Today is destined to be a major day in the history of the United States.
It is the day when a US president completely, thoroughly and utterly turned his back on the Constitution that he swore to protect and instead publicly embraced the tactics of the dictatorial despots he openly admires.
Let’s face facts: the master of the deal, in the past two months, was completely outmaneuvered by Nancy Pelosi. A woman who so intimidates him that his nickname for her is “Nancy,” Pelosi kept the Democrats united and in solid opposition to his wasteful border wall. And it is wasteful, make no mistake. There is NO emergency at the border. None. Arrests are at a twenty year low. Drugs are not being imported over the southern border. Gang members are not stalking across and seeking to kill Americans in their homes. The vast, vast majority of mass shootings are being committed by good old fashioned US-raised white boys. There is. NO. emergency. I know it, you know it, and the truth of the matter is, Trump knows it.
Why? Because he’s been president for two years, during which time the GOP had control of both the House and the Senate, and in that time Trump did not declare there to be an emergency.
What IS an emergency? Let’s find out:
Merriam-Webster defines it as: “an unforeseen combination of circumstances or the resulting state that calls for immediate action.”
9/11 was an emergency. When W. declared that to be a national emergency, NO ONE protested. No one could have foreseen the attack (except for, you know, the intelligence agents who predicted it and W. ignored, just as Trump ignores his guys) and immediate response had to be taken.
Nothing has triggered an emergency at the border. There’s been no single instance that had America go, “Holy crap, we must do something about this!” The truth is that no one was giving the border a second thought until three years ago when Trump launched his racist campaign by declaring Mexicans were rapists.
Yet now that the Democrats control the House, Trump has suddenly decided that the wall is an emergency. He was certainly not helped when Ann Coulter and Fox and Friends castigated him for forgetting about his oft repeated campaign promise. You remember: the wall Mexico was going to pay for.
The fact is that any thinking person (which lets out Trump’s base) knew the wall was a non-starter. Mexico wasn’t going to pay for it; people who owned the land weren’t going to give it up; and the majority of the country saw no need for it. Yet thanks to Coulter and company, the wall is back on the table and Trump’s fruitless efforts to ram it down the House and Senate’s throat shut down the government for over a month.
Having finally realized that they’re not going to give him the money he wants, Trump has decided to toss aside the Constitutional requirement that funds come through Congress and has instead decided to unilaterally declare an emergency so that he can siphon funds from other projects.
I have to say, frankly: I love this idea.
Will it get the wall built? Of course not. Court challenges will tie it up for years, long after Trump is out of office.
But the precedent it establishes is fantastic, for two reasons:
First, it puts the final nail in the coffin of the essence of the GOP. For decades, they’ve advocated small government. Screw that: the government is taking over. Trump is ignoring the wishes of the American people who put their representatives into place and instead enforcing his own will on government funding, just as any strong man despot would do. He’s wanted to be Putin in the worst way, and now he is.
Second, the precedent is set. Because sooner or later, a Democrat is going to be in the White House, and you know what? As opposed to arrests at the southern border which are down, gun deaths are skyrocketing. A Democratic President can unilaterally ban assault rifles; hëll, they might just suspend the Second Amendment altogether. Are more people dying because they can’t afford healthcare? Congratulations: Medicare for all. Don’t like the Green Day plan? Too bad; the planet is going bye bye in twelve years. That’s a pretty major dámņëd emergency.
By the way, I find it interesting that even with the population of the entire world on the line, critics can only trash Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s plan to try and save us all. I know that there is a knee-jerk reflex of people in opposing camps to find nothing but fault in any idea proposed by the other side, but we’re talking about ALL of our futures. The fact is that if the current mentality had existed back in the 1960s when JFK stated we’d be on the moon by the end of the decade, that accomplishment would never have happened. Republicans would have united to make sure that JFK’s dream was never realized.
But hey, at least the government’s not being shut down.
At least until October.
So that’s good.
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Congress has been awful quiet today too. .not a peep out of the Senate in regards to if they are going to Block this “emergency” – after all they only need majority to block it.
will McConnell even allow it to be voted on?
I’m not holding my breath, as these Hypocrites on the GOP side talk a good game, but then turn around and kiss Trump’s boots (and other parts of his anatomy).
So dámņ sad.
My understanding is that if Pelosi introduces the necessary resolution in the House and gets it passed, McConnell has NO choice but to bring it up for a Senate vote. There’s something about the Emergency Act that requires the vote in each house of Congress if passed by the other. (I’ve read suggestions that McConnell’s actually hoping Pelosi sends it to him so he can actually “stand up” to Trump with a “I didn’t want to do it but she made me!” whine/defense.)
“Drugs are not being imported over the southern border.”
This is a little hyperbolic. Yes, the vast majority of drugs go through ports of entry, but the vast majority is not ALL.
I kinda hope this works out for Trump because I can’t wait to see President Ocasio-Cortez declare a climate emergency.
“First, it puts the final nail in the coffin of the essence of the GOP. For decades, they’ve advocated small government.”
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Never believed that one myself. They have always been huge hypocrites in this issue. They want a small government and little intervention in people’s lives – except when advocating for big, intrusive government suits their agenda, like paying for expensive wars on foreign soil or messing with people who want to use (certain) drugs.
In essence, the Republicans only want a small government where THEY want it to be small.
I’ve heard that something was “the final nail” for the Republicans for probably going on two plus decades. Anyone who thinks their hypocrisy on this or that topic is going to be the thing that finally is a step too far hasn’t been paying attention to how willfully ignorant and venomously hateful their supporters are.
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I think they are on the decline. The Democrats are on a great position to capitalize on the Republicans’ continued efforts to harm to vast majority of Americans. Healthcare, economy, sensible immigration reform and gun controls, CLIMATE CHANGE!!! and many other issues where the Dems are right in line with popular opinion and the Republicans are not even on the same planet.
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The only question is: will the Dems effectively use their advantage or choose, once again, to squander it.
The problem is that Conservatives in the USA and some European countries have got a nice vicious circle going on.
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Their policies harm the majority of the population, but that only serves to make this majority angry and desperate and eager to vote for the same guys that made them miserable in the first place.
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The left couldn’t take the upper hand because they were sorta complicit with the right in fûçkìņg things over and now they’ve switched heavily to identity politics that makes them unable to communicate with a portion of this majority.
The GOP does not like or want to govern – they want to RULE.
What i find bizarre, other than the whole of his “speech” on his fake emergency, is how much he just rambles on about totally unrelated things like China, the stock market, and North Korea. He was just all over the place and took forever to get to the point of why he was calling the emergency.
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And then completely undercuts himself afterwords by saying he in fact DID NOT have to do it this way. He just wanted to.
Peter David: By the way, I find it interesting that even with the population of the entire world on the line, critics can only trash Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s plan to try and save us all.
Luigi Novi: As some of it should be, since it’s garbage.
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I mean really….
* Economic security not only for those who are unable to work (which I support), but unwilling to work too? Uh-uh. Fûçk that.
*Healthy food? Really? Did somebody round up all the salads and assassinate them, or something? Someone is being kept from eating healthy food? Where? Who?
* “Guaranteeing a job with a family-sustaining wage?” It is not the job of the government to guarantee jobs to anyone. It’s the role of government to protect our rights from threats to them, foreign and domestic. Period. That includes the freedom to pursue finding work. Not work itself.
* A carbon tax? Great. Just what we need. More taxes.
* A “10-year plan to mobilize every aspect of American society?” Oh, the Soviets would be proud!
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Seriously, gimme a break with this šhìŧ. The government is a bloated, bureaucratic nightmare, and that’s not counting the parts of it riddled with corruption or incompetence. The government can’t get a guy off his roof after a fûçkìņg flood. But you want to expand the government to do this gargantuan thing?
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Peter David: The fact is that if the current mentality had existed back in the 1960s when JFK stated we’d be on the moon by the end of the decade, that accomplishment would never have happened.
Luigi Novi: Except that getting to the moon wasn’t impossible, as evidenced by the fact that we did it. The text of the GND FAQ cites JFK, saying, “When JFK called for us to get to the moon by the end of the decade, people said it was impossible.” But it doesn’t say who these people were, and what their basis was for saying so. Were they scientists with a grasp of the science involved who had a valid scientific basis that they elaborated? Or were they just naysayers arguing from ignorance? If it’s the former, I’d like to read it. If it’s the latter, than the analogy is crap.
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You can’t just argue that “Oh, because they doubted this person who accomplished what he set out to, that means that any ol’ quack must be right when he or she announces a nutjob idea.” It’s been pointed that people who push pseudoscience, for example, are fond of employing this analogy. When someone puts forward an idea for a new perpetual motion machine or some goop they cooked in their garage that they say will cure cancer, or their pet Flat Earth theory or whatever, they sometimes say, “They laughed at the Wright Brothers,” only for scientific skeptics to retort, “Yes, and they laughed at the Marx Brothers too.”
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SOURCES:
* https://apps.npr.org/documents/document.html?id=5729035-Green-New-Deal-FAQ
* http://archive.is/4CVqH#selection-1675.1-1675.61
She’s trying to save the planet. Get on board or get out.
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PAD
To quote George Carlin, “The planet is fine…the people are fûçkëd!”
Luigi –
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My quick opinion on all that is: we’ve had it hammered on us that big government doesn’t work for 40 years now, but almost every single powerful country that ever existed had a HUGE government by today’s standards during the 1930s to the 1960s.
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Yes, that includes the easy targets Germany and Russia, but also includes all democratic countries, including the USA and Britain.
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By the way, the more I study on both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, the more convinced I become that people who compare today’s left-wingers to Soviets (or today’s right-wingers to Nazis too, to be honest) are guilty of huge hyperbole.
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Comparing Trump to Hitler, or Ocasio-Cortez to Stalin, is like comparing an ant hill to Mt. Everest. And yeah, I’ve been guilty of that specific sort of Trump-bashing in the past.
I don’t compare Trump to Hitler. It’s really not fair.
Hitler had leadership and government experience. 😉
Not to mention military experience.
Hitler had leadership, of course – he had a lot of charisma and was extraordinarily good at manipulating people, both the masses and individuals, and he was an expert at playing the political game.
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Government experience, not so much. Well, it’s more that he didn’t care about administration at all. He was a hands-off kinda guy except for stuff he really did care about (like racial ideology and military expansion).
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Of course, he was still miles and miles ahead of Trump in government experience. Even though he was a greater monster than a thousand Donald Trumps.
I don’t know where you are writing from, but the US health regulations have taken major hits the last two years. Salads weren’t banned, but neither was a cancer causing weed killer that the rest of the world banned. Also things like water regulations have a huge impact on whether food is safe to eat or will make you sick. We had a huge lettuce recall a couple months ago, just for that.
And really, talk all you want about how inefficient government is, when most other first world nations have better healthcare and education and infrastructure because the wealthy are taxed fairly, the military budget is reasonable, and big business is regulated. We have the money; we’re wasting it on the wrong things and letting the rich skate on their share of the bills.
Small government hasn’t made sense since the Civil War, and it won’t fix climate change. We need lots of new laws to move industry away from fossil fuels and the market won’t adjust in time.
Peter David: She’s trying to save the planet. Get on board or get out.
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Luigi Novi: No. Your argument is built on the fallacious assumption that I am obligated to get on board with a šhìŧŧÿ approach to a problem, simply because the intent behind it is a positive one. I think you and I both know that that’s a non sequitur.
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It should be “She’s trying to save the planet. So help her come up with and implement GOOD IDEAS, not šhìŧŧÿ ones.”
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Rene: My quick opinion on all that is: we’ve had it hammered on us that big government doesn’t work for 40 years now, but almost every single powerful country that ever existed had a HUGE government by today’s standards during the 1930s to the 1960s.
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Luigi Novi: So what?
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I notice that you make no mention or argument as to whether this is a good thing or bad thing, whether these governments made their citizens more free or less free, whether they accomplished what they set out to accomplish, or whether they were able to do so in a manner that was cheaper or more efficient than what private individuals or companies could have done.
Agreed. So why don’t you do that?
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All your initial comment was was a list of what you found bothersome and flippant objections (“we don’t need new taxes” without any apparent comprehension of what is actually meant by the shorthand “carbon tax” label).
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Where’s your list of what should be done instead.
Luigi –
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Yes, I didn’t say whether big government made things better or worse. I think the situation is too complex for a snap judgment. The mass mobilization of nations in those periods had both good and bad aspects.
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But I do believe that we’d never have the increase of the middle class in First World countries in the 1950s-1960s if not for big government. It’s big governments that created the safety net that made it possible. SmallGov fanatics don’t want to admit to that.
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However, I’m not a BigGov fanatic. I do admit that we’ve also had an increase in middle classes in certain countries during periods of government shrinkage. It happened in Latin America in the 1990s.
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My take is more that big or small governments aren’t necessarily great or horrible. In some periods and situations, big gov is better, and in other periods, big gov is worse.
My opinion is that the world has gone too much in the direction of small government in the last 40 years in a way that is starting to put cracks on democracy and it’s time to let government grow back a bit so that we can have mass mobilizations again in important stuff, like rebuilding safety nets for a healthy middle class, rebuild environment regulations, reduce the power of lobbies, etc.
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The problem with SmallGov fanatics is that they think what was perhaps good in the 1970s and 1980s is gonna be good for all of eternity. I mean, those who are actually honest about their reasons for pushing for SmallGov, I’m not even talking about the Social Darwinists who just want government neutered so that the rich can get richer.
Sean Martin: Agreed. So why don’t you do that?
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Luigi Novi: Because it isn’t relevant to the point.
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I have no more obligation to do Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s job for her than I have to build or repair the levees in New Orleans in order to criticize officials there for their negligence, or to find Osama bin Laden myself in order to criticize George W. Bush in order to criticize him for his negligence in that matter.
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The standard is for responding to an idea is whether it is true and/or reasonable. It is not whether you can personally do a better job, which is just a variation on the ad hominem argument.
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Sean Martin: … without any apparent comprehension of what is actually meant by the shorthand “carbon tax” label).
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Luigi Novi: Carbon taxes are taxes levied on the carbon content of fuels, a form of carbon pricing based on the idea that it will reduce man-made global climate change, which is favored by organizations like the World Bank and the I.M.F.
Sources:
* https://www.oecd.org/eco/greeneco/34258255.pdf
* https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/us/politics/carbon-pricingbecomes-a-cause-for-the-world-bank-and-imf.html
I indeed understand what they are, and you have zero basis to claim that I exhibit a lack of understanding of them, or even an “apparent” one.
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Rene: The problem with SmallGov fanatics is that they think what was perhaps good in the 1970s and 1980s is gonna be good for all of eternity. I mean, those who are actually honest about their reasons for pushing for SmallGov, I’m not even talking about the Social Darwinists who just want government neutered so that the rich can get richer.
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Luigi Novi: Rene, I appreciate your attempt to convey a nuanced view of smallgov vs. biggov.
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However, I am not aware of any evidence that the principles that explain why big government is bad is era-specific, since examples abound of this from not only the past, but the present as well, Venezuela being a good example. Keep in mind that libertarians, smallgov advocates, etc. believe that limited government must go hand-in-hand with democracy, civil rights, and rule of law. When you keep that in mind, modern examples can also include not just those in which the government tries to control the economy like Venezuela, but any repressive government that tries to control too much, from Cuba to North Korea.
Carbon Tax def. A way to extort large amounts of money from a population while simultaneously destroying the economy that population depends on for survival.
Carbon taxes are simply a way for the government and others to make money from a non-existent crisis while doing nothing to actually deal with this crisis.
Instead of punishing everyone for their non-existent sins, they could simply decide to remove or ameliorate the problem, say with high altitude aerosols administered by commercial aircraft, or better ways to grow additional forests and other plants and algae at sea.
blah blah blah something I heard on Fox News blah blah blah
What Tom Keller said.
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As for what you said? Still waiting for you to actually say something intelligible.
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(Seriously. “high altitude aerosols administered by commercial aircraft” ? Everyone knows it’d be far more effective to just have the Keebler elves plant more trees.)
Beyond the fact that we don’t have the proper tech to do this yet and the tech we do have that people spewing this garbage keep citing is largely untested, there’s the problem that the projected cost of this “cleaning” is at a minimum $2.5 Billion per year and would involve a fleet of 100 or more specially outfitted aircraft.
“…better ways to grow additional forests and other plants and algae at sea.”
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For real?
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Right this moment, here in Brazil, politicians on the side of the Free Market/Small Government/Yay Entrepreuners have attained new records of deforestation of the Amazon Forest in the past 3 years or so.
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And we’ll have 4 more years of record destruction of the Amazon Forest, with Jair Bolsonaro (“The Trump of the Tropics”) as Brazilian President.
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But hey, it’s the all-mighty, all-wise Free Market. Just let us get out of its way, and we’ll have an utopia. Here is the wisdom of the free market: Growing new forests costs money, destroying the forests we have generates money in the short term. And THAT is all that the “free market” cares about these days. Greater profit in the next semester.
Bolsonaro scares me much more than Trump. Do you like to breathe? The Amazon rainforest produces nearly ⅕ of the oxygen in the lower atmosphere (where we live and breathe).
“Trump has decided to toss aside the Constitutional requirement that funds come through Congress and has instead decided to unilaterally declare an emergency so that he can siphon funds from other projects…I have to say, frankly: I love this idea…the precedent it establishes is fantastic…the precedent is set. Because sooner or later, a Democrat is going to be in the White House…”
Wouldn’t this also mean that the precedent is set for the next sooner-or-later Republican (or the equivalent of a current one) president to declare a so-called “national emergency”? One far more competent, intelligent and politically astute? What might the consequences of that be?