BBO Discussion Forums: Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped? - BBO Discussion Forums

This is something that a Congressional oversight committee needs to investigate since it is obvious to all that the White House will do nothing.

This just in. Paul Manafort, campaign manager for Individual-1, has been sentenced to 7 1/2 years in prison. At the same time, the state of New York has also indicted him on numerous state charges - which is indeed interesting, as it gives the appearance that the office of the special counsel and the New York state AG are working in unison to quash any pardon attempts (the president cannot pardon state crimes).

Edit: NYT

...

Let's see, Individual-1 populism = $1.5 trillion tax cut for the wealthy and an $845 billion cut to health care for the average person. Oh, I get it - we're all supposed to become Christian Scientists: problem solved!

President Donald Trump’s 2020 budget breaks one of his biggest campaign promises to voters: that he would leave Medicaid, Social Security, and Medicare untouched.

“I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid,” Trump told the Daily Signal, a conservative publication affiliated with the Heritage Foundation, in 2015.

In isolation, the Medicaid budget cuts amount to $1.5 trillion over 10 years, but looked at in the context of the new block grant as well the work requirements and ACA cuts, the cuts round out to about $777 billion — which could leave millions more uninsured.

The budget also continues an attack on Social Security, including to a program that gives assistance to those who have disabilities that prevent them from being in the workforce. In all, the cuts to Social Security amount to $25 billion over the next 10 years, cutting roughly $10 billion from the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program

Am I the only one surprised that Trump is not associated with the college admissions bribery scheme? Or is it just a matter of time before it comes to light (like with Robert Kraft)?

I see Trump decided to ground the 737 MAX a few hours ago.

Basically the last country in the world to ground 737 Max planes. Many countries even disallowed flyovers over their airspace, in addition to landings and takeoffs.

Next week, I predict Dennison will be bragging how he was the first one in the world to react to the crashes of those planes to protect the American people.

Speaking to reporters after a two-hour meeting with Whitaker, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) presented Whitaker’s closed-door comments as a contradiction of his public testimony from February, during which Whitaker said Trump never expressed his dissatisfaction with Cohen for pleading guilty to various financial crimes and lying to Congress. When asked at that hearing whether he had ever discussed the Cohen case with Trump, Whitaker refused to answer the question.

“Unlike in the hearing room, Mr. Whitaker did not deny that the president called him to discuss the Michael Cohen case and personnel decisions in the Southern District,” Nadler said, referring to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, which brought the case against Cohen.

Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
· Nov 7, 2018
We are pleased to announce that Matthew G. Whitaker, Chief of Staff to Attorney General Jeff Sessions at the Department of Justice, will become our new Acting Attorney General of the United States. He will serve our Country well....

kenberg, re: reparations

I've never put much thought into reparations in this context. I suspect I won't put much more additional thought into it now that it's on my radar, unless media starts ramming it down our throats and I need to do my own research. It's a contributing factor to conflict, it is not the root cause. I understand both sides of the argument. I find myself agreeing with some points on both sides. It's a delicate situation.

Rather than calling it reparation, what if we called it investment in our collective future? Education reform, infrastructure improvement, equal rights? Are you still opposed to paying for it if they slap a different label on it? Before we start talking about reparations, why don't we talk about giving all Americans a fair roll of the dice? Let's talk about root cause.

I'll argue that your generation is a major contributor to the root cause, for a lot of reasons.

In order to give you our best sense of this week’s Brexit chaos and where it’s headed, we want to first tell you about an absolutely whackadoo election this week in little Massachusetts town called Fall River.

We promise this will make sense.

Fall River’s saga began in October, when its 26-year-old mayor, Jasiel Correia, was arrested on charges of defrauding investors and falsifying tax returns. He had raised funding to develop a marketing app called SnoOwl but, according to prosecutors, instead spent $230,000 of investors’ money on jewelry, clothes, a Mercedes and his successful mayoral campaign.

Mr. Correia contested the charges and refused to step down. So some citizens of Fall River got enough signatures to force a recall election, which was held on Tuesday.

Mr. Correia received an absolute walloping in the recall election. About 61 percent voted to remove him from office. Only 4,911 people, or 38 percent of turnout, voted to keep him in office. It was a clear popular mandate.

But there was a twist in the results. The ballot had two questions: one on whether to recall Mr. Correia and another on whom to replace him with. Five people ran to fill the mayor’s seat — but Mr. Correia was one of them.

It might seem like the height of youthful hubris that a 20-something mayor under federal indictment would run for re-election amid a recall vote.

It turned out that, whether he knew it or not, Mr. Correia was onto something. He received 4,808 votes in the mayoral race, almost the exact same number he’d gotten in the recall. But the other four candidates split the remaining vote. His 38 percent support was enough to put him in first.

Yes, that’s right: The same election that removed Mr. Correia by a nearly two-to-one margin also returned him to office.
Democracy — there’s no easy way to say this — can be a ridiculous system sometimes.

Which brings us back to Brexit.

Part of what’s confounding Britain’s many votes this week over how or when to leave the European Union is that, as in Fall River, British governance is shaped by two different elections that produced two different results.

The first of those elections, the 2016 referendum on whether to leave the European Union, recorded a slight majority of voters choosing to leave and a slight minority choosing to stay.

The second, a general election held in 2017, muddied that mandate and deepened divisions over what sort of Brexit to have.

The ruling Conservative party lost some seats, which undercut perceptions that the party had a mandate to follow the vision of its leader, Prime Minister Theresa May. The opposition Labour party gained seats, but did not win a majority and did not have a clear Brexit position.

So, on the one hand, British lawmakers believe that, because of the 2016 vote, they have a mandate to make Brexit happen. But the 2017 vote left the Conservatives too weak and disunited to actually do that because there is no clear mandate for a specific plan or for following or rejecting the prime minister’s leadership.

That muddle is coming through in this week’s series of Parliamentary votes.

Just as British voters did not express a clear majority for any specific vision in the 2017 general election, British lawmakers cannot form a clear majority for any specific plan. Mrs. May’s plan failed by a triple-digit margin when it was put to a vote. A “no-deal” Brexit, favored by hard-liners, is also expected to fail, as of the time of this writing. And there is not enough of a majority to push through other options, like a second referendum or simply revoking Brexit.

Capturing public sentiment and converting it into governance is a messy, imperfect science. The way that you design an election can shape the outcome just as much as the actual choices made by voters, and sometimes more.

From How a Bizarre Massachusetts Election Explains the Brexit Chaos by Max Fisher and Amanda Taub at NYT:

Well, this latest college admissions bribery scandal is probably new and unrelated to anything that happened 50+ years ago (or 20+ years ago in the case of children Ivanka and Dumb and Dumber). But, make no mistake. Things like this have been going on ever since there were more applicants for a school than openings.

Dennison had such mediocre grades and test scores that he had Michael Cohen threaten to sue anybody with access to them to prevent them from leaking. How did he get into an Ivy league college with mediocre or even below average grades and test scores? Hmmm, Daddy Fred Trump paid Dennison the equivalent of a million dollars a year as a kid. A few million well placed donation dollars would certainly be enough to get even a dotard into a distinguished University.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were donations involved in getting DT into college.

But there's a big difference between giving preferential treatment to large donors and legacies, and committing fraud and bribery. Maybe the former isn't fair, but at least it's done in the open. A donation benefits all students and faculty, it doesn't go into an individual's bank account.

When I mentioned Trump's possible involvement, I didn't wasn't thinking about getting him or his children into colleges, I meant he might be on the receiving end of the current scam, or maybe involved in hooking celebrities up with the scammer, etc. Similar to his relationship to the massage parlor where Robert Kraft was getting sex.

Yet, an exhaustive search by The Daily Pennsylvanian found that Trump may have cumulatively donated at least $1,480,500 to Penn, based on University reports, his foundation’s tax filings and other sources.

The suspect decided to launch the attack, he said, “to show the invaders that our lands will never be their lands, our homelands are our own and that, as long as a white man still lives, they will NEVER conquer our lands.”

But the president has played a part in stoking xenophobia, including by framing illegal immigration as an “invasion,” enforcing a travel ban on several Muslim-majority countries and referring to some undocumented immigrants as “animals.”

President Donald Trump this week issued a thinly veiled threat of violence against his opponents, saying that members of the police, military and biker gangs could “play it tough” if they “reach a certain point.”

It was a disturbing remark, but even more disturbing is the fact that it’s part of a long history of Trump encouraging his supporters to engage in violence. Largely unchecked by his party’s leadership, Trump’s rhetoric has become normalized despite its real-world ramifications.

According to a pool report, one reporter asked the president if he saw a rise in white nationalism around the world.

“I don’t really,” Trump responded. “I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems, I guess. If you look what happened in New Zealand, perhaps that’s the case. I don’t know enough about it yet. … But it’s certainly a terrible thing.”