Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Serious question - does Congress have the right/ability to prosecute defiance from a co-equal branch of the government? I should think not. The remedy is Constituional, i.e. impeachment.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

To "prosecute"? I think not. But a judge can put someone in contempt of court on his or her own initiative, so why not on request from Congress? Not sure why the only remedy should be constitutional.

There's a real problem here that DOJ is representing the Executive Branch, not the United States. If there is a good-faith reason to think that Congress has overstepped in issuing a subpoena, that's one thing, but I'm not seeing that with the subpoenas to Giuliani or State Department officials. The oath that DOJ lawyers is to defend the Constitution, not the Executive Branch.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Would help if we had an actual AG and not whatever the heck Barr thinks his job is.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

But the Executive Branch, President, DOJ, are all the same. The DOJ is the President's arm as the head of the execution, um, prosecution of law.

If the Prez says fuck you to Congress in the way it wants its laws enforcedw, Congress can't ask the Supreme Court to pick a side (well, they can ask, but). Congress' only Constitutional recourse is impeachment, which is a remedy the Supes are enabled to rule upon.

Re: Impeachment Process
 

Fixed that for you.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

I don't think every agency of government is subservient to the President as part of the executive, simply because he can appoint their head with the advice and consent of the senate. Congress gets to make the rules governing those departments and set their budgets. The constitutional list of legislative powers is much greater than the list the President gets in Article II, and has fewer qualifications.

The authors of the constitution didn't go for the full strength executive, that was a conscious decision.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Two different pieces to my last post:

Courts have the inherent authority to address contempt of court. If a prosecutor, for example, gets on the wrong side of a judge, the judge can find him or her in contempt of court without needing one of the prosecutor's colleagues to file charges. I don't see a reason why Congress could not send lawyers to a federal court to ask the court to enforce a subpoena, or why the court couldn't hold the subject in contempt for a failure to comply.

The DOJ is a part of the Executive Branch, but every DOJ lawyer swore an oath to uphold the Constitution. Not to represent the President -- to uphold the Constitution. If the President wants to act in a way that has no basis in the law -- e.g., telling someone to ignore a valid subpoena -- I would think that DOJ has an obligation, at the very least, to test that position in the courts, rather than just deciding that the President gets to make up the law. Cf. Marbury v. Madison.

Also: Anyone at DOJ who is materially involved in the subject of the impeachment inquiry has a pretty clear ethical obligation to recuse him- or herself for proceedings to, e.g., enforce subpoenas. I haven't given it a ton of thought, but it would see to me to be an ethical problem for a lawyer to take orders from someone with a material interest in a proceeding (e.g., the President) about how to represent the country. Eliot Richardson resigned rather than fire Archibald Cox. Even if the President has executive authority direct the actions of employees in the executive branch, DOJ requires lawyers to be members of a State Bar, IIRC, which reflects their duty to faithfully execute the laws.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

I have been thinking about what kinds of reforms this Trump era is going to bring, and some of them might involve Congress attaching more strings to how funds are spent by the Executive.

What'd they call the place where Mad Max lived?
 

If what appears to be happening happens, that's going to be 2024, and the concept of "reform" will sound as strange and foreign as "functioning republic."

'Twas a nice run. But as Wyatt says to Billy near the end of Easy Rider, "we blew it... we blew it."

I have a couple chimneys and a lot backed up to a line of trees. Clear sights in all directions. As I told a friend in NYC in 2008, when the markets were crashing daily, "you can move in here... but you have to help me put gun turrets on the chimneys."

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Can't Barr be impeached?

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

I added a paragraph to my post after you responded.

I'm looking for mechanisms short of impeachment, because things don't work well when the only escalation option is global thermonuclear war.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

The budgetary process has been badly broken for a while.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Everything has been broken for awhile.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

The barbarians are due here today.


Why isn’t anything going on in the senate?
Why are the senators sitting there without legislating?

Because the barbarians are coming today.
What’s the point of senators making laws now?
Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.


Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting enthroned at the city’s main gate,
in state, wearing the crown?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and the emperor’s waiting to receive their leader.
He’s even got a scroll to give him,
loaded with titles, with imposing names.


Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.


Why don’t our distinguished orators turn up as usual
to make their speeches, say what they have to say?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking.


Why this sudden bewilderment, this confusion?
(How serious people’s faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home lost in thought?

Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven't come.
And some of our men just in from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.


Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
Those people were a kind of solution.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

If you are counsel to Speaker Pelosi, how do you advise her to collect information germane to the impeachment inquiry, given the White House's decision to stonewall most requests for information?

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Is it possible a misspelled allusion to the author explains the mysterious intent of “Covfefe”?

Are we under the control of a mad genius, hiding deep literacy, and dropping subtle hints to the master plan all along?

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Send lawyers to beg judges, I guess. While adding the refusal to comply with valid subpoenas to the articles of impeachment for the president and drafting new ones for the individuals refusing to comply.

Those steps should amount to a lot of pressure, but may not to an administration that's used to getting away with saying no, as long as McConnell thinks his party is still better off backing the president.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

No.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

This is not a bad first response to Pompeo:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EF0AxnkW...jpg&name=small

I'm not sure what gives Pompeo the ostensible authority to tell employees to ignore a facially valid subpoena.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

This is either a super dry attempt to top my joke or you really need therapy for Aspergers Syndrome.

ETA: Fuck it... Look up the poet’s name.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

You can try to "joke" by spouting blithering nonsense, but you really should know that it's pretty hard for anyone else to tell whether you are "joking" or not, because you do it so often in earnest.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

This is doubling down on dullardry. The reverse of topping the joke.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

I’d offer Jared Diamond or Niall Ferguson on this point, but they employ irony. This doorstop is more your speed: https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Comp.../dp/052138673X

ETA: Some Cliff’s Notes from a review (and bringing it all back to Covf— er, Cavafy):

“Two phrases which Tainter borrows from economics are "marginal cost" and "marginal return". Eventually, the marginal returns from investment in complexity - meaning the returns currently available - inevitably level off and then decline, while the marginal costs stay the same or even increase. The only way central authorities can so on supporting such costs is through taxation or currency debasement, unsustainable measures in a system where benefits are perceived as declining. A system so weakened becomes vulnerable to popular revolt or invasion, or lacks the will and resources to overcome other disasters. Tainter describes, for example, how the "barbarians" who eventually overran the Roman Empire were in many cases welcomed and even assisted by the Empire's population, who increasingly saw themselves as benefitting little from Rome's "complexity", even as Rome's tax collectors became more predatory than ever.”

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Things are broken because we have a federal political system that requires consensus, and we don't have consensus. We have been moving away from consensus since the end of the Cold War and when Gingrich started remaking the Republican Party.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Coffee. Keyboard.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

link

"Uh, hello. I'm calling from the White House. I'm looking for a cost estimate for a moat filled with snakes. Is that something you can do?"

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Just wanted to say what a great thread title this is! I’m not normally a narcissist, but I will take this chance to brag on myself.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Really? Because I'm not certain Trump isn't a closet student of Egyptian poets with an interest in political entropy. He could be. His rants on Nasser's execution of Qutb as a flashpoint for the start of Islamic extremism indicate not only a fixation with the culture, but consumption of significant, balanced scholarship on Egyptian society generally.

I don't think you or Adder are giving Trump a fair shake on this. His seminal college thesis, "IMF-Funded High Rises in Cairo: A Beautiful Solution to Urban Crowding" exposes a nimble yet reverent view of the country and its people.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

We don't have consensus because we don't even raise the issues that need to be discussed. Those of us doing fine pretend it's all good; those of us fucked get no say in policy.

Doesn't matter who's in power, Ds or Rs. Losers historically got no say. Well, Trump just organized the losers quite effectively, while winking to the selfish and the cynical. So now the people who want a tax break get to ride a new and expanded wave of votes for their lucre.

And what may the Ds say? Nothing serious in response. Why? Because the Ds aren't offering anything more than expanded handouts. They don't even have a serious fucking policy except for cancelling student loans.

We have two useless parties grappling for power, and the whole fucking country knows the reality: We are moving to a world where half of the labor force will no longer be needed, and that is happening soon, on a timeline consistent with Moore's Law.

Consensus can only be met where two parties agree on what's happening. Without that, consensus is impossible. So you;re wrong, deeply wrong and deluded even, to blame it all on politics. What we have is an economic issue os immense gravity that our politicians and politics are not equipped to address. The economic issues are driving the politics. Until we start addressing those - with something other than tax cuts or enhanced safety nets, which are band aids and morphine highs for a terminal patient - we're fucked.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

I don't understand where you think we disagree, but it's great rant.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Okay. But here's what I hear from most Ds and Rs who are fortunate enough to be in the top 20% of the country:

I want a solution that does not change things for me. In fact, I want to earn more, even if it comes as a result of others earning less (there is a zero sum feature to a rentier economy as ours - the dollars we don't pay to those we can offshore or automate go into investors' and upper management and professionals' pockets).

Successful Ds don't mind paying more taxes. Nor do successful Rs, despite the stereotype. Nor do independents, like me.

Where all of us upper middle class to affluent folks reach consensus is on the issue of changing the game in such a way that our wages flatten, our futures are subjected to ceilings like those below us, and our kids' futures limited. The systemic changes that probably need to be implemented going forward strike us with fear because, as any person capturing all the gains of a dying industry understands, real change removes our security.

So left, right, middle -- those of us with power avoid the conversations Warren and Yang are entertaining. I mean, we listen to them, we know what's coming, and that it's coming for us, but we'd rather vote for a Biden, or even a Trump if we're on the right, because that's More of the Same. Even with Trump, it's predictable. He's just a classic populist, but also so capitalist that nothing truly revolutionary will happen that endangers our advantages.

Sure, we'll scream about how awful he is, but as almost every well heeled D I know has said when I say I like Warren, "Well, we can't elect her. She's too extreme."

Stated otherwise, I hate Trump, but I want to remove him and replace him with someone who is safe and won't do much, like Biden, because while I'm interested in saving the environment and keeping kids out of cages, I don't want to elect anyone who might eat into my revenues. I like the system as it is. I think I can give a little more at the margins to combat inequality, but I don't want structural change that might impede mine or my kids' gains. Keep the economy delivering for me.

So regarding consensus, maybe we're wrong. Maybe we have a lot of consensus already - at least where it matters. All the people doing well are all agreeing that things are just terrible and ought to be fixed, but only if that fix does not change our economy in ways that impact our revenue.

And I use "revenue" for a reason. Because it's no sacrifice for anyone pulling down half a million a year to willingly give up an extra $10-20k in income taxes to provide some enhanced safety nets for the poor. It's quite another thing to elect someone who'd entertain a policy-based restructuring of the economy that drops that person's value to a point where he only brings home $300k per year.

Anyone will trade you five, ten, twenty thousand at the margin to keep the revenue the same. The person who's really serious about remedying inequality will agree to see his industry gored to allow the dollars inefficiently and inequitably piled up within it diverted to more productive uses elsewhere.

Hello, health care, law, accounting, finance, and real estate! Looking right at you.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

GGG said the budgetary process has been broken for a while. Adder said everything has been broken. I think he was talking about how things get done on the Hill, hence my response. You are, as is often your wont, off on a rant about how the wealthy are busy heightening the contradictions for the great unwashed. It may or may not have been over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor, but there is no stopping you when you're on a roll.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

And... you pushed it too far.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

You ignore the point. This isn't a budget issue. It isn't a Beltway dysfunction issue.

It's a general societal refusal to address a malfunctioning market.

Why? Because the malfunctioning market delivers for some of us, so we don't want to see it realigned.

Examples:

1. Inefficient valuations of work.

Your broker, lawyer, CPA, professor, CEO, marketing manager, etc. are grossly overpaid relative to their value. If we didn't command the pay we do, that money would be available to be paid to other workers. But we do command that pay. Only it's not because we're worth it (I'm using a bit of Marxist "intrinsic valuation," which is a valid concept which needs to be introduced into policy discussions). It's because we've: (1) taken on fixed costs; and, (2) acquired licenses. This leads to #2.

2. Unjustifiable fixed costs to reach high paying positions.

To get a top job, one needs a degree, preferably a top degree. This costs money. Lots of money. Because of this, compensation must be greater and greater for people who are in the top 20% (at a minimum, it has to keep up with inflation in higher education costs). If you've run a business, you know that the price of a solid VP is probably about 30% higher than it ought to be, but, well, ya gotta pay it. So you find that 30% by not paying someone else - someone lower. You eliminate a customer service or assistant position and spread that labor among other assistants and customer service personnel.

In this regard, within companies, you've a zero sum competition for compensation, won in almost all instance by the higher tier employees.

3. Credentialism/License leveraging schemes

"License leveraging" isn't my word, but Milton Friedman's. He's wrong about a lot, but not about this. This is a huge tax on lower skilled workers and an insidious bar to their wage enhancement.

To do almost anything of value in this country anymore outside tech, one must acquire a license of some sort. There must be degrees, certifications, and continuing education required, at enormous cost. This effectively creates guilds. It also creates commoditization of labor, as HR screening tools eliminate non-traditionally educated, but often much better skilled workers (one can't rise up from the mail room to CEO in an age where screening software never even allows one to interview to join the company).

Pilots, doctors, electricians, people who engineer bridges - these types of people need baseline credentials. But do all these people with these strange aggregations of random letters behind their names - who work in white collar professions largely pushing papers or money around in circles - need all these licenses and credentials? Of course not. It was only a century ago, before law became a guild, that lawyers did not need law degrees. They could and did simply pass a test.

If we eliminated 50% of licensing, and limited the necessity of it to professions where malpractice could actually physically harm a person, we'd open "the ladder" up to a lot of competition. We'd give a lot of little guys who can't afford the time or investment involved in joining our license-leveraging scheme to make a living for themselves.

Tech is doing some of this for us already, but the guilds are sticky, and powerful. They lobby for licensing requirements to the death. And they work hand in hand with Big Education, which uses the need to acquire credentials as a lever to force people to pay it ungodly sums of tuition. There aren't enough Uber business models out there to destroy the power of the licensing agencies and credential mills quickly enough.

- - -

These are just a couple examples of the way artificial barriers in our society maintain a status quo that favors an undeserving top 20%. I can say this because I've been part of that top 20% through my life. Why? Because I had advantages. Daddy could pay for things. Is life fair? Of course not. But should we have a national conversation where we discuss why we need to dismantle many of the mechanisms that bar people from rising? How this is deeply un-American, anti-innovation? How it's not a fix for this to say, "I'll hand out some crumbs in the form of increased taxes on my unjustifiably increasing income to the people at the bottom." (Why that's the most cynical form of noblesse oblige.)

There are about a hundred policy fixes we could and should discuss, and they all involve redistribution of a sort. But I don't see these things being discussed very much because they all share the same feature: Devaluing the Top 20% to effect a transfer of their indefensible income to the lower classes, who are grossly underpaid. (Run the disparity between a nurse and a VP of marketing and tell me how anyone can defend that delta. Or a teacher and corporate lawyer.)

The market is not delivering. But we can fix it, and I dare say it's simple -- make it freer, so those of us who enjoy protected high wages can sink to parity with those who don't. By eliminating a lot of licensing and credentialing requirements, we could move to a fairer value - introducing a stealth form of intrinsic valuation of labor without even mentioning Marx - almost overnight.

That's the conversation we need to be having, rather than comparing the noblesse oblige bona fides of two useless political parties.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

This is just absolute, revisionist bullshit.

TM

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

No one was discussing the bona fides, noblesse oblige or otherwise, of the two political parties.

Your 1. point is Froot Loops. If that work wasn't valued, people wouldn't pay for it.

Your 2. is also fairly loopy. If you think you can hire uncredentialed people who will do just as well, go do it, and undercut your competitors. But you can't. And companies also get rid of high-paying jobs to hire less expensive workers.

Your 3. is not loopy, but to say that it is a problem more important than Beltway paralysis is just silly. As a resident of California who just had his hair cut by someone who needed a state license, I get it, but did that add $1 of the $17 tab (before tip)? If you want to talk about the ways that the haves have rigged the system to serve their interests and screw the have-nots, talk about zoning. The rents in so much of the country are too damn high.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Sebastian just told us that there are a lot of Republicans who want to do something about climate change. Clearly, the reason we don't have action on climate change has nothing to do with congressional dysfunction, and everything to do with unnecessary occupational licensing.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

It's not just that they want to do something. They "are embracing the urgent need to do something about climate change."

https://media.giphy.com/media/l2QDTq...JXlC/giphy.gif

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/...te-speech.html

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

1. You ignore my point about about introducing instrinsic valuation to the discussion.

2. I cannot hire people without certain credentials because the guilds prohibit it. That's the whole point.

I've managed a lot more people than you have. I'm not bragging. It's just dumb circumstance that I happened to manage people, and trust me -- I didn't want to do it and don't want to do it again.

I found credentials (advanced degrees and certifications) were really poor indicators of who could succeed in a position. Because I like to do things like this, I gave huge responsibility to people I judged to be smart based on other factors. I gave one a five figure raise. I never had a problem. Except for the people who had credentials, who really resented taking orders from those who didn't. But YMMV.

A layman can't perform heart surgery, but a paralegal can certainly practice a good bit of law, a non-CPA tax preparer is every bit as good as a CPA in most instances, and a fund manager with a CFA is not delivering magical returns relative to one without.

3. Re zoning, agreed. As I said, there are numerous ways we rig the system.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Oh, you're quick to cite the environment. Why? Because that's one where you can duck the issues I raised.

"Look, I care about something the GOP does not!"

That's true. You also care about kids in cages.

But then, most sane people care about kids in cages. You remind me of Chris Rock's joke about people who brag that they "take care of their kids": "You're supposed to take care of your kids. You don't get credit for that!"

You're picking and choosing what you care about and hiding the limousine liberal character of upper middle class D politics. (Which isn't very far from the character of upper middle class R politics.)

I think Phil Ochs wrote a song about this, "Love Me, I'm a Liberal." Jello Biafra covered it a few years ago.

BTW, I'm with you. I don't really want to change the system. I'm only interested in cutting through the bullshit "fixes" both parties are offering. We won't really ever tackle inequality. I'll just have the satisfaction of saying, "I knew that," point at upper middle class Ds doing their hand-wringing and lamenting how the evil Rs fuck the poor and say, "they know it too... they just lack the balls to admit their selfishness."