No doubt some of it. That would account for the smug mug he wears everywhere.
Bunch of fucking gangsters.
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If Biden gets elected, the first year of his administration will be consumed with digging out and replacing all the unqualified Trump loyalists he has put in place across government. Then there is impeaching the unqualified judges he has put in place. That will be the work of a generation. Erasing this asshole’s effects on our nation will take more than my lifetime, I fear.
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From the outside, as someone not (really) understanding how US politics work, I am under the impression that this is even unlikely to go forward. I thought even while it should be easy to replace many non-careers, the political fallout of impeaching judges would be substantial.
Just FTR: I had a two semester excursion in political sciences, including lectures from one of the then-leading figures on American politics in germanophone academia. And the Trump period makes me feel like I never knew anything. So, I might be totally wrong.
ETA:
Well, we’ll see if too much red meat is a danger to their health. Oh, well, we are already seeing it.
Shit.
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I have a BA in poli sci and did 24 post grad units (stopped by an illness), and I can honestly say that Trump has thrown all that American theory coursework out the window.
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If a Democrat ever did this he’d be impeached for abusing the powers of his office
Fortunately (/s) Dems ignore the crimes of their predecessors and bumble along like nothing’s wrong
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Yeah, I think you’re right.
That’s a possibility. Presidents tend to err on not undermining their own executive power by going after the previous administration in anyway. Obama, despite running on a promise to end the wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan didn’t do anything with regards to actual war crimes committed by the Bush administration (ie torture, Abu Ghraib, etc) and in fact carried out similar actions, but shifting it to drones doing much of the work (assassinating american citizens without due process for example).
I guess what might be different here is the out and out corruption happening on the domestic front. That could make a difference, but I’m not counting on it, especially if the GOP doesn’t rid itself of its most toxic members (the freedom caucus, McConnell, Paul, Graham, Gingrich, etc).
I agree.
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I still can’t forgive him for that. When Trump fans try the “gotcha” of “you just want Trump impeached because he’s on the other team” I both love & hate that I can honestly say that I would have wanted Obama impeached for drone-striking of the Al-Awlakis.
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It’s absolutely true he should have been. As @Wanderfound is fond of saying, the empire is indeed bipartisan… doesn’t mean that Trump isn’t a thousand times worse, especially on domestic issues like immigration (and again, the kids in cages started with the Obama administration).
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one of the problems with the presidency is that expertise tends to be lodged in the executive agencies. For instance, the fish and wildlife service employs biologists, noaa employs climate modelers, nasa employs planetary geologists.
It is sometime useful for a society to base its legislation on the best scientific analysis available, and Congress has repeatedly abdicated some of its powers to the executive agencies capable of providing this analysis. Unfortunately, this means that an incompetent executive can really stick up the gears.
I don’t really know how you solve this:
- The liberal idealist might claim that Congress should never have abdicated its powers, but if you remember, Trump’s party held both the house and the senate for the first two years-- only to be thwarted by the courts, which are now stacked in Trump’s favour.
- Sometimes scientism is bad-- there were plenty of criminology reports that seemed to suggest that the police were a force for good in society-- imagine if this line of research could not be seriously questioned (or dismantled) by elected representatives.
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I was curious about Stone a while back, and his Nixon tattoo, so I read up on it a bit. Who could want such a thing?
I can’t find the exact article, but here’s one which refers to his reasoning:
Basically: While Nixon was under pressure during impeachment hearings, he showed up to work and still functioned as President. He was unflappable. Actually, people said much the same thing about Bill Clinton during his impeachment.
There is no way Stone loves Trump in the same way. Trump is neither indestructible nor resilient.
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Trump is his meal ticket.
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I was thinking in this general direction, but you focus on the president. My thoughts are also with other parts of the system of checks and balances. Correct me if I am wrong, but that Guantanamo is still a thing is due to this, not the Obama administration, or am I wrong?
Also, I overestimated the amount of admin employees shuffled around after a new president assumes office and was corrected on the BBS on the matter. I am now unsure how much of the admin is a) really already there as a part of Trump’s installment of supporters and b) can be replaced without changing rules, regulations, and traditional policies after he (hopefully) leaves office in January.
That an incoming president might not want to try playing the same game Trump has been playing for the last years is an additional problem. Biden, If elected, might want to stabilise gouvernment instead of de-stabilising it by a new wave of partisan turnover. (Which, given that supporters of trump are undermining the rule of law, the constitution and the social integrity of the USA, would be a bad tradeoff, I would wager. But he still might not want to, would he?)
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Honestly, and this is only my opinion, leaving any of his loyalists in positions of authority would be a huge mistake. Just like all their other projections, that is how you make an “oppositional deep state” a real thing. They wouldn’t bitch about it if they weren’t planning on doing it.
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I have this fantasy that on Inauguration day, Biden will make a very short speach. Like 3 minutes. Then say he has work to do. Two assistants will come up with a sturdy folding table and a chair. His VP will deposit a stack of papers on one side. Biden will sit down and start signing. His VP will take the first few pages to the podium and begin reading executive orders requiring the immediate removal of Barr, Devos, the whole crew. A executive order with an entire list of DOJ attorneys. The orders will say something like “the president thanks you for your service. You are hereby ordered to vacate federal office stuctures immediately. Your personal belongings will be given to you at a later date. You are ordered to refrain from using or accessing any federal database or server. You are ordered to immediately return all federal assets and property, including…” and on and on. Then have fed ITS simultaneously locking each person out of their work email and databases.
Then a series of executive orders appointing new people to key positions and appointing a new soecial counsel to investigate corruption.
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I’d say yes… part of the reason he couldn’t close Gitmo was indeed due to congressional pushback.
That being said, the power of the executive branch has been expanding over the years, from about Nixon onward (there was some pushback from congress after watergate, obviously, but there is a larger pattern, none the less).
Barr is a fan of the unitary executive theory, which would essentially make the executive branch unaccountable and no longer part of a balancing system between the three branches. Nixon said it in his infamous interview with Frost, “when the president does it, it’s not illegal.”
The original point of the system was to make the branches accountable to each other and for each other. It hadn’t been that long since the regicide, English civil wars, cromwell interregnum, Glorious revolution, etc, which did go some way to leveling out the powers between parliament and crown, and the American founders would have been well aware of that history.
But Richardson would be able to answer these questions better, as she’s an actual presidential history (where as I’m not).
Yes… but there might need to be making sure that the people who remain are loyal to the government, not trump himself.
But the people at the top often change anyway with each new administration, or sometimes when their terms run out. Fed Chairman is an appointed position that has terms, and the president appoints someone with the end of the previous term (or in the case of Allen Greenspan, he was re-appointed by many different administration). Once Powell’s term is up, if Biden is president, he can choose to re-appoint or find someone new.
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July 11, 2020 (Saturday)
As I was out kayaking on this gorgeous evening after several days of fog, I passed a friend on the shore who called out, “We wouldn’t mind if you took a day off, you know!”
I’m taking her at her word.
As you all know, the news dumps in the last couple of days have kept me writing until the sun came up. But while I am finally going to bed on those late nights, the fishermen’s days are just starting…
[photo by Buddy Poland]
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None of that is necessary. That all takes place during the transition, essentially. There is no need for an executive order. It’s normal for, especially cabinet secretaries, to be out the moment a new president is sworn in. The new cabinet starts right away. They remain acting secretaries until they are confirmed by the Senate, but they start doing their jobs right off the bat.
OK, one bit is necessary. The last one. Appoint a special counsel to run the investigations into the Trump Crime Syndicate.
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July 12, 2020 (Sunday)
The big news today was the administration’s escalating insistence that our public schools must reopen on schedule for the fall. Today, on Fox News Sunday, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos told Chris Wallace (who is one of the Fox News Channel’s actual reporters), “We know that children contract and have the virus at far lower incidence than any other part of the population, and we know that other countries around the world have reopened their schools and have done so successfully and safely."
Wallace asked her if it was fair to compare countries that have as few as 20 new cases a day with the U.S., which is currently seeing 68,000. DeVos dodged the question.
She vowed to cut off federal funding for public schools that do not reopen. Wallace asked “Under what authority are you and the president going to unilaterally cut off funding, funding that’s been approved from Congress and most of the money goes to disadvantaged students or students with disabilities?" “You can’t do that,” he continued.
Then DeVos said something interesting: "Look, American investment in education is a promise to students and their families. If schools aren’t going to reopen and not fulfill that promise, they shouldn’t get the funds, and give it to the families to decide to go to a school that is going to meet that promise,” she said.
This is the best explanation I’ve seen for why the administration is so keen on opening up the schools. DeVos is not an educator or trained in education or school administration. She is a billionaire Republican donor and former chair of the Michigan Republican Party. She is a staunch proponent of privatizing the public school system, replacing our public schools with charter schools, as her wealthy family managed to do with great success in Michigan, which has been flooded with low-performing charter schools, which have very little oversight.
It seems she is hoping to use the coronavirus pandemic to privatize education across the nation.
Indeed, the administration has responded to the pandemic by continuing its assault on the activist government Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Democrats put into place in the 1930s, and on which we have come to rely.
FDR’s New Deal and, after it, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower’s similar Middle Way, used the government to regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, and promote infrastructure, like roads and bridges. But that government has been under siege ever since it was built by men eager to get rid of government regulation and the taxes necessary to provide a social safety net and infrastructure. In their view, returning the government to the form it took before the 1930s will allow a few wealthy men to dominate society without government interference, thus protecting their liberty and permitting those who know best how to run the country to be in charge.
Since 1981, when President Ronald Reagan took office promising to scale back the federal government, Republican leaders have promised to cut regulation and taxes, and to return power to individuals to arrange their lives as they see fit. But they have never entirely managed to eradicate the New Deal government.
When he took office, Trump set out to do what those before him had not. He has left offices unfilled, slashed regulations and taxes, and did all he could to privatize the functions of the U.S. government.
The administration’s response to the pandemic highlighted the attempt to replace government functions with private efforts. Trump put his son-in-law Jared Kushner in charge of managing the crisis, and Kushner promptly created a task force of young people from venture capital and private equity firms. With no experience in emergency preparation and no contacts in the relevant industries, the volunteers on the task force were ineffectual, simply gumming up the efforts of the career officials whom they were trying to replace.
Notably, when states turned to the federal government to help direct the national response, Trump turned them away, telling them to manage on their own. At the same time, Project Airbridge, the new federal system designed to get critical supplies to the states, used the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to fly supplies to the U.S., but then turned them over to private distributors to get them to their customers. This public-private partnership, as the administration called it, frustrated state governors whose incoming supplies were sometimes confiscated for redistribution to places the administration deemed more urgent.
After the first coronavirus bills shored up the economy, Trump began to talk of tax cuts for businesses and investors, arguing—as has been Republican orthodoxy since Reagan—that tax cuts will stimulate the economy (although there is no evidence that this is the case). States and cities and towns are reeling from the loss of tax dollars, but Republicans have been reluctant to support them, apparently hoping to permit them to declare bankruptcy. This has been a long-term plan on the part of Republican leaders, for in a bankruptcy restructuring, the social safety nets of Democratic states like New York could be slashed.
Not helping local governments through this crisis will also cut public school funding.
And finally, with the support and encouragement of the administration, Republicans are downplaying the seriousness of the coronavirus to urge children back to school and their parents back to work. Today, White House officials started trying to discredit Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and one of the president’s leading advisors on the pandemic. Fauci has warned that the country is not doing enough to shut down infections, and that things will get worse if we don’t. Unless the economy regains traction, we are facing extraordinary economic dislocation that can only be addressed with the social safety net the Republicans want to get rid of altogether.
In all of this, the administration sounds much like that of President Herbert Hoover who, when faced with the calamity of the Great Depression, largely rejected calls for government aid to starving and displaced families, and instead trusted businessmen to restart the economy. To the extent relief was necessary, he wanted states and towns to cover it. Anything else would destroy American individualism, he insisted.
But by 1932, the same Americans who had supported Hoover in 1928 in a landslide recognized that his ideology had led the nation to catastrophe and then offered no way out. They rallied around Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who worked together with Congress to create an entirely new form of national government, one that had been unthinkable just four years before.
Last week, presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden explicitly echoed the dynamic of the 1932 election, highlighting the economy and economic opportunity. His policy paper reads: “Even before COVID-19, the Trump Administration was pursuing economic policies that rewarded wealth over work and corporations over working families. Too many families were struggling to make ends meet and too many parents were worried about the economic future for their children. And, Black and Latino Americans, Native Americans, immigrants, and women have never been welcomed as full participants in the economy.“
Biden’s economic plan for the country is, according to his campaign, the “largest mobilization of public investments in procurement, infrastructure, and R&D since World War II.” Called “Build Back Better,” the plan calls for investment in infrastructure and R&D to revitalize high-paying American industries and bring critical American supply chains back home. He calls for a revival of trade unions—gutted after 1981—and higher wages, as well as higher taxes on corporations (although not to the levels they were at before Trump’s tax cuts).
The document is a strong one politically, undercutting both Trump’s “America First” language and promising concrete policies for voters suffering in the Republican economy. But it is interesting as well for how clearly it marks a return to a vision of a government that stops privileging an elite few, and instead works to level the economic playing field among all Americans.
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That’s the name they went with?
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Hey, why take chances with something any more edgy? Vague blandness seems to be working fine so far. sigh
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