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Tax returns sought as means of extra-judicial punishment/coercion

 
 
maxdancona
 
  1  
Reply Wed 8 May, 2019 05:09 pm
I am someone who see across partisan lines. I can admit when Trump does something good, I can point out ways that the Democrats are wrong. I call bullshit when I see it on either side.

This is falling along general partisan lines.... but I think in this case it is the Trump supporters who are full of ****. If you were sincere, then you would have supported Obama right to skirt the Republican congress.

The Trump supporters on this thread seem to be twisting everything to put Trump above the law. They seem to be saying that Trump can do no wrong and is accountable to no one.

If Obama followed this same type of logic ... he would still be president.
oralloy
 
  0  
Reply Wed 8 May, 2019 05:48 pm
@maxdancona,
maxdancona wrote:
If you were sincere, then you would have supported Obama right to skirt the Republican congress.

Maybe I do say that. Your comment is so vague that I can't even tell what event you are referring to. So I can't really say what my views are about "whatever it is".


maxdancona wrote:
The Trump supporters on this thread seem to be twisting everything to put Trump above the law. They seem to be saying that Trump can do no wrong and is accountable to no one.

My position is more that he isn't doing anything wrong. Or at least, there is no credible evidence that he is.

The President is accountable to the voters.

If he was actually defying court orders, that would be grounds for impeachment, but he is not doing that.


maxdancona wrote:
If Obama followed this same type of logic ... he would still be president.

No. His second term is over.
0 Replies
 
livinglava
 
  1  
Reply Wed 8 May, 2019 06:06 pm
@oralloy,
oralloy wrote:

livinglava wrote:
Rosa Parks is an example of civil disobedience, not defiance of 'rule of law.'

That seems to me like a distinction without a difference.

Rosa Parks didn't reject 'rule of law.' She disobeyed a law she considered unjust and impractical.

livinglava wrote:
Trump and/or others refusing to obey a congressional order to expose Trump's finance's would be civil disobedience.

Only if he ignores a court order. As long as the courts are still considering the issue there isn't really any defiance of the law.

livinglava wrote:
'Rule of law' is just a rationalization for rejecting civil disobedience as a right of conscience.

Well, the two principles can certainly conflict with each other. I think they are both valid principles however.
[/quote]
Either principle can be abused, regardless of how valid they may be as principles.

Any valid rule or law can be applied in a way that abuses it. It just depends on the intention of applying it, how it is applied, and what effects are caused with it.

In this case, the only reason he is talking about 'rule of law' is to suggest that congress can make laws targeting the president for political reasons, but justify it by claiming that the president is subject to the same 'rule of law' as anyone else.

The reality is that they want to make his financial information public to make him vulnerable to coercive power, i.e. so that he will become more compliant with their political will. They want to reduce his ability to act independently by subjecting him to punitive threats involving his finances.

That has nothing to do with rule of law, but they are using 'rule of law' as an excuse to undermine the office of president.
livinglava
 
  1  
Reply Wed 8 May, 2019 06:13 pm
@oralloy,
oralloy wrote:

I'm sure that the Mr. Trump will comply with all rulings by our courts.

Trump has a duty to defend the constitution and the office of the presidency.

If the courts were somehow helping congress threaten the independence of the office and he could protect it by disobeying congress and the court, he would have the duty to do that.

If he could reasonably transfer the presidency to Pence without allowing his persecutors to abuse their governmental power, then he could do so. But if turning over the office amounted to cooperation with interests whose goal was purely to subjugate the presidency by subjecting the person holding the office to coercive threats, then he should neither cooperate nor transfer power away from himself. He should stand his ground against subversive tactics, the same as standing ground against terrorist tactics to manipulate and subvert democratic/governmental processes.

To put it another way: if the people of a town threaten to publish the mayor's bank statements in order to make him more malleable to their will to, say, ignore lucrative criminal activity going on in the town, it's the mayor's duty to prevent them from doing so, even if they find some legal basis to coerce him into submitting his bank statements.

What's also a problem is that the Democratic party, now congress, are harassing Trump the way a panhandler harasses someone whose money they want. First they ask, "hey, got any change?" then they might say, "c'mon you've got money," then they could say, "c'mon show me your wallet; I bet you have a ton of money in that wallet; you can afford to give a few bucks." That is harassment and it is basically what Dems are abusing their governmental power to do to Trump.

If Trump was just a private business man, it would just be harassment. But since he holds the office of presidency, it becomes a threat to the office if they are able to force information out of him that makes him vulnerable to external manipulation/coercion.
oralloy
 
  0  
Reply Wed 8 May, 2019 08:25 pm
@livinglava,
The only remedy for the abuse of power that you are describing is to convince the courts to rule against it. If a president starts disobeying court orders, Congress will impeach him and remove him from office.

I think that if the courts side with Congress, the President is going to have to obey the courts' orders no matter how unfair they seem.

This doesn't mean just accepting the rulings of every low-level extremist judge though. Bad rulings should be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. But once the appeals process plays out, I think the President is going to need to comply with whatever the courts say.
oralloy
 
  0  
Reply Wed 8 May, 2019 08:28 pm
@livinglava,
livinglava wrote:
Rosa Parks didn't reject 'rule of law.' She disobeyed a law she considered unjust and impractical.

That still seems to me like a distinction without a difference.


livinglava wrote:
The reality is that they want to make his financial information public to make him vulnerable to coercive power, i.e. so that he will become more compliant with their political will. They want to reduce his ability to act independently by subjecting him to punitive threats involving his finances.
That has nothing to do with rule of law, but they are using 'rule of law' as an excuse to undermine the office of president.

I hope the President's lawyers raise this point with the courts.
0 Replies
 
livinglava
 
  1  
Reply Thu 9 May, 2019 05:24 am
@oralloy,
oralloy wrote:

The only remedy for the abuse of power that you are describing is to convince the courts to rule against it. If a president starts disobeying court orders, Congress will impeach him and remove him from office.

Who will remove congressional representatives from congress for abusing their powers? Who would remove Supreme Court justices?

Quote:
I think that if the courts side with Congress, the President is going to have to obey the courts' orders no matter how unfair they seem.

Do you think there is a point where people will defer to government, even when they legitimately assess it to be corrupt? There is always further redress to seek when people are unsatisfied with standing authorities. Ultimately the government may suppress violent uprisings by force, but that doesn't automatically mean the government is right and the uprising wrong. Some people say history is written by the victors, but of course no one can rewrite the truth, only suppress and lie about it.

Quote:
This doesn't mean just accepting the rulings of every low-level extremist judge though. Bad rulings should be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. But once the appeals process plays out, I think the President is going to need to comply with whatever the courts say.

Obviously we try to maintain faith that institutions will operate legitimately as a crucible for truth, right, and goodness. When they don't, however, the question is how to address that. Trump was elected largely because of dissent against perceived governmental corruption. Do you think that the people are becoming less suspicious of government as corrupt institutions because the media goads Trump and his 'base' as being a bunch of conspiracy-paranoia lunatics. If you don't respect the sensibilities of the people who are critical of government, how can you have democracy?

Some people criticize the Chinese government for having a repressive stance toward criticism of government, but what do you call it when people who question and criticize government in the US are demonized and rejected and otherwise ignored due to denialism on the part of anti-critical loyalists?
McGentrix
 
  1  
Reply Thu 9 May, 2019 08:35 am
@maxdancona,
maxdancona wrote:

The Trump supporters on this thread seem to be twisting everything to put Trump above the law. They seem to be saying that Trump can do no wrong and is accountable to no one.


I'm still waiting for you to explain what law you are claiming that Trump is above. Have you found one yet?
0 Replies
 
oralloy
 
  0  
Reply Thu 9 May, 2019 08:47 pm
@livinglava,
livinglava wrote:
Who will remove congressional representatives from congress for abusing their powers?

The voters. House elections are every two years.


livinglava wrote:
Who would remove Supreme Court justices?

Congress.


livinglava wrote:
Do you think there is a point where people will defer to government, even when they legitimately assess it to be corrupt? There is always further redress to seek when people are unsatisfied with standing authorities. Ultimately the government may suppress violent uprisings by force, but that doesn't automatically mean the government is right and the uprising wrong. Some people say history is written by the victors, but of course no one can rewrite the truth, only suppress and lie about it.

House elections every two years prevents the government from becoming too unpopular with the people.


livinglava wrote:
Obviously we try to maintain faith that institutions will operate legitimately as a crucible for truth, right, and goodness. When they don't, however, the question is how to address that.

Ratifying the Congressional Apportionment Amendment would require the House to have at least one representative for every 50,000 people. That would make Congressmen much closer to the people than they are now.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Apportionment_Amendment

With the current population of the US, we would have more than 6,500 representatives in the House if this was ratified.


livinglava wrote:
Trump was elected largely because of dissent against perceived governmental corruption. Do you think that the people are becoming less suspicious of government as corrupt institutions because the media goads Trump and his 'base' as being a bunch of conspiracy-paranoia lunatics. If you don't respect the sensibilities of the people who are critical of government, how can you have democracy?

The voters are still allowed to have their say every two years.

Ratifying the Congressional Apportionment Amendment would make the House even more democratic.


livinglava wrote:
Some people criticize the Chinese government for having a repressive stance toward criticism of government, but what do you call it when people who question and criticize government in the US are demonized and rejected and otherwise ignored due to denialism on the part of anti-critical loyalists?

It sounds like you are talking about political arguments. Free speech.

People who are loyal to a given side are free to deny the claims of people who criticize their side.
livinglava
 
  0  
Reply Fri 10 May, 2019 05:58 am
@oralloy,
oralloy wrote:

livinglava wrote:
Who will remove congressional representatives from congress for abusing their powers?

The voters. House elections are every two years.

And what if the voters have the wool pulled over their eyes by the media, or if they are distracted by business/socio-economic interests that lead them to look the other way on corruption because they expect to do better financially if they do?

There is a reason judges are supposed to be independent, i.e. because if you left the job of judge up to the people, the people would be biased.

Quote:
livinglava wrote:
Who would remove Supreme Court justices?

Congress.

How is congress going to remove supreme court justices when they are appointed for life? Even if they could, how would that happen if congress is controlled by a corrupt party that plays congress people like puppets for the benefit of its collective financial underwriters?

livinglava wrote:

House elections every two years prevents the government from becoming too unpopular with the people.

Popularity isn't ultimately sufficient to produce good representatives. The people/voters have to be unbiased and the party system that controls the choices can't structurally prevent good government, as it currently does.


livinglava wrote:

Ratifying the Congressional Apportionment Amendment would require the House to have at least one representative for every 50,000 people. That would make Congressmen much closer to the people than they are now.

You are promoting popular sovereignty as the key to good government, but it's not a magic bullet. In fact, popular sovereignty is the cause of and facilitator of fascism. Hilter was elected by referendum, for example.

Democracy involves checks and balances. If those are undermined by people abusing separation of powers to create alignments against unpopular parties/people, they can be used in a fascist/authoritarian way instead of as a check against it. What the Democratic party has been seeking to do at least since Trump is to simply remove barriers to it achieving the ability to railroad its interests through without resistance from the GOP.

In order to have democracy, different parties have to work together. The Democrats try to manipulate multi-party government to railroad socialism by doing things like pushing a far left agenda and then insisting that the GOP must compromise, which would amount to the GOP foregoing their political will in order to support a less-extreme version of what the DEMs want. It's like when a salesman makes a high initial price offering so that he has room to bargain and still get as much money out of you as he wants. This is what DEMs do, but then they accuse the GOP of being uncompromising when they fail to agree to a middle ground. Then they simply reject and refuse to listen to and respect what GOP voters value.

In short, the DEMs sort of pretend to listen to those outside their party program in order to coach them into accepting it, but they never really listen to and try to understand people who don't submit to their elaborately-constructed party program. They just don't believe in an open critical public discourse of ideas. All their ideologies are decided in academic discussions and by the time it is served to the public, it has been packaged for acceptance as propaganda, not food for public discussion.
oralloy
 
  0  
Reply Fri 10 May, 2019 05:45 pm
@livinglava,
livinglava wrote:
And what if the voters have the wool pulled over their eyes by the media, or if they are distracted by business/socio-economic interests that lead them to look the other way on corruption because they expect to do better financially if they do?

Then they get the government that they vote for.


livinglava wrote:
How is congress going to remove supreme court justices when they are appointed for life?

By impeachment.


livinglava wrote:
Even if they could, how would that happen if congress is controlled by a corrupt party that plays congress people like puppets for the benefit of its collective financial underwriters?

Perhaps it wouldn't. But House elections every two years will prevent the government from becoming too intolerable to the people.


livinglava wrote:
Popularity isn't ultimately sufficient to produce good representatives. The people/voters have to be unbiased and the party system that controls the choices can't structurally prevent good government, as it currently does.

It's a limit against really terrible representatives however. People will not vote for someone who is truly unacceptable to them.

Elections may not guarantee the very best people, but they do reliably prevent the very worst.


livinglava wrote:
You are promoting popular sovereignty as the key to good government, but it's not a magic bullet. In fact, popular sovereignty is the cause of and facilitator of fascism. Hilter was elected by referendum, for example.

"Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
-- Winston Churchill
http://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1947/nov/11/parliament-bill#column_207


livinglava wrote:
Democracy involves checks and balances. If those are undermined by people abusing separation of powers to create alignments against unpopular parties/people, they can be used in a fascist/authoritarian way instead of as a check against it.

The way to prevent that is to try to be an informed voter. Join in political discussions to try to inform other voters. Do your part to strengthen democracy's protections against bad government.


livinglava wrote:
What the Democratic party has been seeking to do at least since Trump is to simply remove barriers to it achieving the ability to railroad its interests through without resistance from the GOP.

Yes, but that perpetually backfires on the Democrats to the GOP's benefit.

The Democrats' games where they blocked W's nominees for no reason resulted in Obama's Supreme Court nominee being blocked and given to Trump.


livinglava wrote:
In order to have democracy, different parties have to work together.

Not necessarily. Although bipartisanship is preferable.


livinglava wrote:
The Democrats try to manipulate multi-party government to railroad socialism by doing things like pushing a far left agenda and then insisting that the GOP must compromise, which would amount to the GOP foregoing their political will in order to support a less-extreme version of what the DEMs want. It's like when a salesman makes a high initial price offering so that he has room to bargain and still get as much money out of you as he wants. This is what DEMs do, but then they accuse the GOP of being uncompromising when they fail to agree to a middle ground. Then they simply reject and refuse to listen to and respect what GOP voters value.

Yes, but people tend to ignore this sort of silly rhetoric from the Democrats. It doesn't get them anywhere.


livinglava wrote:
In short, the DEMs sort of pretend to listen to those outside their party program in order to coach them into accepting it, but they never really listen to and try to understand people who don't submit to their elaborately-constructed party program. They just don't believe in an open critical public discourse of ideas. All their ideologies are decided in academic discussions and by the time it is served to the public, it has been packaged for acceptance as propaganda, not food for public discussion.

That's why people vote for Republicans.
livinglava
 
  0  
Reply Fri 10 May, 2019 07:58 pm
@oralloy,
oralloy wrote:

Then they get the government that they vote for.

So you call it 'democracy' when the media and vote-buyers steer the voters into submitting to their authority/manipulation instead of basing their democratic participation on independent reasoning?

Quote:

By impeachment.

So can members of congress be impeached as well then?

Quote:

Perhaps it wouldn't. But House elections every two years will prevent the government from becoming too intolerable to the people.

Look, let's say global investment groups are trying to get Trump out of the way because he is bad for business. They can buy minions in congress, who then use their terms for nothing but attacking and gaining power over the president and/or ousting him to try to get someone in who's more docile to falling in line with the cues and pressures they expect them to obey.

Look at all this nonsense where every political candidate makes their finances public. They may as well be saying, "look, world, here are my puppet strings and pain points you can pull and push to influence me." That may help them get support to get elected, but it's because they are giving away their power before they even get it. There should be a law against anyone being elected to office if they have made their financial information public, like the emoluments rule. The problem would be that people would still transmit such information in secret and receive support in exchange for doing so.


livinglava wrote:
Popularity isn't ultimately sufficient to produce good representatives. The people/voters have to be unbiased and the party system that controls the choices can't structurally prevent good government, as it currently does.

It's a limit against really terrible representatives however. People will not vote for someone who is truly unacceptable to them.[/quote]
So how was Hitler elected then?

Quote:
Elections may not guarantee the very best people, but they do reliably prevent the very worst.

and where exactly does Hitler fall on that spectrum then?

livinglava wrote:
You are promoting popular sovereignty as the key to good government, but it's not a magic bullet. In fact, popular sovereignty is the cause of and facilitator of fascism. Hilter was elected by referendum, for example.

"Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
-- Winston Churchill
http://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1947/nov/11/parliament-bill#column_207[/quote]
Democracy is used by some people to mean mob rule but it isn't or there wouldn't need to be separation of powers and checks and balances. It is about the prevention of any subgroup from dominating others against their consent, whether minority or majority. It is about governance with consent, not in spite of the dissent of a minority.

Quote:

The way to prevent that is to try to be an informed voter. Join in political discussions to try to inform other voters. Do your part to strengthen democracy's protections against bad government.

That has nothing to do with congress abusing their power to expose presidential power to external coercion by revealing Trump's financial information.


Quote:

Yes, but that perpetually backfires on the Democrats to the GOP's benefit.

The only good it does is to make the public aware of how backroom-planned tactical collectivism works, to the extent that the public in fact perceives it instead of just getting caught up in the play as it is scripted.

They are supposed to reason with the public and with others, not strategically communicate with them in tactical pursuit of planned objectives.

Quote:
livinglava wrote:
In order to have democracy, different parties have to work together.

Not necessarily. Although bipartisanship is preferable.

You shouldn't rule against dissent unless there is some reason that is too compelling to allow dissent to impede it.


Quote:

Yes, but people tend to ignore this sort of silly rhetoric from the Democrats. It doesn't get them anywhere.

It is just an example of how they avoid actually engaging in civil discourse being strategic and tactical. E.g. if they want to pursue/protect legal abortion, they will focus on late term abortion or men interfering in women's rights instead of making an actual case for consideration and discussing. This latest statement about some children being unwanted and executing them before birth or on death row was an exceptional instance where a Democrat actually put out an idea for discussion without it being a tactical statement designed to pursue a policy strategy that avoids discussion in order to just railroad it through with as many votes as possible.

They are even talking now about how they need a supermajority to avoid Trump contesting the election results. They are always skirting the actual discussion to make their case in favor of tactical pursuit of victory against an enemy that needs to be removed from obstructing whatever it is they have decided on in their backrooms.


Quote:
livinglava wrote:
In short, the DEMs sort of pretend to listen to those outside their party program in order to coach them into accepting it, but they never really listen to and try to understand people who don't submit to their elaborately-constructed party program. They just don't believe in an open critical public discourse of ideas. All their ideologies are decided in academic discussions and by the time it is served to the public, it has been packaged for acceptance as propaganda, not food for public discussion.

That's why people vote for Republicans.

Well, most Republicans aren't strong enough on what to do when liberty fails to suffice as a platform for good self-governance of the people by the people. They don't want to offend away voters by telling them doing whatever they want at the expense of others is an abuse of liberty. They pander to self-interested egotism instead of honoring liberty as a decentralized system for taking social/environmental responsibility without the government structuring for people. They just tend to whitewash whatever the people choose as being good, instead of acknowledging that many people don't put sufficient effort into self-regulating for the greater good.

The problem with criticizing Republicans, however, is that the Democratic party profits from that both politically and literally, because the moment they get power they go to work spending money instead of looking for ways to address social problems on the cheap.
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