MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
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User ID: 896
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
16d ago
I'd say the Roman Republic was destroyed by a lack of political control over the military, not by the inability of one element of the political leadership to check and balance another. The key points of failure all seem to involve a general whose troops were more loyal to him than the Republic marching on Rome before he could be fired by the civilian ruling institutions.
My informed layman's view is that the system in the Middle Republic worked because the Centuriate Assembly weighted votes in rough proportion to the military utility of the different classes of citizen in the conscripted army, so the people who elected the consuls and the people who formed the consuls army were functionally the same people. Whereas following the so-called Marian reforms you have a long-service professional army drawn from the proles who are effectively excluded from the Centuriate Assembly and don't feel obliged to respect the consuls it elects.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
16d ago
· Edited 16d ago
It wouldn't have been directly equivalent, because the spending he minted the platinum coin to pay for would have been approved by Congress.
When Congress passes a deficit budget without raising the debt ceiling to pay for it, the President is subject to mutually contradictory laws - at which point the concept of obeying the law goes out of the window. I suppose you could argue that if a loophole like the platinum coin exists, the President is legally required to use it as the alternative breaks a law (either the budget or the debt ceiling). When Congress doesn't pass a budget, the legally correct thing is clear - the executive branch should stop spending money that hasn't been appropriated.
The fundamental asymmetry here is that the debt ceiling is constitutionally pointless - it doesn't give the Congress any useful additional powers because if Congress wants the debt not to increase they can just pass a balanced budget. The requirement for annual appropriations is a core structural feature of the US Constitution.
The factual and political logic is the same in both cases - when Congress behaves in a sufficiently retarded manner, the President is going to look for a loophole. It is hard to say that Trump is doing the wrong thing by paying the troops illegally, but he is making a novel move to increase the power of the Presidency at the expense of Congress, and it is part of a pattern of behaviour of circumventing the power of the purse, not all of which was a necessary response to Congressional retardation.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
16d ago
Fair enough - I agree with you that as a matter of US domestic politics the decision to do Gulf War 2 was over-determined.
I think the message here is "If you are determined for domestic reasons to achieve all of your war aims, people will object less if you don't negotiate a ceasefire and then come back for a second bite at the cherry"
To which the obvious counter-argument is "Yes, but this is the Middle East."
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
17d ago
AFAICT among Democrats his name is still mud
I don't think this is true, except in the sense that he is a conservative Republican and therefore the enemy. He tends to score well in polls of academic historians, for example, who are 80-90% Democrats. It is (and was at the time) mud among leftists, who resent the fact that he successfully deprived their beloved USSR of the moral high ground. Most Democrats are not leftists, although for most of the last decade this hasn't been obvious because the non-leftist Democrats were afraid of the leftists calling them racist.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
17d ago
It’s difficult to imagine a scenario after all where the 1991 Gulf War is not followed by another Gulf War eventually.
It's very easy. If the US doesn't start the 2nd Gulf War, there isn't a 2nd Gulf War. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours in 2003 and his WMD programme was kayfabe to deter an Iranian invasion. The only terrorism he was sponsoring was Palestinian terrorism against Israel, which the West was and is comfortable tolerating in countries they don't have any other beefs against. Israel and Saudi Arabia both wanted Saddam gone, but by 2003 both saw Iran as the real threat, which means that the most likely outcome of a 2nd Gulf War (a Shia-dominated government inclined not to oppose Iran) is net negative for them.
There are good reasons for thinking that the world would have been better off without Saddam if he could have been removed by someone competent, but nobody had to remove him. There is no credible scenario where Saddam starts a 2nd Gulf War from his side.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
17d ago
Paradoxically president does have right to impose tariffs specifically for National Security reasons.
All three courts to consider this question and about 2/3 of the individual judges have said the opposite. SCOTUS is considering it.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
17d ago
The line I am drawing is "these tariffs were expressly authorised by Congress" vs "these tariffs were not expressly authorised by Congress". I don't think that is an artificial distinction. Nor does SCOTUS, given the existence of the Major Questions Doctrine.
I am happy to admit that the Nixon TWEA tariffs at issue in Yoshida are a corner case that you could reasonably claim as a precedent imposing tariffs based on an implicit authorisation, but both Nixon and the Appeals Court made their case that the tariffs were legal based partly on an express authorisation in another part of the statute book.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
17d ago
There is a big difference between a limited delegation of authority and a general one. With one possible exception*, the previous cases of executive tariffs were done under the authority of statutes which allowed specific tariffs to be imposed for specific reasons (such as antidumping), not under broad emergency powers.
* Nixon used a predecessor statue to IEEPA to raise tariffs in 1971, which was ruled lawful on appeal, but Proclamation 4074 didn't raise tariffs above the level set by Congress, it just suspended various tariff-reducing executive orders authorised by other statutes. Nixon didn't claim, and the Court for Customs and Patent Appeals explicitly declined to rule on, the idea that the President could use IEEPA to charge tariffs which Congress never contemplated, as Trump is doing.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
17d ago
I don't think Congress intended to delegate the power to raise tariffs on anyone, at any time, for any reason (including, for example, to punish a foreign politician for telling the truth about Ronald Reagan), which is the power that Donald Trump is claiming. (Trump's lawyers argue that both the President's determination that an emergency exists and the President's decision of who to tariff in response to the emergency are unreviewable by the courts, and can only be overturned by Congress with veto-proof majorities).
If Congress has wordcelled themselves into delegating a broad non-reviewable taxing power to the President, this doesn't change the fact that the Trump tariffs are still an unprecedented usurpation of the traditional taxing authority of the Congress, just one that is technically legal, in the same way that it is technically legal for the President to sell pardons under Trump vs United States. And INS vs Chadha (which invalidated the clause in IEEPA allowing Congress to cancel an emergency declaration by simple majorities) would turn out to have been a Dredd Scott tier mistake by SCOTUS.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
17d ago
I don't think Congress rubberstamped Obamacare. There was a lot of negotiation between the White House, Pelosi's House leadership team, and the marginal senators who would be needed to get the thing through the Senate. The version of Obamacare that was rushed through without backbench House members having time to agree it was the result of that negotiation - it wasn't the administration's original draft.
That said, your basic point about the imperial Presidency stands. The non-US political science literature sees it as an inherent flaw of presidential democracy with strong political parties (and as something which has happened much faster in every presidential democracy, which isn't the US, usually ending in an autogolpe). In the here and now, the Trump budget shenanigans is a major escalation, and a particularly significant one because the budget is the main tool that a non-veto-proof Congressional majority has against a recalcitrant President.
I expect any attempt to discuss how bad the situation is is going to run into the ultimate scissor around the 2020 election and what it means for assessments of Trump's good intentions. "A president with a record of libertarian activism who stans Milei and poasts about the need to route around feckless Dems and Rinos is trying to partially usurp Congress's power of the purse in order to cut wasteful spending" is consistent with the long bipartisan history of drift towards an imperial presidency, including the general principle that each step on that road feels like a good idea at the time. "A president with a record of populist authoritarian activism who stans Putin, Orban and Bukele and poasts about his plans to attempt an autogolpe is trying to partially usurp Congress's power of the purse in order to defund his political opponents" stinks of burning Reichstag.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
17d ago
I don't think we disagree. In the instant case the point is that if "imposing 3 trillion dollars in tariffs" is a major question and the MQD applies to the interpretation of IEEPA, then the power to "regulate trade" should not be interpreted as including the power to impose tariffs, whereas under ordinary canons of statutory interpretation it is a close call.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
17d ago
Reagan liked lower taxes. So does Trump.
Reagan liked cutting rates (and in particular top rates which were far too high at the time) while closing loopholes and simplifying the tax code. Trump likes opening new loopholes and making the tax code more complex.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
17d ago
"Clinton and Gingrich actually did more to roll back the welfare state and control spending in general" is very much a valid criticism of Reagan. Empirically, the US is only fiscally responsible when there is a Democratic President and a Republican deficit hawk leads at least one house of Congress.
"Starve the beast" is a failed Reagan policy - it turns out that if you cut taxes while promising to protect popular spending, you don't force your political opponents to cut spending when they get in, you just blow out the deficit. The reason why Reagan still has a good reputation on tax is that most of what he did to the tax code was fiscally neutral simplification (lower rates, fewer loopholes).
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
17d ago
Biden's pullout was also executing a deal made by the 1st Trump administration which the Deep State were trying to manipulate Biden into ratting out of.
I tease "Trump makes us stronk" MAGA supporters about the fact that Trump surrendered to the Taliban, but under the circumstances it was clearly the right call for Trump to surrender and clearly the right call for Biden to implement the surrender agreement. The war had ceased to be winnable long ago.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
17d ago
Doug Ford has a shot at future CPC leadership, and could be a future PM candidate against Carney
Given the way Canadian politics works, this is extremely unlikely. National and provincial political parties are separate institutions and National and provincial politics are effectively separate career tracks.
That Ford has no brief to help Carney is nevertheless a valid point.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
17d ago
Doug Ford is a conservative who leads the main right-wing party in the Ontario provincial Parliament, so I would very surprised if he wasn't a Reagan fan.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
17d ago
Last time Zelensky behaved much better, he even brought suit.
What exactly is the US national interest in a foreign leader's dress sense? To people who don't have Trump Hagiography Syndrome, there seems to be a pattern where Trump deploys tough negotiation tactics most successfully where the goal is to get people to flatter him personally, not to advance US national interests.
He was able to negotiate peace between India and Pakistan,
Lolwut
he managed peace between Israel and Hamas,
A ceasefire, not peace. There have been lots of those. Trump's one lasted less time than most.
he managed peace between Armenia–Azerbaijan,
The complete military defeat of Armenia by Azerbaijan (backed by Turkey) predates Trump's second inauguration. He turned up to take credit for the surrender negotiations.
he even turned Modi and Xi Jinping against Putin with his latest oil embargo.
Has he? The oil markets haven't moved.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
17d ago
The point is that President Obama didn't create the new tax, Congress did.
There is an arguable case that Congress exceeded its authority under article 1 by regulating the absence of intrastate commerce, thereby usurping authority that properly belongs to the states.
There is a completely unarguable case that if Obama had enacted Obamacare by executive order, he would have been exceeding his article 2 authority, thereby usurping authority that properly belongs to Congress.
Trump imposing tariffs is arguably a case in the second category - the Trump tariffs are squarely within the article 1 authority of Congress, and uncontroversially illegal unless Trump is working within authority delegated by Congress. The tariff litigation has two strands:
- a statutory interpretation issue about whether Congress has delegated sufficiently broad powers to Trump that he can do this legally (the Major Questions Doctrine is a canon of statutory interpretation which says that statutes that delegate major questions to the executive should be interpreted narrowly)
- a constitutional question about whether Congress can constitutionally delegate broad authority to raise taxes.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
18d ago
The government is not a charity, and empirically people don't donate to the government for altruistic reasons. So if the government is being funded by "voluntary" "donations" then the way to bet is that either the donations are not really voluntary and the constitutional requirements for raising taxes have been circumvented (as with the Nvidia and AMD deals) or the voluntary payments are not really donations and something has been sold non-transparently, probably at a loss.
Paying the troops with voluntary donations is a special case of badness - the fact that the Executive needs to go to Congress (and to do so regularly - the Constitution specifically prohibits long-term appropriations for the army) to pay the troops was intended as a key check on Executive power.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
18d ago
That substack is a bad take on it - the best version of the theory I have seen is spread across multiple posts on lawfaremedia.org. But the underlying story is absolutely serious, and as far as I can see it is true. The three-bullet version of the story is
- Trump is trying to replace the Congress-driven budget process established by the Constitution with a White House-driven budget process.
- Johnson is helping him, and Senate Republicans are not trying to stop him
- So far he is succeeding
The slightly longer version is:
- Trump has, on numerous occasions, refused to spend money appropriated by Congress. Congressional Republicans have not complained. As well as using his partisan majorities in both houses of Congress to pass recissions under the Impoundment Control Act (which can't be filibustered), Trump has used a dubiously-legal pocket recission to cut spending without a Congressional vote. SCOTUS has helped this along by setting up procedural barriers to anyone suing over this.
- Despite the Republican trifecta, Congress did not pass a budget in FY 2025, and does not appear to be trying to pass a budget in FY 2026. Notably, Johnson has shut the House down rather than trying to make progress on any of the outstanding appropriations bills.
- Rather than moving a mini-CR to pay the troops (Enough Democrats have said they support this that it would pass both houses of Congress), Trump has paid the troops with a combination of private donations and funds illegally transferred from the military R&D budget. The White House ballroom is another example of using private donations to pay for what should be Congressionally-approved government spending.
- On the revenue side, Trump has raised a helluvalot of revenue with dubiously-legal tariffs. He also did a deal with Nvidia and AMD where they pay what is in effect a 15% export tax in exchange for Trump waiving controls on advanced chip exports to China. Export taxes are unconstitutional. There has been no attempt to incorporate any of this revenue into a budget passed by Congress.
- An obvious combination of this type of "deal" and funding specific programs with private donations is to set up a parallel budget where money is raised and spent outside the official Congressional budget process, all backed by more or less soft threats of government coercion. Trump hasn't done this yet, but it is a logical continuation of things he has done.
- Trump has also claimed in social media posts that he can spend the tariff revenue without Congressional approval.
The claim that Trump and Johnson are trying to change the US budget process to one where (at least as regards discretionary spending - the only changes to entitlement spending have been done in regular order through the OBBBA) Congress does not meaningfully exercise the power of the purse seems to me to be straightforwardly true.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
18d ago
There was a prominent local lawyer for years in my town who would always accept the Democratic nomination for a position if the party couldn't dig up another candidate, he never won and my great aunt used to joke that "the poor guy couldn't get elected dog catcher," but he was always willing to be on the ballot, that's probably what a replacement level candidate looks like.
At the bottom end, that seems right. Further up the tree, a replacement level candidate is a good performer at the level below in the same way that a replacement level Major League Baseball player is a star in AAA ball. Given that each party only has 20-30 governors at a time and some of them will be too old, focused on running for re-election as governor, or not interested, I would say an average governor is a replacement-level Presidential candidate, and an average medium or large city mayor is a replacement-level gubernatorial candidate.
She was a way above average candidate in terms of experience, in terms of her ability to rally institutional support and scare off opponents, etc.
True, but she was sub-replacement in terms of her ability to win votes from normal people, which is what wins elections. Hilary's election history looks like: 2000 NY Senate Primary - Party establishment persuades all other serious candidates to pull out. 2000 NY Senate General - 55-43 against a literal replacement-level Republican candidate (Lazio was drafted last-minute after Giuliani was forced out due to a combination of a cancer scare and a bimbo eruption). Gore won NY 60-35 2006 NY Senate Primary - No serious opponent 2006 NY Senate General - 67-31 against a no-name Republican. Spitzer won his gubernatorial race 69-29. 2008 Presidential Primary - Lost to Obama 2016 Presidential Primary - Won 55-43 against the comic relief candidate in what was supposed to be a 2000-style uncontested election. 2016 Presidential General - Lost to Trump
Both the 2008 primary defeat and the 2016 loss to Trump involved unforced errors of the "trying to win something other than the election" variety. Hilary's strategy in 2008 was based around being annointed winner by the media rather than having more delegates at the convention - in particular this meant she didn't bother campaigning in states she couldn't win, allowing Obama to run up the score. In 2016 she was campaigning in California and not the swing states - it isn't clear to me if this is because she was running up the popular vote margin because she thought it would somehow make her inevitable victory more legitimate, or if it is that she was focused on fundraising long after it no longer made sense.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
18d ago
"Level" here refers to the quality or ability level of the candidate. The idea comes from sports analytics - "replacement level" is the level of the player you would be able to recruit relatively quickly to fill a gap in the roster created by e.g. an unexpected injury. What this means in practice varies depending on how leagues are structured, but for example if you are an English Premier League club then "replacement level" is going to be the level of a good Championship player. "Value over replacement" is the holy grail of metrics - how many extra points/games do you win if you have this guy on the team instead of a replacement level player. And a player with negative value over replacement should be fired and replaced with a replacement level alternative, even if you aren't in a position to recruit a good alternative.
I am claiming that a bunch of Democratic establishment candidates, in particular including Hilary Clinton for President in 2016 and Cuomo for NYC Mayor in 2025 are negative value over replacement.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
19d ago
Also the failure to find a replacement level candidate to run against him. The best the anti-Mamdani forces could come up with were a granny-murdering sexual-harassing unpopular ex-Governor, a paid Turkish agent, and a Republican. None of them are people you run if you actually want to win a NYC mayoral election.
This was one of the two main reasons why I (foolishly) supported the war at the time. The other was as a prerequisite to ending the mutually abusive relationship between the US (and allies) and Saudi Arabia that was Osama Bin Laden's primary casus belli.
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