[POLITICS] If Trump is Innocent, he should prove it

[tstorm823]

Edit: consolidated double post

 

[Sonmi]

So what you know is that Trump wanted to (but didn't) do things that could have (but probably wouldn't) obstruct an ongoing investigation, and your own assumption that he did those things to try and stop said investigation despite his very public cooperation with said investigation. What am I missing here?

The act of attempting to obstruct is still a crime, again, just because he didn't succeed in completely obstructing the investigation doesn't mean he's innocent. You're also acting as if every one of his attempts failed at slowing down the investigative process, which is untrue, seeing as successfully fired James Comey with the express intent to sabotage the investigation.

 

[Saelune]

So what you know is that Trump wanted to (but didn't) do things that could have (but probably wouldn't) obstruct an ongoing investigation, and your own assumption that he did those things to try and stop said investigation despite his very public cooperation with said investigation. What am I missing here?

Trump is objectively not co-operating with the investigation. He has publicly made it very clear he is doing everything he can to hamper it.

If you're going to defend Trump, don't lie to do it.

 

[Asita]

Your patience can grow as thin as it wants, you're still not understanding. The investigation was not obstructed. You have no evidence that the president's actions obstructed Justice. You have no evidence that he intended to obstruct Justice. If people around him had cooperated with his wishes, it still likely wouldn't be obstruction of justice.

Take for example the recusal of Jeff Sessions. Trump did not want him recused. Legally, it would have been wrong for him not to recuse himself. He did not deliver Trump's desires for this reason. Is Trump in the wrong here? Yes. Now imagine a world where Jeff Sessions didn't recuse himself. Does that make the investigation obstructed? Uh, no. No it doesn't. Say they did fire Mueller, does that make the investigation dead? Still no. If people had delivered Donald Trump his every wish (there would be some procedural mistakes absolutely) would that have prevented the investigation into Russia interference and possible collusion from collecting the same evidence and reaching the same outcome? Probably not. Maybe, but probably not.

So what you know is that Trump wanted to (but didn't) do things that could have (but probably wouldn't) obstruct an ongoing investigation, and your own assumption that he did those things to try and stop said investigation despite his very public cooperation with said investigation. What am I missing here?

You know that thing I said you were doing? About how you were evidently unfamiliar with the subject matter and "instead content yourself with drawing faulty analogies or otherwise suggesting that the actual findings of the report either did not occur or are our own amateur conclusions predicated on us figuratively throwing feces at the wall in the hopes that something will stick" Don't think I didn't notice that you just did it again. As I said in my last post to you, either do the legwork that would allow you to competently debate the subject, or stop wasting both of our times by trying to argue a position you don't actually understand.

To be blunt, your ignorance on this subject is well reflected in the argument you just made, wherein your point is apparently predicated on the question of whether or not the attempts would have succeeded in hampering the investigation. As I've explained to you several times now, the success of the attempt is immaterial and the crime is entirely contained in the act of attempting such interference in the first place. And hell, you're still making it a point to imply that I'm basing this entirely on my own amateur conclusions when the subject of this discussion is what the official investigative report was casting light on. To once again summarize its findings visually:

Source. Nexus here meaning "a nexus between the act and an official proceeding"

You're almost desperately trying to cast this as wishy-washy "if you squint hard enough" flailing on our part, but that only belies your own lack of research.

 

[Marik2]

Do you really think people would turn down the offer of "everybody has great healthcare"?

I don't know about Saelune, but I do, yes. The idea that certain people, or types of people shouldn't get the same as everyone else, for one reason or another, is nothing new.

I certainly do and I actually work in the field. The reality is we actually have part of the US population who actually thinks that the poor should do without or be forced to use charity care because they see themselves as "more deserving". I have heard people actually say " I don't want my taxes paying for it, they can use ST. Judes." Yes they ignorantly suggest people use a charity that they do not even understand what they do. Of course, what should I expect though from someone who thinks like that in the first place?

I have had to listen to people complain that they had to wait longer to see the doctor for walk in visits now since we have more patients at the clinic after Obamacare. These patients previously often did not have access to Doctors outside of waiting for it to get really bad and end up in the ER instead. Some of the people here are seriously so entitled they would rather that other people's children do without access to healthcare so that they do not have to wait an extra 10 minutes on a same day appointment. These people are worried about having to share a waiting area with poor people and have to interact with them at their Physicians offices where they expect to only have to see people who can afford to be there. We have actually have had people ask about where they can find physicians that do not accept Obamacare patients so they do not have to be burdened with them existing in the same space. but as I have mentioned before, I live in a wealthy area in Texas and have had to deal with these sorts for a long time now, so not all that surprising to me at this point. This mindset being popular in this area is the primary reason why Texas has so little in benefits, and why the state has so many uninsured.

EDIT: It is also complete and utter BS that the US cannot afford to provide great universal healthcare. They just need to take a crap ton of hands out of the cookie jar. All of the vultures driving up the costs to make a profit off of desperate people are the primary problem that has to be addressed.

We not only need to address Medication costs, but medical supply and equipment, administrative fees, absurd Physician fees, investor profits and operations costs.

What city in Texas are you from? I'm from San Antonio.

I live in Heath, Texas Rockwall County( DFW Metroplex) I work in Dallas county though. Heath is primarily just spread out mansions, ranches and farms for the most part, not many businesses in Heath itself.

Pretty much a little rich snobby nook in DFW.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heath,_Texas
https://www.dianelipps.com/homes-for-sale-in-heath-tx-real-estate

San Antonio is fun! I have been there a few times, we pretty much partied all night there.
That is actually where I bought my "Diablo flame light" because I have this thing for freaky weird lights.
HA! I found a video of one in action online:

Yes, I had to buy one of these while in San Anton because they had one above the bar while we were bar hopping and I asked the owner what it was called and where I could get one. I seem to collect freaky lights wherever I go. XD

I'm surprised that you think that San Antonio is a fun place. Everyone here says it's boring , and they go to Austin during the weekend to party. San Antonio is decent during Battle of the Flowers.

 

[Schadrach]

Trump is guilty and he keeps proving it. He is now suing banks to shut them up.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/us/politics/trump-lawsuit-deutsche-bank.html

Innocent Until Proven Guilty? How about Innocent until you do everything guilty people do to hide your guilt?

He's not suing the bank the bank to shut them up, he's suing to stop compliance with a congressional subpoena, which is probably worse. It's also unlikely to work, but the courts are not fast so it will likely take quite a lot of time.

The bank refused to hand over the documents voluntarily (which is what you would expect from a reputable bank in this sort of situation, to not hand over private financial records unless legally compelled to do so), and were subpoenaed (to legally compel them to do so). Trump sued the bank to stop them from complying with the subpoena, which is unlikely to work, but he might be able to use that to delay things enough to minimize political damage.

Trump's basically arguing that Congress is misusing their power to subpoena things like this to go on a fishing expedition, looking for anything they might use against him politically rather than something specific in furtherance of a proper investigation. Which is probably hogwash, but that really depends on the breadth of the subpoena and what it is they are specifically investigating.

 

[tstorm823]

The crime is entirely contained in the act of attempting such interference in the first place. And hell, you're still making it a point to imply that I'm basing this entirely on my own amateur conclusions when the subject of this discussion is what the official investigative report was casting light on. To once again summarize its findings visually:

Source. Nexus here meaning "a nexus between the act and an official proceeding"

You're almost desperately trying to cast this as wishy-washy "if you squint hard enough" flailing on our part, but that only belies your own lack of research.

It's not that I think you're exceptionally amateur, or that I doubt the firm credibility of "lawfareblog.com", it's that you're genuinely forgetting steps. To quote your source quoting the report "removing Comey would not necessarily ? prevent or impede the FBI from continuing its investigation.? First, you're taking for granted that the things on that list would have impeded the investigation. Most of them wouldn't have, even if people had done what Trump wanted. Everything in that list has the tangential possibility of effecting the investigation, with one exception that's dark blue across the board. So forget for a moment about people not cooperating with Trump. Pretend that nobody did anything to keep him in line and he got literally whatever he wanted in all these scenarios. It's still not a list of 14 acts of obstruction of justice. It's a list of acts that potentially could have obstructed justice, just as much as driving down the road could potentially kill a pedestrian.

We don't arrest people for attempted murder because they drove down the road. You would arrest them if they killed someone with that car, or you would arrest them if you knew their express intent was to run someone over. Apply the analogy. You don't indict the President for obstruction because he fired James Comey. You might do so if firing Comey obstructed the investigation, but once again, the investigation wasn't obstructed and nobody is saying it was. You also might do so if you knew his purpose in firing Comey was to end the investigation, which you don't. Public statements indicate cooperation with the investigation, and most of the evidence of Trump's corrupt intent is inferred at best.

The problem here isn't that your conclusions are amateur. The problem is that your conclusions are based on the underlying assumption that Trump's intentions were corrupt because you hate him.

I understand he doesn't have to be colluding with Russia to obstruct that investigation, I understand he doesn't have to succeed in obstruction to be guilty of attempting it. But the following is the case you're making:

Donald Trump wanted to obstruct the investigation to protect his personal interests. He didn't commit the underlying crime, he didn't succeed in actions that might have obstructed the investigation, those actions might not have interfered with the investigation even if he had gone all the way through with them, but he wanted to interfere and that makes him guilty. Fine, sure, but on what would you base that statement? Show me specifically where you can confidently claim that Donald Trump did X action with the deliberate intent to impede the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election or Russias ties to the Trump campaign. Don't tell me I'm uninformed, don't point at a million page report and gesture to the whole thing, tell me specifically where you can make a case that Trump intended to or succeeded at obstructing justice.

Because, for example, there is certainly clear and available evidence that Trump badmouthed Cohen. But there's not only no evidence that doing so effected Cohen's testimony, there's also no evidence that it was done with the intent to influence Cohen's testimony. If you think Trump's tweeting insults about people testifying bad things about him has to do with anything but his own ego, you're not paying attention. You just want to think that Trump was trying to intimidate Cohen into silence because you hate Trump.

 

[Agema]

Show me specifically where you can confidently claim that Donald Trump did X action with the deliberate intent to impede the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election or Russias ties to the Trump campaign.

He's already supplied an infographic explaining his claim. Seems a not unreasonable case...

So, from that graphic 14 potential incidents of trying to obstruct of which nearly half have substantial evidence, and several more middling evidence. Now, apart from the fact even one with substantial evidence is bad, the sheer quantity of potential attempts also makes for a repeated pattern of conduct and intent.

There seems to be no shortage of legal experts who think there's a good case against him.

You just want to think that Trump was trying to intimidate Cohen into silence because you hate Trump.

Okay. Well then maybe you're just trying to excuse him at every turn because he's your man for Pres 2020.

Let's be totally clear here: the Republican argument is essentially that Americans can vote for him 2020 with a clear conscience because he's incompetent, venal and corrupt just short of outright criminality. As long as there are enough staff around with the smarts or morality to not carry out his more illegal demands.

That's the standards Republicans are now announcing they expect of the occupant of the highest office in the land, so go go four more years. It is just the most depressing shitshow when you can best argue for a Pres with "Hey, at least he didn't commit an actual crime".

 

[Asita]

We don't arrest people for attempted murder because they drove down the road. You would arrest them if they killed someone with that car, or you would arrest them if you knew their express intent was to run someone over. Apply the analogy. You don't indict the President for obstruction because he fired James Comey. You might do so if firing Comey obstructed the investigation, but once again, the investigation wasn't obstructed and nobody is saying it was. You also might do so if you knew his purpose in firing Comey was to end the investigation, which you don't. Public statements indicate cooperation with the investigation, and most of the evidence of Trump's corrupt intent is inferred at best.

The problem here isn't that your conclusions are amateur. The problem is that your conclusions are based on the underlying assumption that Trump's intentions were corrupt because you hate him.

No, the problem is that you're being obtuse and more than a little disingenuous. You've repeatedly implied that this conversation is about my own (and now "lawfareblog"'s) original research, rather than what we are summarizing from the Mueller report. This is not amateur sleuthing made by people with a questionable understanding of the law. They are summarizations of the official investigation led by a former FBI Director. That image above? That's a heat map of how Mueller characterized his findings.

You want to characterize this as trying to get Trump for murder for driving down the road and minding his own business, but we know that's not the case. Pg 369: "The President's efforts to influence the election were mostly unsuccessful, but that is mostly because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests". I even quoted this to you on just the last page, but you're still stubbornly trying to claim that the attempts documented in the report were nothing more than Trump musing that he wished the investigation was over.

Donald Trump wanted to obstruct the investigation to protect his personal interests. He didn't commit the underlying crime, he didn't succeed in actions that might have obstructed the investigation, those actions might not have interfered with the investigation even if he had gone all the way through with them, but he wanted to interfere and that makes him guilty. Fine, sure, but on what would you base that statement? Show me specifically where you can confidently claim that Donald Trump did X action with the deliberate intent to impede the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election or Russias ties to the Trump campaign. Don't tell me I'm uninformed, don't point at a million page report and gesture to the whole thing, tell me specifically where you can make a case that Trump intended to or succeeded at obstructing justice.

First of all, a million pages? That's stupidly hyperbolic. It's 448 pages with a lot of it redacted and there are even a few summarization segments for good measure. Second, don't demand of others what you are unwilling to do yourself. Third, I have quoted it to you on multiple occasions now, sometimes to directly contradict your own claims and [mis]characterizations. That you have thus far made a point to ignore it unless you think you can use it as a 'gotcha' (something seemingly informed largely by your unfamiliarity with the surrounding context) does not mean that I have not quoted it to you.

Regarding motive, Mueller recognizes as motive to interfere "includes concerns that continued investigation would call into question the legitimacy of his election and uncertainty about whether certain events - such as advance notice of WikiLeaks release of hacked information or the June 9, 2016 meeting between senior campaign officials and Russians - could be seen as criminal activity by the President, his campaign, or his family." (pg 369).

Pages 289-302 cover Trump's attempt to order McGahn to fire the Special Council (over which McGahn threatened to resign), and shows evidence that Trump knew that he "knew he should not have made those calls". A few pages later we see Trump trying to get McGahn to issue a statement and create a written record "for our records" claiming that Trump had not made the aforementioned directions (ie, fabricating evidence). McGahn again refused, despite Trump threatening him with termination if he did not comply. To quote the report itself: "Substantial evidence indicates that in repeatedly urging McGahn to dispute that he was ordered to have the special counsel terminated, the president acted for the purpose of influencing McGahn's account in order to deflect or prevent further scrutiny of the president's conduct towards the investigation"

Then there's the matter of encouraging Manafort not to cooperate with authorities, or how in the words of the report Trump "intended to encourage Manafort to not cooperate with the government". by suggesting that a pardon was more likely if Manafort continued not to cooperate. That's attempted witness tampering. Do you want me to get into how Trump's directives to Lewandowski to convey a private order to Sessions telling him to limit the investigation's scope to solely preventing future election interference "indicate that Sessions was being instructed to tell the special counsel to end the existing investigation into the president and his campaign", and how using an outside loyalist rather than official channels "provides additional evidence of his intent"?

If you want me to stop telling you that you're uninformed, then it would do you well to actually demonstrate familiarity with the subject matter and the claims made within the source material instead of trying to argue "common sense" arguments through faulty analogies that only serve to highlight your own lack of research. In the last few posts alone you've also made a few "Darwin said the eye could not have evolved" style blunders wherein you made it abundantly clear that you were unwilling to even look into the surrounding paragraphs of the very quotes you were trying to turn around (most recently the 'capacity' bungle referenced in my last post).

You've given me every reason to believe that you're going into this blind, and if you want to change that opinion, you'll have to actually demonstrate that you've done more to familiarize yourself with the case than just reading this thread.

 

[Saelune]

Trump is guilty and he keeps proving it. He is now suing banks to shut them up.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/us/politics/trump-lawsuit-deutsche-bank.html

Innocent Until Proven Guilty? How about Innocent until you do everything guilty people do to hide your guilt?

He's not suing the bank the bank to shut them up, he's suing to stop compliance with a congressional subpoena, which is probably worse. It's also unlikely to work, but the courts are not fast so it will likely take quite a lot of time.

The bank refused to hand over the documents voluntarily (which is what you would expect from a reputable bank in this sort of situation, to not hand over private financial records unless legally compelled to do so), and were subpoenaed (to legally compel them to do so). Trump sued the bank to stop them from complying with the subpoena, which is unlikely to work, but he might be able to use that to delay things enough to minimize political damage.

Trump's basically arguing that Congress is misusing their power to subpoena things like this to go on a fishing expedition, looking for anything they might use against him politically rather than something specific in furtherance of a proper investigation. Which is probably hogwash, but that really depends on the breadth of the subpoena and what it is they are specifically investigating.

He is suing them to obstruct justice.

 

[Schadrach]

He is suing them to obstruct justice.

If he fails in his suit and the subpoena reveals useful evidence against him for the claims they are investigating (or at least the results are not used for political attacks) then yes. If he succeeds, then we'll never know. If he fails and it doesn't lead to useful evidence for what they're investigating but does lead to things that get used to embarrass or politically attack Trump that would suggest he's right.

We'll see what happens, in the end. Months from now (or longer), when the courts sort it out.

 

[Agema]

If he fails in his suit and the subpoena reveals useful evidence against him for the claims they are investigating (or at least the results are not used for political attacks) then yes. If he succeeds, then we'll never know. If he fails and it doesn't lead to useful evidence for what they're investigating but does lead to things that get used to embarrass or politically attack Trump that would suggest he's right.

Of course, Hilary Clinton could tell us all about what it is like to be investigated for one thing, and have that lead to an issue that proves far more embarrassing.

However, Trump has acted with an unprecedented lack of transparency, and this is going to raise a lot of suspicions that he's hiding something. Given what a narcissist Trump is, I wouldn't put it past being nothing more than his wealth being substantially than what he boasts it is. It also again goes to autocratic character, thinking he should have no-one to answer to. It's not just his accounts, of course - there are all sorts of stories about staff having to rescue documents important to the record of government business that he seems to attempt to dispose of, and even his constant pressure for personal loyalty to him (as opposed to loyalty to the state or office).

What this boils down to is corruption, and Trump is a greater-than-usual risk in terms of both secrecy and connections via his international business links.

 

[tstorm823]

Okay. Well then maybe you're just trying to excuse him at every turn because he's your man for Pres 2020.

Let's be totally clear here: the Republican argument is essentially that Americans can vote for him 2020 with a clear conscience because he's incompetent, venal and corrupt just short of outright criminality. As long as there are enough staff around with the smarts or morality to not carry out his more illegal demands.

That's the standards Republicans are now announcing they expect of the occupant of the highest office in the land, so go go four more years. It is just the most depressing shitshow when you can best argue for a Pres with "Hey, at least he didn't commit an actual crime".

Why are you make this one thing or the other? Why are the options criminal indictment or four more years? You're perfectly welcome to not support Trump without thinking he deserves to be in prison, because you infer he had unstated intent to commit a crime.

That image above? That's a heat map of how Mueller characterized his findings.

"I should emphasize that the below [heat map] is my interpretation of the evidence as Mueller seems to provide it?others may have different readings."

-Quinta Jurecic, the Managing Editor of Lawfare

Regarding motive, Mueller recognizes as motive to interfere "includes concerns that continued investigation would call into question the legitimacy of his election and uncertainty about whether certain events - such as advance notice of WikiLeaks release of hacked information or the June 9, 2016 meeting between senior campaign officials and Russians - could be seen as criminal activity by the President, his campaign, or his family." (pg 369).

It's not motive I'm asking for. It's intent. I've got motive to rob a bank and run away with a million dollars, that does not mean I intend to. Everyone ever born has motive to not want 2 years of investigation into their lives, what I'm asking for is evidence of intent to interfere in the investigation.

Pages 289-302 cover Trump's attempt to order McGahn to fire the Special Council (over which McGahn threatened to resign), and shows evidence that Trump knew that he "knew he should not have made those calls".

Pages 289-302 cover Trump's insistence that the Mueller had personal conflicts of interests that themselves would undermine the investigation. Apparently nobody but Trump took these claims seriously, and they're probably right not to, but to quote directly: "Call Rod, tell Rod that Mueller has conflicts and can't be the special counsel."

That's the comment that's supposed to be obstruction of justice. Asking someone to inform Mueller's direct boss that Mueller should be replaced. That's right, be replaced. "Can't be the special counsel" logically implies that someone else would be the special counsel. The act that Trump's subordinate refused to take part in was having a different special counsel. Did this obstruct justice? Once again, no, because it never actually happened, and even if it did, it's not clear that firing Mueller would have impeded the investigation. The other question, did this intend to obstruct justice? How can you possibly assert that? Do you think that Donald Trump thinks so highly of Robert Mueller that any possible replacement would be less capable of finding Trump's dirty laundry? Do you think the stated intent, that Trump believed Mueller had a personal conflict with Trump, was just a front because Trump believed a different special counsel would be notably less competent? Reading intent to obstruct the investigation into "Call Rod, tell Rod that Mueller has conflicts and can't be the special counsel" is borderline conspiracy theory.

A few pages later we see Trump trying to get McGahn to issue a statement and create a written record "for our records" claiming that Trump had not made the aforementioned directions (ie, fabricating evidence).

It's only fabricating evidence if the evidence is fabricated. Read the report. What did Trump tell McGahn to do? Call Rod Rosenstein to claim Mueller had conflicts of interests that should prevent him from being the special counsel. What did he tell McGahn to publicly deny? That he ordered McGahn to fire Mueller. Who did he ask him to make this statement to? The press that was reporting that Trump tried to order Mueller removed. Did Trump order McGahn to fire Mueller? The answer that lies somewhere between "no" and "technically no". He did not tell McGahn to make a false claim, he did not tell McGahn to lie to investigators, and Mueller notes evidence that Trump believes he was telling McGahn to tell the truth.

Is there obstruction here. As always, of course not, because it never actually happened. Was there intent to obstruct justice? Only if you're willing to claim that the President asking a subordinate to make a PR statement on his behalf was intended to mislead the investigation. Do you really think Donald Trump's intention in getting a correction into a news story that makes him look better publicly (a correction he likely believed to be sufficiently truthful to print) was to obstruct the investigation? That's the claim you're making. The series of events is:

Trump-"Call Rod, Mueller has conflicts and can't be the special counsel."
McGahn-""No, I'm not doing that."
Nothing happens for a bit.
News Media-"Trump tried to fire Mueller! McGahn says so!"
Trump-"I never told you to fire Mueller."
McGahn-"Well, you said something that seemed to obviously imply that's what you wanted."
Trump-"But I never said to fire him, you should have them correct that story so it doesn't make me look bad."
McGahn-"Well, I'm not going to do that."
Trump-"Fine"

And you think that was intended to fabricate evidence for the investigation?

If you want me to stop telling you that you're uninformed, then it would do you well to actually demonstrate familiarity with the subject matter.

Are you now satisfied with my familiarity with the subject matter? Have I demonstrated to you that I wasn't just wasting large chunks of my time making things up without reading the source material? All you had to do was be specific, and I can specifically demonstrate how and why you're wrong.

 

[TheIronRuler]

Another Synagogue got shot up. But hey 'No Nazis anymore' right?

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You're acting terrible. You're using this as evidence for your righteousness.
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It's true that it seems social mobility has eroded over the years. I do not think it is a sign of things to come, or something that had always been - social-mobility has improved immensely, if you view the reality through the eyes of women a hundred years ago, or men two hundred years ago. I believe that a series of bad decisions in recent decades had consolidated much wealth under the protection racket of the state... An example to that would be the world reaction to the 2008 financial drop, which was caused by bankers inventing a new product and inflating it into such insane proportions that it was too late for the bubble to bust without massive block-back. The dot-com bubble was very similar... These things happen, as did the great depression in the 1920s, however it is the incessant intervention of the state in business that creates inequality to begin with... monopolies from the beginning were a way for the crown to regulate who can make business, and thus profit...

I don't agree. The history of monopoly in mercantilist monarchies isn't really relevant - it's a completely different set up. But we have plentiful evidence to show us already that free markets are liable to end in monopoly and near-monopoly. Benefits of consolidation tends to promote few powerful actors, and powerful market actors then simply buy out smaller innovators. There's an argument to scrap intellectual property, except then that innovators may not be able to turn a profit out of their creations at all.

The "capture" of state by powerful actors is a persistent problem - but then a notionally simple solution is recapture of the state by the masses.

My concern is often more related to rent: the ability of the wealthy to extract money for no real effort or skill. Imagine entrepreneurial restauranteurs. Sure, they can make a great success of their eatery... and the minute their landlord notices the profit will be snaffled up in rent increases. The poor sink their money into the pockets of the rich, where the same costs from the wealthy buys assets.

The situation has improved much, but the pendulum swung again - see how the information-age revolution allowed regular people access to a massive market, and gave them the opportunity to innovate and create - but nowadays the market is dominated by giants that consume or stomp on opposition. Those that could not adapt to the changing tides of technological innovation were left behind - many companies make the wrong investment, and fail to predict the future. Those same giants of today could also fail in the future. You're correct that connections between politicians and the wealthy only make the poor even poorer. It's a tragedy, one which is not ought to be a permanent one. I could tell you how things improved from, lets say, the Victorian era, or the middle of the 20th century, but that's not interesting to you... You think about your own generation, as I do myself.

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We see it from our point of view, but it changes back and forth, and in my eyes, slowly towards equality of opportunity.

I am interested in how things improved from the Victorian era to the 1970s. I'm interested in how so much was done to so much general societal benefit, because it means it can be done, rather than the stagnation and even erosion we've seen since. But I don't believe there is any end point we're gradually moving towards, some Whiggish "1066 and all that" inescapable trajectory of improvement. There's no reason we can't decisively regress from here to some sort of neo-feudalism. Our political life is all non-stop, hard work towards goals of societal improvement, with no conceits and no complacency. And I think just currently the forces of egalitarianism are losing, have been losing for decades.

I agree that any corporate giant can fall, but isn't it really just a bit "the king is dead, long live the king"? It doesn't matter how many aristos died in the War of the Roses, it ended with the country still run by a handful of powerful aristos. Things change by killing the institution of aristocracy, not individual aristocrats.

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I disagree on the matter of rent. The employer provides the environment for the employee, and the renter provides the housing for the renter - it is a service given, in exchange for a cost. There is an equilibrium that must be reached mutually between the two actors in a contract - one cannot overpower the other, but if they do it ends with the breakdown of the contract. Either the employer overpowers the employee (substitute owner and renter), in which case the employee leaves the unfair contract, or the employee overpowers the employer - in which case the employer tries to terminate the contract. These edge situations are often regarded with state intervention, while other means exist as well (such as voluntary worker's associations) to keep the relationship between employer and employee balanced. If you tip the balance in one way, the contract becomes unfavorable to one side and that side will try to terminate it. Sometimes it can't - in which case, the state has stepped in to mitigate the damage and obstruct injustice... You can't labor without the means of production. You can't live in a house without a house. Owning those things and providing them, for a cost, to those that don't have them, is regarded as a different class than other people. How do you call them, the have's and the have-not's? The mobility to move between the two groups has diminished over the years (as I have suggested earlier), but it had improved immensely since before the middle of the twentieth century. This, I am certain, can't be undisputed.

I agree that there is no guarantee for a forward movement towards this cosmic 'justice' or as you put it better 'societal benefit'. We must ensure that our rights as people and citizens will not diminish under the pressure from would-be oligarchs. It has diminished in some sense over the years, which I've mentioned earlier, mostly due to the marriage between state and oligarchs to bail-out the other from near-bankruptcy. Had it not happened, many large firms would have gone under - cannibalized by smaller competitors or cut into pieces - and not what had happened in the past, which was the companies that received the grant-money from the state buying up the other failed companies that could not lobby their way into the hand-out list...

You can become an aristocrat yourself, something which was nigh impossible during the war of the roses as a commoner. Persons such as Bill Gates and Mar Zuckerberg control immense wealth, not to mention ordinary people such as Angela Merkel, which is undoubtedly one of the most powerful women in the world, and she was merely a doctor of chemistry so many years ago...

You can be one of those people if only you've spent less time here arguing over Roman and Iranian battle tactics and weapons... and complaining about rich people.
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Trump is guilty and he keeps proving it. He is now suing banks to shut them up.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/us/politics/trump-lawsuit-deutsche-bank.html

Innocent Until Proven Guilty? How about Innocent until you do everything guilty people do to hide your guilt?

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Innocent until proven guilty. You are not the judge that will sentence him. You're a regular person.
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Trump is guilty and he keeps proving it. He is now suing banks to shut them up.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/us/politics/trump-lawsuit-deutsche-bank.html

Innocent Until Proven Guilty? How about Innocent until you do everything guilty people do to hide your guilt?

I mean if I had to say which was more harmful to society between bankers and Trump...I'm going to side with the one that'll be gone in 1-5 years.

Trump's damage will be felt in the US probably for the rest of the US's existence. History is weird like that.

The Republican Party has sold what remained of their soul, becoming the party of hypocrisy and fascism, the rapist buffoon Kavanaugh will be on the Supreme Court till he dies, which took the scumbag Scalia over 30 years. Yeah, Reagan has been screwing us just with one man for 30 years!

Trump isn't going to just 'go away', regardless of what happens to the so-called man.

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Kavanaugh was not a rapist, he was not found to have done such a thing you're accusing him of... Again, innocent until proven guilty. The opposition dug out obstacles to his entry to the supreme court because of politics, not a sense of justice. Regardless of the truth of what had happened - if kavanaugh were denied and a real trial had taken place, he would have been found innocent due to a lack of evidence. I say this with confidence because the Senate had hand-waved this away not because the Republicans sold what remained of their soul, but because the accusation could have not held up in court...

People who repeat what you've said are closest to populism on the left, and not far from fascist bullies such as the brown-shirts that broke-up rallies and talks by people of different and opposing ideologies... There are people that disrupt conventions at universities because the opinions spoken there are opposed to their own... that is a bully mindset, which shuts down free-speech that you disagree with, and has similar characteristic to the early days of the National-Socialist front-line.

You cry out 'Nazi' similarly to how a boy cries out 'Wolf'. I don't believe you anymore.

 

[Sonmi]

People who repeat what you've said are closest to populism on the left, and not far from fascist bullies such as the brown-shirts that broke-up rallies and talks by people of different and opposing ideologies... There are people that disrupt conventions at universities because the opinions spoken there are opposed to their own... that is a bully mindset, which shuts down free-speech that you disagree with, and has similar characteristic to the early days of the National-Socialist front-line.

You cry out 'Nazi' similarly to how a boy cries out 'Wolf'. I don't believe you anymore.

I hope you realize the hilarity of you condemning her (and people like her) for using the term Nazi too often on one line, and then compare her to the SA in another.

 

[TheIronRuler]

People who repeat what you've said are closest to populism on the left, and not far from fascist bullies such as the brown-shirts that broke-up rallies and talks by people of different and opposing ideologies... There are people that disrupt conventions at universities because the opinions spoken there are opposed to their own... that is a bully mindset, which shuts down free-speech that you disagree with, and has similar characteristic to the early days of the National-Socialist front-line.

You cry out 'Nazi' similarly to how a boy cries out 'Wolf'. I don't believe you anymore.

I hope you realize the hilarity of you condemning her (and people like her) for using the term Nazi too often on one line, and then compare her to the SA in another.

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I don't compare her to the SA. I used it as an example for organized political violence. I don't know her, I only read some of her posts here, and her incessant use of the derogatory term 'Nazi' combined with Trump-hysteria.

EDIT: It was a bad decision to include that in the post. I am tired of the flippant use of the term 'Nazi' because it's reducing it to a slur... which it was, a derogatory term to refer to the members of National-Socialist party of Germany, and the people from Germany when it was ruled by it... not too different from the term 'Jap' the Americans used in the Pacific...

Yet it seems I've done it myself, even without realizing it, because it was the easiest comparison to make... I still think it was a valid comparison, but truthfully, this was in poor taste.

 

[Saelune]

He is suing them to obstruct justice.

If he fails in his suit and the subpoena reveals useful evidence against him for the claims they are investigating (or at least the results are not used for political attacks) then yes. If he succeeds, then we'll never know. If he fails and it doesn't lead to useful evidence for what they're investigating but does lead to things that get used to embarrass or politically attack Trump that would suggest he's right.

We'll see what happens, in the end. Months from now (or longer), when the courts sort it out.

We know. Because we see him doing it. Its right there, and we all know it. It is an objective fact. Stop your weak defenses.

 

[Saelune]

Another Synagogue got shot up. But hey 'No Nazis anymore' right?

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You're acting terrible. You're using this as evidence for your righteousness.
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It's true that it seems social mobility has eroded over the years. I do not think it is a sign of things to come, or something that had always been - social-mobility has improved immensely, if you view the reality through the eyes of women a hundred years ago, or men two hundred years ago. I believe that a series of bad decisions in recent decades had consolidated much wealth under the protection racket of the state... An example to that would be the world reaction to the 2008 financial drop, which was caused by bankers inventing a new product and inflating it into such insane proportions that it was too late for the bubble to bust without massive block-back. The dot-com bubble was very similar... These things happen, as did the great depression in the 1920s, however it is the incessant intervention of the state in business that creates inequality to begin with... monopolies from the beginning were a way for the crown to regulate who can make business, and thus profit...

I don't agree. The history of monopoly in mercantilist monarchies isn't really relevant - it's a completely different set up. But we have plentiful evidence to show us already that free markets are liable to end in monopoly and near-monopoly. Benefits of consolidation tends to promote few powerful actors, and powerful market actors then simply buy out smaller innovators. There's an argument to scrap intellectual property, except then that innovators may not be able to turn a profit out of their creations at all.

The "capture" of state by powerful actors is a persistent problem - but then a notionally simple solution is recapture of the state by the masses.

My concern is often more related to rent: the ability of the wealthy to extract money for no real effort or skill. Imagine entrepreneurial restauranteurs. Sure, they can make a great success of their eatery... and the minute their landlord notices the profit will be snaffled up in rent increases. The poor sink their money into the pockets of the rich, where the same costs from the wealthy buys assets.

The situation has improved much, but the pendulum swung again - see how the information-age revolution allowed regular people access to a massive market, and gave them the opportunity to innovate and create - but nowadays the market is dominated by giants that consume or stomp on opposition. Those that could not adapt to the changing tides of technological innovation were left behind - many companies make the wrong investment, and fail to predict the future. Those same giants of today could also fail in the future. You're correct that connections between politicians and the wealthy only make the poor even poorer. It's a tragedy, one which is not ought to be a permanent one. I could tell you how things improved from, lets say, the Victorian era, or the middle of the 20th century, but that's not interesting to you... You think about your own generation, as I do myself.

...

We see it from our point of view, but it changes back and forth, and in my eyes, slowly towards equality of opportunity.

I am interested in how things improved from the Victorian era to the 1970s. I'm interested in how so much was done to so much general societal benefit, because it means it can be done, rather than the stagnation and even erosion we've seen since. But I don't believe there is any end point we're gradually moving towards, some Whiggish "1066 and all that" inescapable trajectory of improvement. There's no reason we can't decisively regress from here to some sort of neo-feudalism. Our political life is all non-stop, hard work towards goals of societal improvement, with no conceits and no complacency. And I think just currently the forces of egalitarianism are losing, have been losing for decades.

I agree that any corporate giant can fall, but isn't it really just a bit "the king is dead, long live the king"? It doesn't matter how many aristos died in the War of the Roses, it ended with the country still run by a handful of powerful aristos. Things change by killing the institution of aristocracy, not individual aristocrats.

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I disagree on the matter of rent. The employer provides the environment for the employee, and the renter provides the housing for the renter - it is a service given, in exchange for a cost. There is an equilibrium that must be reached mutually between the two actors in a contract - one cannot overpower the other, but if they do it ends with the breakdown of the contract. Either the employer overpowers the employee (substitute owner and renter), in which case the employee leaves the unfair contract, or the employee overpowers the employer - in which case the employer tries to terminate the contract. These edge situations are often regarded with state intervention, while other means exist as well (such as voluntary worker's associations) to keep the relationship between employer and employee balanced. If you tip the balance in one way, the contract becomes unfavorable to one side and that side will try to terminate it. Sometimes it can't - in which case, the state has stepped in to mitigate the damage and obstruct injustice... You can't labor without the means of production. You can't live in a house without a house. Owning those things and providing them, for a cost, to those that don't have them, is regarded as a different class than other people. How do you call them, the have's and the have-not's? The mobility to move between the two groups has diminished over the years (as I have suggested earlier), but it had improved immensely since before the middle of the twentieth century. This, I am certain, can't be undisputed.

I agree that there is no guarantee for a forward movement towards this cosmic 'justice' or as you put it better 'societal benefit'. We must ensure that our rights as people and citizens will not diminish under the pressure from would-be oligarchs. It has diminished in some sense over the years, which I've mentioned earlier, mostly due to the marriage between state and oligarchs to bail-out the other from near-bankruptcy. Had it not happened, many large firms would have gone under - cannibalized by smaller competitors or cut into pieces - and not what had happened in the past, which was the companies that received the grant-money from the state buying up the other failed companies that could not lobby their way into the hand-out list...

You can become an aristocrat yourself, something which was nigh impossible during the war of the roses as a commoner. Persons such as Bill Gates and Mar Zuckerberg control immense wealth, not to mention ordinary people such as Angela Merkel, which is undoubtedly one of the most powerful women in the world, and she was merely a doctor of chemistry so many years ago...

You can be one of those people if only you've spent less time here arguing over Roman and Iranian battle tactics and weapons... and complaining about rich people.
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Trump is guilty and he keeps proving it. He is now suing banks to shut them up.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/us/politics/trump-lawsuit-deutsche-bank.html

Innocent Until Proven Guilty? How about Innocent until you do everything guilty people do to hide your guilt?

.
Innocent until proven guilty. You are not the judge that will sentence him. You're a regular person.
.

Trump is guilty and he keeps proving it. He is now suing banks to shut them up.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/us/politics/trump-lawsuit-deutsche-bank.html

Innocent Until Proven Guilty? How about Innocent until you do everything guilty people do to hide your guilt?

I mean if I had to say which was more harmful to society between bankers and Trump...I'm going to side with the one that'll be gone in 1-5 years.

Trump's damage will be felt in the US probably for the rest of the US's existence. History is weird like that.

The Republican Party has sold what remained of their soul, becoming the party of hypocrisy and fascism, the rapist buffoon Kavanaugh will be on the Supreme Court till he dies, which took the scumbag Scalia over 30 years. Yeah, Reagan has been screwing us just with one man for 30 years!

Trump isn't going to just 'go away', regardless of what happens to the so-called man.

.
Kavanaugh was not a rapist, he was not found to have done such a thing you're accusing him of... Again, innocent until proven guilty. The opposition dug out obstacles to his entry to the supreme court because of politics, not a sense of justice. Regardless of the truth of what had happened - if kavanaugh were denied and a real trial had taken place, he would have been found innocent due to a lack of evidence. I say this with confidence because the Senate had hand-waved this away not because the Republicans sold what remained of their soul, but because the accusation could have not held up in court...

People who repeat what you've said are closest to populism on the left, and not far from fascist bullies such as the brown-shirts that broke-up rallies and talks by people of different and opposing ideologies... There are people that disrupt conventions at universities because the opinions spoken there are opposed to their own... that is a bully mindset, which shuts down free-speech that you disagree with, and has similar characteristic to the early days of the National-Socialist front-line.

You cry out 'Nazi' similarly to how a boy cries out 'Wolf'. I don't believe you anymore.

Thoughts and Prayers don't stop bullets. If you were better than me, you would be mad at the shooter and those who encourage these shootings. Instead you're mad at me. I wonder why.

Trump has been proven guilty. It is now a matter of getting the government to follow its own laws. As a regular person, the US government is supposed to serve me, oh wait, that's a democracy, not a dictatorship, my bad.

Kavanaugh is a rapist still. He wasn't found innocent, he was never tried. Kavanaugh has not been found guilty by law or innocent by law. Republicans just said they were ok with an accused rapist representing them. Not the first, nor last time of that either. (Trump and Moore for example).

 

[TheIronRuler]

Thoughts and Prayers don't stop bullets. If you were better than me, you would be mad at the shooter and those who encourage these shootings. Instead you're mad at me. I wonder why.

Trump has been proven guilty. It is now a matter of getting the government to follow its own laws. As a regular person, the US government is supposed to serve me, oh wait, that's a democracy, not a dictatorship, my bad.

Kavanaugh is a rapist still. He wasn't found innocent, he was never tried. Kavanaugh has not been found guilty by law or innocent by law. Republicans just said they were ok with an accused rapist representing them. Not the first, nor last time of that either. (Trump and Moore for example).

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I'm not better than you. I am upset you're using this kind of language... It's irritating to hear 'Nazi' this and 'Nazi' that when it's unwarranted. You don't know if I'm mad at the shooter, or those that encourage him...'wonder why' you're using this kind of rhetoric instead. You're being passive-aggressive me, I'd prefer it if you were direct.

Trump hasn't been proven guilty, and it is not the duty of the executive to judge Trump, but the role of congress to impeach him and then have him put on trial... You're not living in a democracy. You've living in a representative republic, that's why the popular vote doesn't always win the presidential elections, and no amount of whinging would change that.

He isn't a rapist, he'd been accused of it by someone, and they both testified before a senate committee... The charges were found to be insufficient to block his nomination, with good cause. A case can be closed because of a lack of evidence, meaning that had it been to court the judge would have thrown the prosecution out because it had no case... We've had this tactic used here as well. Accuse the nominee of something, force him to withdraw his candidacy, and then when the case comes to trial - get thrown out of the court because you had no damn case to begin with. I suspect it's the same here.

 

[Agema]

Why are you make this one thing or the other? Why are the options criminal indictment or four more years? You're perfectly welcome to not support Trump without thinking he deserves to be in prison, because you infer he had unstated intent to commit a crime.

"Unstated intent"? The evidence clearly demonstrates stated intent to interfere with the investigation.

Trump is a deeply unfit person to hold the office of president. This shoddy mess - which would have been quite enough to sink any other postwar president - is merely one part of a long ongoing national embarrassment. The blame really lies with Republicans, who whilst having offered some degree of mild obstruction on occasion, have largely protected him. They should be moving heaven and earth to drum that contemptible, opportunist scumbag off their party ticket.

Isn't Bill Weld the name of the guy challenging him? Get behind Weld. Or almost anyone to flush him out of the White House.