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27,577 | According to the Constitution, the Vice President is the head of the Senate, but doesn't really explain what that means except to say that he doesn't get to vote except to break a tie. Aside from that and being next in the line of succession, what power does the Vice President actually have? Can he set the Senate's agenda and force calls to order in the Senate the way the Speaker can in the House? | When thinking about political power and influence it is important to distinguish between formal and informal power. While the law explicitly provides some powers, often times the most significant powers are entirely informal (not defined in law). The Vice Presidency is a position that largely relies on informal power. Who Runs the Senate? According to the Senate website , historically the Vice President's major job was presiding over the Senate. Their job included administering the rules of the Senate, casting tie-breaking votes, and overseeing Senate floor meetings. The Vice President's expenses were also funded through legislative appropriation at that time. This changed in the 1961 when Lyndon B. Johnson moved the Vice President toward an executive-focused role, rather than a legislative one. Currently the duties of overseeing the Senate are done by the President pro Tempore of the Senate . However, that position is largely viewed as being ceremonial or administrative rather than important, so it is often delegated to junior Senators to help them learn Senate procedure. So What Does the Vice President Do Now? As mentioned in Ryathal's answer (and implied in the question) the Vice President doesn't have much Constitutional authority. However, they have a large degree of authority vested in them by the President (see this BusinessInsider article for an interesting discussion). One interesting facet is that because the Vice President is elected, the President can't fire them - unlike other advisors. Stemming from this position, the Vice President has statutory (but non-Constitutional) roles - such as being a member of the National Security Council . The Vice President is executive staff, and an advisor without any particular portfolio. So although they aren't vested power by the Constitution, their status as an executive officer, combined with being elected alongside the President, means that informally they are often have significant influence. | {
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27,589 | I've heard whispers of a 'deep state' run by the Clintons or Obama or various liberals/democrats and I never really gave it much thought. It sounds kind of crazy - that said, I have to admit, I don't know much about what it allegedly is . So, I'm asking here: What is "Deep State", according to Wikipedia: In the United States, the term "deep state" describes a form of alleged cabal that coordinates efforts by government employees and others to influence state policy without regard for democratically elected leadership. The use of the term as applied to the United States has been dismissed by numerous journalists and academics as a conspiracy theory. The term has also been used to refer to alleged cabals in countries such as Turkey and post-Soviet Russia. In the United States, the term has been used in numerous published titles written by, for example, Marc Ambinder, David W. Brown, Peter Dale Scott, Mike Lofgren, and Michael Wolff. The term gained popularity in some circles during the 2016 U.S. presidential election in opposition to establishment Republican and Democratic candidates, and has also been used in 2017 and 2018 during the Trump administration by commentators who argue that deep states are aiming to delegitimize the Trump presidency. That gives me some sense of what it is, but how does it allegedly operate? It would seem that there would be a vast number of people involved which would necessarily lead to trails of evidence - especially if it's so sloppily maintained that it's all over various branches of the media. What evidence is there for Deep State? From what I can tell the answer is, not much. It would seem that for this to be real there would need to be hundreds of people involved. Not one of them has spilled the beans? Not one of them has provided substantial evidence? Do I have this correct or am I off somewhere (if so, where?)? | I think it's worth putting this in the context of real deep state examples. This typically manifests as military or intelligence agencies which do not obey civilian leadership. Brythan's answer seems problematic because it confuses institutional independence with a deep state. In cases like the militaries of Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, Russia's KGB, or it has even been alleged the UK's City of London, organisations exist which ignore elected governments or actively control them. This is a deep state. America does not have an equivalent. In Turkey, historically the military has seen itself as the guardian of the republic . If the Turkish government becomes too religious or unstable, the military has purged them. Only recently have the tables turned with the failed 2016 coup , and subsequently the civilian government purging the military, police, judiciary, etc, of dissent. Egypt's military doesn't just try to manage the democratic system, they have been described as a "Mamluk State" , appointing a general to become president (or perhaps Pharaoh). The Egyptian military is a huge institution, and actually owns a considerable amount of economic assets in order to guarantee their own financial independence. The closest the US has to a deep state would be the CIA, given opaque budgets and limited civilian oversight. But even that is doubtful. A 2016 book " Debriefing the President " by former CIA officer John Nixon makes scathing criticism of the CIA. He alleges that over the last few decades the organisation has abandoned its early emphasis, that officers should "dare to be wrong", to challenge ideas. Instead it has developed a slavish relationship with the White House, providing shallow nodding analysis in order to protect its pride and budget. If this assessment is correct, and the least transparent US government agency given the most operational freedom is nothing but a grinning yes man... then the notion of an American deep state is laughable. The suggestion that the Democratic party is involved in some sort of deep state is absurd. In American political discourse there is an unfortunate tendency to make bizarre unsubstantiated claims. For example, that Obama was going to put his political opponents in concentration camps . | {
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27,634 | In most national elections there is usually the option for voters to cast their ballot in foreign consulates. But as far as I can tell this is usually a mere formality as very few voters ever make use of that privilege and the "foreign" votes don't really affect anything. But has there been an election where the foreign vote has had a deciding effect? Here "deciding" means that the vote margin among foreign votes is larger than (and opposite to) the margin of all in-country votes. | The election of the US President in 2000 swung on the result in Florida, which Bush won by a majority of 537 (in the official count) The system in the US is for foreign citizens to vote by post. Consulate voting is possible, but is only recommended if the postal system is considered to be unreliable. The overseas votes tend to favour Republicans, boosted by overseas military voters who tend to lean to the right. Had all the overseas votes been ignored, then Al Gore would have become president. To say that overseas voters had deciding effect is a little unfair. You could equally say that the result was decided by the voters of Bradford county, or any of a hundred other subgroups. This is the case when an election is very tight. Florida state law requires that postal ballots have a clear postmark. One of the many contentious points in the recount process was how many postal votes should be rejected for not bearing a postmark, or the postmark being unclear. Republicans argued that the application of this law was disenfranchising soldiers stationed abroad. Democrats said that it was the simple application of a pre-existing law. This was discussed in the New York Times "How
Bush Took Florida Mining the Overseas Absentee Vote" | {
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27,655 | The BBC describes Navalny as Putin's main opposition rival ( example article ), despite the fact that he has rarely scored over 2% in opinion polls (at least two other opposition candidates score ≥6%). Navalny alleges that his candidacy rejection is politically motivated, but what political motivation would Putin have to bar a candidate with such an apparently low popularity from standing? | The spin on Navalny For the question of why Navalny is labeled by western media as Putin's main opposition rival is an issue of framing. If you look at the two candidates who were ahead of Navalny last he was included in opinion polls on the link you provided - Zyuganov (now Grudinin) and Zhirinovsky, members of the Communist party and the populist-nationalist LDPR party respectively - both are older men from older established Russian parties (both have been around since the early 90s, contrasted with Navalny's party's inception in 2012) with ideologies the west doesn't care for so neither make for as good a story as Navalny Navalny is not the next most favored politically to rival Putin given opinion polls, but he is the strongest contrast to Putin of any of the potential candidates, having labeled Putin's United Russia party a Party of Crooks and Thieves and having organized several protests of corruption and current leadership. He is ideologically further from and more opposed to the current regime than the other greatest contenders. Reasons for barring Navalny As for why Putin would bother to bar him from the election, it is important to consider that it is not only this election cycle and presidential term that Putin is taking these actions in consideration of. Putin has sidestepped and even rewritten the Russian constitution to give himself more time in power. To believe that Putin will completely relinquish power over the country he will have led for 24 years only because it is legally ordained would be, I believe, naive. And so, the reasons Putin has barred Navalny would be more forward-facing than just this election. A strong reason would be to prevent this from turning into a slippery slope for Putin's power going forward. Navalny's party, the Progress Party, was created only in 2012 and has become quite prominent in a short time. Being very ideologically opposed to this party, Putin would not want to give any legitimacy to this party. Perhaps this election they only get 2% of the vote, but that means Navalny getting his message out for a whole election season, televised alongside the rest of the contenders. Navalny is young and charismatic, the next election would have the chance to be quite different. Another reason would be that Putin has a goal of what he calls 70 at 70 , or 70% voter turnout with 70% voting for Putin. Part of maintaining the strongman image he has cultivated is by dominating any challenge. Anything that could be construed as weakness needs to be quashed. 70% of the vote is a lot, and any chip at that is significant. Barring someone from entry is an extreme move towards this end, but this is not the only reason Navalny is barred (see above). | {
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27,717 | Democracy is defined as: Democracy is sometimes referred to as "rule of the majority".
Democracy is a system of processing conflicts in which outcomes depend
on what participants do, but no single force controls what occurs and
its outcomes. Democracy and democratic votes is a mechanism that can be used to resolve many kinds of conflicts. However, when is actually democracy the wrong type of conflict resolution mechanism? There's a scenario I came across in another post on Stack Exchange, regarding a class seating arrangement. It's a benign example, but in that case, would a democratic vote be the right tool to decide who sits where? Or would a democratic vote be the wrong tool? E.g. in that scenario, other ways of deciding the seat arrangements would include: a first come first served based distribution, or a random distribution of the seats, or a distribution based on student eyesight levels, which I think the latter would be the most fair. So my question is more general on when/which kinds of scenarios where it is actually wrong to use a "democratic vote"? How can we generally define the limits of when a democratic vote should not be used as the conflict resolution mechanism? | Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. ~ a quote commonly attributed to Benjamin Franklin So, to answer your question: When is a democratic vote actually the wrong tool? Any time the rights of minorities matter. Pure democracy is mob rule. That's one reason the United States is not a pure democracy. It's a constitutional representative democracy and a federal republic. This means, among other things, that: the rule of law takes precedence over the will of the majority minority rights are protected the people elect representatives (presumably with good temperament) to make rules and decisions on their behalf Democracy may also be inadequate when a faster speed of decision-making is important. Examples include: a state of emergency military command corporate management Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_government_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_emergency | {
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27,841 | Libertarian party is moderate. A survey by David Kirby and David Boaz found a minimum of 14 percent
American voters to have libertarian-leaning views.[69][70] ( source ) It's fiscally conservative. It doesn't run others' people business. It's most compatible with free market and capitalism which most people are used to. Yet, it didn't get much seats. In presidential election, that would be understandable. You need to win and only the big 2 parties can win. But in parliament election? We don't have 1% libertarians in most US states ( source ). | Because most (all?) US states vote for individual representatives on a district-by-district basis. In order to get a person into a state senate or state assembly, that person needs to run in one voting district and gain the majority of votes there. That means an overall 14% approval across the whole nation won't get you any seats when it is evenly distributed over all districts. In order to win seats in the United States, a party needs to concentrate supporters in individual districts. Also, I doubt that the Libertarian party of the United States even has a 14% voter potential. "Libertarian-leaning views" and "Supporting the Libertarian party" are two different things. Many people make their voting decision on other factors than just which party ideology aligns most with their own. | {
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27,844 | From what I understood, the law focuses on 2 things: Calling death camps located in Nazi-occupied Poland "Polish death camps". Blaming Poland as a nation for the Holocaust. It seems only the second point is controversial, especially in Israel. As far as I understand the main criticism is, that it would prohibit discussing incidents, where Polish individuals collaborated with the Nazis. Isn’t there already consensus, that Poland, as a nation and state, is not to blame for the Holocaust? Isn't the law specifically formulated in a way, which would still allow individuals to be blamed for collaboration? So what is everyone arguing about? | The Law and Polish Complicity in the Holocaust While "Poland as a nation" is not to blame for the Holocaust, and while there was no official cooperation between Poland and Germany, government institutions as well as individual Poles collaborated with the Nazis (see also here ): As German forces implemented the killing, they drew upon some Polish agencies, such as Polish police forces and railroad personnel, in the guarding of ghettos and the deportation of Jews to the killing centers. Individual Poles often helped in the identification, denunciation, and hunting down of Jews in hiding, often profiting from the associated blackmail, and actively participated in the plunder of Jewish property. Poland has a long and strong history of antisemitism. Before WWII, the "Jewish Question" was an important political topic and there were calls to deport all Jews. Currently, Poland has among the highest rates of antisemites in Europe (about a third of the population according to PEW , and an index of 45% according to the ADL ). And before, during, and after WWII, Poles carried out pogroms against Jews. Those that oppose the new law fear that it will suppress legitimate criticism of Polish actions and antisemitism during the war. They see it as an attempt to whitewash history . It is difficult to say whether or not the law will be applied that way (my guess is that it probably will not), but the relevant part is that it leaves the impression of rejecting legitimate criticism about Polish involvement in the Holocaust. As the World Holocaust Remembrance Center said : restrictions on statements by scholars and others regarding the Polish people's direct or indirect complicity with the crimes committed on their land during the Holocaust are a serious distortion. Context and rising Polish Nationalism A lot of the worry is not about the exact content of the law itself though, but the context around it, specifically increasing nationalism stoked by the right wing Law and Justice party. As the Guardian says: Many observers believe the party has reignited the debate on the Holocaust as a deliberate ploy to further fuel nationalist sentiment among its voters. The Atlantic shares this view: But this law isn’t about the finer points of history. It is aimed at shoring up the right-wing base of the governing Law and Justice party Free Speech Another criticism, mainly from the US, is that the law restricts free speech (see eg CNN link above). | {
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27,856 | In Germany, every household has to pay "Rundfunkbeitrag" (often called GEZ). It is 17,50 Euro per month, which is used to finance public broadcasting. Normally, I would expect public institutions to be financed by taxes (those that have more have to pay more) instead of a fee (where the poor and the rich pay the same amount). Wikipedia has a good overview over the history of the fee, and they give required "staatsferne" (distance from the state) as reason to not have a tax. That seems to make sense, but the specifics are unclear to me. How could the state influence public broadcasting if the GEZ were a tax, compared to the influence the state already has with the fee? | The difference between a fee and a tax is that while a fee can be designated to be spent for one specific purpose, a tax is not. All taxes go into the state coffers and parliament decides how that tax money is then redistributed to all the government activities. History is full of taxes which were promised to be leveraged for very specific purposes but then ended up getting diverted to completely unrelated purposes. If financing of public broadcasting were controlled directly by the state, then the budget commission would get quite a lot of leverage on the public media. It would be possible for negative reporting to get punished and positive reporting to get rewarded in the next budget. And they would likely get away with it, because government spending decisions usually do not get much attention from those people who are not directly affected by it. But when the broadcasting fees go to an organization which has its own purse, then politicians lose that leverage. All they can do is change the amount of the legally mandated broadcasting fee, but that would be directly visible to the whole population and raise questions. Now regarding the question "Is it fair that everyone pays the same broadcasting fee even though people have different incomes?". Maybe, maybe not. There is already precedent for income-dependent mandatory fees in Germany. Health insurance and social security insurances work that way. But handling those is already a bureaucratic nightmare. Integrating the public broadcasting fees into this system would make your yearly income tax statements even more complicated. This would not really be justified considering that public broadcasting fees are about two orders of magnitude smaller than the other social insurance fees. So it's a much more convenient solution for everyone if everyone gets to pay a flat fee. Those who would really have an issue paying the fee (welfare receivers) can get an exemption . | {
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27,875 | I've noticed increasing talk of civil war in the UK since the referendum: "Brexit tensions could lead to 'blood on the streets' as part of 'CIVIL WAR', warns peer" — https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/772733/Lord-Bird-BBC-Meet-the-Lords-House-of-Lords-documentary-Brexit-civil-war-Tony-Blair-Remain "Oh, there'll be mass riots. There'll be hysteria. There could even be a civil war. The country has used its voice and if the Government ignores what the people have said then there is going to be a civil war. There is going to be." — https://news.sky.com/story/sky-views-will-there-be-civil-war-if-brexit-isnt-delivered-10716408 "From the moment the polls closed on 23 June 2016, British society has been deeply divided, probably more so than at any time since the 17th-century civil war 375 years ago. “It really is like a civil war without the gunfire,” said one commentator to me last week" — http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-catalonia-referendum-kurdish-independence-always-doomed-to-fail-a7986836.html Many comments on social media that aren't worth linking to because I can't tell apart bots, genuine rage, keyboard warriors, or algorithmic bubbles driving me to see the loudest and rarest voices. The Lindy effect — assuming it's appropriate and that I've understood how to apply it for estimating how long things will last from now — says that if I assume I'm in a normal period of British history then the default risk of civil war in the UK in the next 5 years is ~(5 years)/(367 years) = 1.362%. I assume that if people are actually talking about it, the risk is higher than normal. What I can't do is even begin to guess how much higher. Is this just nut picking for the sake of exciting headlines, or is there a significant (let's say P civil war ≥0.1 ) elevated risk? Is there any way to estimate what that risk might be? (Note that I can't go to the History exchange and ask "what are the general risk factors of all past civil wars" — I tried that, it was closed as too broad). | Predicting conflict, coups and civil war algorithmically has been done since the '90s. It was observed that human-based predictions were subject to various bias, (such as humans wanting to make their reports more exciting, attract funding and build prestige) So DARPA (a branch of the Pentagon) developed a fairly simple algorithm called the Integrated Conflict Early Warning System, that consistently outperformed human experts. It claimed over 80% accuracy source Others have gone further. At Duke University, they use an ensemble model to forecast coups . It predicted the most likely places for coups to be Burundi and Thailand. It uses a combination of government characteristics (Stronger democracies tend to have fewer coups, but elections in weaker democracies can be a focus for coup attempts), economic characteristics (Hungry people riot), the past history of coups, and other social factors (for example infant mortality correlates to higher coup risk.) ( source for list of covariates ) Among the "Democratic Western Countries" the USA has among highest risk of coup in this model, due in part to the failure of the health system to reduce infant mortality compared to other Western Democracies. It considered the probability of a coup in the UK to be very low. | {
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27,892 | Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell recently moved to vote to open the immigration debate in the Senate. As quoted from this article by CNN , he chose an unrelated bill to be used for the debate. McConnell moved on the Senate floor to vote to open debate on the bill Monday evening. The bill McConnell chose was unrelated to immigration after he had said he planned to use a separate bill for the debate. The Senate subsequently voted 97–1 to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to consideration. From what I understand, the bill is H.R. 2579 — Broader Options for Americans Act , which was passed in the House last year. Questions: As it is stated that H.R. 2579 is used as a "vehicle for the immigration bill" , how does this exactly work? How is this particular bill chosen? It is mentioned that using this bill will allow Senators to "build a bill from scratch on the Senate floor" , however, why is an existing bill used to start the immigration debate? Can't a new blank bill be introduced instead? What will happen to the existing text in the bill that was passed by the House? Will the existing text be removed via an amendment or will the immigration-related provisions just simply be added on to the existing text in the bill? | This is a common legislative tactic. Although Sen. McConnell didn't explicitly describe his plan, he was likely planning on gutting the bill (removing all of its current content) and eventually replacing it with new, immigration-related content. This isn't an amendment: it's replacing the current text of the bill with all-new text. This saves time for the legislature: the bill was already in-progress so it is a valid "target" for debate and modification. Proposing a new bill could take a lot of time and there is no guarantee it would ever make it to the Senate floor. T his article describes these "carcass bills" in more detail from the state legislature's perspective, but this appears to be what Sen. McConnell had in mind. If you want to read more about this legislative tactic it is sometimes called " hoghousing ". Sometimes the initial bill is only a short phrase or outline, sometimes it is an entire unrelated bill that will be replaced. | {
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27,908 | According to Wikipedia , many US states have a relaxed policy for car inspection regulations: Maryland requires an inspection prior to registration or transfer of
ownership only. Several states have abolished their safety inspection
programs in recent years, claiming that these programs do not reduce
accidents and are merely a tax on vehicle owners. Some states, including Florida, Kentucky and Minnesota, have
discontinued their testing programs in recent years with approval from
the federal government The same article mentions various regulations throughout the world and most of them are more or less "car inspection is mandatory every 2 years after a certain vehicle age". According to this article mandatory inspections might help with lowering accidents: The observed probability of accident involvement (as measured by
either rate) was found to increase with time since last inspection.
This result supports the alternative hypothesis that a mandatory
safety inspection has an immediate safety benefit which decreases over
time. [EDIT] Since comments correctly point out that car inspections might lead to less air pollution, I am also including a reference to sustain this. This article argues that emissions checks might lead to reduce of air pollution with certain substances: Using over a decade of data from the state of California, we show an
increase in emissions-related repairs, as proxied by passing
post-repair inspections, corresponds to local improvement in CO, NOx
and PM10 levels, but with little change in local O3. However, additional gains from the Smog Check program are decreasing
with time, as almost all benefits of repairs and re-inspections come
from fixing failing older model cars (1985 and prior) with inferior
emissions control technology. As older technology cars disappear from
the road, the differential between failing and repaired emissions
decreases. Question: Why do so many US States have a relaxed (or none at all in some cases) vehicle inspection policy?
This seems to be quite unusual when referenced to other countries and also seems to be less safe. | There's a few reasons why, but the two largest are It's effectively a tax on cars (and a regressive tax at that). A Texas legislator noted that when introducing a bill to repeal Texas' law So let’s call these inspections what they really are: a tax on Texans’ time and money. [It] costs Texans an annual $267 million in fees alone. What’s arguably worse is the tax on our time — the program forces more than 50,000 trips to the inspection station every single day, resulting in more than 9 million wasted hours every year. That adds up to $203 million in lost wages, based on average salary data…This type of flat cost disproportionately affects lower-income Texans, and while most begrudge the annual trip to the station, these individuals are truly harmed by this unnecessary and counterproductive mandate. There's no evidence they actually promote safety According to a study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office , there is no evidence to indicate that mandatory safety inspection programs reduce accidents. The report demonstrates that crash rates are roughly the same in states that have them as in those that do not. | {
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27,950 | Also, what about if you buy a software, and some terms in the software TOS says that you agree to be sex slave. A more concrete samples Unit link insurances. In most regions, people are selling unit link insurance. The unit link insurance are often sold deceptively. For example, say you buy an insurance that normally worth $100. The insurance agent will combine that with investment. Say, the investment is $10000. The insurance agent will say that all the money is invested, and you got a small insurance on top of that. The fee, however, is $10k (yap 100 times the normal cost of insurance). The customer doesn't know that there is a $10k fee. It's usually written in obscure ways. For example, the contract can say that there is a fee of 100% of basic premium. A consumer must combine that statement with other statement, such as what is basic premium, and how much is it, to know that there is a $10k fee. Not suspecting that a $100 worth of insurance can have a $10k fee, most customers just miss that part. Another real world samples: Ethereum DAO The contract is the code. There is a bug in a code that makes some people lost money. The way ethereum do it is with a fork. But we can't change our currency every time this happened. Hacking In case of hacking, the thief just got the money. So libertarians seem to follow the easiest path. Notice libertarians aren't worse off than most countries. How would libertarians view that sort of contract? In one hand the contract is consensual. It usually contain terms like customers already read, understand, and agree with the contract. Basically there are several things libertarian "countries" may do Don't bother enforcing the contract. After all, the contract if the contract is grossly deceptive it's not "true consent" anyway. Let the market handles the situation. Companies with deceptive contract will have bad brand. Having protection customer agencies suing the companies (this is probably a very unlibertarian solution, but this is how most countries are doing it) For a sample. I wonder what a libertarian court, justice, or government would do in http://www.asiaone.com/singapore/sim-lim-scams-student-reduced-tears-after-being-charged-1k-iphone-warranty Will it be the same or differ from what Singaporean governments' do? | Perhaps the single, most fundamental principle within libertarian thought is voluntarism . Almost all other libertarian ideals (freedom of contracts, autonomous judgement, informed consent, individual freedom, labor theory of property, etc.) are philosophically derived from this principle. The best society is the one in which all people are maximally free to make their own decisions regarding their own lives. Even though such freedom will most certainly cause inequality of outcome, libertarians believe that it is morally wrong for others (i.e. the government) to interfere with or deprive people of that freedom. And that's where we get into the non-aggression principle. People think of "aggression" as an act of violence, but it really applies to any act which is deliberately designed to cause someone else involuntary and tangible harm. Fraud and deceit definitely fit that definition as do other nonviolent crimes like theft, vandalism, and counterfeiting for example. When it comes to contracts, libertarians believe that no one has the right to interfere with the subject matter of what kinds of contracts people should be able to enter into (even your extreme example of selling yourself into slavery). However, in order to be moral, the manner in which a contract is agreed to is of paramount importance. Even among libertarians, certain contracts should be held unenforceable if they are entered into in bad faith. Such contracts would not be considered voluntary under the following circumstances: Lack of Capacity : People cannot voluntarily consent to terms which they are incapable of understanding. It's very difficult to assess someone else's competence and there is disagreement over the extent to how much duty each person has to verify the sound judgement of another, but it's easy to agree that certain people lack this judgement. Young children, incapacitated people, and people suffering from obvious dementia are great examples. Duress : A contract is invalid when one person was threatened into agreeing to it, either explicitly or implicitly (as is usually the case). One could argue that blackmail would fall into this category, although some libertarians think that preventing disclosure of negative information is a perfectly acceptable contract. But no reasonable person thinks it's OK to coerce someone into signing a contract. Undue Influence :
Artificially creating the circumstances which a contract is designed to mitigate is fraudulent. A good example would be deliberately infecting someone's computer with a virus, and then charging them to remove it. That's a form of racketeering. Misrepresentation : Lying about certain facts or characterizing a situation in such a way as to force someone to enter into a contract they wouldn't have made if they'd known the truth. This is more about the act of making deliberately false statements about important facts a person rationally needs to make an informed decision rather than the other person just blindly believing something untrue when they had the realistic means to know otherwise. Nondisclosure : This is just misrepresentation by omission; deliberately preventing a party from finding out important information that they rationally need to make an informed decision. Obfuscation : This is the act of using the language of a contract to hide terms that would be unfavorable to the other person. This is similar to lack of capacity, but in this case, even a reasonable person wouldn't be able to understand exactly what they are agreeing to. This is most often accompanied by high-pressure tactics designed to fatigue a person into an ambiguous agreement, either by creating a false sense of urgency, or otherwise preventing a person from properly deliberating with themselves. This isn't an exhaustive list, but all of these tactics rob a person of their ability to make voluntary decisions, and are particularly insidious because they have the appearance of voluntarism, but in reality have manipulated another person into a course of action that they would not have consented to without the deception. Voluntarism is based on freedom of choice, so it's not voluntary if you've deliberately acted to take those choices away. So it should be clear that libertarianism is not an "every man for himself" or "let the buyer beware" philosophy. But how should we deal with fraud when it occurs? How those rules should be enforced, who is empowered to enforce them, and what corrective actions should people be allowed to take is a matter of significant debate among libertarian thinkers and I'm afraid there isn't much consensus on those questions. | {
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27,984 | I want to be as neutral as possible, but since both topics (Jews and politics) are historically inflamatory, I'll caveat that if anyone disagrees, I would welcome constructive suggestions on how to edit the question. My premises are as following: Jews are very active in politics in the United States and specifically in the Democratic Party politics. In fact, they are so active in the Democratic Party politics, that the common understanding in the United States is that most of jewish voters always vote for Democrats. Former Soviet Jews who came to the United States as refugees may have a natural inclination against left-leaning ideas (because they escaped a far-left regime). As (albeit anecdotal) evidence for the 2nd premise, I would turn to the personal history of the author of the most widely-read conservative advocacy novel "Atlas Shrugged". Regardless of one's own political persuation, it's very clear that the novel's villains are leftists and its heroes are conservatives. The author of Atlas Shrugged was a former Soviet jew who, having escaped the Soviet Union in 1919, was probably one of the 1st jewish refugees from the Soviet Union. In my personal experience, the Jews who escaped the Soviet Union have been much more Republican-leaning than Democrat-leaning. But that is also anecdotal. Having setup the context, I'd like to get to my actual question: There was a significant immigration wave of Jewish refugees who came to the United States around the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union. As a result of this, these refugees represent a large percentage of the Jews living in the United States. Are there any scientific demographic studies of political differences between political views of Jews who immigrated from the USSR to the United States and political views of other Jews living in the United States? | Yes. There is a tremendous schism. To use a technical statistical term the schism is earth-shattering. Plagiarizing my own Skeptics.SE answer : Overall, American Jews tend to vote 70-90% Democrat in Presidential elections . An overwhelming majority of educated immigrants from former Soviet Union are hard-anti-progressive (technically speaking, they usually vote "R", but if you go into nuance, most are libertarian-ish politically - most of them not so much as vote "for Republicans", as "against Democrats" - literally, if you ask, that is their line of thinking). This would be testable in a ranked choice voting systems, but US is predominantly FPTP, so most people tactically choose "R" regardless of true preference . There isn't too much polling on it as the demographics isn't prominent enough, but what there is, supports this. The poll #s below were sourced from " Russian-Jewish Immigrants in the U.S:Social Portrait, Challenges, and AJC Involvement" By Sam Kliger, Director, Russian Affairs, AJC . Specifically, "Voting patterns 2000–08" section of "Political Views" chapter. 2004: 77% of Russian-speaking Jews in New York voted for the Republican incumbent GW Bush over his Democratic challenger John Kerry who got 9% Similar pattern in 2008: McCain 65%, Obama 10% In 2011, in special Congressional election to replace Anthony Wiener (NY Congressman who resigned prematurely due to a sex scandal), Russian Jews voted 90% for the Republican candidate (Note: "D" candidate was Jewish; "R" candidate was not, so this was even more dramatic). Additional citations can be found in "The New Jewish Diaspora: Russian-Speaking Immigrants in the United States ..." edited by Zvi Gitelman, Zvi Y. Gitelman; p. 116 (but I wasn't able to find citable text, just search inside Google books). Their main source for USA seems to be Kliger as well, though. In addition, being a fUSSR Jewish immigrant myself, I can fully confirm this. Out of everyone in my demographics I know, less than 5% ever considered supporting Democrats, 0% if you exclude people who graduated from American colleges. in 2016, most of them are what 538 classifies as "Reluctant Trump Voters", meaning, they voted against Hillary Clinton regardless of who was on the "R" ballot. For extra irony, you can't even blame this on Russia somehow, as they tend to be far more anti-Russia than most Americans, having experienced much more severe antisemitism in Russia than they did in the States. Please note that this isn't a US-only phenomenon. In Israel, the most preeminent "Russian" political party, " Yisrael Beiteinu ", firmly belongs in the Likud coalition at least as of 2019 both politically and ideologically on most issues except Orthodox/secular divides (and has even merged with Lukud for a time). For those who bring the 2021 status quo as counter-argument, please note that the post-2019 realignment is about things unrelated to left/right side - their break with Netaniyahu was in large part driven by the latter's tie at the hip to ultra-religious parties rather than typical ideological differences. | {
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28,004 | Inspired by this question The United States has low levels of voter turnout as compared to other developed democracies. As seen in the above question, low-income individuals are less likely to vote than their higher-income counterparts. Given that low-income individuals are the most likely to not vote largely because they need to work - often being paid hourly and needing the money more desperately than others, and that low-income individuals are more likely to be Democrats than Republicans , why hasn't a democratic politician spearheaded this effort that could see increased turnout from their base? I understand that perhaps for purely political reasons a Republican wouldn't want to champion this and risk higher turnout in demographics they don't necessarily have support from, but for a Democrat this seems like something that would be easy to make a case for and would enjoy popular support from the nation. What arguments have been posed for and against Election Day being a holiday, and is there a partisan split in the debate (if any)? I realize that some federal holidays generally entail most people having the full day off or at least reduced hours, such as Christmas Day, while others such as Columbus Day go largely unnoticed. I would assume the Election Day holiday would be more like the former than the latter | In some states, election day is a holiday . The counter argument you are looking for is that the federal government shouldn't dictate how states implement their elections. If the states wish to declare their own civic holidays on election day they are free to do so, without the federal government requiring it and the corresponding loss of productivity from anyone else who doesn't want the holiday. Other states solve the issue differently, for instance Colorado, Oregon, and Washington hold their elections via the postal system . Legislators can argue that the loss of economic activity due to the closing of businesses adversely affect the state, and other avenues of solving the problem of lack of participation are available. Another alternative solution proposed would be to move the current election day to always land on November 11th, which happens to be Veterans Day and is already a federal holiday that is widely observed. This can be done without taking the step of declaring election day itself a holiday around the same time in November when elections are generally held, and a lot of people already have the day off of work so there will be less work hours lost than having a separate holiday. Additionally, the left-leaning Slate published an article pointing out that, even though many people would get the day off, other certain types of establishments that don't generally close for federal holidays still won't benefit because they won't observe the holiday. ( Inc.com also published a similar argument.) Restaurants, retail, healthcare, all are businesses that generally get inundated with customers on other federal holidays, causing those industries an undue strain on the same day where their workers would need time off to go to polls also. Still further, the problem of low-income voters not voting may be an XY-problem. Perhaps it's not because they can't get the time off to vote, but rather they don't believe voting would do them any good if they did, making the exercise not worthwhile in their eyes. If their employer closes in deference to a holiday, they may be adversely affected financially against their will. One final observation is that there is more to an election than just the day of voting. The only holiday we're talking about is the day of the actual election, but counting primaries and run-offs there could be more days throughout the year that require voter participation. These elections are arguably more important, since they determine who gets to appear on the ballot. Creating a federal holiday for the election won't encourage people to participate in choosing who is available in the pool of candidates to pick from. | {
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28,162 | I was not born in the USA, and I am trying to understand the Second Amendment. My big question is: When was the last time US citizens made use of the Second Amendment and fought against the US government to protect their freedom? I expect a date, or an event, or "never" as an answer to my question (see my second edit). If the Civil War is the answer, then I want to clarify: in the Civil War didn't people fight people rather than the government? Father vs son, brother vs brother, etc? Edit : clarification Some people complained that my question is too vague, and I agree with that. What is meant by government? Do local governments count? Do bullets have to be shot or is a peaceful protest with guns enough to be considered an exercise of the 2nd amendment? I will argue and say that the ambiguity of my question is caused by the ambiguity of the 2nd amendment itself. I think the 2nd amendment is too primitive to adequately cover all user cases of a much more complex world we live in today compared to the way this world was when the amendment was first written. Please use your best judgment and logic when answering questions and posting comments. As an OP, I don't know how I should make this question more specific. Edit 2 : additional clarifications Here is where I am coming from with this question. A lot of people, when arguing about the 2nd amendment, state that they need the 2nd amendment to protect themselves from corrupt government (I recently participated in such a discussion with friends). The next natural question to those people I had is "when was the last time that happened?" So, I came to this website to find an answer. When I asked the question I expected either a specific date or event, or "never" as a reply. It turned out my question generated a lot of discussion. I received multiple dates/events as answeres as candidates for my answer, as well as requests to clarify my question and suggestions in comments that the 2nd amendment hypothetically prevented the US from a hypothetical corrupt government, which is not really an answer. I also found "counter arguments" (if they can be qualified as such) to the most currently highly upvoted answer. In the mean time, I accept an unpopular answer as "It haven't happened yet" as accepted, until a better answer emerges. Disclaimer : I don't mean to appear anti-gun-ownership. I believe people have the right to own guns, but my opinion has no place on this website. I am on this site expecting to get unbiased, logical answers which weigh both sides of the argument. Edit 3 : I took away my accepted answer check mark so not too skew other people's opinions on this issue. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rebellions_in_the_United_States suggests Wounded Knee in '73. In 1973 about 200 people mostly from a Lakota tribe took over a town on the site of a famous massacre. They held the town for 71 days sporadicly exchanging gunfire with law enforcement including the FBI. It was sparked by a failure of regular mechanisms to remove a elected official (he had goons ). It quickly escalated to be about the US not honoring treaties with natives and many non-Lokota joined. It was fairly successful; popular opinion was in favor, the leaders were not sentenced and the phrase "poor treatment of Native Americans in the film industry" was first broadcast from Hollywood. The official served another 3 years after winning an election that was invalidated because of the actions of the goons, but later upheld. | {
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28,186 | In Jakarta, Ahok and Anies are both running for gubernatorial election. One Anies supporter uses one of Ahok speeches to accuse him of blasphemy. Article: Ahok denies saying the Quran tricks people against voting for him, says his words were edited out of context Ahok, who had a 70% approval rating, was then sent to jail. It makes me wonder, why isn't this happening in stable democracies like the US? When Donald Trump and Hillary were running for election, rather than trying to campaign, why not just try to get the other imprisoned over unclear or "rubbery" laws? Does the US have special rules to postpone prosecution until the election is over? (Indonesians have one but chose to waive it for the Ahok case due to too much demonstration). What would happen in the US? Being a good candidate is tough (and not lucrative). It's much easier to simply jail your competitor than trying to rule well. I know it's done in many parts of the world. How do democracies like the US handle these issues? | The simplest answer is that a US President can't just arbitrarily throw anyone in jail. (At least overtly: we're not talking about covert ops here.) About the most a President could do would be to direct the Department of Justice to have the FBI (or some independent commission, like the current Mueller one) do an investigation. Then if creditable evidence was found, it would need to be presented to a grand jury, and indictments issued. Moreover, even if the opposing candidate was arrested, s/he would be able to obtain bail, and could continue campaigning, probably with increased popular support. See the 4th & 8th Amendments to the US Constitution . Aside from the legal obstacles, public opinion would make it pointless for a President to do anything like this openly. Unless s/he was extremely popular (and in that case, why bother?), such an action would almost certainly sway enough public opinion to lose the election, and would probably lead to impeachment. As mentioned in another answer, Richard Nixon's acts of just secretly investigating his opponent led to him resigning the office rather than face impeachment. Do a search on "Watergate". | {
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28,233 | I see a repeated assumption that puzzles me. From another well asked and answered question : On one hand it is impossible for the UK to leave the Single Market while maintaining an open border with an EU member The comments and answers point out that both the Irish and the UK do not want a hard border, so why is it impossible to leave the Single Market without one? I presume the EU cannot legally force a country that is not a member to enforce its border with them and it can't force the UK to remain an EU member if it decides on a soft border. This question also includes the assumption and has an answer titled "They can't" but the reasons it gives aren't things that create impossibilities . For example, it claims: any Brexit implies stricter borders Maybe for Ireland/EU but the UK does not have to impose any border restriction. It seems to be assumed, and yet it's been a soft border for almost 100 years : the border is essentially open, allowing free passage of people since 1923 and of goods since 1993 I'm looking for something of the ilk of a technical/legal reason, not one that is about negotiating stances or consequences or political inconveniences that go "against Brexit". I'll give 2 examples of things I'm not looking for and why because I want this to be a very strict question. Negotiating stance : The EU demands it or it refuses to sign a trade deal. That doesn't make it impossible even though the UK could concede to it, the UK could simply ignore it. Consequence : (From this answer ) The UK would have to accept the free flow of EU citizens over the border. If foreigners can master the Ulster accent well enough to hide illegally then good for them! ;-) But, this also doesn't make it impossible . It's an assumption so often made and rarely challenged that I'm very curious to find the answer. It appears to be the EU's problem entirely as it would threaten their customs union and that they are the ones that require a hard border after Brexit. However, maybe I missed something obvious or there's an international law I'm unaware of that makes it so? | In the strictest sense, it is of course possible; but it doesn’t make any sense, unless Brexit is only for symbolism. The whole point of Brexit (beside the symbolism) and of leaving the single market and the customs union is to allow Britain to act independently from its former partners – at least in trade issues. On the other hand, one main point of a single market is to allow goods to be traded as seemlessly between, say, Madrid and London as they traditionally are traded between Manchester and London; there should be no trade barriers in a single market. So let’s consider some scenarios where Brexit Britain starts doing its own thing while the Irish border remains fully open: The British parliament and government decide, in order to protect the British strawberry growers from unfair (sunnier) competition, to introduce a 200% import duty on strawberries. (This is a tariff barrier .) The meaning is that strawberries bought for £ 2 a kilogram in Spain should cost at least £ 6 when reaching England. However, importers take their Spanish strawberries to Dublin (no import duty because single market), then across the Irish border to Belfast (no import duty because fully open border), then to England (no import duty because of the UK’s own internal single market), and sell for £ 3. The British strawberry growers and the government aren’t happy. The British authorities decide to allow treating chickens with chlorine. This is not allowed in the EU, and chlorinated chickens aren’t supposed to be in circulation within the EU. (This new regulatory divergence between Brexit Britain and the EU amounts to a non-tariff barrier .) However, Northern Irish farmers take their chlorinated chickens to the Republic (possible because fully open border) and sell them to supermarkets there, and in other EU members. The EU and its remaining member states aren’t happy. The president of the US, Donald Trump, likes Brexit Britain so much that he generously exempts it from his 25% import duty on steel. Belgian steel works transport their produce via Ireland and Northern Ireland to the US, avoiding the duty that is supposed to target them. President Trump isn’t happy. Of course, Brexit Britain could refrain from utilizing its newly-found power to diverge, voluntarily keeping the rules that the EU has. That, however, would mean “a Brexit in name only”, i.e. pure symbolism. | {
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28,250 | This question is prompted by a comment on the radio today, in which it was stated that house prices in the UK are about 10x average earnings (compared to the historically safe ratio for a mortage of about 4x), and that this is why there is a problem with affordable housing. One solution proposed by politicians and commentators is to coerce housebuilding companies and developers to build new houses rather than "sit" on land whose value might rise. My question is this: as far as I am aware, house building businesses do not make "super profits", and are often heavily geared (heavy borrowings). The heavy gearing is because housing development is "up front" in terms of costs - you pay huge outlays, and only get them back if the project completes on time - hence excessive interest on those borrowings - and the dwellings are then sold. Importantly, borrowings are often secured not just on land, but also by covenants based on share price (in turn usually based on profits + dividends, in other words, the company must broadly maintain its expected profit levels). So the political and social issue is not about housing stock . It's about housing price (10x earnings). Short of market controls over house sales prices, any remedy of the affordable housing situation would require that substantial new housing is developed and sold for about 40% of its current price, to solve the problem. It's clear that this could be done by local authorities, who can build at a loss if subsidised or if agreed by central government, but less clear whether it is remotely feasible to achieve it any other way. (House rental pricing and part-ownership rates are largely fixed by house values, so we can discount that solution - if house prices remain too high, it's likely that rental prices will also be too high, to impact the problem, and if prices fall enough to solve it, then we will not need rental market changes to be imposed - they will fall as well.) Market controls on non-new housing sales would be politically unacceptable as well as impractical - house owners could not realistically be compelled to lower asking prices to about 40% of current prices at any realistic future time. How can governments politically approach this issue? What possible structural solutions could a government deploy? It seems, in simple terms, that the essential problem is that as wages won't rise by 2.5x any time soon, a substantial stock of housing at 40% of current prices must be made available, otherwise whatever else is done, it won't actually be affordable. But equally, if a housebuilder was directed to make a large part of their housebuilding available at 40% of current prices, that goes far, far beyond any kind of gain from land hoarding or profits they make. As a sector, they simply couldn't afford anything like that and still remain in business. Land prices don't have that level of flexibility either, no matter if brown or green locations. Interest on borrowings is at a historic low-ish point, so that can't be cut much either, and actions that significantly affect profits and dividends going forward, will impact borrowing covenants of heavily geared companies. Forced to cut the price that a large part of new housing is sold at - which is what has to happen one way or another - their business would go insolvent and if by some chance it didn't, the only other way would be that the direct costs of building a house would have to fall hugely - in other words every employee and contractor in the construction sector suffering a massive pay cut (order of magnitude 50%??) - which isn't going to be feasible either. In short, politically it's essential that the "affordable housing" situation is addressed. But how on earth can it politically be achieved without gutting a major sector of the economy and its employees? | Another reason you cannot have a significant drop in house prices is that it would push millions of people into negative equity, which in itself would cause massive damage to the economy (not to mention ruining people's lives!). One particular thing to note is that we don't really have a housing shortage - what we have is a shortage of housing in the areas where there is a large demand - some northern towns have huge amounts of empty housing. One solution, therefore, is to spread the demand so that you don't have everyone needing to live in/near London (many people, after all, would rather live where they grew up, but can't if there aren't any jobs there...) So some things that could be done: Encourage companies to create jobs in areas with significant amounts of empty housing. Encourage companies to allow more remote working/flexible working etc which allows people to live further away. Discourage investors from sitting on empty housing (see the arguments post-Grenfell regarding luxury apartment blocks in central London that have never been lived in) Improve transport & communication links around the country (again, reducing the need for companies to be near to London) | {
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28,261 | Other than the fact that nobody has challenged it in the Supreme Court, how are separate bathrooms for men and women not in violation of the rejection of "separate but equal"? We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. | The constitution does not say anything about 'separate but equal', for or against, directly. So the easy answer is that separate bathrooms are not a violation because you can't violate something that is not constitutionally required. Of course that's sort of a cop-out, so let's answer the question you're trying to ask without being so overly literal. I'm sure you're referring to segregation and why segregation was ruled unconstitutional yet segregating people by sexes when they use the restroom is not. Quick sidenote: I'm focusing on cisgender individuals for this question. One could argue that the situation is different when you consider transgender, or other types of genders, individuals. I'm ignoring that group for now to keep this answer from growing too long, and I don't think it is what the OP is interested in right now. Let's just say a separate question about how separate but equal concept applies to transgender individuals' use of restrooms could very well be asked and discussed The short answer would be that the two sexes are actually being treated equally, whereas segregation was not leading to equality between the two groups that were segregated. To better explain what that means, let's first go over a quick history lesson. History of Segregation Segregation was ruled to violate the 14th amendment. Specifically the part offering equal protection. Here is the relevant section: Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. You notice that although the 14th amendment was written specifically to protect the rights of former slaves, the wording does not limit itself to former slaves, the fourteenth amendment applies to everyone! (Though I find it ironic that the very next section offers all males the right to vote, but still excludes females from voting, luckily later amendments have fixed that.) The most relevant part of the amendment is that last line, stating that all US citizens are offered 'equal protection of the laws'. This means that no law could be passed that offered one group of people (whites) a privileged to use some resources (such as riding the bus or drinking out of a water fountain) while denying another group (blacks/former slaves) that same privilege. Originally the Supreme Court ruled that this did not prevent 'separate, but equal' treatment. So, for example, you could not forbid one group from drinking out of a water fountain, but you could pass a law saying both groups had the right to drink out of a water fountain, but provide different water fountains for each group. Since both groups gained the same privilege and were treated 'equally' the Supreme court argued this did not violate the equal protection under the law offered by the fourteenth amendment. The problem was the 'but equal' part. Sure, the Supreme Court suggested that the two groups would be treated equally, but in practice the water fountain for the 'negro' people were always worse than those for whites, not cleaned as well, not maintained, etc. In general the items and locations provisioned for 'negro' use were uniformly worse than the ones provisioned for whites to use. Thus the Supreme court later ruled that the idea of treating the different races 'separate, but equal' was inherently flawed because in practice the separation was being used to treat one group ('negro' people) worse than the other and thus the law was not being applied equally amongst the two groups. In fact the supreme court went a bit further, by stating that the very act of treating the two races of people separately in this case was harming one of them. Even if both sides had exactly as nice of a water fountain, and had just as desirable of bus seats etc, everyone would know that the reason that the two were separated was because one group was considered to be less than, and thus not worthy of being allowed to interact with, the other group. Telling a group of people they were considered less worthy by segregating them will cause that group to suffer psychological harm, feelings of inferiority or anger at the treatment etc. This was an unfair harm being inflicted on one group, but not the other, by the very act of segregation, and this meant that it was impossible to ever have truly separate, but equal, treatment of the races. So why doesn't this apply to separation of the sexes? So why wouldn't this apply to bathrooms? Mostly because the concept of separate, but equal, was not actually illegal by the fourteenth amendment. The problem was that in practice making a division based off of race always told one race they were inferior to another. When dividing two groups based off of sex this isn't necessarily the case. First and foremost the two sets of bathrooms are generally treated truly equally, unlike what happened with segregation. Both bathrooms are cleaned as frequently. Both are the same size with the same degree of decoration etc. One isn't treated worse because the owners of the bathrooms consider one of the sexes to be somehow inferior to the other. (This is a slight lie, as I believe studies show female bathrooms are cleaned slightly more thoroughly, as women are more likely to complain about unclean restrooms then men are, but the difference is very minor and not due to some desire to slight one over the other.) Second, and more important, there is no inherent harm in separating the two bathrooms. When you had a separate restroom for whites and blacks, you were effectively telling blacks they were inferior and not worthy of using white's restrooms. This is not the case with separating restrooms between sexes. I don't think either sex feels that the reason they have to use a different restroom than the other is because they are inferior (or superior) to the other sex. This is important, separating the sexes, in this situation, is not causing any inherit psychological harm by its very nature! Going along with the last point the fact that there are valid reasons for separating the sexes, both because the majority of both sexes would prefer to be separated in the restrooms and because the manner of constructing the restrooms differs due to legitimate differences in the sexes (as males have space dedicated to urinals that females don't) helps to justify a reason for separating the sexes and thus further decreases the odds that anyone will view the separation as a statement against one sex or the other. I would also point out this is not the only case that separate-but-equal policies exist. There are many situations where two groups are treated separately, but not with an intent to provide unequal harm to the other. As a random example whenever I vote the location I go to in order to vote is based off of my last name, if my neighbor has a last name that starts with a different letter he may be told to go to a different voting location. We're being separated into groups and told to use separate accommodations. However, since the accommodations are generally equal, and the separation is not done with an intent to mistreat or denigrate one group over the other, it's not a violation of the 14th amendment. There are many many cases where it makes sense to separate people into groups, usually for logistical reasons, that are not a violation of the 14th amendment for this reason. When/if the separation of sexes by bathrooms is proven to cause a disproportionate harm to one group of people over the other then an argument of violating the 14th amendment could be made, but not until then. I will now promptly end this answer before anyone brings up transgender individuals by simply saying that some have made arguments that the transgender individuals are not getting 'equal protection under the law' due to how they are treated with regards of which restroom they may use. I'm sure a separate interesting question could be asked as to how the 14th amendment may be applied to transgender individuals and the law, and I don't have time to get into it right now ;) | {
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28,319 | The UK government has put the Ecuadorian embassy in London on surveillance for years now. AFAIK, Wikileaks has not released any documents damaging to the UK government. Nor has it released any documents that hurt the current US president. Why, then, does the UK government refuse to move on? Activities of Wikileaks seem to continue even after his house arrest, so what's the point? | The UK government is not above the law. UK law requires the government to pursue fugitives. There is no tradition in the UK of allowing fugitives to go free if they are able to remain free for a long enough time. Instead, there is a tradition of the rule of Law, and the expectation that the government will act to uphold the Law. The case is exceptional because Ecuador has chosen to offer sanctuary in its embassy. It is unusual for the UK police to be unable to arrest someone whose location is well known. | {
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28,341 | Has the UK prosecuted, or attempted to prosecute, individuals for jumping bail, or otherwise trying to evade the justice system, other than with Julian Assange? I had a look at the England and Wales section of Wikipedia's article on bail, and while it mentions that it is a criminal offence, it doesn't mention how often, if at all, prosecutions have been done for that. I'd be especially interested if the government has ended up solely investigating or prosecuting for jumping bail or otherwise evading the justice system. | Yes. This article on the BBC from 2016 states that 13000 Arrest warrants are outstanding, on people who have jumped bail, or as in the words of the article Figures obtained by the BBC show more than 13,000 people are subject to outstanding arrest warrants in England, with the oldest dating back to 1980. The BBC asked for details of arrest warrants issued via the courts due to suspects not attending hearings. A suspect will have been on bail prior to the hearing.
This figure is just for the warrants that were still outstanding at the time of inquiry, and would not include those individuals who have subsequently been rearrested. | {
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28,350 | This article argues a possible trade war that might start as a consequence to steel tariff: Appearing at a joint press conference in the White House, Mr Trump was
asked how he would avoid his steel tariff “escalating in a trade war”. Mr Trump responded: “Well, we’ll have to see. When we’re behind on
every single country, trade wars aren’t so bad. You understand what I
mean by that? “When we’re down by $30 billion, $40 billion, $60 billion, $100
billion [in trade deficits], the trade war hurts them, it doesn’t hurt
us. So we’ll see what happens. " This article shows the EU's reaction: European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in an earlier
statement said: "We strongly regret this step, which appears to
represent a blatant intervention to protect US domestic industry and
not to be based on any national security justification. "We will not sit idly while our industry is hit with unfair measures
that put thousands of European jobs at risk ... The EU will react
firmly and commensurately to defend our interests." Since both US and EU are huge economical actors, one should expect that such a "trade war" if started, to have significant global economical effects (measured in tens of billion $). From Trump's declarations I understand that he hopes that a potential trade war to help alleviate the trade deficit, but it is unclear how this would happen, especially when EU very likely to react. Question: Does stopping metal imports alone cover the trade deficit of the USA? | According to the US census bureau, the trade deficit of the United States in 2016 was $504.8 Billion . The recent US import tariff increase is on both steel and aluminum. In 2016, the United States imported $21.9 billion worth of steel and $12.4 billion worth of aluminum and bauxite (aluminum ore) . So even if the tariffs manage to reduce the US steel and aluminum imports to zero, it will reduce the US trade deficit by 7% at most. It is also likely that these import tariffs will increase the cost of manufacturing goods from steel and aluminum in the United States. That means it might get cheaper to import these from abroad and harder to sell them on the world market. This would counteract the trade deficit effect. So bottom line, this measure alone will not balance the US trade deficit. But it might contribute to balancing it if combined with many more such protectionist measures. The main beneficiary of this measure will likely be the steel and aluminum industry in the United States. With the competition from abroad off the US market, their products might become a lot more lucrative. | {
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28,371 | Back when the US presidential election, I frequently heard the US is not suitable for the high-tax, large-welfare system like in Scandinavia. This is especially common among leftists, mostly Hillary Clinton supporters ( example ): Flam said, “We have to remember that Sweden is a small country, the population is very homogenous.” But I didn't see anyone provide evidence for this statement. So what is the reason big countries are considered to not be suitable for the same solutions as these 'good welfare nations'? Also, does the "big" mean population-wise or geography-wise? The former includes countries like Japan and the latter like Australia. | Caveat: These are impressions of a Scandinavian dude (assuming you would include Finland) who only lived in the US (in late 80's) as a grad student/post doc, but never raised a family there. I would say that the question is more complicated than just a matter of size. The scale may affect the viability of a welfare system financed by we the taxpayers, but not necessarily in a direct way. One thing that caught my eye in the article was the statement that the Swedes, by and large, trust their government. This is mostly true in all the Nordic countries, but I'm a bit skeptical about the Americans. You guys are proud of your form of government, but when is the last time you heard an American say "the government is on your side" un-ironically? Don't take the previous bullet too seriously though. Things aren't that different on this side of the pond if we scale up one level! Many people here, Scandinavia and elsewhere, have a similar mistrust of the EU and its bureaucrats. If some politician here suggested the EU to run the welfare system, the voters would call for their local equivalent of tar and feathers. I don't know whether the reason is related to the size, geographic distance or what. Ask a psychologist, I'm a math guy. Healthcare is a big part of it. May be I watched too much LA Law and such (my wife was pregnant during the last months of our stay so I did get a glimpse of the US healthcare system), but I have the impression that healthcare costs in the US are driven up by: A) the medical professionals need to cover the cost of their education, B) when an insurance company picks up the bill, the medical practitioners have a tendency to take a number of extra tests to cover their ass because, C) the US courts are occasionally rather generous with their malpractice compensations. I'm not saying that consumers in Scandinavia would not be able to take malpractice cases to court, but I do find the American legal pratices ridiculous. Cut a couple of zeros from those dollar figures, please. What I was getting at with the previous bullet is that you cannot isolate the healthcare system from the rest of the society, remove it with surgical precision, and replace it with another. It is connected to the legal and educational industries at least, and any changes in one component will have ramifications in the others. Ok, so I just kept stating the obvious. Back to the actual question. The size of the country per se may not be a problem. But, while a taxpayer in New York City may find it acceptable to support people upstate, a taxpayer from Deep South may be more reluctant to support New Englanders (and vice versa). I don't know for sure, but the size of the country may enter the equation this way. The linked article also mentioned relative homogeneity of populations of the Scandinavian countries as a factor. This plays a role in the sense that the number of free-riders, while not equal to zero, is tolerable here. Not sure how the US taxpayers see this? If the US wants to change its welfare structure, it may be better to look at UK and/or Australia for cues. At least the legal systems are then more compatible. It may also be more palatable to the US taxpayers to do reforms like
this at the level of states. Or, at the very least, finance it
state-by-state . Within EU this is referred to as subsidiarity .
Admittedly a point against bringing in a system from a small country
to a much bigger one. Anyway, if implemented at the level of states,
then the states could learn from experiences of each other, adapt and
modify their own ways, and eventually come up with something that
works. | {
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28,475 | "Great Leap Backward" was the title announcing the term limit removal in China. This BBC article tells us more about this: The constitution has been altered to allow Xi Jinping to remain as
president beyond two terms and they would not have gone to this much
trouble if that was not exactly what he intended to do. I am wondering why it is this so important. Putin is de facto leader for more than 3 mandates (not much big difference from "for life") and I do not remember to be illustrated so harshly: Commentators, analysts and some politicians[7][8][9][10] concurred in
2008 and early 2009 that the transfer of presidential powers that took
place on May 7, 2008, was in name only and Putin continued to retain
the number one position in Russia's effective power hierarchy, with
Dmitry Medvedev being a figurehead or "Russia’s notional president". Also, China seems to be less active than Russia regarding external conflicts nowadays. Question: Why is "president for life" in China such a big deal? | Putin is de facto leader for more than 3 mandates (not much big difference from "for life") and I do not remember to be illustrated so harshly Consider revisiting your news sources somewhat. There was an international outcry at the time (in the West anyway), because he had the constitution changed to stay in power. Plus, whataboutism is a logical fallacy . Why "president for life" in China is such a big deal? Because as undemocratic as the regime may have been in recent decades, it has had a somewhat inexplicable knack for having one or two term dictators rather than a series of dictators for life like North Korea. Some (many?) fear that this change might be a return to the Mao days. Which might be sort of fine to outsiders if you're a backward developing country, but not so inviting to outsiders when you're the second largest economy in the world and the main US trading partner. | {
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28,487 | Purportedly the Russian state assassinated Alexander Litvinenko by poisoning with him with: radioactive polonium-210, believed to have been administered in a cup of tea Alexander Litvinenko: Profile of murdered Russian spy Furthermore; Former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned by a
military-grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia, Theresa May
has told MPs. Russian spy: Highly likely Moscow behind attack, says Theresa May Whilst, North Korea apparently performed a similiar attack. Kim Jong-nam died after a bizarre encounter at Kuala Lumpur airport in
2017, when two women smeared his face with VX nerve agent. North Korea used VX nerve agent to kill leader's brother, says US These chemical and radioactive weapons seem unusual, complicated, and draw attention. Is there a specific reason these weapons are used, as opposed to a more commonly available weapon? | The reasons given by @zidadawatimmy's answer aren't wrong, but the points made in the original post are also well taken. As your decision to post this question in this forum illustrates, this is also a quintessentially political act. These chemical and radioactive weapons seem unusual, complicated, and
draw attention. This is a feature and not a bug. Another analysis is that it is intended that the organizations behind these hits are unambiguous and that each hit is intended to send a loud and clear message to others similarly situated about who is ready, able and willing to kill you if you don't behave. When you choose to kill with polonium-210 or a nerve gas agent, you are making it unambiguously clear that this is an officially sanctioned killing by an agency of a sovereign government that has access to these kinds of weapons. There is no room to suppose that this was a hit ordered by a jealous lover, or as a consequence of a drug deal gone bad, or by an anti-government faction. The method, together with the identity of the victim and to the extent discernible (as in the Korean case where the dupes who actually carried out the killing swiftly reported that their handler was Korean IIRC) the ethnicity of the perpetrator, leaves little room for reasonable doubt regarding who is responsible, short of an official public statement that the government carried out the killing, which even then could be doubted. Also, the novelty of the method of assassination ensures that the hit becomes international news that is available to everyone else whom that government might want to exert pressure upon in the future (and a link to a verifiable third-party news clip could send the same message to hermits living on rocks who didn't catch this news the first time around). These are all individuals who are being assassinated for suspected or actual disloyalty or insubordination of some form, and a public identifiable, high profile hit tells others who might consider disloyalty or insubordination that even if it seems like they are in the clear, that they can be made to suffer a horrible death at any time as a consequence of their disloyalty or insubordination and that the agency of the sovereign government to whom they owe loyalty won't hesitate to do it. It demonstrates that this agency has no scruples when it comes to disciplining its own. After a few incidents like this, a mere photograph of the recipient or a member of their family, sent in a letter postmarked in a city associated with the agency to which the recipient might consider being disloyal or insubordinate could be enough to trigger terror in that person sufficient to secure their obedience, because it would demonstrate that they have the ability to kill the recipient since they know where the recipient lives. Essentially, this is the same kind of showy, disgust inducing tactic seen in similarly overblown killings in fictional stories like the delivery of the dead horse head in The Godfather , or even more gory acts in the same vein in Game of Thrones . The Latin phrase associated with this tactic when used in the Roman empire by some of its less scrupulous Caesars was: Oderint Dum Metuant ("Let them hate so long as they fear.") | {
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28,507 | What would the Kremlin stand to gain from assassinating the ex-spy Sergey Skripal , now critically ill after being poisoned on March 4th 2018 with a nerve agent ? | Skripal was a double-agent who used to work for the Russian secret service GRU but defected to the UK intelligence service MI6. He was arrested by the Russians in 2004. In 2010, he was officially pardoned and exiled to the UK as part of a prisoners exchange. So he is unlikely to still possess any not yet revealed intelligence which still has any value. Still, assassinating him sends a clear message to any other would-be defectors in the Russian secret services: "Do not defect! Other countries can not protect you from us. Even if you somehow manage to get an official pardon, we will still be out there to get you. And we will also get your family." | {
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28,581 | The UK has decided to expel Russian diplomats as response to the poisoning of an ex Russian spy in the UK. This tactic has been used by UK and other countries in the past (example: 4 diplomats were expelled by the UK when another Russian spy was poisoned) As far as I know, this is not the same as breaking of diplomatic ties with another country, meaning that the expelled diplomats will just be replaced with a new set of diplomats. So it seems like an inconvenience at best? How does the expelling of diplomats work to create pressure on the diplomats' home country? | It is an open secret that most diplomatic missions all around the world are also involved in intelligence service operations. This isn't a Russian thing. Everyone does that. So forcing another government to replace personnel also inconveniences their intelligence services. But unless they actually expel the whole diplomatic mission and reappropriate their embassy and consulates, this won't really stop them in the long term. Expelling diplomats as retaliation for something which is not related to the personal conduct of the diplomats is usually a symbolic gesture. When a country's sovereignty is violated, for example by other governments apparently performing political assassinations on their territory, then the government needs to show some reaction. Otherwise they will have to face allegations from the opposition that they didn't do anything about it. However, more serious reactions, like trade sanctions or military retaliation, would further escalate the situation and might cause more harm than good for the country. So they usually pick the safe option of a purely diplomatic response. This sets a clear signal "We are not OK with this" while not unnecessarily burning any bridges or dragging the nation into a costly conflict. | {
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28,587 | US's external debt to china is a staggering 1.1 trillion US dollars and according to many economists, it's highly unlikely that U.S. will be able to pay back the entire external debt to China in the next 4-5 decades or so. So what will happen if China stops lending money to U.S. as prospects of ever getting back the debt is highly unlikely because of the ever increasing deficit and spending? And is there any other nation other than China which can lend money to U.S. (Seems highly unlikely) ? | There are some assumptions being made by this question that don't reflect how the international economic order works. Countries do not ever have to pay off all of their debt A nation's finances are not like a person's. A person has a finite lifespan, and creditors take this into account when giving a loan. A country does not have a finite lifespan, and thus it has, in theory, forever to pay off its debt. Additionally, due to inflation, the value of a loan decreases over time . $1.2 Trillion will be worth less 50 years from now than it is today, which is another reason countries do not strive to pay off all their debt. If the money they are being credited drives growth such that the GDP growth minus the loan plus time is greater than GDP growth without the deficit-spending-aided growth, then the deficit was worth it. Think of it like this, if you have a loan with an interest rate of 3%, but you have stock market investments that continually return at 7%, it is more profitable to maintain some level of investment rather than pay down all your debt in a sprint. Riskier, yes, but more profitable. China is not the only creditor of the United States, large or otherwise Japan is nearly as a large a creditor to the United States as China, each owning about 1/6th of the US debt that is held by foreign countries. Ireland, Brazil, and the UK are also large holders of US debt. To answer your question directly Yes. There are many other countries which can lend the US money , and as long as US debt is considered investment grade , countries will continue to buy it. | {
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29,690 | In the recent Russian presidential elections on March 18, 2018 , foreign reporters and election observers noticed irregularities, incidents of election fraud and general violations in the voting process on several occasions (e.g. washingtonpost.com , golosinfo.ru , rferl.org , tagesschau.de , nytimes.com , reuters.com ). Here is an extract from the Washington Post: Other examples from observers and social media included ballot boxes being stuffed with extra ballots in multiple regions; an election official assaulting an observer; CCTV cameras obscured by flags or nets from watching ballot boxes; discrepancies in ballot numbers; last-minute voter registration changes likely designed to boost turnout; and a huge pro-Putin sign in one polling station. A democratic election requires members of all important parties to observe the election during the preparation, voting and counting of the ballots. This makes sure that all ballots are counted truthfully and that the final result represents the actual votes. The same goes for independent observers from other countries and news organizations. In the particular case of the Russian presidential elections in 2018, but also in principle, what can an election observer do if they notice serious problems with the election process? Do they have any legal power to force the election commission to re-do the elections, or is their job purely to increase transparency for the voters? | I was an observer yesterday at a Yekaterinburg voting station. I had been trained at a local Alexey Navalny headquarters ( video example of training ), but was officially an observer from Grigory Yavlinsky . As an observer, I had the right to make suggestions to the Chairman of the Voting Station Committee. In case a suggestion is not considered, an observer has the right to file a complaint, which must be considered at a Committee meeting either immediately or as soon as possible on the day of voting. The meeting must result in a written decision. The complaint is prepared in two copies. One copy remains with the observer to serve as proof of complaint. The first copy, along with the written verdict produced by the Committee, is attached to the Voting Protocol - the final document that contains the results of voting. Of course a copy of the verdict is also given to the observer. If the observer does not agree with the Committee's decision they may use their attested copy to file a complaint with the superior Committee - the Territorial Voting Committee. In my case, this Committee was just 3 kilometers away. A representative of this Committee visited us at midday to make sure everything went smoothly. We (observers) had phone numbers of members of this Committee in case we had any problems. The observer may also launch a case in an administrative or criminal court. He or she may also make the complaint public. The observer has the right to make video records and take photos. These may serve to substantiate his complaints and claims, and decrease the perceived legitimacy of the election even if the observer's steps made through official channels (superior Committees, courts) failed to right the wrongs. I sent updates on voting turnout each half-hour to my Alexey Navalny headquarters using a Telegram chatbot, and consulted with their specialists using a couple of Telegram chats. At the end of voting, each observer gets a copy of the Voting Protocol with the final figures (turnout, votes given for each candidate, number of ballots used, number of ballots spoiled, etc.). The actual Protocol is sent to the superior Committee which decides whether the procedure was performed just so. It may decide to recount the votes - in this case it must call all the Station Committee members and observers, gather them again in a single room, and make them recount the ballots, for instance, and produce a new Protocol. In some more fraudulent nooks and crannies of the Russian Federation, observers sometimes discover that a second Committee meeting was called in their absence because the observers were allegedly "out of reach" by phone. The observer then may make noise in the media, showing that the second (observer-less) session produced a Protocol with figures that are more pleasant for the powers that be. From a legal standpoint, there are two main laws that the observer may use in arguments with Committee members, in courts etc: Federal Law 67 " On basic guarantees " (lays down the rules for elections and referendums) and the Federal Law " On Presidential Election in the Russian Federation ". There are also other laws that may be used to defend your rights as an observer. According to amendments made in the legislation in 2016, an observer may not be removed from the voting station by Committee members. He or she may be removed only by a court decision. This makes it harder for corrupt Committee members to make up pretexts for getting rid of irksome observers. In real life, with Russia being an authoritarian state, there are ways to thwart an observer. However, Yekaterinburg is a big city (1.5m people) and is considered something of a democratic oasis (relatively speaking). We have an openly "non-Putinist" city mayor , for instance. So there was nothing outrageous at my station. I was mainly thwarted by my own legal illiteracy. I was barred from taking pictures of the Books of Voters (before the start of voting) because they contain personal information. I know that this particular case is moot: according to some laws, I could take pictures but not make them public. According to some administrative rules, I could not even take pictures of these books. The books did not look much tampered to me, although there were several signatures "made by mistake" and crossed out, so I did not force the issue. I read in a Telegram chat later that some other observer drove his Committee Chairman to a fit by insisting on taking pictures of the Books. Do they have any legal power to force the government to re-do the
elections or is their job purely to increase transparency for the
voters? An observer's actions may result in a manual recount of votes, and/or in some or all ballots cast at this particular station being deemed "null and void". I haven't heard of an entire election being re-run due to observer action. There must be some legal framework for this, I guess, but that would be an incredibly tough thing to achieve in Putin's Russia. Of course an observer has no direct power, all should be achieved through making as many records as possible and as many complaints as possible. The two ballot boxes at my voting station: My copy of the Voting Protocol (click for a larger-size version): P.S. The legal part of my answer is based largely on Observer's Guideline ( Справочник Наблюдателя ) published by Golos ("Voice/Vote"), an independent observer organization. I read it for a couple of days before the voting; and on Observer Wiki . The sources are in Russian. | {
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29,728 | The US requires US citizens to file a return for federal and state income taxes. Interestingly, per the 2017 IRS guide, page 5 , it does not matter whether the US citizen resides in the US, or whether the income derives from US sources. Thus, a US citizen residing outside the US and drawing income entirely from non-US sources would still be required to file for US taxes. In principle, this would even apply to US citizens that were born abroad and never set foot in the US. This seems to be very uncommon in the rest of the world. For instance, on Expats.SE, it is claimed that only the US and Eritrea tax non-resident citizens on foreign income , and when I as a German national lived and worked in Switzerland, Germany didn't care about my Swiss income. (The Swiss did care about my German income, though.) I assume that following up on foreign income on non-resident citizens is a big hassle for the IRS. Plus, people qualify for the Foreign Tax Credit and Foreign Earned Income Exclusion , so whatever the IRS does collect in such cases is further reduced. It seems to me like the taxes collected in this manner will likely be trivial compared to any serious enforcement costs. (I would welcome any statistics proving me wrong, or backing this up.) What is different in the US from the rest of the world to cause this? Has there ever been a political discussion, say in Congress, in which someone explicitly articulated a reason why this practice should continue? I could imagine a couple such reasons, e.g., that US citizens will be eligible for consular protection no matter where they live, and so they should darn well pay for it - but that would apply to citizens of other countries, as well, so it doesn't really tell why the US took a different view of this matter than everyone else. | The United States is the richest country in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) by financial assets per capita and first in the world by wealth per adult among the countries evaluated. The US has the most billionaires of any country, more than the entire continent of Europe, much less Africa or South America. The reason to focus on wealth over income is that it is the wealthy who can migrate. Someone who has a high salary can't simply change their residency. Such people have to change their employment as well. But someone whose income is entirely derived from wealth can easily change their residence. The US relies on its higher income residents for an exceptionally large amount of its revenue. Almost half of the population pays no federal income taxes at all. The top .1% pay about a fifth of the overall taxes . What would happen if the US switched to taxing only the income earned in the US for non-residents? A number of ultra-rich people would adjust their residency such that it was no longer in the US. To take full advantage of this, they might also move the corporate headquarters so that what is currently US income and taxed regardless would become non-US income and not subject to US taxes. As things are, if an ultra-rich person wanted to avoid US taxes, that person would have to give up US citizenship. That would lose various privileges, e.g. the ability to donate to US politicians. But under the more common international model, they would only have to give up residency. The US is heavily reliant on its richest citizens to support the tax burden. If it reduced that, then it would have to do one or more of increase middle class taxes, reduce spending, or increase borrowing. Note that it dropped provisions changing expatriate taxes out of the recent tax bill to avoid those choices. It may change in the future, as there has been a global shift away from global taxation (tax all income by citizenship) to territorial taxation (tax only income earned locally). This is less of a concern for most countries, as they rely less on taxes on the rich and more on taxes on the middle class. E.g. Canada gets 54% of its income taxes from the top 10% of earners, compared to 70% in the US. And that's not counting the difference from the Canadian Value-Added Tax (VAT). Comparing to other countries finds that the US had the tax system that concentrated the most taxes on its top 10% in income. Unfortunately, most of the literature in the US is devoted to income taxes, so we don't have a good measure of all taxes. This is problematic because most countries have a national VAT, which skews taxes paid towards the middle class. The US doesn't. So looking just at just income taxes undercounts the US' relative dependence on income taxes paid by the rich. | {
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29,865 | At the March for our Lives rally, the podium has a sticker - $1.05 . It seems unusual to me, a non-American. What is its meaning? | As Vox explains it is directed at Senator Rubio, who has opposed the March and their movement, representing the value they believe he has placed on their lives by dividing the number of dollars he has received from the NRA by the number of school children purportedly harmed by his pro-gun stance: [T]hey came up with it by dividing the amount the National Rifle
Association has spent to support Rubio’s campaigns, $3.3 million, by
the 3.1 million public and private students in the state. Since
Rubio’s first senate bid in 2010, the NRA has spent about $1 million
to support his campaigns, and $2.3 million to attack his opponents,
according to the Center for Responsive Politics. | {
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29,873 | While I was researching the topic of the F-35 I noticed a certain pattern in military politics which comes up again and again. In the TFX program Boeing was the clear winner of the Request For Proposal out of 6 firms.The Source Selection Board wanted the Boeing prototype. Current Secretary of Defense (SecDef) McNamara ordered to restart the competition. SSB again found out the Boeing was the best deal, both Air Force and Navy favored Boeings design. SecDef McNamara ordered to restart the competion again . SSB still comes to the very same conclusion, McNamara ordered now the third time to start over. You may have predicted it, SSB stayed to Boeing, so McNamara ruled after 4 tries that General Dynamics (GD) get the contract . In relation to GD the Boeing design offered a ferry range of more than ~1200 miles, 69% more load on fully extended wings (11% more on fully swept ones), 50% more nuclear bombs, twice more AAMs and weighted 2200 pounds less, GD's designs only offered more place on carriers. The congress set up the McClellan committee and McNamara was asked to defend his decision, explicitly asking if vice president Lyndon B. Johnson which comes from Texas has influenced the decision. McNamara pulled out explanations out of his hat and - that was it. No cancellation of the contract and McNamara gets scot free. In the book "The Pentagon Wars" from Colonel James G. Burton the Army actually threatened Burton with restationing to Alaska if he insists to make live-fire tests of the M2 Bradley which was actually his assigned task. After Burton send internal copies of the order to everyone remotely concerned and therefore leaking the document to potential whistleblowers the Army agreed to allow him to do his tests in writing. A while later some Army brass regretted the decision and tried to force him into retirement or restation him again and lied before Congress after it was asked if this order exists . Congress got finally the order in writing and had therefore proof that they were being lied to. And that was it - no repercussions for the people involved. Burton completed the tests and was sacked later, all the responsible people got promoted, some also got lucrative jobs in the private sector. These are two examples of many others where I get the impression that the Congress is led on the line, you only need to be a good self-confident liar.
You may be inconvenienced by being forced to visit the Congress, but you only need to sit it out because nothing can really happen to you, only uncomfortable questions. This is kind of strange because the senators in the congress are quite influential, so I thought they should be able to influence important equipment decisions for the armed forces. While it may alarm the public, I sincerely do not see that congressional hearings influences the military decision if a project is cancelled, postponed, modified or otherwise influenced at all. The list is long: F-35, V-22 Osprey, RAH-66 Comanche. Can someone come up with some important decisions on military projects influenced by congressional hearings? | As Vox explains it is directed at Senator Rubio, who has opposed the March and their movement, representing the value they believe he has placed on their lives by dividing the number of dollars he has received from the NRA by the number of school children purportedly harmed by his pro-gun stance: [T]hey came up with it by dividing the amount the National Rifle
Association has spent to support Rubio’s campaigns, $3.3 million, by
the 3.1 million public and private students in the state. Since
Rubio’s first senate bid in 2010, the NRA has spent about $1 million
to support his campaigns, and $2.3 million to attack his opponents,
according to the Center for Responsive Politics. | {
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29,879 | Let's say a non-US citizen (legal or illegal immigrant) is resident in the US and has a valid postal address in a state without "Voter ID" laws. Would anything prevent such a person from registering to vote in federal and state elections? There is a related question on impersonating a registered voter, but I'm interested in the process of becoming a registered voter in the first place. | My answer here shows that it is trivially easy to do in California. The answer details official CA procedures, and at no point do they require anything that would prove citizenship (nor, offer the state ability to check citizenship without offered proof). Short version: When registering to vote (quoting from my own answer, NOT from source supporting documents) The important part is that California's driver's license is OPTIONAL, and you can simply provide last 4 digits of SSN (which of course an illegal or non-citizen legal can make up) or even leave empty . You are NOT required to submit an ID by California. So, step 1 in the process is to register to vote without supplying an ID. You can either leave SSN empty, or use fake 4 digits. Or, for legal non-citizens, even use your real 4 digits - the state cannot conclusively check someone's citizenship status based on just 4 digits of SSN and a name, especially for common names (just because your SSN 4 digits matched a non-citizen immigrant in INS's database, doesn't mean that was you. But you can just leave SSN empty). As another aside, I don't think CA even checks citizenship even if it could - because legal non-citizen are eligible to vote in local elections in CA as far as I know, so they are actually permitted to register to vote. And you can't tell if someone is a citizen or illegal by name+SSNx4, since there is no database of either set. When voting in person, you need two types of IDs: As you can see, you are not required to prove your citizenship here either. You can bring utility bills. You can bring student ID cards (which, obviously, don't require one to be a citizen). ... While these (first set of required IDs) all are photo IDs, none of these are restricted to citizens. But, as per above, you don't even need a photo ID. None of these (second set of required IDs) are restricted to citizens. Some are easy to forge (especially A and B). When voting by mail, as linked answer shows, the accepted ID lists to be sent are identical to voting in person, and none of them are restricted to citizens, nor allow the state to check citizenship status based on them. So, step 2 is to vote in person or by mail, by supplying one of the following ( (E) credit or debit card; (G) student identification card; (H) health club identification card; (I) insurance plan identification card ) and one of the following ( (A) utility bill; (B) bank statement; (C) government check; (O) identification documents issued by governmental disability agencies; (P) identification documents issued by government homeless shelters and other government temporary or transitional facilities ) Note that none of the documents in either set allows finding out citizenship status by the state, even if the state was so inclined. Additionally, most of those documents are trivial to fake, especially second set. | {
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29,892 | Think about it: capitalism has brought so much prosperity to so many people. Yet no country claims our national ideology is capitalism - none that I know of. Americans can proudly claim they are capitalists. Well. First. Not so much. And then, it's not technically the American national ideology. There are "Socialist states of...". There are "Islamic states of...". Then there is "Democratic republic of..." What's funny is that countries that claim they are democratic are usually not democratic either. North Korea is called the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. But that would be another question. Why does no country ever claim capitalism as their state ideology? Why is there no "Capitalist Republic of America"? | There's two kinds of antonyms: opposites (left and right) and present/absent (light and dark, where dark describes the absence of light). Capitalism is basically the default economic system. It has both good and bad aspects to it. Even in total anarchy, you'll find Capitalism in some form. Nobody establishes Capitalism. The reason it is the default is that it tends to be self-leveling in managing supply and demand (i.e. market forces ). Communism, for contrast, is a political philosophy that says the government should control the economy, with the theory being that Capitalism is inherently unfair. The goal of Communism is, more or less, to use the power of government to remove Capitalism (in other words, create the absence of Capitalism). It does this by attempting to manage supply and demand with direct regulatory power (i.e. the state owns everything). This can, however, produce disastrous results . Most modern states regulate Capitalism in some form. Those that want to aim more for the ideals espoused by Communism (i.e. Socialism), without the disastrous side effects, have states limit how much control they exert over various areas of the economy. NOTE This is oversimplified for the sake of argument. The question pertains to why Capitalism isn't a political system. Don't get bogged down in the precise economic terms please. | {
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29,902 | According to The Guardian , President Trump was subject to criticism over his decision to congratulate President Putin on winning Russian elections in 2018: Donald Trump defended himself against criticism over his
congratulatory phone call to Vladimir Putin following the Russian
president’s recent re-election, insisting on Wednesday afternoon it
was in US interests to maintain a positive rapport with Moscow. It is my understanding that congratulating a President for winning an elections is typically an automatic diplomatic gesture that is performed throughout the world and it happened before even in US–Russia relations ( source ): "former president Barack Obama also wished Putin well after the Russian election on March 4, 2012" "Former president George W. Bush also called Dmitry Medvedev in 2008" Another example is a Romanian President who made a similar gesture , and Romania–Russia relations are not exactly full of unicorns and rainbows (also this source ). Question: Why was President Trump so heavily criticized for congratulating President Putin on winning the Russian election? | After the Crimea annexation, the social media trolling during the US election and the recent Skripal incident, the public image of the Russian government in the western world turned from bad to worse. So the comparison between Putin 2018, Putin 2012 and Medvedev 2008 is not necessarily appropriate. Trump is under suspicion of colluding with the Russian government to gain an advantage during his presidential election, so any interaction between him and Russia is currently subject to intense scrutiny. This makes the "Trump congratulates Putin for getting reelected" story a good angle for Trump's political opponents to attack him. | {
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29,960 | Hawaii's unemployment rate is the lowest in the nation (2.1%). https://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm Yet they are almost last in economic freedom (#48). https://www.freedominthe50states.org/overall/hawaii Why? Normally economic freedom correlates with low unemployment rates. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20111958?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents https://www.flickr.com/photos/shanedk/14925249433/in/album-72157646459874723/ https://youtu.be/Q3EZiPyAVjk?t=363 The 2nd place in unemployment, NH, scores #1 in economic freedom. | I'm one of the authors of Freedom in the 50 States . We don't expect economic freedom to correlate with unemployment rates at all. Why not? Basic economics. Unemployment has to do with whether the labor market is in equilibrium, that is, whether all those looking for jobs are able to find a job at the wage rate prevailing in a competitive market. The labor market gets out of equilibrium when there are cyclical shocks. You'll find that unemployment rates still tend to be a bit higher in states that suffered a big housing bust in 2007-2009. They also tend to be higher in states with a high percentage of adults with less than a high school education, possibly because the minimum wage is higher than their productivity per hour. We do expect states with more economic freedom to have higher growth rates, and indeed, Hawaii has a low income growth rate compared to the rest of the country. The average state grew 2.5% per year from 2000 to 2015, adjusting for state-level inflation, but Hawaii grew only 1.9% per year over that period. More Americans have been moving away from Hawaii than moving to Hawaii as well. | {
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29,965 | Erdogan's policies towards Turkish citizens are in general considered to be Authoritarian. This authoritarianism is generally attributed to Ergodan's hunger for power, and it is alleged that Turkey is sliding into dictatorship . But, I am curious about an alternative narrative according to political science . According to political science, Why can't Erdogan's dictatorship be defined as benevolent? | Of course Erdogan's dictatorship (although technically it is no dictatorship) can theoretically be defined as benevolent. It is solely a question of the definition of the "benefit of the population as a whole", to cite your wikipedia article. Depending on the viewpoint (or political agenda), some - especially Erdogan supporters - might say it is benevolent, others - say, Kurdish resistance groups - might say it is highly malevolent. Typically, what is a benefit is defined by the political views of the observer. Calling a specific dictatorship benevolent or not reveals more about the caller than about the dictator. Just to show some examples for things that people might see as measures for a benefit (although not every point will be a benefit for everyone and some even contradict each other): Economic growth Personal freedom A unified nation Military victories Promotion of piety Maximization of happiness Minority rights Protection from dangers (terrorism, war, etc.) Education The second problematic point is the question of who the "population as a whole" is. Are you including non-believers? Dissidents? Kurds? Kurdish resistance fighters? Syrian refugees? Should a benevolent dictator help the refugees, or should he try to expel as much of them as he can to protect his own citizens? Should he fight the terrorists of the PKK (or resistence fighters? Your mileage may vary...) as hard as possible to increase the safety of Turkish police officers or soldiers, or should he try to negotiate a deal with them? Are they part of the "population as a whole"? As you can see, answering this questions is not easy, and it depends on the own personal values and political stance. You can clearly say that from the viewpoint of a typical Western mainstream liberal or conservative, Erdogan is not a benevolent dictator. But then, a (slight) majority of Turks loves him, as well as a majority of Russians love Putin (another non-benevolent dictator from a Western viewpoint). And those clearly think that he has done many things for the benefit of the Turkish population. So my question would be: Who asks, and what are your values and personal beliefs? | {
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29,971 | One common theme whenever the voting public are asked about the on-going Brexit process is that they were mislead during the campaign and are now desperate for basic information. They seem fully aware of their own ignorance on the subject. Yet, when asked for opinions on Brexit, they have many strong feelings. The recent BBC programme is a great example: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09xyjcm "For the build up going to Brexit, on both sides we were told different things... How do we know what's going to happen?" "They tampered with the figures." "No one actually seems to know what is gonna happen. Or what the outcome's going to be." "I just thought it was a straight out. You know. Goodbye." "Who are going to be the winners and who are going to be the losers out of this? No-one knows!" Why do people who clearly know that they know almost nothing have strong opinions on political matters? Why don't they just say "I don't know" or "I was lied to", why insist on making bold statements and casting a vote? | Of course Erdogan's dictatorship (although technically it is no dictatorship) can theoretically be defined as benevolent. It is solely a question of the definition of the "benefit of the population as a whole", to cite your wikipedia article. Depending on the viewpoint (or political agenda), some - especially Erdogan supporters - might say it is benevolent, others - say, Kurdish resistance groups - might say it is highly malevolent. Typically, what is a benefit is defined by the political views of the observer. Calling a specific dictatorship benevolent or not reveals more about the caller than about the dictator. Just to show some examples for things that people might see as measures for a benefit (although not every point will be a benefit for everyone and some even contradict each other): Economic growth Personal freedom A unified nation Military victories Promotion of piety Maximization of happiness Minority rights Protection from dangers (terrorism, war, etc.) Education The second problematic point is the question of who the "population as a whole" is. Are you including non-believers? Dissidents? Kurds? Kurdish resistance fighters? Syrian refugees? Should a benevolent dictator help the refugees, or should he try to expel as much of them as he can to protect his own citizens? Should he fight the terrorists of the PKK (or resistence fighters? Your mileage may vary...) as hard as possible to increase the safety of Turkish police officers or soldiers, or should he try to negotiate a deal with them? Are they part of the "population as a whole"? As you can see, answering this questions is not easy, and it depends on the own personal values and political stance. You can clearly say that from the viewpoint of a typical Western mainstream liberal or conservative, Erdogan is not a benevolent dictator. But then, a (slight) majority of Turks loves him, as well as a majority of Russians love Putin (another non-benevolent dictator from a Western viewpoint). And those clearly think that he has done many things for the benefit of the Turkish population. So my question would be: Who asks, and what are your values and personal beliefs? | {
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30,028 | The US and more than 20 other countries have expelled Russian diplomats in response to the poisoning of the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal. As of this writing, Israel has not expelled any Russian diplomats in response to this particular incident. Given that Israel is considered a US ally and is a major recipient of the US foreign aid , what would be the possible reasons behind Israel's not joining in the effort to punish Russia? | Israel has a complicated relationship with Russia, which it doesn't want to hurt. Russia is a major supporter of Assad's regime in Syria, which is aligned with Iran and Hezbollah, Israel's bitter enemies ( see here ). Yet, Russia does not interfere when Israel operates in Syria against them. Russia is also a significant importer of Israeli produce, as well as a significant source for tourism in Israel. All in all, Israel has a lot to lose from upsetting Russia, and little to gain. | {
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30,089 | There are endless debates about climate change and CO 2 reduction. The US decided to withdraw from the Paris agreement , although there are no legally binding requirements . Also, this article argues about Kyoto protocol effectiveness: Overall, the result is that global emissions have showed no sign of
slowing down, as the chart below shows. In that sense, the Kyoto
protocol has been a failure. But it was unquestionably an important
first step in global climate diplomacy. For me, it is quite clear that it is very hard to control CO 2 emissions. However, there are emergent technology to recycle CO 2 such as this one or this one . Using such technologies may reduce pressure on industry to produce less CO 2 . Question: Why is there so much focus on producing less CO 2 rather than investing in technology to recycle it? | Both of your examples use solar energy to convert carbon dioxide into fuel. They are cutting edge, meaning that they haven't yet been engineered into usable systems that people could buy. The proof of concept was only published in 2016 and 2017 for each. So, reasons: They don't actually exist in usable form (yet). It's not clear that we are better off burning fossil fuels and then using solar power to capture the carbon dioxide that is produced than to just use solar power directly. We already have methods to convert carbon dioxide and sunlight into fuel. That's the basis of the biofuels movement. Plants use sunlight to convert carbon dioxide into plant matter. We harvest the plants and turn them into fuel. We don't know if these processes will be power positive. We especially don't know that if we have to transport the fuel from somewhere with plentiful solar (e.g. New Mexico or Saudi Arabia) to somewhere that needs fuel (e.g. Illinois or Romania). Converting carbon dioxide into fuel does not reduce the pressure on industry. One of the problems that we currently face is that many alternative power sources use more power to produce than they provide. For example, fusion power reactions currently draw more power than they provide, so they are not self sustaining. Another issue is that these examples produce fuels. Fuels get burnt and turned into energy, releasing their carbon dioxide. That doesn't actually sequester any carbon dioxide. I.e. these examples are for reducing the net production of carbon dioxide, not for reducing existing carbon dioxide. Yes, they briefly reduce the amount of carbon dioxide. But they then turn around and release it again. That doesn't offset existing carbon dioxide production. The goal is instead to replace current production with more sustainable process like these might be. There is significant investment in searching for ways to convert carbon dioxide into fuel. That's why there is a biofuels movement and is why these examples were funded. | {
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30,098 | Recently, Turkey claimed, that it won't do extraditions to U.S. until U.S. extradites Gülen to Turkey. ( source ) Why U.S. do not want to do it? Turkey is one of its closest allies on Middle East. Please post answers based on statements from the US government. Answers based on your point of view for this situation and political analysis are also greatly welcome. | The U.S. has repeatedly stated that Turkey has not provided adequate evidence to link Fethullah Gülen with the crimes he is accused of, as required by the extradition treaty between the two countries. The latest such statement was in regards to the 2016 assassination of Russian Ambassador to Ankara Andrei Karlov, from Justice Department spokesperson Nicole Navas Oxman: The United States is awaiting evidence from Turkey over U.S.-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen’s alleged links to the 2016 assassination of Russian Ambassador to Ankara Andrei Karlov, and will consider an extradition request accordingly, Justice Department spokesperson Nicole Navas Oxman has said. “We will review any materials the Turkish government may provide in this regard and will make any decisions about extradition on the basis or the facts and relevant U.S. laws,” Oxman told Russian state-run news agency Tass on April 2. Source: US ‘awaiting evidence’ from Turkey over Gülen’s links to murder of Russian envoy Karlov. Hürriyet Daily News. April 03 2018, 10:00:00 | {
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30,106 | Today at an emergency meeting of the OPCW, Russia proposed a joint UK/Russia inquiry into the poisoning of a Russian ex-spy Sergey Skripal. However, the UK members described this proposal as "perverse". To me, this position seems counterproductive, because if Russia is supposedly one of those countries that are able to produce Novichok, its help and its expertise cannot be overestimated. Besides, I would call this position a deadlock, because if Russia refused to participate in the inquiry, it is as clear as a day, that it would get the blame for everything. But now they put their blame on Russia for its proposal of joint investigation. My question is, if they do not want to make this inquiry public and probably will classify it (just like Litvinenko case), how can we trust it? PS. I think I should attach two comments to my question, just to make them visible in case they will be deleted or moved to chat. JAB: What do suspects in normal criminal cases do when they are innocent? They normally aren't allowed to participate in the investigation even if they have the necessary skills for it, anyway. This comment has much sense and seems reasonable to me. Another interpretation of this idea is that if we allow Russia to participate in a joint inquiry, it will give it leverage over the investigation. Quassnoi: Russian procedural law requires the investigators to notify the suspects and the accused and their representatives about all forensic examinations regarding their case; gives the suspects and the accused and their representatives rights to be present at the examinations, give explanations to the forensic expert performing the examination, file motions to withdraw an expert witness, to appoint an expert witness and to add to the instructions for the expert witness called upon by the investigative body. But this comment is pure explanation of how it works in reality, when it comes to normal criminal cases. I guess, similar procedures exist in all democratic countries around the world. To add to it, I believe that Russia being a primary suspect, should not be devoid of all rights. While it is not proven guilty, Russia should be present at all examinations and should be given all explanations of any examination. I should stress, that this examination may of course prove that Russia (and Vladimir Putin, personally) is guilty, just like in normal criminal cases. | It may help to turn it around. Suppose Vladimir Putin is poisoned and Russia suspects the UK as the culprit. How would Russia respond to a suggestion from the UK that they "help" Russia investigate? From Russia's perspective it would probably seem to be a pretty disingenuous invitation as it would do nothing but give the UK leverage over the investigation to help steer it to a conclusion that better favors them, rather than as an exercise in discovering the truth behind the circumstances. The Skripal case doesn't involve the head of state being poisoned, but that's just a difference in degree. A UK police officer was also injured, and the risk to the civilian population at large in chemical weapon attacks such as this should not be downplayed. Whoever committed the act did so with reckless disregard to UK citizens that also might come into contact with a very dangerous substance. Even if they do make the entire investigation public it probably won't have much effect on whether you or other lay people like me trust it in an era where "fake" can mean anything I don't like. What answer you or I are willing to trust in this sense depends mostly on who we trust before the question is even asked. NB- I don't think that the comparison to an individual criminal case can really go very deep because of scale. Even ordinary criminal cases fall apart due to lack of evidence. Nation states can perpetrate conspiracies on a much larger scale which can be a weakness (since there are more "weak links"), but also provides a large amount of resources to back it. Police can detain an individual suspect in most jurisdictions and prosecutors can bring charges that will completely disrupt a person's life and provide a large incentive for an innocent person to cooperate with an investigation. There is no such incentive between nations, since the UK cannot detain all of Russia for 24 hours for questioning in order to gather evidence. If damning evidence is uncovered, individual suspects don't generally have ICBMs ready to protect against arrest, or an army of people sworn to prevent it. | {
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30,116 | This question is NOT about any one country . It is about whether there is an accepted convention about whether former employer countries are responsible for future actions of their would-be retired intelligence officers. The premise is that spies lie for a living (quite literally). So any designation of spies as "former" or "retired" can always serve as a "cover" unless there is any legal framework precluding this from happening. It can happen even if such a framework does exist, but if such a framework (akin to prohibition on using Red Cross for military transports) were in place, it would make claims that spies are "former" spies more credible. There is a number of "former" spies who are very active in public life and actively work to change or shape public policy. I would like to know how their claims of not working for their former employers can be evaluated (really, if they can be evaluated). Here's some examples of "former" intelligence services employees who are active in shaping public policy (and who may or may not be still active members of their former agencies): Igor Ivanovich Strielkov , (presumed former) GRU colonel. Reported to be (or to have been) in charge of the Russian separatists in Eastern Ukraine. Christopher David Steele , (presumed former) head of the Russia Desk at MI6. Known to be the author of an anti-Trump (often disputed) dossier created in stages through three different commissions by Bill Kristol's son-in-law, HRC Presidential campaign, and the FBI. putting this one on this list maybe controversial, but still... Edward Snowden , (presumably former contractor at) the NSA. Snowden revealed existence of NSA's program to collect meta data of most calls made in the US. The construction of the building structure doing the surveillance was known to a very large group of people (some with and some without any clearance) and the building structure is large enough to be visible from space. The revelation of its existence split public opinion (which was uniformly against blanket surveillance) into the anti-surveillance and anti-"treasonous"-Snowden camps. These are just some of the examples of controversial "former" intelligence services employees. There are many other examples of publicly-active ones which are par for the course. I realize that I am making claims which many people may wish to contest based on news reports and based on their own views. But, please, keep in mind that most of the "questionable" claims I made are part of the context . The question itself is whether there is any legal internationally-adapted convention against identifying active spies as "former"? And if so, whether these conventions make it incumbent upon their past employers to "rein them in" if their actions interfere with public good of other states after their retirement. | It may help to turn it around. Suppose Vladimir Putin is poisoned and Russia suspects the UK as the culprit. How would Russia respond to a suggestion from the UK that they "help" Russia investigate? From Russia's perspective it would probably seem to be a pretty disingenuous invitation as it would do nothing but give the UK leverage over the investigation to help steer it to a conclusion that better favors them, rather than as an exercise in discovering the truth behind the circumstances. The Skripal case doesn't involve the head of state being poisoned, but that's just a difference in degree. A UK police officer was also injured, and the risk to the civilian population at large in chemical weapon attacks such as this should not be downplayed. Whoever committed the act did so with reckless disregard to UK citizens that also might come into contact with a very dangerous substance. Even if they do make the entire investigation public it probably won't have much effect on whether you or other lay people like me trust it in an era where "fake" can mean anything I don't like. What answer you or I are willing to trust in this sense depends mostly on who we trust before the question is even asked. NB- I don't think that the comparison to an individual criminal case can really go very deep because of scale. Even ordinary criminal cases fall apart due to lack of evidence. Nation states can perpetrate conspiracies on a much larger scale which can be a weakness (since there are more "weak links"), but also provides a large amount of resources to back it. Police can detain an individual suspect in most jurisdictions and prosecutors can bring charges that will completely disrupt a person's life and provide a large incentive for an innocent person to cooperate with an investigation. There is no such incentive between nations, since the UK cannot detain all of Russia for 24 hours for questioning in order to gather evidence. If damning evidence is uncovered, individual suspects don't generally have ICBMs ready to protect against arrest, or an army of people sworn to prevent it. | {
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30,173 | Why weren't any sanctions imposed on India for not signing the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons? | An entire international body designed for restricting trade of nuclear materials was created in response to India's first test, and the US did impose sanctions on India for their tests in the 90's. The reason India specifically hasn't been punished much is because they otherwise have a good nuclear record and claim to want stronger non-proliferation treaties. Nuclear Suppliers Group: The NSG is an export control group which was created directly in response to India's first nuclear test, the amazingly named Smiling Buddha . The NSG is tasked with tracking and controlling materials that can be used to directly or indirectly create nuclear weapons. Since this certainly would have stopped imports of certain items controlled by the NSG, you can say that India(and many other nations) received sanctions indirectly. In regards to India's nuclear tests in the 1990's, the US strongly condemned India and imposed pretty strict sanctions on them in 1998 . In the following years, the US held talks with India regarding their nuclear program, though were unsuccessful in convincing India to reverse their program fully. India's Nuclear Record: As was explained in an answer to a similar question , the situation in India is different that in other nuclear-possible countries, such as North Korea, since they have essentially adhered to the treaty since their tests. In the early 2000's, India and the US began working on an agreement which would allow India to begin working with the US to develop nuclear energy, with a good part of the rationale being that India has 'de facto' status as a non-proliferation nation. Essentially, India's polcies regarding no-first-use of the weapons, lack of apparent desire to create a large stockpile, and claims that they want to sign a stronger version of the NPT meant that other nations didn't see much need to sanction or otherwise punish India for their weapons program. | {
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30,200 | Which parts of the world are not claimed/part of any country (not Antarctica). Do they have inhabitants? If they are inhabited, what citizenship do the inhabitants hold? | There is indeed a small patch of land between Egypt and Sudan not claimed by any country: Bir Tawil . It is essentially a patch of desert in the middle of nowhere with no inhabitants, no infrastructure and no known natural resources. The reason is a border dispute between Egypt and Sudan about the nearby Hala'ib Triangle . The borders as stated by the two governments both assign the Hala'ib Triangle to themselves and the Bir Tawil region to the other side. So the result is that none of the two governments currently claims Bir Tawil, because doing so would mean to give up their claims on the far more relevant Hala'ib Triangle. But before you move there and found your own micronation: Keep in mind that when Sudan and Egypt ever come to an agreement regarding the Hala'ib Triangle, then that agreement will likely also clarify which one of them gets Bir Tawil. | {
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30,223 | So it's time to file taxes in the United States and it occurred to me that I am required to provide a lot of information that the government already knows. For instance, I have to provide the contents of my W-2 form, but my employer already sent the Internal Revenue Service a copy of that document. Indeed, if I don't accurately report my income, the IRS will know because it differs from the information that they already have. Why doesn't the IRS just save me the trouble of submitting information it already has and just send me a "bill" telling me what I owe (based on the information it already has)? Obviously, there is some information I would still need to fill out, like self-employment income. But wouldn't it be easier, and save more money for everyone, to just have the IRS tell me the information it knows and, if I don't have any corrections or additional information that I need to report, just ask me to write a check and send it back? EDIT: I'm interested in the political rationale for the IRS not doing this. As some commenters have noted, countries in Europe already have a system very similar to this where the IRS-equivalent discloses their known information and the individual fills in unknown information (such as self-employment income), so I am aware that it is technically feasible. | It's certainly possible, and plans have previously been made to do it, but then what would happen to the tax preparation industry? That may seem like a silly question, but for the capitalist tax prep industry, automating away a large portion of their industry is a huge problem, so naturally they would lobby against it. ProPublica has an article from last year that covers the issue. Filing Taxes Could Be Free and Simple. But H&R Block and Intuit Are Still Lobbying Against It. Here’s how preparing your taxes could work: You sit down, review a prefilled filing from the government. If it’s accurate, you sign it. If it’s not, you fix it or ignore it altogether and prepare your return yourself. It’s your choice. You might not have to pay for an accountant, or fiddle for hours with complex software. It could all be over in minutes. It’s already like that in parts of Europe. And it would not be particularly difficult to give U.S. taxpayers the same option. After all, the government already gets earnings information from employers. But as ProPublica has detailed again and again , Intuit — the makers of TurboTax — and H&R Block have lobbied for years to derail any move toward such a system. And they continued in 2016. Intuit spent more than $2 million lobbying last year, much of it spent on legislation that would permanently bar the government from offering taxpayers prefilled returns. H&R Block spent $3 million , also directing some of their efforts towards the bill. Among the 60 co-sponsors of the bipartisan bill: then congressman and now Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price. The bill, called the Free File Act of 2016, looks on the surface to be consumer-friendly. It makes permanent a public-private partnership in which 13 private tax preparation companies — called the “Free File Alliance” — have offered free online tax filings to lower- and middle-income families. The Free File Alliance include both Intuit and H&R Block. But the legislation would also permanently bar the IRS from offering its own free alternative. Intuit has repeatedly warned investors about the prospect of government-prepared returns. “We anticipate that governmental encroachment at both the federal and state levels may present a continued competitive threat to our business for the foreseeable future,” Intuit said in its latest corporate filings . Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., offered a bill last year that would have actually allowed the government to start offering prefill tax returns. While Intuit did not lobby against Warren’s bill — presumably because the legislation had little chance of success — tax giant H&R Block did. (H&R Block did not respond to a request for comment.) Neither Warren’s bill nor the Free File Act made it out of committee. | {
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30,231 | Mark Zuckerberg is testifying in the US Congress this week about issues surrounding privacy at Facebook. However it's not clear to me why the legislative branch would become involved in such minute details of a private company's operations. If I understand correctly Facebook didn't break any laws (all users accepted an agreement which basically gave away their data to Facebook forever) and therefore Congress shouldn't be involved in the first place. So what is the point of Mark Zuckerberg testifying at the Capitol? | It's not specifically about Facebook, Zuckerberg, or the "minutiae details of private company's operations", but rather the social media industry as a whole. Essentially, the purpose is for lawmakers to get a first-hand, expert account of the current state of the industry, how effective current laws are and in what ways they potentially failed, and what changes/improvements should be made to prevent those failures from happening again. They're actually quite common for each section of Congress individually, though a joint hearing like Zuckerburg's is decently rare , and most are quite boring so they don't get much attention. Looking at Mark Zuckerberg's prepared testimony should help answer the topics legislators are interested in, as it is essentially his expectations of what he'll be asked: Election Interference: Obviously the big topic these days. Legislators would want to know how a foreign entity could use social media platforms to influence an election, so that they may better draft legislation/regulation aimed at minimizing interference. Data Use: The Cambridge Analytica thing is what caused this most recent controversy. For this testimony, it is primarily regarding the proper use of data, who is responsible for monitoring that use, and what responsibilities the user/company/government should have. Again, legislators will want to know whether a company's voluntary policies are enough to protect consumers (who never read those agreements anyway since they aren't lawyers ), or if changes to legislation/regulation is needed in order to prevent misuse of data. | {
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30,254 | I find it weird that on committees, senators say "thank you" to the chairman when they get the chance to speak, or when they cede back time. What are they thanking the chairman for ? For example, is the chairman being in some sense generous by letting them speak (e.g. does he have the power to just refuse arbitrarily)? Or is the chairman responsible for the schedule and they're thanking him for the work gone into that? Or is it something else? | In official proceedings of the United States Congress, members are expected to maintain a high degree of decorum . The repeated "thanks" (even though he may not mean it), and "my good friend, the Senator from ..." (even though she hates him), may not be sincere, but is done anyway out of common decency and respect for the institution. So, they're not really thanking the chairman solely to express appreciation (because they are entitled to be recognized to speak). They are also being polite and respectful. You can find more here: Traditions of the Unites States Senate (pdf) Rules of the House of Representatives - Decorum and Debate (pdf) | {
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30,268 | The UK is one of the main NATO members. It seems to me that Western countries almost always act in a block. Why is the UK stepping back from the line? Does she not want to burn jets in Russian fire? In this question NATO is viewed not only as a military alliance, but mostly as a Western alliance of interests, where the UK has been almost everywhere side by side with the US. Source: The Times - May resists calls to join US action | I would not overthink this. I suspect it was nothing more than a desire to avoid getting involved in a war that had no upside for the UK. However, Trump's willingness to abandon NATO means he is not going to find friends for causes that are not in the US's allies interests. There is nothing to be gained by deposing Assad. Look at what happened in Iraq, and Afghanistan. Unless you are going to conquer the land for the spoils, war is a loss. In the past the US's allies have backed the US interventions because they needed to know that the US would be there if they were attacked. The fears of the cold war have been replaced by new fears now. Those fears are not assuaged by the alliances that were formed to prevent another World War in the 1940s. | {
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30,278 | Based on this answer , and the fact that the discussion was said to get off topic and I wanted to know more, I thought about asking this question to find an answer. It seems to me that both campaigns used data that was obtained without the consent of the vast majority of people: From Politifact The Obama campaign and Cambridge Analytica both gained access to huge amounts of information about Facebook users and their friends, and in neither case did the friends of app users consent. And then later: Whereas the data gathering and the uses were very different, the data each campaign gained access to was similar. So my question is: did both sides basically do the same thing (using data without the users' consent), but Facebook only got "called out" when the Cambridge Analytica founder blew the whistle? I would like to make one thing clear as far as I understand it. Both camps started by getting user data from users who willingly used their app. Then both campaigns used the data from those users to get the data from all the users in their contact/friend list as well (without consent from those friends), bloating the original amount of data x100. Some information from this article: the Obama camp used a common Facebook developer API–the same one used to access the data for Cambridge Analytica–to create a Facebook app that could capture the personal data not only of the app user, but also of all that person’s friends. and this The Obama campaign’s director of integration and media analytics Carol Davidsen said on Twitter that Facebook was surprised to learn how much user data could be pulled out through its graph API. “We were actually able to download the entire social network of the U.S. It feels to me that the Obama campaign did not do anything wrong as such - Facebook is to blame for not protecting the data. But (like my question), if both sides did the same thing, then one could also not say that CA did much wrong. | did both sides basically do the same thing (using data without the users consent) No, according to your link The people signing up for ["Obama for America"] knew the data they were handing over would be used to support a political campaign. The people filling in the Cambridge University personality quiz were not informed that their data would be used to support a political campaign. The way the data was used was different The "Obama for America" app encouraged its users to send campaign messages to their friends The Trump campaign worked with Cambridge Analytica (CA) with the intention† to use this data to directly send targeted adverts to friends of users of the personality tests without involving those users. What is true is that, in both cases, friends of users were not explicitly asked by Facebook or by anyone else for consent for their data to be used in this way. Facebook seems to have taken the view that if you choose to share data with a friend, that friend is free to share that data further. Facebook's history suggests that their meat-based products are often unaware of or oblivious to the sausage-factory's sales to their real customers. † The Trump campaign are reported as saying the data obtained by CA (in contravention of Facebook policies‡) was not actually used because the RNC had some better data they could use for the purpose. ‡ Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, says the data was passed to CA in contravention of Facebook's policies at that time. I would like to make one thing clear as far as I understand it. Both camps started by getting user data from users who willingly used [their respective] app. That is not the case. There was no "Trump for America" app. Facebook users did not willingly use a Trump campaign app. They thought they were using a Cambridge university personality test. Obama 2012 NPR reports Betsy Hoover, the online organizing director for Barack Obama's 2012 presidential campaign as saying: the app that everyone's referring to in this moment was an app called Targeted Sharing. It was an app that we created on Facebook that fully followed Facebook's terms of service. And any individual could decide to use the app. When they clicked on the app, a screen would pop up that would say what data they're authorizing the app was giving us access to and exactly how we were going to use that data. And so at that time, it was totally legitimate on Facebook to say you're giving us access to your social network. You're giving us access to your friends on Facebook. we matched the data of your friends to that model and then reflected it back to the person who had authorized the app and said, if you want to reach out to your friends about this election on Facebook, here are the ones that you should reach out to first. And that was it... Users of the "Obama for America" app provided access to information about their friends explicitly in order to find out which ones would be receptive to messages from the user regarding the political campaign those users were supporting. Trump 2016 USA Today reports Patrick Ruffini, a co-founder Echelon Insights, a Republican-leaning digital analytics and research firm, as saying: had Cambridge Analytica just put out the app themselves, they would have been playing by the rules Obama's team put out the app themselves, Trump's did not. A republican says Trump's team were not "playing by the rules". Related Snopes Fact Check: Did the Obama Campaign Employ the Same Tactics as Cambridge Analytica? | {
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30,292 | Although I am normally quite supportive of higher taxation, I've never really felt comfortable with the inheritance tax. I see no reason why the government should tax the money a parent wishes to endow upon their children. That seems to be entirely an internal family and household matter to me which you'd think was none of the governments business. What arguments are typically offered by those supportive of this taxation technique, both ethically and economically, in order to defend and promote its use? | What arguments are typically offered by those supportive of this
taxation technique, both ethically and economically, in order to
defend and promote its use? Inheritance Taxes As Taxes In Lieu of Income Taxes Inheritance taxes aren't taxes on dead people who paid taxes on what they earned during life. The dead people are dead. They suffer no harm and receive no benefit from what happens to their wealth after their deaths. An inheritance tax, even when structured as an estate tax, is fundamentally a tax on people who receive inherited wealth upon which they have paid no taxes. As a general rule, we tax increases in wealth that result from transfers of money and property. At a very basic level, a bonus to an employee of $1,000,000, winning $1,000,000 in the lottery, receiving a gift of $1,000,000 and receiving an inheritance of $1,000,000 are all events with the same economic effect on the recipient and fit within a broad definition of income. But, in most countries, gifts and inheritances are exempt from taxation as income and a gift or inheritance or estate tax is a tax in lieu of an income tax that is designed to impose less of an administrative burden than treating gifts and inheritances as income would. Generally speaking, we tax individuals as individuals, not as corporate family units. Not subjecting gifts and inheritances to income taxation is the exception to the general rule, not imposing taxes on large gifts and inheritances. Thus, an inheritance tax can be seen as a way of broadening the income tax base, particularly if those taxes would be comparable in magnitude for similar amounts of property transferred. In this view, an inheritance tax supports the standard economic maxim that if you want to raise a certain sum of money, and you have to use distortive taxation, it is best (in terms of efficiency) to use all margins, i.e. to distort everywhere a little instead of only somewhere a lot. Expanding the tax base to include taxation of inheritances, could allow income tax marginal rates to be somewhat lower, and improve efficiency. Recall also that income and inheritance taxation are fundamentally, in principle, justified as you are paying for the benefits you receive from the government's efforts to create a system of laws and a regulated society. Income and inheritance taxes are ethical to impose because they are paying the taxpayer's fair share of benefit received from living in that society which is orderly/safe enough that you were able to give/gain that wealth by means of income or inheritance at all. Dumb Money What Did Heirs Do To Deserve This? Indeed, ethically, there is less justification for taxing earned income, for which the recipient had to give up something of value in time and effort in order to get paid, than there is for taxing a lottery winner, gift recipient, or inheritance recipient who gave up little or nothing to earn the money received and did absolutely nothing of substance to deserve this wealth. Why not tax undeserved money? The Economics Of The Leisure Class Put another way, inherited wealth creates a leisure class that we do not need and who are mere parasites on society that don't have to contribute anything to it. Of course, sometimes people who inherit wealth do develop noblesse oblige or utilize their leisure to make long term progress for society in science and culture that people forced to think about providing for themselves economically, which is pretty much everyone who does not inherit great wealth, don't have the resources of time or money to do. Dumb Money Doesn't Manage Wealth Well This ethical consideration ties into an economic one. Someone who earns a lot of money can generally be trusted to be competent to manage and invest it well, but we have no similar assurances that the recipient of the property will be particularly qualified to manage it in the case of "dumb money" received by lottery or accident of birth. This doesn't mean that heirs to great fortunes die paupers. But, for example, if Donald Trump had simply invested his inherited wealth in an S&P 500 Index fund instead of actively managing it, he would be more wealthy than he is today. But, Heirs Might Be Better Than Average Property Managers On the other hand, the children of wealthy people or objects of the bounty of wealthy people may be more qualified than the average person to manage that wealth, due perhaps to inherited aptitude, or perhaps because they have been groomed for that responsibility during life. But, this is undermined by the fact that most inherited wealth dissipates in subsequent generations, rather than building up. People who inherit wealth are more likely than people who accumulate wealth themselves to use it for self-indulgence or to lose it with bad investments. Great fortunes rarely last even three or four generations. Incentives Economics is all about incentives. The incentives created by an inheritance tax or its absence, are complex and lead to considerations that run both ways. The Economy Needs An Incentive For People Who Can't Take It With Them One reason that we don't tax gifts and inheritances at a 100% rate is because the ability to pass on wealth to the next generation gives the people who are currently earning that wealth an incentive to create more wealth and because these very wealthy people would be less economically productive if they couldn't do so. But, the empirical account here is also mixed. First people earn money for their own comfort, but in the low tens of millions of dollar range and up, most people who earn great wealth struggle to spend it as fast as they earn it, because at that point many of the things that they purchase (e.g. real estate and art) don't get used up and decline in value after you buy them. Then, up to a point, people want to leave everything they own to their children. But, at some point, the vast majority of wealthy people (for whom I've worked as an estate planner for most of my adult life) start to think that enough is enough and no longer want to spoil their children (who are themselves typically past retirement age when they receive inheritances in this day and age). After that point (in reality this starts to kick in around the tens of millions of dollars mark), the very wealthy tend to be more concerned about leaving a legacy for the larger community in the form of university buildings and museums named after them, charitable foundations and other symbols of them having made a difference in the world, and those charitable gifts and inheritances are typically not taxed. It is certainly not the case empirically that even a 45% gift and inheritance tax rate significantly reduces economic productivity in people who give their wealth to family members. You really need to approach 60%-70% effective rates or so before you start to see much of a significant impact on productivity of donors, and that is only in cases where charitable legacies are not a primary concern. Nudging The Rich To Do Good Rather Than Merely Doing Well Normal decent people, even really rich ones, want to benefit both family and friends and a larger society. Normally, in the absence of a nudge from society, they err on the side of giving to family rather than society as their motivating goal to continue producing. But, inheritance taxes provide a nudge that helps the wealth shift their preferences modestly from a basically selfish motivation to a more community oriented motivation, by making charitable gifts and inheritances tax free, while taxing gifts and inheritances to family and friends. This makes inheritance taxes basically optional. You can give to society and not pay these taxes and have a choice over what cause in society you want to promote. This choice of which cause you want to promote still gives you an incentive to work productively in old age to advance that societal goal. And, the earners unlike their heirs, have shown themselves to be high in merit and so likely to make good and efficient choices about how to improve society with their estates. And, while the causes chosen by wealthy old people to advance may not exactly match societal needs, tax funds can fill the gaps that no one wealthy was interested in donating to at death, so it doesn't really matter all that much exactly what charitable legacies the rich leave, even though they and their heirs can feel good about the charitable legacies that they do leave. Not An Incentive For Heirs The flip side of the incentive that is provided for donors is that inheritance provides no incentive whatsoever for heirs to do anything but engage in self-indulgence that has no necessary benefit to the larger society. Huge amounts of resources that could have been used to create incentives are instead squandered away without receiving anything in return. Indeed, the empirical evidence clearly supports the conclusion that people who receive "economic life support" in the form of substantial gifts and inheritance become much less economically productive than comparable individuals who do not receive substantial gifts and inheritances. Keynesian Considerations Most of the time, spending money boosts the economy more than sitting on it, and purchasing productive investments creates more value than purchasing unproductive investments. But, people who receive inherited wealth are much more likely to not spend and to not productively invest their inheritances, than the people who would have received that economic benefit had the money been taxed and distributed. So, untaxed inheritances are a drag on the economy. Inheritors of wealth buy paintings and fancy mansions, not backhoes and factories. They invest in prestige rather than infrastructure. Their spending reduces the economy's capacity to produce necessities in favor of its capacity to produce luxuries that most people can't afford at all. Economies of Scale Historically, one of the important reasons to not only allow inheritances but to specifically favor inheritances to a single heir to an entire fortune was that gifts and inheritances were a major mechanism by which significant amounts of property were concentrated under a single manager, which allowed for economies of scale. Someone with a 10,000 acre estate can engage in agricultural strategies that benefit from economies of scale in a way that a yeoman with 40 acres and a mule cannot. But, the importance of the economy of scale justification for inheritance greatly declined when institutions like trusts and corporations made it possible to consolidate management of large quantities of assets without giving all of the benefit of those assets to the person managing them. You can equitably divide shares in a corporation causing the wealth associated with the corporation to be equitably divided, without giving shareholders a meaningful say in anything other than deciding which single CEO will be appointed to run the company when the current CEO is unwilling or unable to act. Inequality, Meritocracy And Incentives For Everyone Else Excessive Inequality Encourages Have Nots To Be Unproductive Too Inheritances meaningfully increase economic inequality between families and between classes of people. The recipients of inheritances often receive great wealth that someone else would be more qualified to manage. And every time you reward someone in the economy for the accident of their birth, you are simultaneously not providing an incentive for someone who has economic merit. (If someone has both very lucky birth and extreme merit, they don't need an inheritance to be wealthy themselves based on merit, so the net benefit to the economy from inheritances received by that person are modest.) Basically, inheritances push us towards a winner take all economy in which lots of people who would be highly rewarded in a fully meritocratic society are undercompensated and may decline to fully utilize their abilities knowing that fact. Economic Harms Are Caused By Excessive Rent Seeking Due To Inequality Winner take all economies divert effort of highly able people from producing economic value that increases the size of the pie for everyone, to "rent seeking" which decides who gets the existing bounty without contributing to the total amount of wealth in the economy. Rent seeking involves significant expenses that are dead weight loss to society. Frequently rent seeking costs in a conflict by all parties to a conflict can equal or exceed the economic rent that is at stake (e.g. the aggregate litigation costs of parties in a lawsuit over who owns an income producing asset). In addition, economic rent seeking diverts resources from more productive economic activity. Now, if you live in a society whose wealth primarily derives from rents and income from the ownership of property, and individual efforts to engage in creating new wealth are fairly insignificant in the overall picture of the society's economy (e.g. Saudi Arabia or Medieval France), having an economy that revolves largely around rent seeking and privileges inherited wealth isn't a serious problem for the society. But, if economic rents are a pretty small share of the society's total wealth and economic production, then favoring rent seeking behavior in a winner take all economy that ends up that way through the great importance of inherited wealth, at the relative expense of people who have merit and generate new wealth through their own efforts, is a catastrophe. Dead Weight Losses Arise Due To Gatekeeping Expenses Another problem with high levels of economic inequality is that lots of resources have to be devoted to gatekeeping and guarding the wealth of the wealthy from those denied wealth, which isn't necessary to nearly the same degree in more egalitarian societies. This expenditure is basically wasted economic capacity. Inequality Creates A Risk Of Revolutions And Excessive Dissent And, if inheritance becomes too important relative to earning income, eventually your very political system becomes unstable and the poor meritocrats will revolt and depose the dumb money. This isn't just an abstract possibility. We think of the late 1940s to early 1960s as a time of national tranquility and prosperity in the U.S., but the truth is that it was an incredibly turbulent time in terms of domestic labor unrest. One of the reasons that the U.S. has one of the tamest labor forces and weakest unions in the developed world after unfathomably intense labor actions from the late 1940s to the early 1960s, is that colleges and universities shifted to meritocratic admissions, expanded higher educational capacity, and financed higher education through the GI Bill and public colleges, so that people who didn't have great wealth could advance to their full meritocratic potential. People who were shut out of the upper middle class until then and became union leaders instead, were coopted into the establishment based upon their abilities and the content of their character. Anti-discrimination laws also cut down these barriers, and taxes in this period for the wealthy were very high indeed, including inheritance taxes. As wealth inequality limits the ability of talented people with little inherited wealth to succeed again, those people will devote themselves to undermining the system rather than being coopted by it and advancing it. The "Let Them Eat Cake" Dilemma Finally, from a primarily ethical perspective, with great wealth comes great responsibility and this maxim applies at a societal level as well as an individual level. In a society that has vast wealth sufficient to eliminate the suffering and privation of the poor, allowing people who were lucky enough to be born rich to have vast wealth while redistributing none of this unearned societal wealth to those who profoundly need it, is inherently unethical and unjust. An inheritance tax takes from people who have done nothing to deserve wealth and don't need it, and gives it to people who direly need it or to other worthy societal goals. Imposing Some Taxes On Unrealized Capital Gains Another key point to realize in the particular case of the United States is that lots of wealth of most wealthy people takes the form of capital gains, i.e. appreciation in the value of property like real estate and business stock, that has never been subject to any income taxation. Under U.S. tax law, all accrued capital gains in property owned at death are tax free. So, but for an inheritance tax, all of those capital gains (which clearly meet the definition of income) are never taxed at all to anyone. Thus, in the U.S. tax system, an inheritance tax ensures the unrealized capital gains of people who die are taxed at least once. Death is a natural time to do this, because a transfer of the asset must take place anyway at this point. The ability to totally escape capital gains by holding onto assets also discourages people from selling assets when, but for taxes, that would be the economically efficient choice. Also, the prospect of inheritance taxation prevents economic resources from being skewed too far towards capital gain producing activities and away from income producing activities. For example, without an inheritance tax, more resources would shift to zero sum real estate investments that rely on appreciation in real estate values and away from retailing and manufacturing and construction sectors that generate current income more than capital gains. Canada, in contrast, for example, treats death as a deemed sale of capital assets to the inheritors under its income tax, which makes an inheritance tax somewhat less important for revenue protection purposes. | {
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30,314 | I'm anti-Trump, just to get that out of the way, but I'm also curious about the legal aspects. I hope this falls enough under political and not legal but if you think it's better for the legal board, feel free to move. Mueller recently got a warrant and "raided" - I don't like the word raided when a warrant is obtained, but that's the word most articles are using, so he raided Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen - all legal, all well and good. Fox News and Team Trump is saying that Mueller has no business going after campaign finance violation in a Russia-collusion investigation. My question is, is that correct, or does the FBI have an obligation to seek out any crime? I know that if it's the police, and they think I might be guilty of murder, they get a warrant, they search my apt, they don't find a murder weapon but they do find my bag of illegal drugs, that there's a good chance I'll be charged for possession of illegal drugs. Perhaps the same thing applies to Mueller that he "can" use whatever he finds. Is there a law that defines whether Mueller should go after anything, or is he legally or perhaps ethically bound to only pursue Russian collusion? (He could have searched Michael Cohen's office for Russian collusion, and that may even be what was presented to the judge when they got the warrant) I'm not sure. I'm just curious if, when it's the FBI investigating a politician, is anything they find fair game (like cops searching my house after obtaining a warrant), or are there legal or ethical reasons why Mueller should stick 100% to possible Russian collusion, and, as team-Trump suggested, pass the campaign finance stuff to another agency/person? (I'm guessing that the FBI would investigate campaign finance violations, so it would be passed on within the FBI). | The "raid", which is the execution of a search warrant, is under the jurisdiction of the US Attorney's Office of the Southern District of New York, not that of the Mueller investigation. Mueller presumably referred whatever prompted the warrant to Rosenstein (deputy US Attorney General and his direct supervisor) specifically because it doesn't necessarily fall under the scope of his investigation. Note that we don't know the exact nature of the evidence presented to get the warrant beyond it being something related to "campaign finance violations, bank fraud, and wire fraud". While Cohen has presented it as being about the 130k Stormey Daniels payment after the fact, there is no indication from any other source involved that its strictly limited to that. To get the warrant, the approval of Rosenstein (deputy AG), the head of the DOJ criminal division, the US Attorney for SDNY (though he recused himself from this for some reason, so whoever substituted for him), and a federal magistrate judge or district judge are required. The standards for executing a search on an attorney is much higher than for other people precisely because of attorney-client privilege. It's usually done only when there's expectations of evidence tampering/destruction or that measures like a subpoena wouldn't be answered in good faith. In fact sometimes it might even involve things like single blinding the evidence by using two teams to examine the documents after they are obtained. The fact that there was a search at all instead of something like a subpoena suggests that the evidence already available before the search is very strong; Cohen is probably about to have a very bad time. | {
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30,316 | The US has recently accused the Syrian government of using chemical weapons in the civil war. However it seems to me that Assad has little to gain from doing so: Chemical weapons give a casus belli for the Western governments to increase their presence on the ground Regular weapons are just as effective at assaulting the opposition Assad has been gaining ground ever since Russia began their campaign there and it is only a matter of time before he wins the war So what rationale could the Syrian government possibly have for resorting to chemical weapons? | Chemical weapons give a casus belli for the Western governments to
increase their presence on the ground That's true that the use of chemical weapons galvanizes the west against Assad, but, I think the best way to put it is like this. "They're going to hate me anyway, I may as well go all out". There's a body of people in the west who don't want war no matter what. They don't want to be in Syria. They aren't going to change their minds based on some rarely shown news clips. There's another body of people who are anti Assad anyway. Hating him more won't change much. The actual shift that happens when chemical weapons are used isn't all that much. Granted, it's affected Trump and lead him to drop some bombs on an airport (after giving the Russians a head up) and it lead Trump to make a threatening tweet, but for the voting american public the use of chemical weapons doesn't move the dial that much. It moves it some, but it's hardly a "Casus Belli". It maybe could become that. So far it isn't. Regular weapons are just as effective at assaulting the opposition That's false. Gas is heavier than air. It sinks into bunkers. People who are underground run outside to escape the gas. Chemical weapons gas is also very painful and it hits a lot of women and children. It has an effectiveness that regular weapons simply do not have. It's also very good at breaking the spirit of the resistance. Assad has been gaining ground ever since Russia began their campaign
there and it is only a matter of time before he wins the war I don't know. He certainly is wining. I don't know if it's a clear cut case of "only a matter of time before he wins". Resistances can last for decades. One could also make the argument that Assad is impatient or perhaps make the argument that he's cruel, or that he's a tactician who understands the devotion of his enemy. To get into specifics would require a lot more knowledge of how determined and entrenched his opposition is. So what rationale could the Syrian government possibly have for
resorting to chemical weapons? I've covered this above, but just to summarize; 1) to break their spirit,
2) to punish,
3) to hit people in bunkers. Whether you believe Assad is behind the numerous chemical attacks or not, there are clear benefits to him using them (there are risks too, but to say there's no benefit is flat out false). | {
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30,468 | Reading this article about the fastest trains in the world, I found no US train. This makes sense since high speed rails is quite limited : (..) Amtrak's Acela Express (reaching 150 mph (240 km/h)) (..) Also, rail transportation as whole became secondary during the last decades : Rail transportation in the United States consists primarily of freight
shipments, while passenger service, once a large and vital part of the
nation's passenger transportation network, plays a limited role as
compared to transportation patterns in many other countries. This article section from Wikipedia argues about the train efficiency when compared to other means of transportation: Trains are in general one of the most efficient means of transport for
freight and passengers. Efficiency varies significantly with passenger
loads, and losses incurred in electricity generation and supply (for
electrified systems),[33][34] and, importantly, end-to-end delivery,
where stations are not the originating final destinations of a
journey. Some romanticized arguments in favor of train transportation can be found here . Question: Why is US rail passenger transportation less important than in other countries? | I'm not so sure it's fair to generalize this across the US like you're doing in your question. If you visit Grand Central in NYC you'll see plenty of passengers getting transported by rail. It's tempting to put forward that the US has no federal entity sponsoring the tracks, or that it's inhabited by individualists who have love affairs with their cars. But I think the key issue is more practical and tied to the geography: the US is larger than Europe with a lower population that is concentrated in a few key areas. When the population is as densely packed as it is in Europe, with cities near each other, people use rail for transportation. Not as much as in Europe - Europe has better infrastructure and faster trains after all, and American suburbs with inadequate public transportation invite you to take the car from the get go. But rail certainly is an option in places where it can be relevant. Grand Central in NYC, for instance, sees ~750k passengers per day on weekdays, and ~1M on holidays . It's one of the busiest train stations in the world. In the rest of the country, the major population centers are far apart enough from each other, and public transportation is inadequate enough, that you'll simply go a lot faster by airplane if it's far or if your trip is anything time sensitive. Car also works for short to medium distances. (Automotive fuel is dirt cheap in the US compared to what it costs in Europe .) And just like on that side of the pond, there are buses if you're on a tight budget. I think it's also worth noting that high speed rail wouldn't make that big a difference when traveling between distant pockets of population. Consider the high speed track between SF and LA that has been in discussions for years. The distance between the two is ~650km. Somewhat longer if you lay the tracks in the desert. Even with high speed rail, you'd be looking at three hours or so of travel time - and that's assuming you don't stop at Bakersfield or Fresno. If you have a stop at San Jose, which would be logical, you'll likely add an extra half hour or so. The flight from LAX to SFO, for comparison, is an hour and a half for under $100. Even if you count the time needed to go through airport security and board the plane, the cost and time benefits of using a high speed train will be marginal at best. (The ecological one is a different matter of course, so it may very well see the light one day if only because of that.) The benefit might tilt in the train's favor if you account for the travel time to get to and from the stations vs the same for the airports. I'd add in passing, since your original question lumped all trains together if the comments are anything to go by, that rail actually is relatively healthy as an economic sector in the US. It's not tech, of course, but you can earn money. Berkshire Hathaway famously bet big on rail a few years back. It paid off handsomely . Rail actually gets used a lot to transport goods in bulk. Anecdotally, I keenly recollect from my childhood in the US how trains would take forever to cart a seemingly endless number of wagons across the road. | {
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30,509 | GDPR is a hot topic since it will start being enforced from 25 May 2018 . One of the most important characteristics of this regulation is that it also applies to companies outside the EU : A major change made by the GDPR is the territorial scope of the new
law. The GDPR replaces the 1995 EU Data Protection Directive which
generally did not regulate businesses based outside the EU. However,
now even if a US-based business has no employees or offices within the
boundaries of the EU, the GDPR may still apply.
(..) The GDPR imposes significant fines for companies that fail to
comply. However, it is not clear how the EU can issue a fine for a company that has no physical presence in the EU. Assuming some US company breaks this regulation and has no physical presence within EU territory, how can it be fined? My assumption is that there must be some kind of US-EU treaty that can be used, so that fines can actually be issued. I found this article about EU-US Privacy Shield that seems to be related to GDPR. It seems to have some issues related to Cross-Border Data Transfers: Though the United States has worked extensively with the European
Commission on data security standards, it is not considered an
Adequate Jurisdiction by the Commission Anyway, it is not clear if this program is the missing link I am looking for. Question: How are GDPR fines actually enforced for companies with no physical presence in the EU? | Your assumption of a US-EU treaty to enforce fines seems like it is one of two intended enforcement methods, the other being the required establishment of representatives to ensure non-EU entities have at least some physical presence in the EU. The GDPR requires non-EU entities handling EU data to appoint a representative in the EU, and this representative will be able receive the fines or other penalties relating to regulation compliance. In case that doesn't work, according to the text of the GDPR, the enforcement authorities will work with non-EU countries and international organizations to develop exact enforcement methods, rather than having such methods be part of the GDPR itself. Enforcement Outside EU: Chapter 5 of the GDPR relates to handling of data by non-member countries or organizations. The relevant text relating to enforcement of fines is from Article 50 , titled "International cooperation for the protection of personal data": (1) In relation to third countries and international organisations, the Commission and supervisory authorities shall take appropriate steps to: a) develop international cooperation mechanisms to facilitate the effective enforcement of legislation for the protection of personal data; b) provide international mutual assistance in the enforcement of legislation for the protection of personal data, including through notification, complaint referral, investigative assistance and information exchange, subject to appropriate safeguards for the protection of personal data and other fundamental rights and freedoms; c) engage relevant stakeholders in discussion and activities aimed at furthering international cooperation in the enforcement of legislation for the protection of personal data; d) promote the exchange and documentation of personal data protection legislation and practice, including on jurisdictional conflicts with third countries. That's it. Basically, their method of non-EU enforcement seems to be "we'll figure it out". Depending on what 'appropriate steps to develop international cooperation mechanisms' means, it appears like treaties or others agreements will be the mechanism for enforcing the GDPR outside the member states. Representatives As Means of Enforcement: Article 3 states that the scope of the GDPR covers any data sourced from the EU, regardless of it is actually processed or used there. Article 27 covers the appointment of representatives for non-EU entities, and applies to whatever entities Article 3 applies to. The relevant text from Article 27: (3) The representative shall be established in one of the Member States where the data subjects, whose personal data are processed in relation to the offering of goods or services to them, or whose behaviour is monitored, are. (4) The representative shall be mandated by the controller or processor to be addressed in addition to or instead of the controller or the processor by, in particular, supervisory authorities and data subjects, on all issues related to processing, for the purposes of ensuring compliance with this Regulation. (5) The designation of a representative by the controller or processor shall be without prejudice to legal actions which could be initiated against the controller or the processor themselves. Basically, non-EU entities which process or control EU data will need to establish a representative/proxy entity in at least one of the member states where they source the data. This representative will, unsurprisingly, represent the non-EU entity in all matters relating to regulation. According to this explanation (and some others I've seen), this means the representative will be subject to any compliance issues, including enforcement of fines. Presumably, there are mechanisms already in place stopping entities from creating a representative, getting a fine, having the representative declare bankruptcy, and just setting up a new representative. | {
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30,523 | Here in Denmark we pretty much have "forced" retirement saving. Almost everybody in regular employment pays about $15 a month plus 12% of their monthly salary into a pension fund. [1] You can save more on the side, but not less. Why would a country do this? I think there are two major drawbacks to this. People have different tastes and needs. Some people might want to spend more money now, while others may be aiming for a much more uniform distribution of income. Why prevent people from living according to their tastes and needs? Risk is a factor. The return from the investments may change due to economic factors, the retirement age and tax rules may change due to political factors, and so on and so forth. Most people work from their 20s until retirement in their 60s and 70s. That's a period of 40-50 years, over which so much can change, so taking away people's income now and promising them you'll pay them back so many decades later is a promise with too much variability and risk involved, and people have different risk aversions. The forced retirement system ignores this risk aversion and pretends every population member is identical. What are the pros? [1] To be precise, you only pay 4% of your salary into the pension fund, and your employer pays the remaining 8%, but it's still kind of the same thing, because we could imagine the employer could just give me those 8% as a salary instead of putting it in my pension fund. | Old people starving is bad. There exist many people who don't bother with financial planning and they might end up without enough to live on when they are too old to work. By forcing a pension you avoid anyone having to work until they die, or dying shortly after they can't work. Many of these social programs also divert funds to other people who need assistance, and by bundling it with a pension system it is less obnoxious to the tax payers. Outlawing skydiving or smoking as retirement plans (jokes on him - I'll be dead by then) is of course a cost, but most people prefer improving the conditions of the people who are worst off. | {
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30,552 | According to this article there seem to be quite a difference between religion of Congress members and that of general population: The religious makeup of the legislative body is overwhelmingly and
disproportionately Christian, according to Pew’s “Faith on the Hill”
survey. Nearly 91 percent of members of Congress reported their
religious affiliation as Christian, while 71 percent of U.S.
adults identify as Christian. A particular case is that of those with no religious affiliation: Just one member of Congress , Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), identifies
as religiously “unaffiliated. ” She’s been the only “unaffiliated”
member of Congress since she was elected in 2012, even as the nation’s
ranks of religious “nones” — those who don’t subscribe to a particular
religious creed or simply don’t believe in God — have grown to include
nearly one-quarter of U.S. adults. Question: Why is there a significant difference between religious makeup of the legislative body and that of adult population in US? | The main reason is game-theoretical asymmetry . If you "identify" (officially, as per self-label) as a Christian - or any other religion - non-religious people would most likely not decide to avoid voting for you based on that. There may be a small sliver of atheist zealots who would, but I seriously doubt it is enough to matter, especially in US First Past The Post two-real-parties system ( only 5% of people would be more likely to vote for someone if they identify as "atheist" as per Pew poll in 2014 ) If you identify as a an "atheist" ( and to many religious people, there's very little inclination to make fine nuanced distinction between 'nones', 'non-affiliated', 'agnostic', 'atheist' - they all get conceptually lumped together as "unbelieving atheist heathen"(tm) from the point of view of someone highly devout in a monotheistic Abrahamic tradition ), there's plenty of strongly religious people who - according to polls - would refuse to vote for you. about half (53%) of Americans said they would be less likely to support an atheist. ( Source: Pew poll 2014 ) As such, there's absolutely no tangible electoral advantage to openly declaring yourself as not being affiliated with any religion; and practical tangible electoral risks/disadvantages in failing to do so. As such, even if in practice you only attended Church 2 times in last 30 years and can't quote a holy book any better than last page of Hawking's doctoral dissertation, you're better off declaring yourself to be a Christian/Jew/Moslem than anything else. For every Shabbat-observing Joe Lieberman in Congress, there's probably 10 pork-eating "Jews" who haven't said a prayer in private since graduating college or kindergarten. Additionally, as Alexei pointed out, Congress isn't statistically big - and there's even fewer valid 'none' seats if you start looking at Politically Wonkish details - Texas electorate outside Austin guarantees a Christian representation, so TX seat - or West Virgina - doesn't get to be counted if you study this phenomenon. As such, it may very well be probable that 'nones' simply randomly don't get represented as often, given the small sample size (you can ask on Cross-validated the probability of the exact outcome we see, especially adjusted for mimicry noted as the main reason). I have explored both of these reasons specific to US Republicans in my answer here: Are there any atheist politicians in the Republican Party (GOP)? A very useful stat from that answer: Please note that there are at least 9 members of 114th Congress who didn't disclose their religious affiliation . Unfortunately, Pew didn't break down the party lines, so it's unknown how many of them were D vs R. | {
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30,647 | The internet does not give a satisfactory explanation as to the slightly differing nuances of these two notions. Question: When speaking politically, what is meant by "separatists" and "rebels" and where do they differ in ideology? | Separatists desire to be separate. Rebels desire to no longer be under control. Rebels are outside of the system, and may or may not want the system to be the same. In Pakistan and Turkey rebels in the army aimed to replace leadership without meaning to fundamentally change the nature of their country. Mao's or Lenin's rebels aimed to remake the whole state. Separatists but not rebels can work from within or almost within the system. Catalonia recently made a not quite legal bid to be separate from Spain, Texas polls about 10% for independence from the US, Scotland has held legal referendums to leave the UK. In Sudan and Ireland rebels aimed for a separate state, making them both separatists and rebels. | {
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30,671 | Recently it has been reported that: Kim Jong-un has pledged a "new history" in relations with his neighbour as he became the first North Korean leader to set foot in South Korea since the end of the Korean War in 1953. In a lot of social media ( here , here and here ) I have seen people attributing this breakthrough to work and "negotiating skill" of Donald Trump. Is there any basis to these claims? How much influence has Donald Trump had on this event? | According to South Korea's National Security Chief, Chung Eui-yong, speaking to the press after a meeting about North Korea with President Trump on March 08, 2018: "I explained to President Trump that his leadership and his maximum
pressure policy, together with international solidarity, brought us to
this juncture. I expressed President Moon Jae-in’s personal gratitude
for President Trump’s leadership." Full transcript: South Korea official's speech on Trump-North Korea leader meeting by May According to South Korea's Foreign Minister, Kang Kyung-wha, speaking to CNN on April 26, 2018: South Korea's foreign minister has said she believes President Donald
Trump is largely responsible for bringing North Korean leader Kim
Jong-un to the negotiating table. Speaking ahead of Friday's historic summit between the leaders of
North and South Korea, Kang Kyung-wha told CNN that the US President
had played a significant role in bringing the two sides together. "Clearly, credit goes to President Trump," Kang told CNN's Christiane
Amanpour in Seoul. "He's been determined to come to grips with this
from day one." CNN report: South Korea credits Trump for opening door to talks with North According to the President of South Korea, Moon Jae-in, as reported by the BBC on April 27, 2018: South Korean President Moon Jae-in said publicly too that President
Trump deserved big credit for bringing about talks to discuss peace
with the North. "It could be a resulting work of the US-led sanctions
and pressure." BBC report: Does Trump deserve the credit for peace talks with North Korea? President Moon went further, saying that President Trump should receive the Nobel Peace Prize: Donald Trump should win the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to unify
Korea, the South Korean President has reportedly suggested. "President Trump should win the Nobel Peace Prize. What we need is
only peace," Mr Moon told a meeting of senior secretaries, according
to an official who briefed media. In floating the idea of a Trump Nobel, Mr Moon was responding to a
comment by Lee Hee-ho, the widow of late South Korean President Kim
Dae-jung. She said Mr Moon deserved to win the prize in recognition of his peace
efforts, leading him to say Mr Trump should get it. Sky News report: Donald Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, says South Korea's President New York Times report: A Trump Nobel Peace Prize? South Korea’s Leader Likes the Idea According to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in a joint press conference with President Trump on April 27, 2018: "Today, we meet at a point in time where it has become very clear that
the strength of the American president, where he really saw to it that
the sanctions against North Korea are respected, has opened new
possibilities, opened new ways." CNBC report: Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel hold joint press conference | {
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30,745 | If a bill is being debated in the Senate or House, are there any rules or laws which prevent a member of congress from simply lying while making a speech for or against a bill? I'll propose this (deliberately absurd) example for the sake of discussion: The Senate is considering a bill which would require all Americans over the age of 10 to carry no less than 35 hand grenades at all times. Senator Joe Lyre is recognized by the presiding officer and, during his speech, makes the following statement: My home state has the world's largest stockpile of grenades, which makes it the safest state in America. In fact, never in the entire history of my state has any crime ever been committed. Naturally, there are plenty of other reasons one might not want to lie so boldly, not the least of which is giving your political opponents ample reason to call you a liar in campaign ads, or alienating other members of your own party who don't want to be identified as the friend of such a bold liar. But, neglecting these practical reasons and assuming that the statement is readily, demonstrably and undeniably false and is not in some other way a legal liability (for instance, by being slanderous), are there any formal consequences? | Generally speaking, anything that a member of Congress says during a speech or debate in Congress is protected by the U.S. Constitution from lawsuits and criminal prosecution. This immunity is covered in Article I, Section 6, and is known as the "Speech and Debate Clause" . The Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for
their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury
of the United States. They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony
and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their
Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to
and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either
House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place . (emphasis mine) So a member of Congress can't go to jail for lying during a debate in Congress. However, the Constitution does say: "...shall not be questioned in any other Place. " I read this to mean that a member of Congress can be punished (e.g. with expulsion ) by his/her peers. The U.S. Supreme Court dove into this matter in Powell v. McCormack (1969). There is substantial case law elaborating on the Speech and Debate Clause. For example, in addition to the case noted above, Gravel v United States (1972) was another landmark case. It established that the clause's protections can, under certain circumstances, apply to Congressional staffers. More cases are listed below. A useful and detailed commentary of the clause can be found in this document provided by Congress.gov (pdf; the relevant section starts at page 137). Here are some excerpts: The immunities of the Speech or Debate Clause were not written into the Constitution simply for the personal or private benefit of Members of Congress, but to protect the integrity of the legislative process by insuring the
independence of individual legislators. The protection of this clause is not limited to words spoken in
debate. Committee reports, resolutions, and the act of voting are
equally covered, as are things generally done in a session of the
House by one of its members in relation to the business before it. So long as legislators are acting in the sphere of legitimate
legislative activity, they are protected not only from the consequence
of litigation's results but also from the burden of defending themselves. The scope of the meaning of "legislative activity" has its limits. The heart of the clause is speech or debate in either House, and insofar as the clause is construed to reach other matters, they must be an integral part of the deliberative and communicative processes by which Members participate in committee and House proceedings with respect to the consideration and passage
or rejection of proposed legislation or with respect to other matters
which the Constitution places within the jurisdiction of either
House. Immunity from civil suit, both in law and equity, and from criminal action based on the performance of legislative duties flows from a determination that a challenged act is within the definition of legislative activity, but the Court in the more recent cases appears to have narrowed the concept somewhat. Legal cases: United States v. Brewster (1972) ~ the Speech and Debate Clause is used to shield a Senator from bribery and corruption charges Gravel v. United States (1972) ~ the Speech and Debate Clause extends to Congressional aides; the case also narrowed the protections provided Kilbourn v. Thompson (1880) ~ House members cannot be sued for false imprisonment; establishes the "Kilbourn Test" Powell v. McCormack (1969) ~ further establishes the rights of House members Dombrowski v. Eastland (1967) ~ further establishes the immunities of members of Congress United States v. Rayburn House Office Building, Room 213 (2007) ~ FBI raids Congressman's office; Supreme Court says no way Also, outside the Constitution, there's the Westfall Act (2007), a federal statute that "accords federal employees absolute immunity from tort claims arising out of acts undertaken in the course of their official duties" . The statute was litigated in Wuterich v. Murtha (2009). | {
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30,753 | This Guardian article argues about connections between Cambridge Analytica and Brexit referendum. There is a paragraph that tells us about some restrictions related to how information and money can be used for political campaigns in Britain: Beyond data, there are two more issues at stake here: overspending
and coordination between campaigns . The law forbids campaigns from
coordinating, to forestall the potential for shell entities and
overspending vehicles . In the digital age, where political campaigns
use Facebook as their predominant tool, it’s difficult to enforce. And
when four different campaigns – Vote Leave, BeLeave, Veterans for
Britain and the DUP – all used the same data firm, AIQ, it’s pretty
much impossible. Assuming that the vote leave campaigns indeed broke some electoral rules (through an official investigation), does this change anything related to the referendum results? Or the referendum results cannot be changed (e.g. it is considered null and must be repeated). If I understood correctly, from EU's perspective triggering article 50 was the point of no return for Brexit, but whether referendum campaign was done legally or not might be very important within UK. This would be particularly interesting since the referendum lead to irreversible consequences (outside UK). Question: What happens if it is proved that "vote leave" campaign broke campaigning laws? Important: this question is not about whether campaign was done legally or not. Not even about its nature (Brexit). It is about what campaign regulations specify in such cases (illegal elements in referendum campaigns). | Nothing (Legally) Regardless of the circumstances of the referendum, the (legal) basis for Brexit is the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act 2017 . I will add it in its full form so we can discuss all of the intricate details: Preamble An Act to confer power on the Prime Minister to notify, under Article 50(2) of the Treaty on European Union, the United Kingdom’s intention to withdraw from the EU.
[16th March 2017] Be it enacted by the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:— Provision Power to notify withdrawal from the EU (1) The Prime Minister may notify, under Article 50(2) of the Treaty on European Union, the United Kingdom’s intention to withdraw from the EU. (2) This section has effect despite any provision made by or under the European Communities Act 1972 or any other enactment. Short title This Act may be cited as the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act 2017. That's all folks! Not much to argue about, isn't it? No "Because of the results of the referendum" and much less "Assuming that the referendum was conducted according to law". No preconditions to argue about if the Act allows for Brexit or if it does not. Also, nothing in the law organizing the referendum stated that the results were to be automatically implemented . And even if that was the case, since the UK system works with Parliamentary supremacy 1 , that new Act alone would be enough to legalize Brexit, regardless of what the referendum law said. The fact that an Act (or any other law) is based on wrong or even false premises does not invalidate it legally 2 . Of course, if some new information appeared that substantially weakened the pro-Brexit position (be it that the referendum results were directly false -ie. "Remain" won but the results were manipulated, or that science proves that the UK will sink under the sea the day after Brexit), at the political level it would be possible for Parliament 3 to change its stance. Which would lead to the additional issue (see here and here ) that the EU does not have a stablished procedure for cancelling the invocation of Article 50, so that would have to be worked out, too. It is complicated (Politically) Not all cheating is equivalent. More to the point, the current alegations mean that even if campaign rules were broken, people did vote freely and the results match the votes that were cast. This makes any claim for invalidating/ignoring the results very difficult and almost pointless, because: it is difficult to impossible to prove the relationship between the rule being broken and the result (i.e., would the result have been the same wihtout cheating?). people who became convinced to vote one way or the other are unlikely to change their vote because of financing rules violations; if some piece of info/propaganda convinced me that the best option is X, the fact that such piece was "over-budget" does not affect my conclusion. Compare that with other possibilities like ballot stuffing or buying/threatening voters. And of course, automatically invalidating referendums for any violation of the rules is problematic, too: Just get some underlyings to break some law while supporting the opposing side and you are set: if the referendum goes your way you won; if it does not then you are able to invalidate it. If the results change, the people on the losing side are going to be very pissed, and even some people in the winning people are going to be worried about the whole issue. Last but not least, a (posible) repetition of a referendum would be slow and expensive. which advises to accept the results of a referendum (or any other votation) unless you have more than enough evidence to support that the violation of the rules did alter the results. 1 You might remember that shortly after the referendum there was a legal battle because the Government claimed that it had authority to initiate Brexit by itself, but it was ruled that since it affected many British laws the authority of Parliament was needed. 2 In other countries, maybe a false premise could lead to an opportunity for a law to be invalidated on grounds of conflict with the constitution or other higher level laws, but in the UK the constitution is not written and emanates (among others) from the Acts of Parliament, there are no "higher laws" that could be used to invalidate an Act. 3 Maybe it would be only necessary for the Government, since the Act does not mandate the Brexit process but only allows it. But legal details aside, it would be suicidal for any Government to cancel Brexit without Parliament's support. | {
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30,809 | The President's term is fixed to a specific length. That means its start and end dates are not dependent on which weekday is most convenient (as opposed to a national holiday like Veteran's Day), and that a President's inauguration could be any day of the week (including Saturday or Sunday). Now suppose that the President-elect of the United States stringently practices a religion with some kind of Sabbath . If Inauguration Day falls on this Sabbath, the President-elect would be unavailable to be sworn in. In such a case, can the outgoing President delay or advance the transfer of power by a day or two to accommodate the President-elect? If not, what would happen instead? Note: This question is not exclusively about Judaism, despite its non-working Shabbat perhaps being the most well-known. Seventh-Day Adventists do it too, I think. | There is no provision for delaying the outgoing president's departure. It would be possible for the outgoing vice president to resign and allow the incoming president to become vice president prior to the Sabbath. Then the outgoing president could resign and allow the incoming president to take office early. The outgoing president could choose to do that, but the incoming president couldn't force it. Two presidents, James Monroe and Zachary Taylor, delayed their inaugurations because they fell on Sundays (the Christian Sabbath). From Wikipedia : As neither Taylor nor Fillmore had taken the oath of office on March 4, some historians and Constitutional scholars have argued that neither of them had any legal authority as President in the interim until they did. They go on to argue that, as both President James K. Polk and Vice President George Dallas ceased to hold their offices at noon on March 4, the executive branch was officially empty, and President pro tempore of the United States Senate David Rice Atchison (who at the time was third in line to the presidency) was Acting President until the inauguration on March 5. At the time, friends jestingly pestered Atchenson for ambassadorships and cabinet positions, and he gleefully refused. Whether or not Atchison was actually Acting President or not has been a subject of debate ever since. Millard Fillmore was Taylor's vice president. Rutherford B. Hayes took the oath of office early, on Saturday, March 3rd, 1877. But again, he wouldn't actually become president until March 4th. It's worth noting that January 20th, 2013 was a Sunday (the Christian Sabbath). Also in 1985 and 1957. So Barack Obama , Ronald Reagan , and Dwight Eisenhower actually faced this situation (albeit when re-elected). March 4th was on a Sunday in 1917, 1877, 1849, and 1821. Zachary Taylor in 1849 was the only initial inauguration. Assuming the incoming president doesn't take the oath of office on time, the vice president would be president until the president-elect took the oath of office. Should the vice president be unavailable, the next two in the current line of succession are the Speaker of the House and the President pro tempore of the Senate. Presumably the vice president would also serve as president on every other Sabbath throughout the term. Because being president is a twenty-four/seven job. There are no days off. A president must be available in case of emergency. Note: I'm ignoring the realities of the religion, which may allow for exceptions to the Sabbath rules. The question assumes that this wouldn't be an exception, so I'm going with that. But if all religions would make this an exception, these contingencies may not be necessary. | {
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30,818 | In the latest local elections in May, Labour won 2,350 seats (up 77), the Conservatives 1,332 (down 33). There were other parties involved, but these are the main two. The BBC has an article (2018-05-05) claiming that: No clear party winner has emerged following Thursday's local elections in England. Note that this article has been updated since all the results have been announced, as the article quotes this: As the final election result was declared in the London borough of Tower Hamlets overnight, Labour sealed their best result in the capital since 1971. I'm having a hard time understanding why the BBC thinks there is 'no clear ... winner'. Labour has almost twice as many seats as the Conservatives. In the same article the BBC say: But their [Labour's] failure to secure key targets such as Wandsworth saw Theresa May claiming "success" for the Tories. But I don't see why Wandsworth is so vital. My question is, why is the BBC reporting that there is 'no clear winner'? | Because when these results are projected into a nationwide swing, Labour and Conservatives come out suggesting that Labour has a small lead. However there is normally a swing away from the party of Government in mid-term elections, and a swing back towards the government party for the general. Projecting these result forward to the next general election does not give either party a clear lead. You quote the number of seats gained (77 for Labour, 33 for the Tories) These are very small gains, and should be compared against previous mid-term local elections in which the opposition party has had a huge lead over the government. I recall the 1995 local elections, in which the Conservative Party lost over 2000 seats to Labour and the Lib-Dems, and were nearly forced to third place. That was a local election that pointed to the Labour victory in 97. | {
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30,949 | How do people running for office hire campaign managers? For many campaign-related professional positions it's easy to reach out to a firm specializing in that field (campaign law, accounting/finance, policy experts, canvassing firms, etc.). However, I'm at a loss about hiring campaign managers. I have never seen an ad seeking a campaign manager and I have yet to locate firms specializing in that kind of work. I'm in the United States. | Campaign managers are usually hired by word of mouth from a network of people with experience working on campaigns with whom the candidate is familiar, often a close confidant of the candidate. A campaign manager does not necessarily have to have served in that capacity before, but must have considerable experience in campaigning, the trust of the candidate, and some management aptitude. Often a candidate will talk with several other people that the candidate has worked on campaigns with before who function as a "brain trust" for the candidate to come up with ideas. Former political party officials such as county political party officers, former legislative aides, former campaign treasurers, and people with experience as volunteer coordinators are often near the top of the list of prospects. Less often, but not infrequently, a family member with leadership or business experience, or someone suggested by an important financial backer for the campaign, is brought on to fill that role. It is uncommon to hire a "professional campaign manager", to whom the candidate does not have other ties, to serve as a campaign manager. (This answer is based mostly on experience serving in various capacities on political campaigns.) | {
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30,968 | From what I can tell via the definition of the word on Google, globalisation seems like a fairly reasonable course of action. Trade makes everyone better off in the long run, and it isn't as if we can just pretend that we don't live on a planet anyways, right? So then my question is, why do so many people seem to hate globalisation? Is it because of the potential short-term economic pains? Some other reason? | There are critics of globalization both on the progressive and on the conservative side of the political spectrum. One of the most relevant progressive anti-globalization NGOs is the European Attac . The main concern from the left-wing perspective is not globalization in theory but rather the way it is currently being implemented in practice: with a focus on economic interests instead of social and environmental interests. The current approach to globalization allows large international corporations to form which can then use their dominant market position in an exploitive manner. Among their issues are things like: Tax avoidance by using base erosion and profit shifting to offshore tax havens. Circumventing inconvenient employment and environmental protection laws by moving production to countries with laxer laws. This might lead to a competition of which country can lower these the most. The problem is that the gains of cheaper goods are evenly spread, but the adverse effects are concentrated on certain people and industries. Lowering national consumer protection standards under the pretext of international trade agreements (one of the most criticized part of the TTIP agreement ) Using their dominant market position to exploit developing countries (aka Neocolonialism ) Unless accompanied by serious economic reforms, immigration just hurts the working poor and benefits wealthy capital owners . Eat Local! Some environmental advocates disdain globalism, because if everyone ate mostly local foods, the global environmental footprint would be lower. Lose of cultural diversity: unique local businesses and restaurants getting displaced by the mono-culture of global chains But there are also globalization critics among the conservative. Among the reasons why conservatives dislike globalization are: Importing products from other countries instead of producing them domestically hurts the domestic economy and results in more unemployment (anti-globalist counter-measure: Protectionism ). Globalization is also pro-immigration, which many conservatives are opposed to for economic reasons ("foreigners take our jobs!") or cultural reasons ("I feel like a stranger in my own country!"). Some social science research on diversity comes to the conclusion that diversity leads to lack of social trust , collective violence , and civic disintegration . National Defense is often a right wing priority. A country may have industries that are prioritized in the national interest, its defense, or a competitive advantage, which globalization can threaten through a number of ways. For example, weapons technology can spread globally, or the flow of raw elements for wartime production can be threatened or halted if not controlled domestically. For this reason, many argue for limiting globalization's impact on the economy with protectionist policies for industries in the national defense. Anti-authoritarian reasons for people not to like globalization are Globalization empowers big national and super national governmental organizations that many anti-authoritarians don't like. A local government might make laws that make sense for their community (eg different definition of public indecency, more/less religion in public sphere, different spending priorities) that aren't universally agreed upon by global majorities . These anti-authoritarians want local, not global governing bodies to have power and authority. This anti-authoritarian localism can be seen in criticism of the UN, EU , and even the US federal government . A global monopoly government leads to tyranny from which there is no escape, as it is impossible to live on another planet. Monopolies never provide the best service as it is not in their interest to do so. Fringe arguments which can not be attributed to any mainstream political direction: Freeman Dyson once formulated a theory that genetically isolated villages might in fact have favorable condition to breed unique, highly intelligent geniuses. The freedom of movement facilitated by globalism would prevent this genetic isolation from occuring. Note: Many of the facts presented in these reasons are disputed by pro-globalization advocates. Politics StackExchange answers are about describing real world political opinions, not arguing which opinions are correct. | {
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30,973 | Quite recently (in April), Telegram has been banned/blocked in Russia for refusal to give up encryption keys to Russian agencies. Telegram's defence was built around the fact that they don't even have the encryption keys for their end-to-end encrypted secret chats, naturally, and while the ordinary chats are only client-server encrypted, the encryption keys and data are stored in different places under different jurisdictions, as per Pavel Durov's blog post . WhatsApp, however, uses E2EE by default in all chats, so even WhatsApp servers and anyone else doesn't have access to the messages... unless there's a backdoor, which we can do nothing about, or secret services just use the backups from iCloud/Google Drive (which would give them access to everyone's messages anyway). So why the selective ban? Is it somehow related to Telegram in particular, or maybe the people behind it? | Telegram is a lot more popular in Russia compared to Whatsapp within the opposition circles. It is used by many people whom the Russian government wants to keep track of, as evidenced by the fact that two factor authentication was added as a response to hacking attempts against Russian activists. Telegram was founded by an opposition activist Pavel Durov who openly opposes the Russian government. Telegram itself has declared numerous times that it will not under any circumstances provide message logs from its users to any authorities. WhatsApp is far more neutral in their policies. China only blocked WhatsApp in September 2017 (Telegram was blocked since the very beginning) so it's possible that Russia will follow up with a ban on WhatsApp too, albeit at a later time. | {
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31,092 | Eisenhower in his farewell address warned the American people about the United States Military Industrial Complex and its emerging power. According to Wikipedia The US spends more on the military than the next 8 countries on the list combined . Several times the budget for the whole European Union. Is somehow President Eisenhower's warning related to the economy or was it the threat it could pose to the Americans' liberty? | Eisenhower's speech isn't strictly about the military-industrial complex, I at least read it as a general warning of how great concentrations of wealth/power in a construct (in this case, he uses the military industrial complex as an example, but it also mentions academia infused with government directed research funds) can lead to that construct having unintended impacts on democracy. At its core, he appears to be pointing out the precarious balancing act that a government has to make, or rather a well functioning one has to make. The balance between security vs liberty, desires vs necessity, short-term gain vs long-term gain, etc etc. Unless Eisenhower had a follow up explanation for his speech (which I'm unaware of), a definitive 'what did he mean' probably doesn't exist. Outside of reading his speech, and interpreting it. Text copy of the speech | {
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31,101 | According to this Harvard article eating too much added sugar can lead to serious health issues: A sugar-laden diet may raise your risk of dying of heart disease even
if you aren’t overweight. So says a major study published in JAMA
Internal Medicine. Wikipedia confirms this: Added sugars are sugars and syrups added to foods during processing or
preparation and sugars and syrups added after preparation. Excessive
intake of added sugars, as opposed to naturally occurring sugars, is
implicated in the rise in obesity The same article tells us about how this tax was imposed in various US states, but in some cases taxation was cancelled. Question: Why does having a soda tax seem so hard to achieve? Since health effects of sugar were challenged in a comment, I will also add a better source ( Medscape, requires free account for full article ): Sugar Is the New Tobacco, so Let's Treat It That Way (..) So, how much
sugar do we need? For the purpose of health, the optimum consumption
is zero . Added sugar has no biological requirement and is, therefore,
not by any definition a "nutrient." It is the fructose component
(sucrose is 50% glucose and 50% fructose) that fulfils four criteria
that justify its regulation: toxicity, unavoidability, the potential
for abuse, and its negative impact on society. | The short answer is because complaining is louder than passive agreement. It often doesn't matter if a bill is popular if there's a vocal objection to it by a sufficient minority. The objection can be in the form of protests, or a special interest or in some cases, an issue that can swing votes, but some kind of objection, with enough teeth to get noticed can be enough to block a law even if that law passes the majority vote test. We don't see situations like that come up very often because most issues we hear about get people polarized so you get people and/or special interests yelling objection from both sides and the politicians will for the most part, defend their side. It's less common to get objection from only one side, but the sugar tax is an example of that. I've never heard anyone say "god dammit, how could they fail to tax sugar again - vote that guy out of office". There's not really a big "no tax on sugar" constituency either though there's probably some effort by soda and candy manufacturers. But there's also the people who like soda who don't want a tax on what they like. There's also a pretty fair number of people who object to government intervention of any kind. The " don't tell me to wear a bicycle helmet " protesters as a rather funny example, or a more relevant example, Mike Bloomberg's no big soda law , was the subject of ridicule by people who felt it wasn't government's place to write that law. Even though the department of health liked it people called it a nanny state and if you talk to people on the street or do a google search and you'll see that a lot of people ridiculed Bloomberg's soda bill. So to sum up, 60% popularity of a bill doesn't do much when that 60% isn't invested. A vocal minority is often able to get more politicians on their side than a mostly indifferent majority and believe it or not, there actually is a somewhat organized and vocal objection to ideas like a sugar tax or Mike Bloomberg's large-soda ban . That said, and as you note, soda taxes have happened, though they are often unpopular. This article suggests that the Philly soda tax was about raising money for a cash strapped state as much or more than it was about concern over the dangers of sugar. | {
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31,162 | I grew up in a country where we were not allowed to leave/travel to an other country even when we were able to do so – we had the resources and dual nationality. After two decades I still can't figure out why dictators, like Kim Jong-un for example, ban people from leaving their home countries? Could it be that a dictator is usually interested in looting the country he rules, and having a smaller population means more natural resources for him and fewer protesters? | People are resources, dictators (and oppressive regimes in general) don't want them to defect to other countries because they want them working for their regime. Some of them are going to be people that the regime has put their resources into, like scientists and doctors, but even laborers are valuable for actually gathering and assembling the resources the regime needs. Additionally, the regime especially does not want people with access to sensitive information to defect to their enemies. That isn't just spies and soldiers, there are plenty of "regular" government positions that require access to something the regime would not want falling into enemy hands, like economic data that could be used for propaganda. Obviously this is true of any country, and even in democracies with strong human rights records, people with access to classified information are usually required to submit to strict scrutiny of their international travel. Given that they aren't concerned with human rights, dictatorships can take the easier option of restricting travel to any citizens. However, defection is really a piece of a bigger issue - oppressive regimes maintain their rule in part by controlling information. Here's an interesting article that talks about how dictatorships keep power. Jerrold Post, director of the political psychology program at George Washington University, is referenced: Post said that in both Iraq and North Korea, dictators tightly controlled the flow of information. That control was upended in the past two years during the "Arab spring" revolts that swept away despots in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and some of the Gulf states, revolts that were encouraged in large part by information spread by cell phones and social media. North Korea is probably the most extreme example of information control (according to Reporters without Borders , they are dead last in Press Freedom in the world), but this can be seen in other oppressive regimes - for example, China attempts to limit access to "wrong" information via its Great Firewall . This is thrown out the window if citizens go somewhere with free media and realize they are being lied to. Traveling can be the cause of their dissension, rather than a symptom. Known dissidents may also be restricted from traveling so that they can not coordinate with foreign countries or anti-dictatorship organizations, and to prevent them from smuggling contraband or evidence of the regime's misinformation back into the country. Regimes can control the information originating in their country, but once someone is outside their borders the regime cannot control who they speak with. | {
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31,347 | I am very pro-LGBT, however I have never understood the logic behind wanting to forbid voluntary conversion therapies , as many of my fellow peers do believe is a good idea. Why? If somebody, whether that somebody is gay or straight or trans or bi or whatever, doesn't feel comfortable with their sexuality and wants help to "convert" into something else... what could possibly be wrong with that? It seems to me that forbidding such therapies is exactly the kind of intolerance and disrespect of other people's right over their own bodies that LGBT people suffer from themselves, and now we want to do the same to others? NOTE : I am NOT talking about forced conversion camps targeting kids, that is obviously a horrible thing. | Homosexual "conversion" therapies are a psychiatric medical treatment. Like all medical treatments they are subject to regulation. Details vary, but as a rule a medical drug or procedure is only permitted if: There is evidence that it works. Any negative side effects are less serious than the original problem. The Wikipedia page I linked above has a list of references. One from the Pan-American Health Organisation (regional office of WHO) , states that no rigorous scientific studies demonstrate any efficacy of efforts to change sexual orientation. However, there are many testimonies about the severe harm to mental and physical health that such "services" can cause. Repression of sexual orientation has been associated with feelings of guilt and shame, depression, anxiety, and even suicide. (On point 1, its true that "alternative" health products can be sold without demonstrating efficacy, but they can only do this by avoiding any specific claims of efficacy. This work-around does not apply to "conversion" therapies.) | {
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31,349 | For example, people in the USA like dividing themselves up into groups such as "Country-of-Origin-American". Irish-American Swedish-American African-American Spanish-American Chinese-American Why don't they simply call themselves "Americans"? No other people does this. Is this divisive or does it help establish comfortable groups for different ethnicities to reside in? EDIT: Many people have pointed out that the statement "no other people does this" is not accurate. However, I shall leave the statement in the original question to keep the answers relevant. | "...people in the USA like dividing themselves up into groups..." Not everybody in the US likes this or does this. Despite my heritage (there are many hyphenated identities I could apply), I am simply an American. There is a tendency, often seen in the news media and liberal interest groups, to categorize people into ethnic, racial, religious, gender-based or other sub-groups. However, many Americans reject this collectivist approach to identity, preferring instead to focus on the importance of each individual. So I would disagree with the premise of your question. Only some people in the US use hyphenated American identities. Others are proud to be simply American. As to the reasons why people use these terms, they vary wildly. In the early 20th century, referring to people as "German-American" or "Irish-American" was often meant to offend . In current day political campaigns, the terms "African-American", "Hispanic-American" and "Asian-American" are used to categorize electoral blocks. Ethnic pride is another reason. There are countless others. | {
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31,411 | According to this article there seem to be lots of countries that subsidy sugar production: Pakistan struggles to export sugar surplus as global prices plunge Morocco sees sharp rise in cooking gas, sugar subsidies China slaps heavy penalties on sugar imports (India’s) government extends stock limits on sugar traders for six months Of course this might create a disadvantage for farmers within a country not providing such subsidies, thus leading to some sort of spiral (keep or increase subsidies to compensate for subsidies within other countries). This article argues about distortions these subsidies create: Global subsidies make sugar the world’s most distorted commodity
market, where prices swing violently and dip well below production
costs. U.S. policy protects consumers from that roller coaster and has
kept prices affordable and stagnant for the three decades. Also, there are significant health issues related to sugar (requires free account) - I think the article refers to sugar , not all sugars . As a side note, energy subsidies make much more sense as they have an impact on virtually all products and services. Question: Why are sugar subsidies so prevalent? | Why do sugar subsidies and tariffs exist? The classic answer is that sugar producers organize to increase their profitability at the expense of the general public. The increase in profits is highly concentrated among sugar producers, so they are willing to do a lot to keep the profits coming. The expense to the general public is widely dispersed, so there is little political will to fight it. Politicians are then faced with supporting the corrupt system, or losing elections. This problem is a common one in politics and is refered to as dispersed costs and concentrated benefits . But the interesting question is actually, why sugar? Of all the industries in the world, why is sugar so well organized and able to capture politicians so well. One answer to that question goes back to the 1930s United States. In the midst of the great depression, agricultural prices were falling and displaced farmers were clamoring for help. Roosevelt's Democratic party came to their aide with bills supporting farmers. In the case of sugar, they first tried tariffs, taxes on sugar imports, but the poor Caribbean countries where sugar was grown just kept reducing their prices. In response: In 1934 the United States shifted its sugar protection policy from
emphasizing the tariff to a comprehensive system of quotas... The
sugar program created substantial quota rents to support the incomes
of producers, and provided a degree of price stability far beyond that
in the world sugar market. As a consequence, participating producers
supported the continuation of the program, and instead focused their
lobbying activity on increasing their respective shares of the quota
rents. Source Once the sugar producers got these benefits, they had money and incredible incentive to keep them around. Other sugar producers around the world were forced to follow the US model of subsidy and quota, or be left unable to compete. | {
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31,456 | Donald Trump has been making a lot of noise the past few days about Canada's protection of its dairy industry, and cites that practice as the justification for the steel and aluminum tariffs he has levied on Canada (along with other nations). These seem to be legitimate points. I haven't found any good arguments from Canada's side as to why they have been putting such high tariffs on US dairy and why they feel this is justified and within the spirit of free trade. Can anyone provide the Canadian arguments in favor of their dairy tariffs? | It seems that Canada and the US use two different systems to protect their respective domestic dairy producers. In Canada "Under a system called supply management, the Canadian government controls how much milk dairy farmers produce and how much it sells for" thereby guaranteeing sustained dairy milk farming. In the US, milk dairy farmers are supported by government subsidies. In 2015 the American government doled out approximately $22.2 billion dollars in direct and indirect subsidies to the U.S dairy sector. So the Canadian system tends to keep milk cost high, while the US system tends to keep milk cost low. Everything is OK domestically, the problem is created when a milk processor in Canada wants to import less expensive milk from the US and in the process adversely impact the Canadian dairy milk farmer. “U.S. politicians have been quick to demonize Canada for its different system. Fair trade is in the eye of the beholder. For example, some 41 countries, including the U.S., has WTO approved tariff-rate quotas. The U.S. challenged Canada’s rights to use their quotas within NAFTA over 20 years ago. The U.S. lost (that challenge) discussion of dairy milk US subsidies Canadian protection of their dairy milk farmers | {
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31,462 | What is the reasoning for choosing Singapore to host the North Korea–United States summit? There are many other neutral places as far as I can tell, e.g. Japan. So why Singapore, of all places? | The BBC ran an article outlining why Singapore was chosen. The reasons are: North Korea feels comfortable with Singapore. They maintain an embassy there and they've had trade relations too Singapore is a neutral country Singapore is an ally to the US and China, an ally to North Korea | {
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31,489 | The general "neoliberal" position towards trade is that it benefits both sides and low tariffs/subsidies are beneficial. This has been the dominant trend in wealthy nations for the last thirty plus years, with free trade agreements and descending tariffs. Recently, however, politicians have been more inclined to impose tariffs. When Donald Trump threatened to, or actually imposed tariffs, I noticed that other countries respond with threats of their own tariffs . These politicians could all be closet anti-globalists who just wanted an excuse to throw up trade barriers, but I'm not interested in that side of things. My question is, what reasons do pro-globalization and pro-free-trade politicians use to justify retaliatory tariffs? The default, expected, free-trade position being something like : Yet, in view of recent United States actions[tariffs], Canadian
nationalists may well step up their demands that Canada exercise its
sovereignty, raise new trade barriers, particularly against the United
States, and, in general, ignore international agreements. That's about
the silliest thing we could, something that would spell economic ruin
for hundreds of thousands of Canadian workers. I'm not looking for why any politician would impose a tariff, that's been covered elswhere , I'm looking for how politicians that believe in free trade justify retaliatory tariffs. | The tariffs that the EU and China have imposed on the US are politically aimed at (swing) states held by (key) Republican politicians. In this way, the EU hopes to influence the US domestic political debate in favour of removing the tariffs, while keeping direct economic damage to a minimum. In case of EU tariffs, BBC News reports : Brussels said it planned to introduce retaliatory tariffs on items such as Harley-Davidson motorbikes and bourbon whiskey. (...) But why exactly has Brussels chosen such specific products, and do past trade wars between the US and Europe suggest that the White House will now ultimately back down? (...) Meredith Crowley, international trade economist at the University of Cambridge, says that the EU is being far more politically savvy than just picking famous American goods. Instead it has chosen products made in states that are home to some key members of Trump's Republican Party. "Bourbon is produced in Kentucky, home state of Mitch McConnell US Senate Majority Leader," she says. "Harley-Davidsons are manufactured in Wisconsin, a swing state that is the home of the Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. "The EU hopes these men will petition the president to save jobs in their home states by eliminating the US steel and aluminium tariffs." Stephen Woolcock, a lecturer in economic relations at the London School of Economics, adds that the aim is "to have as much impact [as possible] on the policy debate in Washington". And in case of Chinese tariffs, Sinologist Andy Rothman reports : China will clearly retaliate with reciprocal tariffs on U.S. goods, with a list designed to inflict pain on Trump supporters, which could help Democrats take control of the House in November. Of the 2,742 counties with employment in the industries targeted by Beijing's retaliation list, 82% of those counties voted for Trump in 2016, while just 18% voted for Hillary Clinton, according to analysis by the Brookings Institution. Soybeans are high on China's retaliation list, and it is worth noting that 24 Republican Members of Congress represent districts which account for about 60% of the total U.S. soybean crop. | {
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31,524 | Both Canada and the US still have weird quasi-states on their territory for citizens of Native American/First Nation origins. However in the 21st century this appears to be quite an archaic concept, since in theory there shouldn't be any more areas restricted to members of a certain race or ethnicity. So why do these Indian reservations still exist in North America? Are there any plans to reform them into regular villages/towns/cities without a special status? | To remove such rights would be unfair. But while the reservations have a particular context, self-determination for ethnic minorities is not so unusual. The Native American and First Nation peoples were moved to reservations as a deliberate policy of "ethnic cleansing" in the 19th century. The various tribes were given limited rights to self-governance on their new reservations. Now if we propose to remove those rights, justice would expect that the lands that were taken should be returned. However this is not a practical idea: the original inhabitants are long dead, the land has been dramatically changed and there are several hundred million new people living on those lands. The Indian nations currently living on reservations want to preserve such rights as they have. There is, of course, no legal barrier to leaving a reservation, and many people of Native American and First Nation descent don't live on reservations. As such, removing such limited rights that the Native American nations have to self-determination without giving something in return would be an extension of a historical injustice. By way of analogy: A school bully steals a fountain pen worth $20 from another boy. Laughing at the boy the bully gives the boy $1 and says "It's not stealing, I'm buying the pen". 20 years later, and both the bully and the boy have grown up. The bully says "It was wrong of me to steal your pen and give you a dollar in exchange. So I'm going to take back the dollar." The idea of certain peoples having limited self-determination is not so unusual. The Welsh (who were perhaps victims of an earlier ethnic cleaning by the invading Saxons) have an assembly and the Scots have a parliament. Other regions in Europe have similar arrangements. It is quite common for an ethnic minority that is geographically limited to be granted some form of limited self-determination. | {
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31,557 | In regards to this story "New upskirting law blocked by Tory MP" A single MP in the Houses of Parliament can say the word “object” and prevent a bill being passed. Why can one MP block proposed legislation like this? What is the parliamentary rule which allows it? | A single MP can't block a law from being passed; however, he can block a law being passed without debate . The Bill is a Private Members Bill, and there is always very limited time available to debate them, so although formally Bills that are objected to are put on the list to be debated later, in practice that rarely happens (except for a few at the top of the ballot). The time to lay out a case for or against the Bill would be in the actual debate. Christopher Chope is from the libertarian right of the Conservative party and is a scourge of well-meaning backbench legislation. His objection in this case was reported as being that it was wrong to create a new, imprisonable criminal offence without a debate. The government broadly supports the Bill, and that being the case, they may adopt it and allocate government time for a debate. And one should point out that it isn't legal throughout the UK, being already criminalized in Scotland. | {
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31,638 | Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution enumerates the powers of Congress and includes the creation of military forces: To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years; To provide and maintain a Navy; To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces; Given that the Constitution only talks about granting Congress the ability to regulate land and naval forces, why were they able to create the Air Force without a constitutional amendment granting that power? | In a dissent in the case of Laird v. Tatum , Justice William Douglas argued tangentially that the creation of an air force is legal as per Article of 1, Section 8 of the Constitution: The Army, Navy, and Air Force are comprehended in the constitutional term "armies." Article I, § 8, provides that Congress may "raise and support Armies," and "provide and maintain a Navy," and make "Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces." In other words, Douglas argued against a literal interpretation of the Section - an interpretation that I don't think has been disputed. Going into more detail, this blog post talks about John Marshall's opinion in McCullough v. Maryland , where he gave conflicting statements about the Enumerated Powers listed in Section 8. The Enumerated Powers are, in a nutshell, those granted to Congress via Section 8. While several common passages of Marshall's decisions are often cited for different interpretations of his points, one in particular caught my eye: Among the enumerated powers, we do not find that of establishing a bank or creating a corporation. But there is no phrase in the instrument which, like the Articles of Confederation, excludes incidental or implied powers and which requires that everything granted shall be expressly and minutely described. Marshall also referenced the Necessary and Proper Clause in Section 8, which states that Congress can make laws necessary for the execution of the powers explicitly listed - which makes sense, backing up the argument of Justice Douglas. In particular, the clause states that Congress has the power To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof. The application of this clause is strengthened, as lly pointed out, if we consider that the United States Air Force was previously part of the US Army , and therefore, the use of aircraft in war was already considered an extension of the army - and thus a necessity to raise an army. Therefore, it wasn't unnatural for it to be extended into a separate branch. As an addendum, it seems to be accepted that Congress could authorize the creation of a "space force" , according to domestic law. Arguments against the legality of such a measure don't typically invoke Section 8 - but that's a rabbit hole I'd rather not go down. The point is, a literalist interpretation of the Constitution is not being applied at present in the case of a space force, and likely would not be applied to challenge the existence of the United States Air Force. In summary, in Laird v. Tatum , Justice Douglas argued that a broader interpretation of "armies" should be used, and while it was given in a dissent and therefore isn't precedent, it seems to be backed up by Marshall's broader interpretation of Section 8 in general, along with the Necessary and Proper Clause. As far as I know, though, the constitutionality of the Air Force has never been seriously challenged in a US Court. | {
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31,663 | According to this article Russian government believes that 2018 World Cup will help Russian economy on the medium term: a survey by the Russian government last week. It said the World Cup's
boost for the country's gross domestic product (GDP) would be between
$26 billion (€22 billion) and $30.8 billion over the 10 years from
2013 through to 2023. This article argues about several Western countries considering boycotting World Cup, but AFAIK most of them actually attended the competition: (..) are Poland, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, Australia and Japan, with
more expected to follow. About two days ago I have watched on TV a short documentary about this issue and some analysts argued that World Cup will also help Russia improve its international image using the competition [citation needed]. Considering above, attending the World Cup in Russia seems to contradict existing Western sanctions . Question: Why didn't Western countries boycott the 2018 World Cup? | For many countries, the decision to attend or not is deferred to the national football association. The countries that you mention don't require exit visas, so it would require an exceptional act to prevent the football players from attending the World Cup in Russia. The government can attempt to influence the football association, but it is not a matter for the government, except in exceptional circumstances. For the government to use its soft power to influence the football association would be tremendously unpopular with a large number of people. There is a notion that "politics should be kept out of sport". Even during the height of the Cold War, when relations between Russia and the West were much, much worse, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, Australia all attended the Moscow Olympics. (Japan, however, did follow a U.S. boycott) The current Western sanctions on Russia are clearly defined and described. They don't just say "don't help the Russians". They do not cover, and are not intended to cover all economic activity. They do not cover sporting events. Doubtless many Western leaders would have preferred one of the other bidding groups (England, Spain/Portugal, Belgium/Netherlands) to be hosting the tournament. But to stop the national football team from playing would, in the words of Sir Humphrey , be "a courageous decision". | {
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31,690 | According to Wikipedia , only men are required to register for the draft with the Selective Service System in the US. Some feminists want equal conditions for men and women. Are there any USA politicians who actively pursuit equal rights when it comes to potential conscription by requiring women to register too? | In 2016, there was the Draft America's Daughters Act of 2016 which was proposing exactly that: Ammend the Military Selective Service Act (the legal base for conscription in the United States) to apply to both men and women. The bill was introduced by Duncan Hunter (Republican) and Ryan Zinke (Republican) who is now the Secretary of the Interior. The House of Represenatives referred the bill to the Subcommittee on Military Personnel which took no further actions. For context: The last time the United States made use of conscription was in 1973. But in theory Congress and the President would still be legally allowed to authorize a draft if deemed necessary. In any case, the draft registration is still a bureaucratic obligation which is imposed on men but not on women. | {
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31,713 | A referendum on joining the European Union was held in Norway on 27 and 28 November 1994. But, the "No campaign" won the referendum. One of the reason was that, Norway has an economy based on natural resources (oil and fish), meanwhile the European union mostly consist of industrial countries. What would Norway have lost in case of joining to EU then? | The common fisheries policy is a EU wide system for managing fish stocks in the waters around the EU. It intends to give all EU fishing fleets equal access to EU waters. If Norway were to join the EU it would have to join the CFP. Outside the EU, Norway can control its own waters, which are rich in natural resources. The right of access to EU fisheries may not compensate for the increased competition from other nations. | {
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31,734 | Philipp comments : ...We all know that one side's terrorists are another side's freedom fighters... Suppose big Country X provides arms to little Country y 's native "freedom fighters" , who do certain scary things, ( "for freedom!" ), which goes on for a decade or so, but then Country y 's freedom fighters wind up fighting against Country X , doing the same scary things, which Country X now labels "terrorism" . Meanwhile Country y 's fighters still consider themselves freedom fighters, and let's suppose that for the average fighter from Country y the daily routine never changed, they still get up in the morning, report in, and follow orders to get the same-old same old scary things done. That'd be a subjective usage of the term "terrorism" . Is there a non -subjective usage of the term, one that both sides could agree upon as unequivocally terrorism, irrespective of the cause or target? If not, is there any non -subjective term, (which describes the job of doing the scary things Country y 's fighters do), that both sides would always agree upon? | TL;DR: Yes, there is an objective term. No, there is no way to force people to use the term objectively in political contexts and they don't tend to. The term "terrorism" isn't subjective. Or to be more precise, it has a widely accepted, objective definition accepted by major institutions. Quoting Wikipedia : Since 1994, the United Nations General Assembly has repeatedly condemned terrorist acts using the following political description of terrorism: "Criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or particular persons for political purposes are in any circumstance unjustifiable, whatever the considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or any other nature that may be invoked to justify them." And: A definition proposed by Carsten Bockstette at the George C. Marshall Center for European Security Studies underlines the psychological and tactical aspects of terrorism: Terrorism is defined as political violence in an asymmetrical conflict that is designed to induce terror and psychic fear (sometimes indiscriminate) through the violent victimization and destruction of noncombatant targets (sometimes iconic symbols). Such acts are meant to send a message from an illicit clandestine organization. The purpose of terrorism is to exploit the media in order to achieve maximum attainable publicity as an amplifying force multiplier in order to influence the targeted audience(s) in order to reach short- and midterm political goals and/or desired long-term end states." Note that the three components are required, which makes this an objective definition: Acts that are intended to instill fear/terror Acts against general public (civilians/non-combatants) . This is why for example attacks on the military during armed conflict generally aren't universally considered terrorism. For a political purpose (note that just what the purpose is is 100% irrelevant to the definition, as long as it's politics and not, say, robbery ) Now, the confusion that birthed your question arises out of two things: You (or whatever your sources are) are confusing the well-defined objective tactics ( terrorism ) with a wholly orthogonal point, the goal of the movement. Yes. The oft-repeated "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" is basically a word game designed to confuse people. Someone is a terrorist if and only if they engage in above-defined objectively defined acts of terrorism as a tactic. Someone is a freedom fighter if they do something to advance freedom (whether they advance freedom or not is a bit more subjective and squishy, but let's pretend we can agree on that). The two are wholly orthogonal - you can be a freedom fighter using a wide variety of tactics, only one of which - and often, the least effective - is terrorism. You can be a freedom fighter and not a terrorist (Mahatma Gandhi is the typical example) or you can be a terrorist and NOT a freedom fighter (Taliban seems to fit here - they don't by any stretch of imagination fight for anyone's freedom in any stretch of the word; they fight to oppress other inhabitants of Afghanistan into their version of Sharia) or you can be a freedom fighter who engages in acts of terrorism and become both (IRA, Jewish fighters attacking the British during Mandate times, Basque separatists). Also very importantly, just because there is an objective definition, it does not at all mean that political bodies will not disingenuously ignore that definition when it suits their political/ideological purpose . The USSR didn't recognize the IRA as terrorists for a variety of political and ideological reasons. Many people in the USA and Israel refuse to recognize the PKK (a Kurdish organization) as terrorists for the same reason. This willful ignoring of the objective definition applies to both type 1 and type 2 errors. That is, not only people refuse to apply "terrorist" label to clearly objectively terrorist organizations (PKK, Hamas, IRA), but they also apply the label to things that don't fit that definition. TL;DR: Yes there is an objective term. No, there is no way to force people to use the term objectively in political contexts. | {
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31,744 | According to this article , actress and New York gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon has announced that her oldest child has come out as transgender. This kind of announcement is not a surprise from an actress, but I fail to understand the rationale for doing so from a political person, as this belongs more to private life rather than the public one. This article argues about Nixon's sexuality: “In terms of sexual orientation I don’t really feel I’ve changed,” she
told the Telegraph in 2008. “I don’t feel there was a hidden part of
my sexuality that I wasn’t aware of. I’d been with men all my life,
and I’d never fallen in love with a woman. But when I did, it didn’t
seem so strange. I’m just a woman in love with another woman.” So, her being a gubernatorial candidate and a (sort of) bisexual already shows a tolerant society. I wonder why the need for such declarations. If her bisexuality does not seem to matter when running for governor position, why the need for further confessions? Of course, I am interested in the reasons within the political context (political candidate). Question: Why do some politicians share relatively private information from their family lives? | To show his/her position and/or commitment By telling about her and her child's gender identity openly, she is making a statement about how she views these as normal situation and nothing to be ashamed about, which signals that she would be in favour of laws against discrimination. The fact that she is using her personal story shows that she is less likely to change opinion once in office or use it as a bargaining chip. Re "If her bisexuality does not seem to matter when running for governor position", this seems a bit too optimistic. There are still lots of people who take issue with these things; just remember how Hillary Clinton was attacked for turning a blind eye towards her husband's infidelities and how Trump was praised by some religious figures as representing "family values" So people can relate to him/her She is not just some politician, but a person too, with her own opinions, problems, hobbies. This is done a lot, although usually in less controversial issues: A politician going to church. Richard Nixon talking about his dog . Bill Clinton playing music. [List too long to continue] A candidate needs not only to sell his/her political program, s/he needs to convince the people that s/he is someone who can be trusted. To get publicity Specially since Cynthia Nixon is a challenger, it does not hurt to get the press attention so people can remember her candidature and positions. | {
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31,747 | Did Erdoǧan cheat in the 2018 Turkish election? Cheating means, for example: Gerrymandering Buying/bribing/scaring voters Jailing/scaring/assassinating candidates Interrupting/blocking candidates from canvassing Ballot stuffing Manipulating the result | As a Turkish liberal who does not support conservatives and as a voter who spent many times watching the opposition speeches my answer is: It depends what you call cheating. If you mean stealing votes or adding more votes than there are, then as the liberal opposition candidate Mr. Ince said, "no". Even though there were some reports of illegal actions going on, the difference in votes was ~10 million votes, which is thousand times more than the possible illegal things which might happened. But meanwhile the president Mr. Erdoğan used all government resources (like planes etc... which of course we liberals also pay with our taxes) opposition mostly run their campaign with our donations. Many TV channels didn't give screen time to opposition leaders. Since not only public but also most of the private media is under Mr. Erdoğan's control, it was totally unfair. "Doğan Media", probably Turkey's biggest media organisation, which was the last media organization which didn't support any group directly was sold to an Erdoğan supporter recently. Please use google translate to see the time distribution between opposition and Mr. Erdoğan in government public TV . Bottom line: The AKP get ~40 hours all other opposition get only ~3 hours. It is much more worse in government controlled private media. There were more things which I think were totally unfair (like election being run while martial law is going on etc...). But I don't want to nag about them. As a proud Turkish citizen I still respect conservatives I hope these things will be more fair in the future. These are our problems which we have to solve ourselves. Also despite unfair things, we should self criticize as liberals. We have to work harder and also try to anticipate and understand our conservative citizens. | {
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31,767 | I am not sure what the criteria are to be a permanent member of the UN Security Council , but I do wonder how did Russia manage to keep its veto power after the dissolution of the Soviet Union? I think, after what happened to the USSR in 1991, the country lost some of its power and even its name changed. It was an opportunity for the other countries such as USA, China, France, and the United Kingdom to get rid of Russia once and for all from the UN Security Council, but that did not happen. Why not? | Essentially, you got a permanent seat on the Security Council if you were one of the major powers who won WW2 and went about setting up the post-war peace organisation, i.e the United Nations. When the Soviet Union (which was a union of multiple soviet republics) dissolved, Russia claimed itself as the successor state on the grounds it contained 51% of the population and 77% of the territory of the Soviet Union. They thus agreed to inherit all international treaties and responsibilities of the Soviet Union and were internationally recognised as such . As such, it was perfectly legitimate for them to inherit the seat on the Security Council. A similar example might be if Scotland had left the UK, the remaining state would not have lost its permanent seat. As the UN says in this article All international agreements, such as those governing membership of the UN Security Council, relate to a nation as a legal entity. Even if that nation changes it name, has a part of it split off and declare independence, or undergoes a revolution or any other form of change of government, that nation is still considered to be the same legal entity. It is still bound by all the same laws and treaties as before and it still enjoys the same statuses as before. The article goes on to say ...when the USSR broke up in 1991 Russia successfully argued that it should be recognised as the continuing state and so it inherited, among other things, the USSR’s permanent seat on the Security Council. This is partially because Russia received the backing of lots of the other former soviet states to remain as the successor state. Russia inherited all the Soviet Union's assets and also its foreign debt of US$70bn . | {
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31,904 | Why does the European Union not seem to pursue technological independence? While I am just a naïve citizen without deep insight, it seems to me that many technologies that seem critical to both our daily lives and national security are imported, and no longer developed in a visible manner within Europe. Just think of computers, and what would happen if a country lost access to them. The US, Russia, and several East Asian countries seem to have the capability to produce their own more-or-less competitive computer hardware if need be, but I am not aware of anything within Europe. Not even (smart)phones are made there anymore. The parts of Nokia and Ericsson that could do this in the past are long gone. Or think of one of the most critical tools we use every day: the internet search engine. The only search engines that actually get any use, and use their own technology, are again American, Russian or East Asian. The same goes for social networks, which definitely aren't a technology we need, but could be deemed a national security issue. All the ones that are popular in Europe are controlled by American companies. The EU seems to try to regulate how these companies handle private data, but will that ever truly prevent US government access to that data in practice? Having citizens use local technology would be more secure. There used to be popular country-specific social networks in Europe, but all that I knew of are now gone or irrelevant. Why does the European Union seem to accept such huge technological dependence, mostly on the United States? It would be naïve to think that relations could never worsen, even if the current disagreements may turn out to be only temporary. Or am I incorrect about this? Do EU countries actually have most of these technologies, even if in a latent form, not visible to consumers? Or perhaps they do try to achieve technological independence but simply fail at it? | The EU does pursue technological independence. For example, it has assembled its own satellite navigation system so that it does not have to rely on GPS and Glonass. The EU develops a lot of military hardware (ships, jets, missiles, you name it). The EU also has its own space programme and the ability to put objects in orbit independently. On the computing front, ARM is (for the moment) an EU company and ARM CPUs are the most common in the world. Europe has huge tech companies like Siemens and Philips. The EU fined Google heavily for anti-competitive practices that were making it harder for EU companies to compete. So the suggestion that Europe does not pursue technological independence is simply untrue. | {
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31,924 | Theresa May's cabinet is highly divided between soft-Brexiteers and hard-Brexiteers . She clearly belongs to the former (she was actually against Brexit before the referendum), whereas people like David Davis, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove belong to the latter. What I don't understand is why, even up until this stage, in which there is little time left to reach a deal, May is still working with a totally split cabinet. Why not say "enough is enough", and sack hard-Brexiteers, and go directly for a soft-Brexit, which is what she wants anyway? Maybe in the beginning it made senss to have a widespread range of views in cabinet (and maybe she was elected as PM precisely on the condition of such inclusivity). But it seems evident to me that a hard-Brexit (as in a Brexit that involves a formal deal with the EU) is no longer possible, that time is running out, and that if no major change happens, the UK will crash out of the EU (what we might call a very hard-Brexit , which is something many hard-Brexiteers would be happy with). | May is in a very precarious, weak position which prevents her from firing openly rebellious MPs such as Boris Johnson. She called an election in 2017 which went extremely badly. She started with a decent majority and ended up with a minority government, propped up with a £1.5bn bribe to the DUP. As a result of this she needs the support of all her MPs, or risks losing votes in the Commons which would likely result in her being forced to resign at a minimum and possibly the fall of her government. Therefore she cannot upset any faction within the Tory party too much. Firing someone like Boris or Gove would upset the Brexit extremists, of which there are enough to force a leadership challenge at the very least. Effectively she is being held hostage by both hard line Brexiteers and the majority who want a softer, less damaging Brexit, and by the DUP who don't want a hard Irish border or customs frontier in the Irish sea, and by the Lords who keep forcing votes on amendments, and by the EU who keep rejecting her outlandish and unrealistic proposals, and by the looming deadline for doing a deal. The whole thing is balanced on a knife edge and firing an extremist would cause the whole thing to come crashing down around her. | {
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31,952 | I was reading another question and it got me thinking: Are ministers protected by laws against unfair dismissal? Under what circumstances can the PM 'sack' members of their cabinet? What happens to a minister once they have been 'sacked'? Is 'sacking' a minister even the same thing as a business dismissing an employee, or is it an entirely different thing all together? Which can hopefully all be summed up with the question: "How does a British Prime Minister 'sack' ministers?" | In all cases that I can think of, the minister is told to resign, and they do so. Even in cases when it is clear to everyone that the Minister has been fired, it is presented as a resignation 1 . Consider the sacking of Damien Green. He writes: I regret that I've been asked to resign from the Government following breaches of the Ministerial Code, for which I apologise. It has been a privilege to serve ... and May replies It is therefore with deep regret, and enduring gratitude for the contribution you have made over many years, that I asked you to resign from the Government and have accepted your resignation. It's not clear if a minister would have even theoretical recourse to an industrial tribunal (*edit as Will notes in another answer, they don't) , as appointments are made (in theory) by the Queen, rather than by a contract between an organisation and an employee. In practice, all ministers know that they can be fired without notice. There is no protection from unfair dismissal that a normal employee would have. A Prime Minister can remove a minister for any reason or for none . In the occasional "reshuffles" a Prime Minister may decide that they just want "new blood" and ministers can get axed without warning. Generally, ministers get sacked for breaching the Ministerial Code, or for bringing the government into disrepute. If you're not winning support for the Government, you may not last long in your post. As a ministerial position is a paid position, ministers who resign or are reshuffled do receive severance pay, as are ministers who lose their position following an election. After a minister has been sacked, they remain an MP and thus continue as a backbench member of parliament until the next election. If a Minister has done something wrong, they may also be ejected from their parliamentary party (called "having the whip removed") but would still be an independent MP and cannot stand as a member of their (former) party at the next election. Originally MPs couldn't resign (having been elected, not appointed) but there is a procedure in which an MP is "appointed as Steward and Bailiff of the Three Hundreds of Chiltern" (or another similar post) which is a Crown office with no responsibilities. Since MPs cannot hold Crown offices, being appointed to the Chiltern Hundreds effects the MP's dismissal from Parliament. 1 The sacking of Gavin Williamson is an exception to this. The PM told to leave the government . His response clearly denies any wrongdoing. This is an unambiguous example of a sacking, which has not been presented as a resignation. The exceptional nature of the case is an example of the exceptional state of British Politics in 2019 | {
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31,953 | According to this article , the European Parliament is considering rolling out taxation of news aggregators: (..) large European newspaper publishers have dreamed of charging news
aggregators such as Google News for the privilege of sending readers
to the publishers’ online articles. However, according to the same source this measure was already enforced in Spain and Germany and did not generate the expected results: The problem is, ancillary copyright proved to be a complete disaster
in both Germany and Spain, failing to put a penny into the pockets of
those press publishers — and in the Spanish case, causing losses of
millions of euros. Also several important organizations heavily criticized this law (e.g. Wikipedia): Why is the European Parliament still pursuing copyright law despite its implementation issues? | The question should be: who is supporting this legislation through lobbying. And a bit searching finds a partial answer : Some groups are opposed to the proposed Copyright Directive on the grounds it will ‘shut down the internet’, ‘ban memes’ or even hamper creativity itself. PRS for Music, a non-profit organisation which represents thousands of songwriters and composers in the UK and beyond, has been campaigning for this new copyright legislation – fit for the internet age – for more than four years. Likewise : Of course, support for the directive remains. Crispin Hunt, Chair of the British Association of Composers, Songwriters & Authors, is in favor of the legislation, calling some of the criticism reliant on “an ability to weave a narrative that has no relationship to fact.” Hunt is in support of Article 13, suggesting that it could “restore fairness to a broken market.” But even he admits that the articles remain vague, using this as a reason to dismiss criticism as “unconstrained hyperbole.” And the Centre for the Picture Industry blog says: Image creators could be thrown a lifeline by the EU if Article 13 is passed. However, many are keen to brand the much needed new proposal as creating limitations for Internet users. Somehow in a bid to close the online value gap for creators, some are so distressed that hashtags such as #SaveYourInternet are being brought to arms. But before getting wild with the retweet fearing the Internet is about die – let’s look how this new proposal could save photographers and other creators, and how all this scaremongering is misconceived. I'm pretty sure there are similar organisations in other EU countries, although the info is probably not going to be in English. It would be hilarious if a UK-based lobby was the only force pushing this through given Brexit. | {
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31,968 | It was recently announced that : The Trump administration is expected to tell schools not to consider race in the admissions process, discontinuing the policy former President Barack Obama adopted to promote more diversity at colleges and high schools. Why is removing racial considerations out of the picture controversial? | The article you've linked actually describes Affirmative Action (AA) as controversial, not the ending of it. That said, it's fair to say that anything related to AA -- starting it, ending it, expanding it, shrinking it, whatever -- is controversial in the US. The fundamental issue is that you can't favor one person without disfavoring another. A lot of Americans don't think anyone should be disfavored. A lot of Americans also think that groups who have been the victims of past discrimination, especially African-Americans, should be favored to compensate for the past. Some people probably even hold both of the above opinions, regardless of the fact that they are contradictory. But it's not possible to do both, so the whole thing is controversial no matter what. | {
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31,997 | Oftentimes amid a scandal or issue the public or other politicians will call for an office holder to resign. It seems strange to me to try to shame an individual into stepping down if they truly are terrible, and to my understanding it is rare for anyone to follow through on it. Is it effective at all, having any consequences? | It separates the officeholder who is calling for the resignation from the one being asked to resign. It separates the party from the officeholder being asked to resign. It pressures the one being asked to resign for the good of the party. It communicates to potential donors that the behavior is unacceptable and that they shouldn't support the person being asked to resign. There are any number of cases where calling for a resignation results in a resignation: Al Franken, Democratic Senator from Minnesota. Chris Lee, Republican Representative from New York. Anthony Weiner, Democratic Representative from New York. Richard Nixon, Republican president. And others. Now it may be that the real problem is that they would be expelled from Congress. But the public calls for resignation make it clear that they lack support. This is especially effective when the person calling for the resignation is of the same party as the person being asked to resign. For example, it was Republican Senator Barry Goldwater who convinced Nixon that he didn't have enough support in the Senate to survive an impeachment trial. | {
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32,007 | Has there ever been a non-trivial, stable, and functional anarchy? Sure there are lots of small groups that operate on personal relationships and don't have what could be called a government. I don't dislike such things. I just worry that they are not candidate models for a country big enough so that everybody does not know everybody personally. And lots of anarchic conditions arise through some kind of war or disaster or some such, but don't last very long, or are very grotesquely bad places to consider living. Let non-trivial be defined as roughly the size of or bigger than Iceland in
population. (About 350,000.) Or 100,000 for individual ancient cities if you have an example. Let's be a little relaxed about the definition of functional. Maybe something like, if the country you currently live in was like that, you would not find it worth while to move to get away from it. This feeds into the stable thing. If a place is so horrible nearly everybody wants to leave then it can't be particularly stable. Let stable be defined as at least 25 years with substantially the same arrangement. That is chosen to be about one generation. So, no kings, no oligarchs, no junta, no elected law makers, no priestly leaders handing out punishment for transgressors. Only all voluntary, all the time. Anything like that? An explanation of why I put in those requirements (though they might seem like very high standards): There are currently a large number of countries, using other political systems, that satisfy the requirements I set. I certainly would not label any of them perfect, but then, they are jammed up with people. What are you going to do? There are plenty of countries that big. Many of them have been around substantially in the form they are now for at least 25 years. And there are many where people don't suddenly en mass abandon the place. So lots of other political systems exist that people can tolerate for at least long enough to raise children, and that involve communities of millions. So, if anarchy was a model political system for those communities, it would have to deal with those limits. If, say, it only works for groups of a few 100, then it isn't a model for, say, the USA, China, or Europe. If it could only be kept together for, say, 5 years max, ditto. And if nearly everybody who tried it wound up hating it, again, ditto. | No. While it is hard to prove a negative, wherever two people come into conflict, either the stronger will come to dominate the weaker, or both will defer to an even stronger power, ie a government. Consider the usual examples of anarchist societies such as The Paris Commune, Nestor Makhno's "free territory" all had systems of government. These might be "peasant councils". Besides the Free territory only lasted 3 years, and the Paris commune only a few months. Local communes, like the Twin Oaks Community, are much smaller, but still have "rules" for dealing with conflict and are, of course, embedded into a country with a system of laws. You are not free to "do what thy wilt", you are expected to conform to the community standards and the laws of the land. Unintentional anarchies, such as parts of Somalia are actually a network of microstates with a baron or war lord ruling such a region as he is able (it usually is a "he") by the threat of force. You have set a very high standard for "stable anarchy" and there are no examples where this standard has been met. There are various lists of anarchies online, but I think none meet your standard. | {
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32,055 | Sure the "remain" side in the EU referendum suffered a narrow defeat, but the Labour Party has lost in much bigger defeats and didn't abandon its policies, so that's not reason enough. Possibilities I've considered: - Corbyn just doesn't like the EU Labour MPs in the Northern Labour
heartlands represent constituencies who were largely pro-Brexit The EU tends toward the political centre ground, so is incompatible with extreme policies on the left in the same way as the right. Have I missed anything? | Because the majority of the people voted for Brexit . In fact, this reason is given in the very first line of the Party's 2017 manifesto , in the Brexit chapter: Labour accepts the referendum result and a Labour government will put the national interest first. Thus, ex-post the referendum, the Labour Party accepts it because it is the will of the voters. As simple as that. But then, someone might ask: " but why does the Labour Party accept the referendum? " My tentative answer is: because the LP wants to be a popular party. Unlike the Lib Dems, for instance, who ask for a second referendum, the LP understands that (i) those who voted Brexit want Brexit, and (ii) most of those who voted Remain respect the referendum result. Thus, respecting the referendum is the only choice of a party aiming to be popular. But then, are the Labour and Conservative approaches to Brexit the same? Not at all . For instance, page 26 of the same manifesto says (emphasis mine): The EU has had a huge impact in
securing workplace protections and
environmental safeguards. But we
all know that for many Brexiteers
in the Tory Party, this was why
they wanted to Leave – to tear up
regulations and weaken hard-fought
rights and protections. A Labour government will never
consider these rights a burden
or accept the weakening of
workers’ rights, consumer rights
or environmental protections.
We will introduce legislation to
ensure there are no gaps in national
security and criminal justice
arrangements as a result of Brexit. This is quite a left-wing line, which highlights that, even after Brexit, workers' rights and environment would be protected under LP-driven Brexit negotiations. Thus, in conclusion, the LP supports Brexit because Brexit won the referendum . They are as such, quite pragmatic, whilst still aiming to keep their (Corbyn's) left-wing ideas in place. | {
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32,081 | The British PM traditionally meets the Queen every week to discuss government matters. However this seems like a pointless exercise given that the British monarch lacks any direct influence . So why does the PM bother meeting the monarch at this point? Is it a mere formality or perhaps there's a law forcing the PM to do so? | It is a constitutional rather than a statutory requirement: Prime Ministers have a constitutional responsibility to tell the Queen what is happening ( John Major ) The Queen remains the Head of State, and the Prime Minister is required (by tradition and precedent) to keep the Queen apprised of government business. The Queen lacks direct power, but she retains influence. The meetings are confidential and no minutes are taken, but they appear not to be formalities. The PM really goes and talks directly about the issues of the week, and the Queen questions and discusses. It seems that she is careful not to tell the PM her opinions. Tony Blair said that even after 10 years of meetings, he did not know her personal opinions on political matters. The Queen has influence, but chooses not to exercise it by direct advice. Some Prime Ministers have said that they found it useful to explain and discuss with an intelligent but non-political person. It helped them to gain perspective away from the adversarial arena of the Commons. David Cameron described the meetings as "one of the most valuable hours of the week" as it helped him sort out the problems in his own head. If a PM chose to, they could abolish the meeting. The Queen must act on the advice of her ministers. But this would signal a marked shift in the UK constitution towards a Republic. However even Prime Ministers who regarded the audience as a duty ( Margaret Thatcher is said to have called the Autumn visit to Balmoral "purgatory") have never tried to get rid of it. The Queen also receives a daily "red box" from the other ministers advising her of their department's business. | {
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32,101 | Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Elena Kagan held the job of Solicitor General at the time she was nominated to the Supreme Court by Barack Obama. Her legal bona fides were extensive. But prominently missing among them was any experience of her being a judge. I do understand that she was qualified to make a distinction between various legal theories and issue formal opinions on which of them held more weight and prevail. What I don't understand is why her willingness to be impartial was never questioned . She was never a judge. In fact, as a Solicitor General, it was her position to argue for legality of Government's use of power whenever such use of power was in question. From an outside-of-the-government perspective, she seems like an advocate for government overreach getting nominated to the position of deciding when the government overreached and when the Government should not be allowed to overreach and its powers should be curtailed. The Wikipedia article mentions that Senators were concerned with this question, but I do not recall it ever being brought up during the hearings. Did I miss it? Or were those concerns brought up only in private? I don't see why such an important question was not central to her candidacy. I realize that this may parse like a few questions. But the gist of the overall question is that either I am missing some crucial piece of information or there is an overwhelming reason why this does not matter. A good answer would point to an authoritative source showing which one of those two happens to be the case. | Democrats didn't care, because they liked her. Republicans didn't seriously try to stop her nomination. So they didn't bring up the matter in more than passing fashion. The organization that is supposed to watch against unqualified nominees did not find her qualifications lacking. As per ABA Journal (and other sources easily found on Google), the American Bar Association found Elena Kagan well qualified, which is their highest recommendation. It's not actually that uncommon for Supreme Court justices to have no previous judicial experience. William Rehnquist was the most recent prior to Kagan. The ABA endorsement is a major reason why this never became an issue. Trying to do so would have been an attack on the ABA. She only needed two Republican votes, as the Democrats occupied fifty-seven seats with Democratic-leaning independents occupying two more seats. One Democrat (Ben Nelson of Nebraska) voted against her. So they only needed two of the five Republican votes to reach sixty. Due to the previous agreement that saw Samuel Alito added to the court (as well as other nominations), she was almost certain to find those two votes. Confirmation vote roll call . The same basic issue existed for Solicitor General as well. Kagan had no appellate experience as a lawyer. The first case in which she would appear as a lawyer was as Solicitor General (obviously after her confirmation). But she had academic qualifications that appealed to the ABA (and she had clerked for the Supreme Court, which is a feeder position). So she was declared well qualified and was confirmed with minimal Republican support. | {
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32,116 | US Constitution Article 2 says this about the appointments to the Supreme Court: [the President] shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent
of the Senate, shall appoint (...) Judges of the supreme Court Clearly, it seems to me, the Senate refused to follow the Constitution with respect to Merrick Garland, a judge he nominated to a vacancy on the Supreme Court, and President Obama, swore to "defend and protect the Constitution". So it seems, it was President Obama's duty as the chief law enforcement official, to force the Senate to hold hearings, like, for example, order the hearings to take place and hold them with whoever the senators would show up, and enforce that order with law enforcement resources such as police and military. Obama, having a law degree from Harvard, was certainly aware of all of that. Why didn't he fulfill his duty to enforce the Constitution? | In short: separation of (coequal) powers means the President can't order any such thing of Congress. Congress does as it wills, and the constitution has very little to say about whether it does its jobs in any particular time frame, or even in any particular way. Article 2, Section 3 of the constitution details the two things a President can force Congress to do (emphasis mine): He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information on the
State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures
as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary
Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of
Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he
may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper ; he shall
receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care
that the Laws be faithfully executed , and shall Commission all the
Officers of the United States. So his only power over congress is to force them into session (in "extraordinary occasions") or to settle a disagreement on their adjournment. The last part I highlighted is also particularly relevant to your consideration. While Article 2, Section 1 does specify that he will take an oath to uphold the constitution: Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:-"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." Article 2, Section 3 above specifies only that he take care to faithfully execute the laws as an actual duty. Congress has certain constitutional powers and obligations, but it sets its own rules on how it does these things in almost every instance. Article 1, Section 5 includes the clause: Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member. The Supreme Court has generally ruled that the rules of the houses are essentially non-justiciable: they are not subject to overview by the judicial branch. Even the constitutional requirement for a quorum in the House/Senate is in the sole purview of the rules of the chambers themselves, and the courts have no power to dictate or question when the requirement has or hasn't been met; only the houses themselves determine this, by whatever means they see fit, and if the rules say there's a quorum, then there's a quorum . Obama, having a law degree from Harvard, and professional experience in constitutional law specifically (he was a professor thereof for a time), was certainly aware of all of that. At best he could have tried to exert political pressure on Congressional Republicans, say by being more forceful about the matter in public statements. Some people do feel he didn't do enough of this, some even feeling he should have done more even if it was guaranteed to not change the outcome. But that's more of a political contention than a constitutional one. | {
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32,140 | Since the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran , the behavior of two American political parties toward Iran has always been contradictory: From the beginning and after hostage-taking by revolutionaries,
president Carter negotiated the release while Reagan, on the campaign trail at the time, advocated an approach more aggressive towards the Iranian regime. President Obama's policy of Iran seems also strange. He persisted to open negotiations with Iran. On the other hand, the Republican party has always been very strict
to the regime. Reagan advocated not paying " ransom for people who have been kidnapped by barbarians ", Bush called the Islamic regime a part of the axis of evil and Trump called it the rogue regime . The Islamic regime's behavior shows that it has done many things against the US and human right: Hostage-taking , 1988 executions of Iranian political prisoners, Chain murders , The 2009 carnage following the peaceful protests , Insults against Israel and US, etc. The regime's past shows that they are very hostile towards the US, so I cannot understand the reason behind the Democrats' seemingly accommodating behavior toward the Islamic regime. Can anyone explain? | The issue is the mis-characterization of Obama as "very friendly". The fact that a country signs a treaty with other does not mean that they are "friends" per se . Obama (together with 4 other parties) signed a treaty with Iran to dismantle Iran's nuclear program, and in exchange removed some of the sanctions that the USA and other countries were applying to Iran. While Obama (and others) defended the treaty (as still do Russia, China, France, the UK, Germany 1 ), that did not mean that he showed any sign of support to Iran's regime. While the idea that the USA should impose its values in all of the world (by force if necessary) sounds simple, appealing (after all, if we are the best then anything we do is right?) and "ethical" 2 , the implementation has been found to be "complicated" and overwhelming costly(look at Irak for a recent example). So, countries sign treaties with countries even if they do not like each other, as a way of achieving their objectives. It does not mean any affection between the two, it is just a recognition that an agreement is preferable to war or to no treaty at all. For example, almost nobody has objected to the Trump administration engaging in talks with the North Korea regime, which is far worse than Iran. And even during the Cold War, with the USA calling the Soviet Union an "Evil Empire", treaties were held and diplomatic talks did happen. Of course, that does not mean that engaging with talks with an hostile regime cannot be used as political ammunition about the politicians engaged, either because some people honestly do not like it, or if that serves to become an attack on the politician, even if there is no realistic alternative 3 . So, the "Obama is friendly towards Iran" claim appears 4 . A different issue is that Donald Trump has been criticized for actually praising Kim Jong Un and his regime in repeated occasions . But that is because he has gone far beyond what engaging in diplomatic talks requires, and even that could be "brushed under the rug" in the case that the process ends with a satisfactory treaty. And, as a side note, if you do think that "respect to the Human Rights" is used as a meaningful guide for USA foreign policy, you really should read a little more . 1 In short, the whole world except the Republican Party, Israel and Saudi Arabia. 2 Then the old issue appears: what happens if "they" freely decide not to be like the USA? 3 And not only in one side; in Iran Conservative politicians did accuse the Iranian representatives who signed the treaty of leaving the country defenseless against ISIS. 4 Which gets to work well together with the "Obama is secret Muslim" and other propaganda spread by some conservative sectors. | {
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32,173 | What purpose does economic inequality (inequality in wealth) serve? While one can argue that it's a result of differing productive capability, this is not the case with e.g. inherited wealth. Also, when it grows so big that it may appear to start "exploiting" others, because the wealth bearers have so much power, then does it still serve useful purpose? But particularly, does it serve some purpose for some to have more and some to have less? From a Marxist perspective one could interpret that having more leads to those having less having to do more in order to attain the position that those having more already have. So it's some sort of "pyramid scheme", where everyone rises, but those beneath the top are being scammed. | The conservative view on this topic is that wealth inequality allows to create incentive systems which encourage people to contribute to society in order to increase their wealth. In other words: work more, work well, provide the goods and services other people demand and you will receive more wealth and live a better life than your peers. The conservative believe is that when you are poor, then you are being punished for not contributing to society. If you don't want to be poor anymore, look for a job which is in higher demand, get paid for it, and get rewarded with a higher standard of life. The idea of inheritance is that people don't just care about themselves but also about their children and want them to live a better life, even when they themselves are not alive anymore. So working hard and well does not just improve one's own life but also the lives of one's children. One of the most influential economists in this regard was Adam Smith who coined the term "free market economy" and recognized that it is a self-regulating and self-perpetuating system which automatically rewards those who optimize their personal contribution to society. But the capitalist implementation of this idea is not without flaws. Those who already have wealth have more opportunities to increase their wealth even more while those who lack wealth face greater challenges to improve their social status. A capitalist system means that children of rich people have better access to education, which in turn allows these children to take on better paying professions. And those who already have capital have a better opportunity to try out new business ideas without endangering their existence. The result is a low social mobility (i.e. the social status of individual people is unlikely to change over the course of their life - for better or for worse) and an ever increasing gini coefficient (i.e. the income differences between rich people and poor people increase). One of the most influential economic scientists who recognized and criticized this flaw in a free market economy was Karl Marx . He postulated that this system would eventually lead to a concentration of wealth in the hands of a small elite. This inequality would be unsustainable in the long term and collapse in what he referred to as a "communist revolution". The system would then be replaced by a "dictatorship of the proletariat". A centralized planned economy in which everyone would be obligated to work to the best of their ability and receive goods according to their needs. However, those countries which tried to implement planned economies according to Marxist doctrine in the 20th century failed. Their governments ended up to be authoritarian regimes which committed some horrible atrocities and their economic output and median standard of living was below that of the capitalist economies in North-America and Western Europe. Near the end of the 20th century, almost all communist countries reconsidered and decided to reform their economic systems back to a free market economy. Now you could speculate about whether this was a flaw in the Marxist idea, a flaw in the execution, or the result of external circumstances. Lots and lots of books were written about the downfall of communism and they tend to come to drastically different conclusions, depending on the political views of the author. Also, this website is not a discussion forum. So I don't want to waste any more keypresses on speculating about whether Adam Smith was right, Karl Marx was right, or if the optimal path lays somewhere in the middle. | {
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32,205 | I may be misremembering, but I vaguely recall that somewhere in the marxist (or communist) ideology there was a claim like war (and I mean actual war, not class war) benefits the rich (maybe even in all/both countries involved) at the expense of the poor (again perhaps in all/both countries)? Sorry if this is a fairly vague statement to go by... Also it's possible the claim may have preceded Marx. Come to think of it, Marx would have probably framed it as the bourgeoisie benefitting and the proletariat losing. | There have been many pronouncements of this type; they became particularly popular during and after WWI; although during the war the position of the socialist parties was that not so much about the profit but the fact that the proletarians of Europe were fighting each other along national lines instead of fighting their class enemies. From your wording, maybe you are refering to War Is A Racket , by Smedley D. Butler, a retired -at the time of publication- Major General of the USMC. War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes. He also made these comments in a socialist magazine to the same effect: I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents. | {
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32,258 | When a European head of government has too many enemies/doubts about their history, then he or she is usually deposed by the parliament and a new head of government is elected (either by the parliament or through a new general election). However, in the United States, the only way for Congress to remove the president from office is an impeachment based around "illegal" or "medical" grounds. And such an impeachment does not lead to the election of a new president but only to the replacement of the president by the vice-president. What are the reasons why the Constitution of the United States does not have a process to replace the president with a newly elected president before their term is over? Are there any contemporary sources which indicate why the founding fathers made the decision to not have such a process? | One of the main reasons was that the President - even now, never mind in Founding Fathers' time - is not the "head of government", the way Prime Ministers are in Parliamentary systems. The President is the head of Executive Branch of government, and in Founders' time that branch had fairly little power, therefore there was far less possible impact and importance to having a re-election. 200+ years ago, most of the domestic power was in the hands of legislative branch (Congress). There's too many references to pick just one, just go with whichever level of scholarniness you prefer out of a Google search for "us growth of presidential power" . Also important is the fact that - again, as of Founder's time, the removal process outcome would NOT be the same as today. Today, the Vice President is a member of President's party (after 12th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified), so removing him without a subsequent election would (theoretically) have relatively little effect in terms of politics/policy. Back then, the Vice President would be the second placed person in Presidential election , and the Founders very strongly frowned on the whole idea of "factions" (as they called what we know as parties). As such, removing a President - via impeachment, or health reasons - would likely result in the same net effect as a re-election, as last election's runner-up would probably win, and that person is ALREADY a Vice President who would succeed the president. | {
"source": [
"https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/32258",
"https://politics.stackexchange.com",
"https://politics.stackexchange.com/users/12531/"
]
} |
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