Recent classic example: Clinton’s email server should have sent her to jail vs. Bush era 20+ million emails deleted and private server for the White House shouldn’t have?
The answer to most engineering questions is, "it depends".
22 million emails is a huge number, especially 15 years ago. Assuming 22 emails a day per person, that's 1 million person days, that's what... 800 people over a 5 year period?
The best case is we're looking at a records retention screw up (and btw some or most of them are in the process of recovery, the issue is how much money do we want to spend on this).
Worst case is... what? An effort to sidestep the freedom of information act? Presumably it's not an 800 person conspiracy.
HRC's email server was deliberate and determined, and was about 800 emails a month in addition to her emails as head of State. That number seems like a professional level, i.e. not birthday parties and yoga meetings.
It's very difficult to see innocent explanations for this, especially not when she could have simply had a personal email account on the side. Also releasing these emails would have been more damaging to her election than not releasing them. So releasing the emails was simply impossible, presumably for the same reason that she was determined to have the server. Her other profession was head of the Clinton Foundation, did her work for her charity overlap so much with her duties as SoS that she couldn't separate them?
Best case that I can see is an effort to shield herself from the Freedom of Information act (I'm not a lawyer but I'm under the impression that she couldn't claim she was doing this as a defense because that itself is illegal), but even that ignores what was she doing that needed shielding.
Note all of this is separate from the likelihood that Russian/Chinese/North Korean/etc actors figured out that she had her own server (considering her email address showed this, it's hard to see them not figuring it out), and hacking into her server (it's not easy to defend against the resources of a Nation State).
I would be very surprised that server didn't get important secrets leaked, which implies people getting killed. I would also be very surprised if the core reason wasn't that her job as SoS overlapped with her job as head of TCF.
On inspection, these two cases don't seem comparable.
Technically, we have officially banned political assassinations.
The key word there is "political". Members of the military, especially officers organizing war crimes, can presumably be blown up, even deliberately.
Keep in mind it's AQ who is wholesale ignoring the rules of society and war.
I'm not comfortable with blowing up buildings full of civilians for the purpose of mass murder (i.e. 911). I am comfortable shooting people who do that. I'm not comfortable with slavery/rape as military tools (ISIS), I am comfortable with shooting people who do that.
I'm even comfortable with knowing their names before we shoot them, or blowing them up with some remote controlled robot. If you have better ways to deal with ISIS and AQ, by all means suggest them, but the alternative of living with mass murder/slavery/rape/genocide/etc is a non-starter. Ditto getting lots of American soldiers killed so that it's less of a one sided match up, there's nothing ethical about getting American soldiers killed to make the war more expensive, just the opposite.
Bingo. We’ve never had this discussion, because assassination is something that government generally didn’t do. Not out of any moral sense, but because the leadership doesn’t want to…because if you start assassinating their leaders, they will assassinate *you*.
Because it wasn't possible to assassinate armies' middle management before, much less the heads. You needed to level villages to kill individuals, so we leveled villages.
The entire concept of war is, functionally, a scam.
War predates humanity, some of our chimp relatives hold wars.
IMHO Humans have had war to such a degree that it's deeply affected our evolution and our instincts. That's what it means when we've had periods of time when the lifetime "murder" rate was 25%, which basically means half of all men die in battle.
That’s why assassination is sneaking in as acceptable…because AQ cannot respond by killing the president.
911 showed we don't have a choice but be at war. They're going to sneak in and knock down skyscrapers if we don't kill them, so we do. We use Drones because it's cost effective and more ethical than burning down villages... but if burning down villages was the alternative to 911, we'd do that.
the Fourth Geneva convention, or Protocol I…the stuff that actually tries to deal with guerilla forces.
The 4th was written after WW2, I doubt the 4th deals well with either Drones (which were impossible) or AQ (who as a non-state actor in an uncontrolled territory wasn't expected).
Resulting in the obvious end result of believing that the opposing party has somehow done actual criminal things that should result in jail time.
Yes, witness 8 years ago all the cries to arrest Bush and his crew for Guantanamo etc.
Do…you guys have any policy goals at all? Things you actually want the Republicans to do, as opposed to just punching liberals, or specifically Hillary, in the face? Can you please *list* some of those goals?
Reform the tax code so it doesn't punish job creation. Inversions are basically us paying US companies to relocate.
Stop using "fighting global warming symbolism" to justify destroying jobs and the environment.
Switch to using parents to fight educational system disfunction (school choice) and not command/control.
Rollback growth destroying regulations.
Healthcare reform that actually reforms healthcare.
And I could go on but that's enough for now I think.
If i happen to own a bunch of other business, not related to hamburgers at all, that aren’t demonstrably a scam, then I am excused from my McDonald’s scam? At least according to you, right?
Excused? No. Just like Walmart isn't off the hook when one of their store managers prevents employees from having bathroom breaks or steals their money.
However large numbers means this sort of thing is expected to happen.
The question is what are we looking at here? Clearly he doesn't have day-to-day control (or even 'vision' control) over 300 business. Is this bad local managers? Another possibility is this was a bad idea, badly implemented. That Trump over promised and under delivered so badly that it actually did rise to the level of Fraud (although at the moment what we've got is allegations and lawsuits).
The original question was whether it "disqualifies" him for office? The issue is was this an anomaly, or the way he does business? At the moment it looks like the former and not the later.
...outside of an archaic system in which battles are meant to somehow be “fair”.
I'm not sure "fair" is the right word. In the old system, nameless peasants are ok to kill en-mass; named nobility are not.
Or maybe it's just knowing someone's name gets rid of some of the mental disconnects we use to justify why it's ok to kill someone. I suspect we're starting to get into instincts here.
No, dark one, I was just playing with your framing. I believe that bill and Hillary have a big enough and star studded enough rolodex that people will write large checks just to be at the right social party with queen bae bae, and that the clinton foundation has done vast amounts of good with that money.
Then you don't expect a massive haircut and I do. That's why I think it will be an interesting year for that point and I'm looking forward to picking this matter up again in about 16 months.
And brilliant bit there, “we can’t prove these things we say they did before, we can’t prove this one either, QED she’s a crook.” Incandescent sir, truly.
People like her are supposed to be operating to avoid the appearance of impropriety, i.e. the appearance of being unethical. Accepting tens of millions of dollars from torturous Russian politicians who you're helping get mining contracts isn't even close to that.
Her operating (I won't call it "ethical") standard appears to be "avoiding what she can be convicted of", as opposed to "being ethical", or even "appearing to be ethical".
So I don't think she can be convicted for running her pay to play scheme, but this doesn't prevent me from pointing out that she is apparently running one.
But im sure if she needs to, she can still get fat $250,000 checks for speaking events.
She and Bill will take a big haircut there too. Bush only gets $100k-$175k.
But what's more interesting than the amount is the frequency. Two years ago, if Bill Clinton wanted to give you a speech for $300k, could you realistically say "no" if you were a high level CEO?
I'm not surprised. Doesn't change that it is "same old, same old" however... or maybe political payback. Go back more than a decade and you're looking at the Dems pulling that kind of crap on the GOP.
This is how NC has been doing things for a long time. It's a vile political culture, but that's a different problem.
Hopefully we'll have an honest bipartisan reform effort.
Alternatively Trump could just get have a bipartisan effort to get rid of the unpopular parts (the mandate) and let the death spiral destroy the popular parts.
Politicians always fold against the public. IMHO there's no way the Dems could remain solid against the public for keeping the unpopular parts of the bill, no matter what the long term consequences are.
If Mcdonalds has issues with... 1 out of every 100 stores its franchisee’s run, then yes, quality control.
Agreed.
But If every burger they claim has beef and cheese actually came with no beef and no cheese, that’s not a quality control issue, thats a scam. If half of them have no beef and cheese, thats a scam.
Agreed. So are half of Trump's businesses like this, or is it just that one?
Forbes thinks Trump is worth about 4 Billion, unlike Scrooge McDuck the bulk of that is going to be in his companies and not gold coins. Trump owns roughly 300 companies. His person involvement in any one of those has to be pretty small.
If you want to claim "Fraud" is a problem then you need to find lots of other companies, otherwise this smells like a quality control issue.
What does the worst McDonald's look like? The worst Wal-Mart? The worst Shell? And those companies put a lot of effort into having them all be the same while Trump does not.
Wal-Mart occasionally has to pay fines because local stores break laws, owning lots of stores and/or businesses means it's a cost of doing business.
nor is it a “resisting arrest” death in which the victim’s violent resistance occurs during an attempt to carry out a judicial process.
Being a member of a terror group and hiding out in a land where we'd have to use the army to deal with you is "violent resistance" of the judicial process.
in true Keynesian fashion, pumped money into the economy.
If that worked the economy should be just screaming along right now. Even adjusted for percentage of economy we're doing two or three times what we used to.
The AUMF is not, however, legally a declaration of war. (It couldn’t possibly be, it doesn’t even *name a country*.)
Where does the Constitution say we can only declare war on countries?
If it helps, Wiki says "War is a state of armed conflict between societies" (as opposed to countries). As far as I can tell, the idea of "War" predates the creation of nation states, it even predates humanity.
Declarations of war are statements *you send other countries* informing them that you are at war with them...
Sounds like a personal definition.
There is nothing in there about ‘associated forces’.
"Aided", "such organizations", and "in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism" amount to the same thing.
Rso she conned those bad people out of money to do good charitable acts and has given them nothing?
Some of these bad people are governments we need to deal with.
You, an HRC supporter, are suggesting that she's "only" shaking people down. So how does that work? Is she threatening to have the gov do things or is she threatening to have the gov not do things?
There really is no good answer for this.
But by all means, show where a donor got a quid pro quo. Im waiting.
If we couldn't show that for a donor who gave a million dollars to HRC in exchange for Bill giving her husband a Presidential pardon then we won't be able to prove that there was a relationship between the tens of millions that Russian gave TCF and the mining contracts he received.
But the lack of agreeing to an explicit price and putting it in writing doesn't make the transaction ethical or less obvious, just impossible to prove in court.
However now that she can't "bundle" the government's political power to her personal "charity", I expect the talk about how great a charity it is will fade and it will go bust.
I don't think we can reasonably claim the head of a multi-Billion dollar organization is personally responsible for *everything* which happens in it. Someone in the Army committed rape/murder/terrorism last year (and see BLM for other lists), it's not useful to think Obama was personally involved without lots more evidence than we have.
Where has this magic of tax cuts and deregulation produced any effect?
The United States after Reagan.
Further all this talk about advanced economies having a low rate of growth was popular right before he took office, and we've seen non-advanced economies suffer low rates of growth from over regulation (India for example).
We have a tax code which isn't humanly understandable, it's not a reach to think it's causing economic distortions. The marginal corporate tax rate is the highest in the world and businesses flee the country via inversion on a regular basis, it's not a reach to think that costs jobs.
Additionally, at some point you really are going to have to stop conflating AQ and ISIS. ISIS has never directly attacked the US that I am aware of.
And, technically speaking, we haven’t declared war on *anyone*. At all.
The AUMF is only a page and answers all of this. The Constitution says Congress needs to declare war, it doesn't specify the form that needs to take. The AUMF expressly gives the Prez permission to take the army out to invade/destroy countries and kill people. That sounds like "war".
From wiki, the AUMF says "authorizes the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the attacks on September 11, 2001 and any "associated forces".
How many years of 2% growth do we need before we conclude there's a problem?
If Obama had given us growth (via the Stim, or Obamacare, or anything really), then HRC would be in office. Her not being in office is a reflection of that more than anything else.
I think you’re stuck in a bad place, here, Dark. You think there’s a way to get universal coverage that require a mandate, lowers costs, guarantees issue (at community rating?), etc and so on, without healthy people “paying for it”.
No, I understand the economics of this just fine (and agree with what you said), but what we're talking about is the politics.
Universal Coverage is a fine policy choice, but it has costs. Explaining those costs and getting support anyway is what was suppose to happen. What did happen was outright lies and determined defiance of popular opposition.
Somehow there this effort on the left to present Obamacare's political and economic problems as the GOP's doing, not Obama's. Similarly there's an effort to present Obamacare as popular no matter how unpopular it is, and approved by the public no matter how many Dems got voted out of office for supporting it.
I don't understand all the determined blame shifting. Obama came into office with very little experience, being President is hard. The first painting you do is unlikely to be a masterpiece. The politics (and imho the economics) of this was mishandled.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Impeach Barack Obama”
The answer to most engineering questions is, "it depends".
22 million emails is a huge number, especially 15 years ago. Assuming 22 emails a day per person, that's 1 million person days, that's what... 800 people over a 5 year period?
The best case is we're looking at a records retention screw up (and btw some or most of them are in the process of recovery, the issue is how much money do we want to spend on this).
Worst case is... what? An effort to sidestep the freedom of information act? Presumably it's not an 800 person conspiracy.
HRC's email server was deliberate and determined, and was about 800 emails a month in addition to her emails as head of State. That number seems like a professional level, i.e. not birthday parties and yoga meetings.
It's very difficult to see innocent explanations for this, especially not when she could have simply had a personal email account on the side. Also releasing these emails would have been more damaging to her election than not releasing them. So releasing the emails was simply impossible, presumably for the same reason that she was determined to have the server. Her other profession was head of the Clinton Foundation, did her work for her charity overlap so much with her duties as SoS that she couldn't separate them?
Best case that I can see is an effort to shield herself from the Freedom of Information act (I'm not a lawyer but I'm under the impression that she couldn't claim she was doing this as a defense because that itself is illegal), but even that ignores what was she doing that needed shielding.
Note all of this is separate from the likelihood that Russian/Chinese/North Korean/etc actors figured out that she had her own server (considering her email address showed this, it's hard to see them not figuring it out), and hacking into her server (it's not easy to defend against the resources of a Nation State).
I would be very surprised that server didn't get important secrets leaked, which implies people getting killed. I would also be very surprised if the core reason wasn't that her job as SoS overlapped with her job as head of TCF.
On inspection, these two cases don't seem comparable.
"
The key word there is "political". Members of the military, especially officers organizing war crimes, can presumably be blown up, even deliberately.
Keep in mind it's AQ who is wholesale ignoring the rules of society and war.
I'm not comfortable with blowing up buildings full of civilians for the purpose of mass murder (i.e. 911). I am comfortable shooting people who do that. I'm not comfortable with slavery/rape as military tools (ISIS), I am comfortable with shooting people who do that.
I'm even comfortable with knowing their names before we shoot them, or blowing them up with some remote controlled robot. If you have better ways to deal with ISIS and AQ, by all means suggest them, but the alternative of living with mass murder/slavery/rape/genocide/etc is a non-starter. Ditto getting lots of American soldiers killed so that it's less of a one sided match up, there's nothing ethical about getting American soldiers killed to make the war more expensive, just the opposite.
"
Because it wasn't possible to assassinate armies' middle management before, much less the heads. You needed to level villages to kill individuals, so we leveled villages.
War predates humanity, some of our chimp relatives hold wars.
IMHO Humans have had war to such a degree that it's deeply affected our evolution and our instincts. That's what it means when we've had periods of time when the lifetime "murder" rate was 25%, which basically means half of all men die in battle.
911 showed we don't have a choice but be at war. They're going to sneak in and knock down skyscrapers if we don't kill them, so we do. We use Drones because it's cost effective and more ethical than burning down villages... but if burning down villages was the alternative to 911, we'd do that.
The 4th was written after WW2, I doubt the 4th deals well with either Drones (which were impossible) or AQ (who as a non-state actor in an uncontrolled territory wasn't expected).
On “The Electoral College Option”
Yes, witness 8 years ago all the cries to arrest Bush and his crew for Guantanamo etc.
Reform the tax code so it doesn't punish job creation. Inversions are basically us paying US companies to relocate.
Stop using "fighting global warming symbolism" to justify destroying jobs and the environment.
Switch to using parents to fight educational system disfunction (school choice) and not command/control.
Rollback growth destroying regulations.
Healthcare reform that actually reforms healthcare.
And I could go on but that's enough for now I think.
"
Trump burning to the ground some of his corporate assets with the button? That seems unlikely.
"
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/north-carolina-republicans-learned-obstruction-from-democrats/article/2609886
"
Excused? No. Just like Walmart isn't off the hook when one of their store managers prevents employees from having bathroom breaks or steals their money.
However large numbers means this sort of thing is expected to happen.
The question is what are we looking at here? Clearly he doesn't have day-to-day control (or even 'vision' control) over 300 business. Is this bad local managers? Another possibility is this was a bad idea, badly implemented. That Trump over promised and under delivered so badly that it actually did rise to the level of Fraud (although at the moment what we've got is allegations and lawsuits).
The original question was whether it "disqualifies" him for office? The issue is was this an anomaly, or the way he does business? At the moment it looks like the former and not the later.
On “Impeach Barack Obama”
I'm not sure "fair" is the right word. In the old system, nameless peasants are ok to kill en-mass; named nobility are not.
Or maybe it's just knowing someone's name gets rid of some of the mental disconnects we use to justify why it's ok to kill someone. I suspect we're starting to get into instincts here.
On “The Electoral College Option”
Then you don't expect a massive haircut and I do. That's why I think it will be an interesting year for that point and I'm looking forward to picking this matter up again in about 16 months.
People like her are supposed to be operating to avoid the appearance of impropriety, i.e. the appearance of being unethical. Accepting tens of millions of dollars from torturous Russian politicians who you're helping get mining contracts isn't even close to that.
Her operating (I won't call it "ethical") standard appears to be "avoiding what she can be convicted of", as opposed to "being ethical", or even "appearing to be ethical".
So I don't think she can be convicted for running her pay to play scheme, but this doesn't prevent me from pointing out that she is apparently running one.
She and Bill will take a big haircut there too. Bush only gets $100k-$175k.
But what's more interesting than the amount is the frequency. Two years ago, if Bill Clinton wanted to give you a speech for $300k, could you realistically say "no" if you were a high level CEO?
"
I'm not surprised. Doesn't change that it is "same old, same old" however... or maybe political payback. Go back more than a decade and you're looking at the Dems pulling that kind of crap on the GOP.
This is how NC has been doing things for a long time. It's a vile political culture, but that's a different problem.
On “Impeach Barack Obama”
As we target the enemy more and more precisely, we get more moral, not less.
On “The Electoral College Option”
Hopefully we'll have an honest bipartisan reform effort.
Alternatively Trump could just get have a bipartisan effort to get rid of the unpopular parts (the mandate) and let the death spiral destroy the popular parts.
Politicians always fold against the public. IMHO there's no way the Dems could remain solid against the public for keeping the unpopular parts of the bill, no matter what the long term consequences are.
"
Agreed.
Agreed. So are half of Trump's businesses like this, or is it just that one?
"
If you want to claim "Fraud" is a problem then you need to find lots of other companies, otherwise this smells like a quality control issue.
What does the worst McDonald's look like? The worst Wal-Mart? The worst Shell? And those companies put a lot of effort into having them all be the same while Trump does not.
Wal-Mart occasionally has to pay fines because local stores break laws, owning lots of stores and/or businesses means it's a cost of doing business.
On “Impeach Barack Obama”
Being a member of a terror group and hiding out in a land where we'd have to use the army to deal with you is "violent resistance" of the judicial process.
On “The Electoral College Option”
1980? Looking at the graphs, I see a more-or-less constant 3% deficit from 1974 to 1995.
http://www.eucitizens.eu/pictures/Government%20budget%20surplus%20or%20deficit%20as%20percentage%20of%20GDP%201970-2010.jpg
If that worked the economy should be just screaming along right now. Even adjusted for percentage of economy we're doing two or three times what we used to.
http://www.heritage.org/~/media/InfoGraphics/2012/10/SRfedspendingnumbers2012p4chart4_600.ashx
On “Impeach Barack Obama”
Where does the Constitution say we can only declare war on countries?
If it helps, Wiki says "War is a state of armed conflict between societies" (as opposed to countries). As far as I can tell, the idea of "War" predates the creation of nation states, it even predates humanity.
Sounds like a personal definition.
"Aided", "such organizations", and "in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism" amount to the same thing.
On “The Electoral College Option”
It is "same old same old". The GOP of this state learned this trick from the Dems.
"
Some of these bad people are governments we need to deal with.
You, an HRC supporter, are suggesting that she's "only" shaking people down. So how does that work? Is she threatening to have the gov do things or is she threatening to have the gov not do things?
There really is no good answer for this.
If we couldn't show that for a donor who gave a million dollars to HRC in exchange for Bill giving her husband a Presidential pardon then we won't be able to prove that there was a relationship between the tens of millions that Russian gave TCF and the mining contracts he received.
But the lack of agreeing to an explicit price and putting it in writing doesn't make the transaction ethical or less obvious, just impossible to prove in court.
However now that she can't "bundle" the government's political power to her personal "charity", I expect the talk about how great a charity it is will fade and it will go bust.
"
I don't think we can reasonably claim the head of a multi-Billion dollar organization is personally responsible for *everything* which happens in it. Someone in the Army committed rape/murder/terrorism last year (and see BLM for other lists), it's not useful to think Obama was personally involved without lots more evidence than we have.
"
We can do better. If we're interested in not handing power to people like Trump we need to do better.
One way to think of it is over 105 years 4% growth means an economy which is 8x bigger than 2%.
And if you're willing to settle for 2% you'll get that "with" recessions and depressions and not "without" them.
"
@don-zeko
The United States after Reagan.
Further all this talk about advanced economies having a low rate of growth was popular right before he took office, and we've seen non-advanced economies suffer low rates of growth from over regulation (India for example).
We have a tax code which isn't humanly understandable, it's not a reach to think it's causing economic distortions. The marginal corporate tax rate is the highest in the world and businesses flee the country via inversion on a regular basis, it's not a reach to think that costs jobs.
On “Impeach Barack Obama”
The AUMF is only a page and answers all of this. The Constitution says Congress needs to declare war, it doesn't specify the form that needs to take. The AUMF expressly gives the Prez permission to take the army out to invade/destroy countries and kill people. That sounds like "war".
From wiki, the AUMF says "authorizes the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the attacks on September 11, 2001 and any "associated forces".
AQ-in-Iraq is clearly an associate of AQ.
On “The Electoral College Option”
How many years of 2% growth do we need before we conclude there's a problem?
If Obama had given us growth (via the Stim, or Obamacare, or anything really), then HRC would be in office. Her not being in office is a reflection of that more than anything else.
"
No, I understand the economics of this just fine (and agree with what you said), but what we're talking about is the politics.
Universal Coverage is a fine policy choice, but it has costs. Explaining those costs and getting support anyway is what was suppose to happen. What did happen was outright lies and determined defiance of popular opposition.
Somehow there this effort on the left to present Obamacare's political and economic problems as the GOP's doing, not Obama's. Similarly there's an effort to present Obamacare as popular no matter how unpopular it is, and approved by the public no matter how many Dems got voted out of office for supporting it.
I don't understand all the determined blame shifting. Obama came into office with very little experience, being President is hard. The first painting you do is unlikely to be a masterpiece. The politics (and imho the economics) of this was mishandled.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.