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EU Parliament freezes US trade deal ratification

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Re: EU Parliament freezes US trade deal ratification

#121

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

joe_mamba wrote: post #111
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Out of curiosity since you made this claim and said you're european, where are the EU vents of frustration that the US lacks? Proportional representation definitely helps here. You could look at the UK as a good counter-example, where the UKIP (a Brexit supporting party) got like 15% of the votes in the 2015 election, and no seats. Where people see that voting doesn't change anything, they'll look for some other wa…

>Proportional representation definitely helps here. With this logic doesn't the US have proportional representation as well? Didn't Trump win the popular vote and republicans the senate? The majority of voters won, end of story, and the ones who lost have another chance in 3 years to flip the board. Where exactly is the missing vent valve you were talking about? >think that a lot of the issues relate to free flows of…

> Well yeah that's the big issue, but nobody will win the elections by saying they are slaves of the capital class and doesn't matter who you vote for as they are powerless to change the crooked financial system that actually runs the world even if they win the elections since the finance systems globally connected and easily moves to the areas with most stability and tax benefits even if they are undemocratic.

This is a political choice that has been made by governments, and continues to be supported by governments. It's definitely helpful for capital to make people believe that it's a law of nature but capital controls existed in the US until Nixon removed them, and much later in other places.

> Where exactly is the missing vent valve you were talking about?

So FPTP typically forces people into 2 parties because it's the only way to win enough power. So all the extremists (in terms of being far away from the centre of public opinion) basically have to join one of the two major parties and attempt to take them over, which is basically what Trump did with the Republicans and also what happened to the UK Conservative party post Brexit.

In a PR system, you'd end up with some compromise where the democratic socialists and the greens or MAGA or Libertarians held the balance of power in the house, and the Republicans and Democratic parties would need to negotiate with them on what they wanted to accomplish.

The benefit here would be that the voters of the smaller parties would get some of what they want, and the bigger parties would be forced to compromise with others rather than ruling all for the two years between mid-terms.

Re: EU Parliament freezes US trade deal ratification

#122

Post by honzabe »

thrance wrote: post #109
littlestymaar wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if Trump died today, Vance would continue his nefarious job.

Vance has none of whatever Trump used to entrance 50% of Americans. MAGA dies with Trump, although I'm sure something else will come end replace it, if the issues that led to it aren't fixed.

That reminds me of an article Noah Smith wrote about this: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/after-trump-the-deluge

He believes they will switch from charisma to ideology to keep the movement going.

Re: EU Parliament freezes US trade deal ratification

#124

Post by lifestyleguru »

chucksta wrote: post #123
lifestyleguru wrote: post #28

This whole thing is slowly becoming irreversible. Canada should join the EU.

The European Union would need a new name then

Looking at the globe it makes more sense for Canada to join EU, than Greenland belonging to US. Call it Arctic Union, whatever.

Re: EU Parliament freezes US trade deal ratification

#125

Post by mindslight »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #118
panda-giddiness wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the cause is structural. Even if one could identify the sources of rot (money in politics, an outdated electoral college, the collapse of our information environment, whatever), Congress would deadlock, the Courts would block any meaningful reform, and the President would be left trimming the blight while the rot festered underneath.

I agree the cause is at least partially structural but I'd argue that congress deadlocking is generally an intentional feature not a bug. Meanwhile the courts on the whole seem quite reasonable to me. Disliking what the rules say should never turn into lambasting the ref for making calls consistent with those rules. That said, it doesn't seem to me that reform has been meaningfully attempted yet. It isn't reasonable…

The idea that Congress deadlocking is somehow a feature is a relic of the Republican party's destructionist agenda of the past four decades. In reality, this dynamic is what caused so much power to accrue to federal agencies, which they then proceeded to bemoan and go to work tearing down as well. Their goals were kind of understandable when they represented US business interests, but it seems as of late they're under new foreign ownership.

Re: EU Parliament freezes US trade deal ratification

#126

Post by fc417fc802 »

mindslight wrote: post #125
fc417fc802 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree the cause is at least partially structural but I'd argue that congress deadlocking is generally an intentional feature not a bug. Meanwhile the courts on the whole seem quite reasonable to me. Disliking what the rules say should never turn into lambasting the ref for making calls consistent with those rules. That said, it doesn't seem to me that reform has been meaningfully attempted yet. It isn't reasonable…

The idea that Congress deadlocking is somehow a feature is a relic of the Republican party's destructionist agenda of the past four decades. In reality, this dynamic is what caused so much power to accrue to federal agencies, which they then proceeded to bemoan and go to work tearing down as well. Their goals were kind of understandable when they represented US business interests, but it seems as of late they're unde…

> a relic of the Republican party's destructionist agenda of the past four decades.

I believe it goes all the way back to the founding of the country. Gridlock was viewed as preferable to tyranny. Failure to arrive at a compromise is supposed to mean that no one gets to proceed.

Of course times change and cracks show up in the system.

Re: EU Parliament freezes US trade deal ratification

#127

Post by mindslight »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #126
mindslight wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that Congress deadlocking is somehow a feature is a relic of the Republican party's destructionist agenda of the past four decades. In reality, this dynamic is what caused so much power to accrue to federal agencies, which they then proceeded to bemoan and go to work tearing down as well. Their goals were kind of understandable when they represented US business interests, but it seems as of late they're unde…

> a relic of the Republican party's destructionist agenda of the past four decades. I believe it goes all the way back to the founding of the country. Gridlock was viewed as preferable to tyranny. Failure to arrive at a compromise is supposed to mean that no one gets to proceed. Of course times change and cracks show up in the system.

Maybe. As a libertarian I'm sympathetic to the concept. I would say that one of the huge founding assumptions which clearly no longer holds is that the federal government was meant to be a less-powerful mediator between states, with the individual states being more powerful. For example I'd imagine that the founders' solution to our current predicament would be individual states calling up their own sizeable militias to put down the lawless gangs (regardless of whether they were purportedly "authorized" by the federal government), only calling for federal government help if they desired it. Restoring order within a state shouldn't hinge upon Congress agreeing to do so, right? Of course the obvious inapplicability of that solution to the events of the Civil War demonstrates how we got to the point we're at. It looks like slavery is still on track to being the great stain that ultimately dooms us.

Re: EU Parliament freezes US trade deal ratification

#128

Post by 4gotunameagain »

andsoitis wrote: post #87
4gotunameagain wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe never decided to outsource its defense to the US. It was the US that wholeheartedly sold quadrillions worth of armaments to the EU, in order to support the cold war remnants of its military industrial complex. The "funding the retiree class" comment is simply silly, I will not even get baited.

Europe relies on the US less for money, and more for capabilities. Within North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the US provides most of: - Strategic airlift (moving large forces quickly) - Aerial refueling - Missile defense - Intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (ISR) - Command, control, and battle management - Nuclear deterrence (via the US nuclear umbrella) Europe can field armies, navies, and air forces, but l…

And that surely has nothing to do with lobbying of the US military industrial complex behemoths in EU countries, right ?

They just decided to stop building things just so they can buy them from the US ?

Re: EU Parliament freezes US trade deal ratification

#129

Post by soco »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #88
atoav wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. Because you can always go one level higher and ask: Why are the US people the cause? And then we will talk about structural issues, to do with social mobility, education, a dysfunctional journalistic landscape, a tribalization of the political landscape and so on. But of course it doesn't stop there. You can go one up: Why did these underlying causes came to be? The simple answer is that a certain loose c…

> will always boil down to lobbying and money in politics. And here you take the easy way out. Just blame third parties. You should keep asking why to find the real cause. My personal take, as someone who is European but has lived in the US, Texas metro areas specifically, is that first past the post elections sow division. Choices are limited, political activity is neutered, and extremism builds until it finds an ou…

Also sows division because it's _by definition_ "us vs them". Can't give anything else than enmity.

Re: EU Parliament freezes US trade deal ratification

#130

Post by 4gotunameagain »

mrtksn wrote: post #112
thecopy wrote: post #11

It all seems so surprisingly unnecessary. Angry geriatric man f*cks the world up for generations to come, then in a short bit he will die, and not have to live through the consequences.

It's the same with Putin. EU-Russia had a good working relationship where Russia sends oil&gas and EU sends Mercedes and Adidas and live happily. However this is not enough for the megalomaniacs at the top, this is boring they need to be conquerors they need their place in the history books be longer than a chapter. Maybe going forward there must be safeguards against power accumulation. The checks and balances obvio…

If you look at old interviews of Putin and Lavrov, it is clear that they had been warning about NATO expansion and Ukraine for a long time.

On 12 June 2020, Ukraine joined NATO's enhanced opportunity partner interoperability program.

On 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine.

I think Putin is a dictator, but comparing Trump to Putin is simply clueless.

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