We are "stuck with poverty" because we insist on defining it as "the bottom X% of society" or we move the goal posts so it's still with us.
We're down to dealing with the mentally ill and other people who insist on making bad choices.
If we want to evaluate Free Trade by actual results, then it's lived up to expectations. Free Trade is well studied and it's solidly pro-growth from an economic point of view.
If we want to look at "market orient solutions" for something like the cost of housing; the problem is too much government regulation and interference, not too little. If the gov won't allow enough housing to be created then the cost will go up.
Gov mismanagement is also true in a number of our other problems. Health Care comes to mind.
The devil is always in the details and the various issues we have deserve details.
If you want to talk about market failures then we need to be clear about what is failing and why. The only example I can think of is we probably need a way to force some of the mentally ill to get treated.
I don't understand how someone can look into the past and claim we haven't had growth or shared prosperity.
This sounds like someone drawing a line between things they don't like (capitalism) and other things they don't like and just claiming that one caused the other.
When they were protesting they were virtue signaling to fellow students and doing the cool thing.
When they were trying to be hired by Boeing they were more serious.
Most of the protesters aren't serious and/or are poorly informed. Someone took a map out and showed some of them where "the river" and "the sea" were then asked if they really backed turning all of that into Palestine and they said no.
He desperately needs money to keep his empire alive and is openly asking for "help". Realistically we should expect a nation state to try to step in because he needs "that" much "help".
Koz: The facts are completely disputed in the Jean Carroll case. In fact, in that case there is basically no evidence against him
He's already lost all of the cases involving her. The big witness for her was Trump himself.
She claimed he'd been defaming her after she made a rape accusation. Jury agreed and awarded her single digit millions.
At that point it should have been clear publicly attacking her was illegal and he should stop. Except he didn't stop, he continued to do what he'd been found guilty of doing, he just did it more.
So she sued him again for the same thing. Won again. To get him to stop the award got two more zeros put on it so he now owes $600 million or so.
He's appealing, but his idiot lawyer didn't create grounds for appeal during the court case. To be fair she's a Florida Real Estate lawyer and had zero experience in what she was doing, i.e. NY civil.
At this point it's a legal fact that he defamed her. Trump claiming otherwise in public doesn't matter to the courts.
Koz: reassuring the financial community that other people will not be charged in the same circumstances as Trump was in the Tish James case.
James is dealing with Trump's defamation case. I think you're confusing that with his business records case which is really Presidential Election Interference. This is at least the second case being brought for this sort of thing, I think the first one was against Edwards.
Normally this sort of business records fraud isn't that serious. What makes it serious if it was done for a larger crime. It's very hard to see the rest of the financial community interfering in Presidential elections but if they did then I'm reasonably sure they'd get charged no matter what the Mayor has said.
You're overthinking it. The "plan" or "paradigm" is there is no plan. The United States has the most aggressively assimulistic culture in the world.
Normal rules apply. You are welcome to be absorbed (consider that a standing offer). You are welcome to keep your culture going. You can even mix those two.
Koz: Trump straight out winning on the merits, like the 14th Amendment case.
That seems unlikely. Trump winning on the merits means a President could just order his political rivals Trump killed. We might have the Supremes establish some sort of test, but the results of that test will still put him seriously over the line.
[Trump] demonstrating his substantial innocence
In all four of them his actions aren't seriously disputed (although his lawyers are making unserious disputes). Nor is it disputed that those actions are illegal.
or the corruptness of his adversaries
The argument here is that someone else wouldn't be charged.
This is obviously untrue for both of his attempts to overturn the election (State and Federal), and the efforts to keep seriously classified documents.
For business fraud (i.e. Stormy) I'd say there's a case to be made (and I've made it here) but I've been following that one and their case looks a lot more convincing when we drill down into it.
The various civil cases he's already lost. He owes crazy amounts of money, it's not clear he can pay, and his appeals don't seem to have merit so he will eventually need to pay.
With Trump’s situation as it stands today, it’s weak to say that he can’t or shouldn’t be President because of his legal problems.
I don't understand this conclusion.
Fiscally he's compromised from the lawsuits he's already lost and needs to take money from unclear sources just to keep his business alive (this has already happened).
For the two federal cases he needs to take office to order to stop the justice department from trying him (thus the planned purge at Justice that he's talked about). The documents case has been delayed past the election. Depending on when the Supremes rule, the election interference case might go quick enough to require him to pardon himself.
For the two state cases he may end up in prison, or awaiting to go to prison, while he's potentially in office.
Any of those 5 are enough to say he shouldn't be in office.
I am not a lawyer, but the Constitution seems to say we can't count (non-citizen) immigrants for the purposes of the House.
Fourteenth Amendment, Section 2:
If you can't vote for a Representative then you can't be used for increasing the number of people he represents. (Me paraphrasing because it's long and clunky).
Koz: the substantive failure of the various legal cases against Trump
Trump has been successful at delaying some of them past the election. The inexperienced Trump appointed Judge has been a problem in the documents case.
Where the system is somewhat "failing" is he's saying things that would get normal people arrested. By the normal rules you're not allowed to attack witnesses and the like.
However there is a good chance Trump will be found guilty in some or all of them.
Some of his lawyers are apparently breathtakingly bad. Even the ones that aren't have the serious problem that Trump is apparently insisting they make political arguments.
The below link details the various efforts to keep Trump in power.
We are well past "corrupt politician" territory. He attempted to overturn an election. His efforts failed, not because he wasn't serious, but because various institutionalists refused to go along with that. Pence, the Justice Department, and most of the hundreds of GOP officials he talked to didn't cooperate.
Putting someone like that back in power is nuts.
He has learned he needs to select people for personal loyalty ahead of time. So Pence won't be VP and the Justice Department will be purged. He's even talked about the upcoming purges if he's elected.
It's not an emotional reaction. My cold, logical opinion is that Trump should be in prison as a traitor to the country.
I don't say that lightly. I think Blue/Red constantly claiming [current President] is a [whatever] is a misuse of language.
But we have the problem of what to call a President who refused to step down and attempted a violent insurrection to stay in power.
I refused to vote for Trump in '16 for calm reasons. Then I voted for him in '20 for calm reasons. Now I think he should be in prison for breaking serious laws and can't be trusted to be in office.
He could have accepted defeat gracefully and then successfully ran in 2024 but we are where we are.
You attempt to overthrow Democracy just once and you'll never hear the end of it.
I voted for Trump last time and he attempted to overthrow democracy.
If Trump is elected he needs to dismantle rule of law because if he doesn't he'll go to prison.
We're in "dictator" and "traitor" territory. Right there I need to vote against him if Team Blue has anything even slightly sane.
Joe has had issues, but he's no where close to Trump and he's not with the lunatic Left. I haven't paid a lot of attention but my impression is he's fine by Blue standards and that's their big issue with him.
North: I’m pretty confident most of those Gazans, if given a vote on the matter, would not have voted for the attack and the consequences that followed.
The "consequences" were supposed to be "the Arabs all join the cause and force the Jews out".
Listening to what the Arab street is saying now, they think that Israel is being unreasonable, genocidal, and breaking all sorts of rules.
This wasn't supposed to happen.
Israel isn't supposed to have the right to defend itself. It's a Disney villain and at the end of the movie it's supposed to lose.
However she'd come out and explain she did it because of "A" (where "A" is the most innocent and self serving explanation), and then we'd find out this wasn't true.
So she'd come out and explain she did it because of "B"... and we'd repeat the process. I don't remember how many letters we got through but she herself was the one who kept this in the media.
She couldn't be honest about why she did it and she couldn't just say "it was legal so f*** off".
Multiple media sources said it. The Gaza people were told it and were dancing in the streets.
They didn't mention that Hamas was only agreeing to it's own terms. This was presented in such a way that we're supposed to think Hamas agreed to Israel's terms and then Israel itself still refused them.
On “Open Mic for the week of 5/13/2024”
We are "stuck with poverty" because we insist on defining it as "the bottom X% of society" or we move the goal posts so it's still with us.
We're down to dealing with the mentally ill and other people who insist on making bad choices.
If we want to evaluate Free Trade by actual results, then it's lived up to expectations. Free Trade is well studied and it's solidly pro-growth from an economic point of view.
If we want to look at "market orient solutions" for something like the cost of housing; the problem is too much government regulation and interference, not too little. If the gov won't allow enough housing to be created then the cost will go up.
Gov mismanagement is also true in a number of our other problems. Health Care comes to mind.
The devil is always in the details and the various issues we have deserve details.
If you want to talk about market failures then we need to be clear about what is failing and why. The only example I can think of is we probably need a way to force some of the mentally ill to get treated.
"
We are spending a lot more on the Great Society than we did then by any measure (raw numbers, percentage of GDP, whatever).
What is it that a modern Lyndon Johnson should do and where would he get the money?
"
I don't understand how someone can look into the past and claim we haven't had growth or shared prosperity.
This sounds like someone drawing a line between things they don't like (capitalism) and other things they don't like and just claiming that one caused the other.
"
When they were protesting they were virtue signaling to fellow students and doing the cool thing.
When they were trying to be hired by Boeing they were more serious.
Most of the protesters aren't serious and/or are poorly informed. Someone took a map out and showed some of them where "the river" and "the sea" were then asked if they really backed turning all of that into Palestine and they said no.
On “Republicans Defending Joe Biden”
Philip: So if Texaco, and BP and Chevron and the lot stopped drilling and decided not to pay OPEC’s set price...
Three Fortune 50 companies collectively commit suicide... why?
The only way that happens is if the gov makes them, so we're back to the gov.
Philip: deeply reported data that corporations...
This is about the dozenth time I've heard politicians claim corporations are setting the market rather than being slaves to the market.
In all of the previous investigations, we found nothing and it was politicians blame shifting.
"
Exxon gave $394,114 this cycle and they have $6 million budgeted for lobbying.
Spending millions, much less hundreds of millions, wouldn't be legal.
Trump needs someone who can burn hundreds of millions of dollars and doesn't care about breaking the law.
That's nation state territory, and most of them wouldn't do it. Basically it's Saudi Arabia, China, and Russia.
"
I lump that last into "fiscally compromised".
He desperately needs money to keep his empire alive and is openly asking for "help". Realistically we should expect a nation state to try to step in because he needs "that" much "help".
"
Koz: The facts are completely disputed in the Jean Carroll case. In fact, in that case there is basically no evidence against him
He's already lost all of the cases involving her. The big witness for her was Trump himself.
She claimed he'd been defaming her after she made a rape accusation. Jury agreed and awarded her single digit millions.
At that point it should have been clear publicly attacking her was illegal and he should stop. Except he didn't stop, he continued to do what he'd been found guilty of doing, he just did it more.
So she sued him again for the same thing. Won again. To get him to stop the award got two more zeros put on it so he now owes $600 million or so.
He's appealing, but his idiot lawyer didn't create grounds for appeal during the court case. To be fair she's a Florida Real Estate lawyer and had zero experience in what she was doing, i.e. NY civil.
At this point it's a legal fact that he defamed her. Trump claiming otherwise in public doesn't matter to the courts.
Koz: reassuring the financial community that other people will not be charged in the same circumstances as Trump was in the Tish James case.
James is dealing with Trump's defamation case. I think you're confusing that with his business records case which is really Presidential Election Interference. This is at least the second case being brought for this sort of thing, I think the first one was against Edwards.
Normally this sort of business records fraud isn't that serious. What makes it serious if it was done for a larger crime. It's very hard to see the rest of the financial community interfering in Presidential elections but if they did then I'm reasonably sure they'd get charged no matter what the Mayor has said.
On “Open Mic for the week of 5/6/2024”
You're overthinking it. The "plan" or "paradigm" is there is no plan. The United States has the most aggressively assimulistic culture in the world.
Normal rules apply. You are welcome to be absorbed (consider that a standing offer). You are welcome to keep your culture going. You can even mix those two.
On “Republicans Defending Joe Biden”
Koz: Trump straight out winning on the merits, like the 14th Amendment case.
That seems unlikely. Trump winning on the merits means a President could just order his political rivals Trump killed. We might have the Supremes establish some sort of test, but the results of that test will still put him seriously over the line.
[Trump] demonstrating his substantial innocence
In all four of them his actions aren't seriously disputed (although his lawyers are making unserious disputes). Nor is it disputed that those actions are illegal.
or the corruptness of his adversaries
The argument here is that someone else wouldn't be charged.
This is obviously untrue for both of his attempts to overturn the election (State and Federal), and the efforts to keep seriously classified documents.
For business fraud (i.e. Stormy) I'd say there's a case to be made (and I've made it here) but I've been following that one and their case looks a lot more convincing when we drill down into it.
The various civil cases he's already lost. He owes crazy amounts of money, it's not clear he can pay, and his appeals don't seem to have merit so he will eventually need to pay.
With Trump’s situation as it stands today, it’s weak to say that he can’t or shouldn’t be President because of his legal problems.
I don't understand this conclusion.
Fiscally he's compromised from the lawsuits he's already lost and needs to take money from unclear sources just to keep his business alive (this has already happened).
For the two federal cases he needs to take office to order to stop the justice department from trying him (thus the planned purge at Justice that he's talked about). The documents case has been delayed past the election. Depending on when the Supremes rule, the election interference case might go quick enough to require him to pardon himself.
For the two state cases he may end up in prison, or awaiting to go to prison, while he's potentially in office.
Any of those 5 are enough to say he shouldn't be in office.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-indictments-details-guide-charges-trial-dates-people-case/
On “Open Mic for the week of 5/6/2024”
I am not a lawyer, but the Constitution seems to say we can't count (non-citizen) immigrants for the purposes of the House.
Fourteenth Amendment, Section 2:
If you can't vote for a Representative then you can't be used for increasing the number of people he represents. (Me paraphrasing because it's long and clunky).
On “Republicans Defending Joe Biden”
Koz: the substantive failure of the various legal cases against Trump
Trump has been successful at delaying some of them past the election. The inexperienced Trump appointed Judge has been a problem in the documents case.
Where the system is somewhat "failing" is he's saying things that would get normal people arrested. By the normal rules you're not allowed to attack witnesses and the like.
However there is a good chance Trump will be found guilty in some or all of them.
Some of his lawyers are apparently breathtakingly bad. Even the ones that aren't have the serious problem that Trump is apparently insisting they make political arguments.
On “Open Mic for the week of 5/6/2024”
That "stop" looks a lot like "pretend to stop".
It's "delay", not "stop", only on extremely large bombs that blow up entire neighborhoods.
This is political theater.
On “Republicans Defending Joe Biden”
Chip: Did you know that the theory of evolution is just a theory?
So is the theory of gravity.
The James Webb telescope has found a lot of data which is a massive F.U. to existing theories.
We seem to have galaxies that are older than the big bang.
"
The below link details the various efforts to keep Trump in power.
We are well past "corrupt politician" territory. He attempted to overturn an election. His efforts failed, not because he wasn't serious, but because various institutionalists refused to go along with that. Pence, the Justice Department, and most of the hundreds of GOP officials he talked to didn't cooperate.
Putting someone like that back in power is nuts.
He has learned he needs to select people for personal loyalty ahead of time. So Pence won't be VP and the Justice Department will be purged. He's even talked about the upcoming purges if he's elected.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempts_to_overturn_the_2020_United_States_presidential_election
"
It's not an emotional reaction. My cold, logical opinion is that Trump should be in prison as a traitor to the country.
I don't say that lightly. I think Blue/Red constantly claiming [current President] is a [whatever] is a misuse of language.
But we have the problem of what to call a President who refused to step down and attempted a violent insurrection to stay in power.
I refused to vote for Trump in '16 for calm reasons. Then I voted for him in '20 for calm reasons. Now I think he should be in prison for breaking serious laws and can't be trusted to be in office.
He could have accepted defeat gracefully and then successfully ran in 2024 but we are where we are.
You attempt to overthrow Democracy just once and you'll never hear the end of it.
"
This is like claiming fish sustain water.
Oil is one of the big sources of inflation.
Oil companies don't set the price of oil.
Companies report inflation, they don't create it.
"
Corporations aren't big enough to create inflation. They're all slaves to the market.
"
I voted for Trump last time and he attempted to overthrow democracy.
If Trump is elected he needs to dismantle rule of law because if he doesn't he'll go to prison.
We're in "dictator" and "traitor" territory. Right there I need to vote against him if Team Blue has anything even slightly sane.
Joe has had issues, but he's no where close to Trump and he's not with the lunatic Left. I haven't paid a lot of attention but my impression is he's fine by Blue standards and that's their big issue with him.
On “Open Mic for the week of 5/6/2024”
North: I’m pretty confident most of those Gazans, if given a vote on the matter, would not have voted for the attack and the consequences that followed.
The "consequences" were supposed to be "the Arabs all join the cause and force the Jews out".
Listening to what the Arab street is saying now, they think that Israel is being unreasonable, genocidal, and breaking all sorts of rules.
This wasn't supposed to happen.
Israel isn't supposed to have the right to defend itself. It's a Disney villain and at the end of the movie it's supposed to lose.
"
Hmm... does that make me a "Zionist"? Or do you have to be Jewish?
"
It wasn't a crime.
However she'd come out and explain she did it because of "A" (where "A" is the most innocent and self serving explanation), and then we'd find out this wasn't true.
So she'd come out and explain she did it because of "B"... and we'd repeat the process. I don't remember how many letters we got through but she herself was the one who kept this in the media.
She couldn't be honest about why she did it and she couldn't just say "it was legal so f*** off".
"
Multiple media sources said it. The Gaza people were told it and were dancing in the streets.
They didn't mention that Hamas was only agreeing to it's own terms. This was presented in such a way that we're supposed to think Hamas agreed to Israel's terms and then Israel itself still refused them.
"
For the Left, virtue and oppression comes from the color of your skin.
This is racist as all fish.
Obama's kids getting affirmative action is amusing. The Jews not being viewed as having problems after a mass murder is not.
But it shouldn't be surprising.
On “Class in 21st Century America”
They're not kicked out yet.
MAGA is going to get their guy, he's almost certainly going to go down in flames because he's toxic to everyone who isn't MAGA.
So... what happens after that? Same old Team Red? New Red super focused on cultural crap and economic populism (insanity)? Something else?
Does MAGA stays together after Trump? After Trump goes to prison?
We're over the edge of the universe here.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.