721–730 of 1001 posts
There should be a limit on the number of pardons a president can do during their tenure so that they have to at least think a bit before using it. It is a very powerful tool that actually allows a last resort. But this kind of egregious abuse of it's power means it needs to be kept in check.
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They were fed "waste fraud and abuse" in the beginning of the year. and suddenly it happens in broad daylight and people shrug? At this point it's just brainwashing. Some people's principals are clearly less about their own conviction and treating all this like a sports team. Whoever team "wins", even if the stadium burns down around them.
It's privately funded so it doesn't fit under "waste, fraud, and abuse" in the same vein as things that use taxpayer money. Conflict of interest by attempting to curry favor for his vanity project by making donations? That's a fair criticism.
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Which congress do you want doing that review? The past several congresses have been unqualified to do any sort of constitutional reviewing in my opinion.
The U.S. is running an outdated installation of democracy. The French approach of just rebooting and reinstalling the entire thing seems like a good idea at this point. Except the populace is already badly split into warring camps.
The closest thing we have is the amendment process. In theory we could use that to rewrite the entirety of the constitution[0], but good luck getting the required votes in place on any possible replacement. The bar is pretty high: amendments need to be proposed by either a vote of 2/3 of Congress, or by a constitutional convention convened by 2/3 of the state legislatures, and then ratified by 3/4 of all state legislatures.
We couldn't get that sort of agreement to pass something as theoretically uncontroversial as the Equal Rights Amendment. It's laughable to think we could pass a "new constitution" that way.
I expect the only way we could end up with a new constitution is through a bloody civil war, or some sort of coup. Hopefully no one wants something like that, though. I certainly don't.
[0] Technically the entirety of the constitution can't be amended; Article V, Section 5 prohibits an amendment from changing each state's equal representation in the Senate. Though I suppose a "rewrite amendment" might get around that by preserving the Senate as-is as a ceremonial body without any power. That would certainly violate the spirit of that wording in Article V, so I imagine it would be challenged in court.
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It seems like whatever party gets into power, suddenly doesn't want to change the system they inherited. I remember Trudeau talking about eliminating first past the post in Canadian elections. But once he got into power he forgot about it. We need a way to vote for popular ideas via referendum at the federal level. That might get it through.
> seems like whatever party gets into power, suddenly doesn't want to change the system “The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution” [1]. No President. No courts. Partisanship may work to our advantage in a divided government. What you would need, however, to reach two thirds is some members of the President’s party signing on. That could ha…
I think the opposite. That is exactly what we need. A lot of the problem we have come from the fact that the constitution speaks almost entirely in terms of what various government bodies do and provides no way for the people to directly override government actions they disagree with. This has led us to our current situation which is based on politicians exploiting loopholes (e.g., gerrymandering, stacking various judicial/administrative posts, manipulating voting laws, etc.) in order to preserve their position against potential electoral response.
In some cases these problems have been overcome or mitigated at the state level. . . via ballot measures. In California, for instance.
> California is a modern example of why republics are more stable than pure democracies, for anyone who forgot about Athens.
I'm not sure what you mean by this, but from where I'm standing California looks a lot more sane and stable than the US as a whole.
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The White House is a pretty significant symbol of this country, so yeah, I think they might care that a big chunk of it was just torn down.
Go to a Walmart in Ohio or Wisconsin and ask. Ask what % will change their next vote because of it
Coffeezilla video about this is up already https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMEJTORMVN4
"CZ deserves his pardon.
His show trial of a prosecution was a combination of regulatory railroading and ethnic persecution for being Chinese-Canadian.
Imagine if Macron was held personally responsible for every crime committed by the 67M citizens of France, and you'll get the absurdity of holding CZ personally responsible for the actions of a few of the 250M+ Binance users.
Indeed, if the bureaucrats who went after CZ were similarly held accountable for every violent crime committed in their home states, they'd be in prison for eternity! But there was an insane double standard. In the physical world, the Biden admin gleefully abolished the police. Meanwhile, in the digital world they demanded that CEOs achieve impossible levels of probity.
The ethnic dimension to CZ's persecution was similarly execrable. In reality, he helped many millions of Chinese people get into Bitcoin and thereby get to freedom. And also helped millions of poor people from around the globe get out of failed currencies, and into cryptocurrency.
So he did more for practical human rights and civil liberties than most. CZ did nothing wrong, and did so many things right.
Of course, my friends at Coinbase and I were competitors of Binance. But I always respected CZ, and I congratulate him on his accomplishments, and I congratulate him on his pardon today. Well deserved."
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You believe the US on the path to killing tens of millions of its own citizens for the sake of some ideology like Mao, Stalin, and Hitler because a non-violent white collar criminal was given a shortened sentence? Interesting.
You can kill someone without weapons. And just like the Great Leap Forward, America is well on its way to letting many thousands die from lack of healthcare.
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They were fed "waste fraud and abuse" in the beginning of the year. and suddenly it happens in broad daylight and people shrug? At this point it's just brainwashing. Some people's principals are clearly less about their own conviction and treating all this like a sports team. Whoever team "wins", even if the stadium burns down around them.
It's privately funded so it doesn't fit under "waste, fraud, and abuse" in the same vein as things that use taxpayer money. Conflict of interest by attempting to curry favor for his vanity project by making donations? That's a fair criticism.
Genuine question: If one wanted to get in on the Trump grift, and had no moral qualms, how would you do it? Can you come up with a realistic fast path to snag, say, $5 million within 2 years from Trumpland?
I don't think the direct approach to Trump or his inner circle would be ideal, considering how crowded the field of professional grifters and griefers surrounding him is. You'd really have to stand out to get noticed. But they've recently lost a key connection to the broader MAGA youth movement. A quick-witted young person with good public-speaking skills and a psychopath's morals could step into that role without mu…
It's gotta be more low-effort and high-confidence. I'm thinking more like: incorporate a company with a mission of "Providing AI without woke bias." The product would be simply GPT-OSS behind a system prompt of "You are a Fox News host" and a simple guardrail, wraped in a generic web and mobile UI. It'd be a couple of days of vibe coding and setting up AWS backend. Now, how do you legally funnel a few million into your pockets from that?
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The power to pardon needs to be removed all together. All it does is show that the President overrides the department of justice. How anyone ever thought this should be a thing, I have no idea.
I think a congressional pardon power to allow national leniency on previously accepted sentences that are now viewed as unjust might be worth holding onto. It being such a casual presidential power has made it ripe for corruption for a long time but I would weigh that with civil rights era pardons for sham trials - I think we do still need a national sanity check relief valve for local injustices. And the dysfunction…
That sounds like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. For the branch of government in charge of making and changing laws.