AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
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User ID: 2498
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
4mo ago
Ok, so? If we're expanding it to impeachment probes that go nowhere and impeachments of non-presidents, then the historical examples abound. The longest gap between impeachments of Federal officials was 50 years between Halstead Ritter in 1936 and Harry Claiborne in 1986. Fifteen Presidents have faced impeachment efforts with varying degrees of failure, including Jefferson, Tyler, Hoover, Cleveland, Reagan, and Grant. I still fail to see the point.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
4mo ago
Pretty much. I also reckon that's the main reason why America has such a strong two party system - individual politicians can just take whatever policy view they want and vote how they want and as long as they have local support the party can't do anything about it. Whereas our stricter party control leads to more discontent with the rigid party line and consequently more people splitting off to start their own parties and more space for independents and minor parties to exploit gaps left by the one-size-fits-all approach of the major parties.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
4mo ago
There's a couple of factors here. One is that Labor is much more disciplined about hashing out their policy differences behind closed doors and everyone singing from the same songsheet in public while the Liberals are more free about having their policy arguments in full view. E.g. the infamous interview where Bill Shorten supported Julia Gillard's position without knowing what it was. I assure you that policy differences are just as stark in the Labor caucus as in the Liberal partyroom, you just don't hear about it on the news as much. For example there's hardcore anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage social conservatives on the Labor benches - but you'd never know that from the media coverage.
Another is that factional divisions are often more about building personal fiefdoms and less about actual policy. You still have to sign up to a specific faction, and you vote in lockstep with your faction in internal deliberations, and you have to be loyal to that faction... but there's a certain amount of flexibility about what you can actually think.
And a final consideration is that Labor tends to give their leaders more license to take public positions for strategic reasons (currently at least). For example while Albanese is to the left of Shorten, he's also more ruthless about publicly moderating for electoral advantage. Whereas a Liberal who tries that tends to run into serious and usually public pressure from the backbench.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
4mo ago
Which donors? AIJAC is the main pro-Israeli lobby group and I haven't been able to find any record of political donations from them.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
4mo ago
Labor in theory has factions as well - there's a Labor Left and Labor Right - but Labor's factions are less well-defined and tend to fight each other less as well.
This is kind of the opposite of the truth. Labor's factions are much more defined and organised. For example, they have a longstanding rule that the deputy leader has to come from the opposite faction to the leader (e.g. Albanese is from the Left, Marles is from the Right). Cabinet positions are allocated by quota among the factions. Specific seats and senate ticket positions are allocated to specific factions. Their infighting has often been extremely bitter.
Conversely, while the Liberals have had some nasty factional warfare over the last few decades (though mostly calmed down at the moment), their factions are more ephemeral and fluid. E.g. it used to be just the wets and the dries, but then Scott Morrison effectively created a three faction system, with his own centre-right group operating distinctly from the Turnbull moderates and the Abbott conservatives.
It's a little out of date but this article provides a great explainer of the Labor factions.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
4mo ago
It's actually significantly more common in British politics (though still much less common than in America). For example, in the UK 56 Labour MPs broke ranks with the party over the Gaza issue, as opposed to just one here.
In neither system can the party instantly replace you. They can kick you out of the party or deny you pre-selection though, and that functionally means you will not be re-elected in most cases.
Australian Labor Party discipline is very, very tight. Payman is only the 20th Labor MP to ever cross the floor. I think the last time it happened was back in the 90s.
The Conservative side of politics is less extreme. You won't be kicked out of the party and you probably won't be denied preselection. But you have to give up any ministry positions and generally it hurts your political career. So a few opinionated people decide it's worth it, for example Bridget Archer has crossed the floor dozens of times. But overall it's still pretty rare, and the vast majority of Liberal MPs have never crossed the floor.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
4mo ago
Ok.
The first Presidential impeachment was of Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, in 1868. There was no subsequent retaliatory impeachment of his Republican successor, Ulysses S Grant.
The second Presidential impeachment was of Bill Clinton, a Democrat, in 1998. There was no subsequent retaliatory impeachment of his Republican successor, George W Bush.
The third and fourth Presidential impeachments were of Donald Trump, a Republican, in 2019 and 2021. There has so far been no subsequent retaliatory impeachment of his Democratic successor Joe Biden, and it does not appear that there will be.
What's your point again?
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
4mo ago
There's a limit to how many people you can brand as enemies of the Republic.
Indeed there is. Robespierre found that limit. Unfortunately, it's much higher than zero.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
4mo ago
I'm of the view that Payman will go independent. There's 0 chance she gets given a winnable spot on the Senate ticket after her antics, she's frozen out of the caucus and has no ability to influence the government internally, there's just no benefit from her perspective for her to stay within the Labor fold.
Most likely she forms her own party to try to get re-elected and fails miserably, following a long tradition of party defectors who have done just that. As you say, there's not enough Muslims in Australia to sustain an Islamic party, and there will be precious little crossover appeal to non-muslims. But she still gets 4 more years as a senator, and Senate numbers are always finely balanced. As an independent it's likely she would get to be a pivotal vote in some circumstances, and potentially be able to use that leverage to extract some sort of concessions on issues she cares about.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
4mo ago
The typical rule in Australian politics is that oppositions don't win elections, governments lose them. The most successful oppositions tend to employ a small target strategy - not putting out any big promises or agendas for the government to attack, and simply taking pot shots at the government for anything that goes wrong. The current Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, was an exemplar of this sort of strategy and he succeeded in dethroning a three-term Liberal government with it.
The current Opposition Leader, Peter Dutton, has decided to hell with that. Very unusually, he has proposed a big change in policy direction that is going to be one of the main issues that defines next year's election. He wants to go nuclear.
Australia does not have a nuclear industry (despite having more than a quarter of the world's uranium). In fact, nuclear power is explicitly illegal, at both the federal level and in multiple states. Victoria and Queensland (both ruled by Labor governments) have already ruled out any change in their laws or allowing nuclear plants to be built in their jurisdictions. Dutton is undeterred. He argues they will change their tune if he wins a mandate from the electorate for his policy.
The Albanese government meanwhile has made a big deal of the transition to renewable energy and acting on climate change. It has challenged Dutton to name the locations of his proposed nuclear plants (which he has now done) with the obvious intention of trying to stir up local resistance. It's running the argument that nuclear won't be built quickly enough to meet our climate commitments under the Paris Agreement, and that nuclear will be more expensive than renewables. Most of the media has joined in the chorus of insisting that nuclear just doesn't make sense and that relying on wind and solar is much more sensible.
Much remains to be seen about how this debate develops. But Dutton in my estimation is an very pragmatic politician with a good sense of the public mood. He's certainly a conservative, but not someone who's about to let ideology get in the way of political advantage. It seems that he's judged that this is a good fight to have, and I suspect he's right.
I don't know what the politics of nuclear were like back in the 70s but today most people simply don't have a strong opinion on it. What they do have a strong opinion about is energy prices, and those have been going up and up. And while there's an endless stream of commenters ready and willing to assert that the path to cheaper prices is more renewables, I think Dutton is correct that he can win this argument.
Firstly, the actual experience of Australians has been that prices have gotten more and more expensive as more and more wind and solar has been deployed. It's easy to write a headline saying "Power prices went negative today" during a sunny period, but most people are very aware that they are paying more overall.
Secondly, the uptake of rooftop solar has been very high. Something like a third of houses have solar panels already, and this has led to widespread understanding of the intermittency of renewable energy. People understand that it's great when it works... but when it doesn't and they have to buy power from the grid, it's extremely expensive.
And there's a third underrated and underreported aspect to this debate. Dutton's plan is for these nuclear power stations to be government built and owned, while the Albanese government is relying on private investment for its renewable energy buildout. This is kind of an inversion of the traditional stance of the two parties involved, with the Liberals having led the charge in privatising our existing energy system. But I've encountered a not-insubstantial number of people who think that privatisation was a big mistake and really wish we had a nationalised energy system again. I've even heard doctrinaire libertarians say it.
I think Dutton expertly read the public mood on the Voice referendum, correctly judging where people would end up as the issue became more salient. And my feeling is he's done the same here, and is guiding the debate in a direction that will be rewarding for him. It's rare for first term governments to lose, we'll see if this play is able to create an exception.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
4mo ago
it is true that if the Presidency was not an "office" he would not have been disqualified from running for President, but nobody was worried about that;
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
4mo ago
Yep. He enacted the crazy scheme with the intention to conceal the fact that he had paid her off.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
4mo ago
As it so happens, such a case exists! Lisa Wilson-Foley hired John Rowland as a campaign advisor in her congressional race, but because she wanted to hide the fact she had done so (due to Rowland's own scandals) she disguised it by having him be employed by her husband's business. So the couple paid him with their own money, but because they tried to disguise it as not being a campaign expenditure, they broke the law.
Now, I grant that hiring a political advisor is a much more central example of a campaign expense than paying for a NDA. But the Lisa-Foley case demonstrates that it is not unprecedented to charge a politician for spending their own money on their own election, and the Edwards case demonstrates that it is not unprecedented to prosecute a NDA payment as a campaign expense. So neither aspect constitutes a novel legal theory.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
4mo ago
Unless I'm misunderstanding, he practices civil law. So no prosecutors, just plaintiffs.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
4mo ago
Regardless of whether the legal theory is correct, the fact that it has previously been prosecuted demonstrates that it is not novel.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
4mo ago
Correct, the prosecution was unsuccessful. Edwards argued that the payoff was made to hide his affair from his wife and not to influence the election, and presumably at least some of the jury thought that was plausible.
But recognise that this is a case of Edwards successfully convincing (some members of) the jury that the legal theory did not apply to him. it's still a case where the same legal theory was prosecuted in the past.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
4mo ago
To point 2, that is correct. However, Trump did not pay off Daniels himself. Cohen did. The fact that he later reimbursed Cohen does not change the fact that Cohen made the payment on behalf of Trump, and that making a payment on behalf of a candidate is counted as a contribution to the candidate. There's no time travel involved, Cohen committed the initial crime during the election campaign. Trump later committed further crimes trying to hide the fact that he was paying back Cohen for committing that crime.
It's true that if Trump paid Daniels himself with no intermediary and reported the payoff as a campaign expense, there would have been no violation of campaign finance law.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
4mo ago
Trump's campaign chair was literally convicted of acting on behalf of a foreign government which he received millions of dollars from. Granted, it was the Putin flunky Yanokovych rather than Putin himself, but still.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
4mo ago
That's a factual difference, but it doesn't change the legal theory. Both cases hung on the idea that paying off the woman you cheated with is a campaign expenditure. If you concede that point, then the question of whether you get someone else to do it and then pay them back, or get someone else to give you money to do it, or get someone else to do it while the money never passes through your hands at all, is all pretty immaterial. All of those actions violate campaign finance law in some way, if and only if the payoff counts as a campaign expenditure.
I don't believe this is correct. The donors supplying the hush money in the Edwards case gave the money for the specific purpose of paying off his mistress. The money only counts as campaign funds if you embrace the legal theory used in the Trump case - that paying for an NDA to shut up the woman you cheated on your wife with is an election expense.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
4mo ago
I think it is eminently fair that those who have the power to make the law be expected to obey the law. This is even more true when the law is difficult to follow.
Trump imprisoned people for years for mishandling classified documents. Why should he be held to any lower a standard?
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
4mo ago
The idea that trump reimbursing his lawyer for paying stormy Daniels to sign an NDA constitutes a misreported campaign expense is, however, totally a novel legal theory.
No it's not. The John Edwards case ran on the exact same theory.
Notably, the Republican Party decided not to do this. Like, there weren’t competing slates of electors. Mike Pence had openly said he wouldn’t go along with that plan.
Parts of the party refused to go along with that plan, sure. And they mostly got purged for disloyalty to the guy who spearheaded it.
What are the new legal theories embraced by the 6-3 majority on scotus? Name them.
Off the top of my head, the Major Questions Doctrine is one obvious example of a new legal theory adopted by SCOTUS. It's also highly likely they will be soon adopting a new legal theory in the area of administrative law, abandoning the current Chevron Deference legal theory. Again, I have 0 problem with them doing that, sometimes existing precedent is plain wrong and generally speaking I think the current court has made pretty good rulings.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
4mo ago
LOL. Sure, I might have found this troublesome in 2016. By 2020, it was clear Trump wasn't going to Lock Her Up. Now, with both the Justice Department AND state prosecutors being used as weapons against Trump, I'm actively hoping he does so. The only way back from this involves having it thrown back at its instigators. And if we don't step back, "one term in office and one term in jail" is more tolerable if it applies to both Republicans and Democrats rather than just Republicans.
My reasoning is somewhat different, but I'm with you here. It's a very good thing for politicians to face motivated legal scrutiny and while I have many misgivings about a second Trump term, vigorous politically motivated prosecutions are a clear positive. It is healthy for a society when their elected officials need to take care not to break the law.
AshLael
Just here to farm downvotes
4mo ago
Where are the republicans inventing new legal theories to prosecute their political opponents?
I don't think this is an accurate description of any of the Trump prosecutions. It mainly gets levelled at the falsification of business records case, on the theory that Bragg used a federal crime as the enhancer to kick it up to a first degree charge. But this isn't accurate. He used a state crime - New York Election Law Section 17-152. That charge itself refers to influencing an election by "unlawful means", and the unlawful means referred to in this context are violations of Federal election finance law, but my understanding is that it's well established by precedent that you can use federal crimes in relation to this statute. As always IANAL and I might be wrong. But as far as I can tell, although it's a bit of a convoluted approach to take, it's also one that specifically avoids using laws in unprecedented ways.
Republicans however certainly have invented new legal theories. They invented a new legal theory to overturn the 2020 election using competing slates of electors and having Pence refuse to certify disputed results. They invented a new theory to defend Trump by claiming Presidents have absolute immunity to criminal prosecution.
And, look, there's nothing wrong with inventing a new legal theory. You try it out, you test it in court, you see if it flies. And I think it's kind of natural for it to be the Republicans who are testing new ground here - the courts have become increasingly right wing (especially SCOTUS), and those new court majorities have different ideas about how laws should be interpreted. But if you're going to take the position that advocating novel legal theories for political purposes is some kind of no-no, then you really ought to be pointing the finger in the other direction.
Indeed. I rather suspect that high levels of foreign interest in the conflict is why it continues to be unresolved. Other countries keep intervening politically to "promote peace", but that actually leads to the underlying issues never actually being sorted out.
The west stayed uninvolved in Rwanda, and while that was a horrible and protracted conflict with a shocking death toll, in the end Kagame and the Tutsis won, and it came to an end. Sometimes one side just needs to definitively win and one side needs to definitively lose for the fighting to stop.
The current situation in Sudan is awful, much worse than what is happening in Gaza. But I'm much more optimistic about that conflict being over ten years in the future than I am about Israel/Palestine.
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