear about - was about foreign policy failures that killed presidencies.  It was not about degree, and, again, it was not about the overall hostage crisis.  Further, it wasn't about examining counterfactuals that you mentioned, e.g. if Carter was successful.  Another counterfactual, obviously, would simply be not ordering the mission at all - which was SoS Cy Vance's avid position that prompted him to resign in protest.  I could have used a number of comparisons - as I mentioned, Dubya and Iraq is one of them.  Also, LBJ/Vietnam, Truman/Korea, and Wilson/Treaty of Versailles ratification and the League of Nations. 

I used the Carter comparison, in addition to the reasons already mentioned, because he's the only one who ran for reelection after the public perceived any of those examples as foreign policy failures.  Although, importantly, the president's party lost the White House in all the examples, rather convincingly so.  And that was the point of using the comparison - such an action would very likely cost the Dems the White House in 2024.  I certainly wasn't trying to rank these examples by degree of failure.  It was a dichotomous, not an ordinal, variable.