dasfoo
1yr ago
Everyone? This list looks very short considering how much cash is involved and the kind of person attracted to a career in politics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:American_people_convicted_of_campaign_finance_violations
It looks like campaign money can also go into charities/foundations and PACs. You seem more confident in the sanctity of these funds than I am, especially when it's in the hands of a family associated with over 20 shell companies. Maybe the Clintons can tutor them on how to run a completely above-board Foundation.
dasfoo
1yr ago
I agree that people here discount the possibility of her winning if she becomes the nominee. It’s not above or even close to 50%, but she probably has a 20-30% chance of winning. A lot of people dislike Trump and will be willing to come out to vote against him, just like last time.
Yeah, while I don't think she would be ideal, people forget that Biden in 2020 had only two arguments in his favor:
- He wasn't Trump
- He was "safe"
Now that he's apparently mentally unfit, and therefore unsafe, the only argument for him is one he shares with literally every other Democrat, including Harris.
There's little Democrats love more than a historic DEI accomplishment and if Harris becomes the nominee we won't hear the end of all of the exciting potential "firsts" she represents and the enthusiasm for smashing that glass ceiling will become deafening.
dasfoo
1yr ago
With what endgame?
What happens to unspent campaign cash after an election? Let's say Biden is tanking but has healthy coffers. Would it benefit a candidate to quietly accept an early loss and become thrifty in the final months, setting aside a surplus of funds as a nice consolation prize?
dasfoo
1yr ago
Most Democrats want him gone. They voted for him in the primaries but now he's a liability.
Did they? He ran (virtually) unopposed and only got something like 15 million primary votes. They didn't need to vote for him, and they mostly didn't.
Will the long-buried Biden hair-sniffing stories finally see the light of day? Or will the media come back to Biden's corner now that he's fighting back?
It's interesting how my Reddit in the last week has been overrun with "Trump's Best Buddy Jeffrey Epstein" and "Trump accused of raping a 13-year-old" posts across a variety of subs. The anti-Trump bots are out in force and aiming low. If "Biden's Top 10 Underage Gropes" doesn't get equal roll-out, someone is shirking their solemn responsibility.
dasfoo
1yr ago
Some commentator said that the Biden/Harris campaign can donate money to a PAC that could then """independently""" decide to run ads for whomever happens to be the Democratic nominee.
I would expect Dr. Jiil and Hunter to take an "over my dead body" approach to any attempt to divert that money out of their personal control. If they allow Biden to withdraw from the campaign, I would imagine that a good portion of his campaign funds will stick to him like glue.
dasfoo
1yr ago
In Corner Post, the Supreme Court ruled that the statute of limitations to challenge an action by a federal agency begins to run when the plaintiff is injured by the action
By contrast in Ledbetter, the Supreme Court rules that the statute of limitations against (allegedly) discriminatory pay starts at the point when the action was made, even if the plaintiff alleges that they were continually injured
So what's the difference? "Continually injured" has a starting point; in both cases the SoL begins at the time of first injury. This seems consistent to me.
dasfoo
1yr ago
Isn't the primary duty of the office of the President to protect and uphold the Constitution of the United States? If so, wouldn't that make any Presidential action that violates the Constitution -- without an explicitly granted exception -- either fall outside of or be in severe conflict with their Presidential duties? It seems to me that any Presidential act that deliberately violates the due process (5th Amendment) of an American citizen (like assassination) would be very easy to argue falls outside the President's powers and is therefore not covered by this immunity clause.
I'm having trouble thinking of the types of crimes this theory of immunity would cover, other than process crimes. Certainly it wouldn't seem to cover any the more sensational crimes that have been used in examples of how horrible this decision is. What are some examples of crimes which a President may now commit freely?
dasfoo
1yr ago
Also, if there's a concern that Biden's ticket replacement will have their political career tanked by an inevitable loss, no one will shed a tear for Harris. She's an acceptable casualty rather than some actually promising future candidate.
dasfoo
1yr ago
I can’t believe Obama would sign off on Kamala but maybe he just doesn’t care anymore.
She has really high negatives, but fewer negatives IMO than Biden at the moment, and her negatives are pretty much limited to people who closely follow politics. If she is kept away from improvisational moments, the narrative will become a series of hyped up "Girl Boss" and "Yass Queen" memes with a lot of media cheerleading. Democrats and their sympathetic social media drones will easily fall in line for "the first female president." How much the middle is persuaded by "making history" is a gamble, but it revives enthusiasm temporarily.
dasfoo
1yr ago
That just makes me think of Hippias Minor, in which Plato's Socrates proposes that the man who does evil deliberately is better than the man who does it accidentally, in that he is more capable.
I think the opposite is true. The man who does evil deliberately intends evil -- wanton suffering, pain, misery -- and will continue to do it because evil is the goal. The man who does evil accidentally has a non-evil goal and may be persuaded to pursue that goal through a different, non-evil path. Believing that a person is better because they are more capable of pursuing evil successfully is itself an evil notion and Socrates should drink some hemlock for even thinking it.
dasfoo
1yr ago
I wonder if they could mollify her with a spot in the historical record books as the "first woman president" by pushing Biden out early in exchange for selecting a different ballot replacement? She can dine out on that for the rest of her life, and even run again in 4 years if she wants to as "former president Harris."
dasfoo
1yr ago
That's why it has to be an unknown with no slate of known negatives, or a celebrity who can drown out the negatives with new voters.
dasfoo
1yr ago
On a smaller scale, it also happened twice in 2002-2004 when MN Senate candidate Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash just before the election and a NJ Senator had to drop out due to corruption charges after the nomination deadline passed. The results were mixed, but there was a wave of sympathy for Wellstone which just fell short, and a burst of enthusiasm in NJ that carried the replacement candidate to victory.
With Biden, however, there is no upside to sticking in the race because the optics are horrible, and it threatens to taint the entire party if they try to push him over the line and it fails because everyone can see how desperate it is. So do you stick with an obvious and likely losing deceit, or do try something more positive?
dasfoo
1yr ago
With everyone focused on the election, little attention is being paid to what would otherwise be an obvious question in light of the new scrutiny on Biden's health: Is he even fit to continue being president for the remainder of his term? In a vacuum, I think most of us would prefer for a leader who is not capable of doing their job to step down -- or be made to step down by those with influence. As much as I might not like the replacement currently on-deck, I would prefer a gesture of civic responsibility over what is looking increasingly like a desperate grip on power.
If everyone now assumes that Biden -- if he remains upright -- will hand it over to his VP after his inauguration, then why persist with an obvious charade through the election? That's surely sapping voter enthusiasm. There would seem to be a greater upside to clearing the deck prior to the election, just for the refreshing honesty of it.
We've been very short on gestures of civic honesty and responsibility recently, and I will take what I can get.
dasfoo
1yr ago
I see no new downside (electorally) to the Democrats replacing Biden with a younger, charismatic and relatively unknown center-left politician with no current national profile, someone like Obama in 2004. There will be wall-to-wall fawning media coverage and probably a short enough period for the honeymoon to stretch through the election before any real negatives can stick to them. It will bring back Democrats who were weary of Biden, Independents who were put off by age concerns or the stench of this re-run election between two guys with high negatives. If they pick well and find someone who isn't mired in dumb scandals, a family of grafters, or crazy fringe politics, that's even better. It's a hail mary, but like most sports fans, I would rather see my team try a hail mary when they're chasing the game in the fourth quarter than do nothing at all.
The other thing they could try, which might have a better chance of working, is to draft in a feel-good barely-political celebrity, like Tom Hanks, Oprah or The Rock, with a brief campaign as a "non-partisan" national healer. Like Trump did in 2016, this generates excitement and brings in new voters who are there for the star-fucking and don't care about issues.
In both scenarios, selection is key. The wrong person can go down in flames disastrously (like Sarah Palin, who brought in a burst of energy but faced a hostile press and was not prepared for it), but then they'd back where they are now, so no real loss.
dasfoo
1yr ago
I don't think you can retroactively prosecute anyone for something that wasn't a crime at the time they committed it, right? I can't pass a law today making posting on The Motte illegal and then charge you for posting yesterday.
Also, in this decision reversing Chevron, don't they explicitly say something like "This doesn't make all previous decisions that relied on Chevron reversible." At least there should be some general protection against these kinds of cascades of retroactive illegality.
Further, I would add that I don't think anyone could argue that -- generally -- an admin agency acting under Chevron was committing crimes by interpreting the laws as directed; rather they were operating under an error and without malice.
dasfoo
1yr ago
I don't think an act becomes qualified as an "official presidential act" merely by the president appearing on TV, saying "I'm the president!," and committing a crime. There would have to be an argument that the crime was somehow necessary to the duties of his role.
Let's say one of a President's official duties is signing bills. While signing bills, his pen runs out of ink. The President then grabs his nearest aide, chops off the aide's hand, and signs the bill with the aide's bloody wrist stump.
The crime may have been committed during the execution of an official duty, but the crime is not necessary to the execution of the duty. Even assuming that another working pen could be not found without a run to Office Depot, the crime would still be egregious compared to the inconvenience of waiting for a new pen. This seems like an easily prosecutable crime because the infringed right of the aide outweighs the convenience of finding a writing utensil.
The same goes for the Seal Team Six scenario: Executing one's political opponents is not a necessary function of the president performing a duty. Whatever duty was being pursued surely has less-illegal remedies at the president's disposal.
dasfoo
1yr ago
Is this a fair thought experiment for reframing the principles behind the Chevron decision in way that might change how opponents are predisposed to think about it?
Let's say there is a law against theft, but the law is vague. What latitude should the police be given when making arrests based on that law? Should they be able to decide that the definition of theft can be widened to accommodate new scenarios not previously considered theft? Should they have the discretion to change their definition of theft at will? And should the police also empowered to enforce punishment for their definition of theft without review by a court?
Should the judgment of the police be deferred to in this scenario? Or should the police/prosecutors have their enforcement go through the court system for review? If the law is so vague that it is open to what looks like unfair discretion on the part of the police, who should review this law? The police? If not, who else?
Or does this analogy not map very well to the same arguments?
dasfoo
1yr ago
Importantly, Nixon was never charged with anything, so we don't know exactly what the pardon was intended to subvert -- but the underlying crime of the Watergate break-in was related to Nixon's reelection campaign, and reelection campaigns are not official duties of the president but are separated by statutes (isn't that correct?) that draw a clear-ish line between presidential duties and campaign activities. So isn't it likely that if Nixon had been charged, it would've been related to his political campaign -- using presidential powers in the service of his campaign? -- which would be categorically outside of his enumerated presidential duties.
dasfoo
1yr ago
Obama is the one man who could have made the switch happen. If he had tweeted, "Biden must go," Biden would be gone. He has decided not to tweet that. Biden will not be removed.
Obama also doesn't always say publicly what he thinks or says privately.
dasfoo
1yr ago
a guy who goes stargazing on a blanket and accidentally falls asleep
The cop would probably nudge him awake and say, "You can't sleep here," and the guy would go home. If the guy instead pulls out a tent and crawls inside to sleep there, he'll probably get told again to leave and, if he doesn't, arrested. This applies whether the guy is homeless or homed, there's no class distinction other than one of obstinate and probably repeat offending.
Sleeping in a park where sleeping is disallowed because you have nowhere else to sleep is no different than stealing fruit from a fruit stand because you have no other food. It's a crime, whether you're scruffy or clean-cut.
Luckily there are beds and food in jail, so the system works when we let it.
dasfoo
1yr ago
Trump's political "gift" is that he is the antidote to a certain kind of entrenched mainstream political insincerity by himself being a cartoon of political insincerity. Every politician loses in some way by appearing with Trump.
He mocks his opponents merely by appearing alongside them -- and then also points out that he is mocking them as he mocks them directly on micro-subjects. He is the clown who reveals that it's been a clown show all along. I think this makes him a shitty president, but very useful as a sort of corrective to a game that has been playing with itself for far too long.
dasfoo
1yr ago
This was by no means a good debate for Trump
It depends on the standards you're using for "good." Trump is never going give an answer that is detailed or factual, because he doesn't know details or facts. He's going to sell something -- usually himself -- with confidence.
His past debate failures have been down to misjudging how aggressive and petulant he can be. He toned it down last night for the most part, and let his opponent lose without interference, so it was a relative success for him.
My idea for dealing with homelessness is to create a series of remote contained cities -- using BLM land -- that are essentially economies built around a hospital-prison-treatment-community college complex.
Let's say there are 4 categories of homeless:
The Cat-1 Homeless can live in apartments or housing and get jobs in the cities that serve the complex staff. There will be restaurants, groceries, everything a normal small city might have, as well as job in the complex. So there is plenty of opportunity for employment. They will also be enrolled in the college to develop other skills -- maybe with a focus on addiction treatment and social work. When they are on better financial and educational ground, they can "graduate" back to the real world.
The Cat-2 Homeless go to the addiction treatment center. They can "graduate" to Cat-1 or fail to Cat-2.
The Cat-3 Homeless are repeat offenders who have either failed Cat-2 or have been deemed mentally well enough to not belong to Cat-4. Through good behavior, they can graduate to Cat-1.
The Cat-4 Homeless are for the serially mentally unfit. these would need drastic oversight so as not to repeat the failure mode of the old state mental hospitals that turned into hellholes.
These cities would need to be far enough away from other cities to discourage foot traffic and have some kind of low-security system that checks people in and out. They are essentially halfway houses on a larger scale.
Maybe there can also be a wilderness area on the outskirts of these town for those homeless who aren't Cat 2-4 but who just wish to live in outdoor camps off the grid of normal society.
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