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32,298 | Suppose a government does something to annoy a company, what would stop the company from protesting the action by stopping the sales/providing their services? For example a hardware company such as Intel or AMD could stop CPU production completely or say that their sales are only for non-government use only. For a software company such as Google, they could disable their free search and maps services. | Note that those free services have some way for the company to make money. This can be by way of advertising or gathering data which they can sell or otherwise use to make money (for example provide some other service which does make money). Having said that, a company boycotting a country would generally result in fewer users which in turn leads to less revenue. Even if a company (its management) wants to boycott a country, their shareholders may disagree because they want to keep maximising profit. Those shareholders could oust the management and replace them with those who do what the shareholders want. Obviously, this answer relies on the company making profit (possibly in the future) based on its services in that country. If the company (or its shareholders) think they cannot make money in that country (not now, nor in future) they are very likely to suspend services in that country. | {
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32,321 | In The Guardian on July 19 2018 I found this under the headline "Tory MP casts doubt on claim pairing breach was honest mistake as row escalates - Politics live". Up to five Tory MPs were told to break pairs on Tuesday, Sun claims According to a story by Tom Newton Dunn in the Sun, as many as five Conservative MPs who were paired on Tuesday night were asked by the chief whip, Julian Smith, to break the pair and vote regardless. The paper quotes an unnamed MP who was involved as saying: Julian told me I was needed and told me to come in and vote. Of course he knew I was paired.
I didn’t vote and honoured my pair, and he demanded to know why not afterwards.
It then appears Julian told the prime minister it was all an innocent mistake
...
What happened was unacceptable. We cannot behave like this. In the event only one Conservative, the party chairman Brandon Lewis, did break a pair. Theresa May, Smith, Lewis and Andrea Leadsom, the leader of the Commons, have all claimed this was an innocent mistake. As a continental European, I have no idea what a pair/pairing is exactly, other than some sort of Gentlemen Agreement. What is it intended for? Have breaches occurred in the past and what were the consequences? | It is when two members from opposite parties agree not to vote when the other is absent. pairing is an informal arrangement between the government and opposition parties whereby a member of a Legislative body agrees or is designated by the party whip to be absent from the chamber or abstain from voting while a member of the other party needs to be absent from the chamber due to other commitments, illness, travel problems, etc. Intention It is a courtesy to allow members to be absent without affecting non-critical vote counts The member that needs to be absent from their chamber would normally consult with his or her party whip, who would arrange a pair with his counterpart in the other major party, who as a matter of courtesy would normally arrange for one of its members to act as the pair. Breaches The Wikipedia article also lays out several breaches or suspensions of pairing by country, for example: In 1976, the Conservatives broke off pairing after accusing the Labour whips of bringing in an MP who was supposed to have been paired off. and pairing lost trust again in the 2017 parliament. In June, Labour MP Naz Shah was controversially pushed through the lobby in a wheelchair, still under the impact of morphine, claiming that pairing was not offered, which was denied by the Conservative government. | {
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32,359 | According to a 1998 HRW report , The United States may have the world’s most restrictive criminal disenfranchisement laws. We know of no other democracy besides the United States in which convicted offenders who have served their sentences are nonetheless disenfranchised for life. A few countries restrict the vote for a short period after conclusion of the prison term: Finland and New Zealand, for example, restrict the vote for several years after completion of sentence, but only in the case of persons convicted of buying or selling votes or of corrupt practices. Some countries condition disenfranchisement of prisoners on the seriousness of the crime or the length of their sentence. Others, e.g., Germany and France, permit disenfranchisement only when it is imposed by a court order. Many countries permit persons in prison to vote. According to research by Penal Reform International, prisoners may vote in countries as diverse as the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Israel, Japan, Kenya, Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Poland, Romania, Sweden and Zimbabwe. In Germany, the law obliges prison authorities to encourage prisoners to assert their voting rights and to facilitate voting procedures. The only prisoners who may not vote are those convicted of electoral crimes or crimes (e.g., treason) that undermine the “democratic order,” and whose court-imposed sentence expressly includes disenfranchisement. There's a BBC story with more details as to where and how prisoners can vote: But it doesn't say much about the arguments for. There's already a question on Politics.SE exploring the reasons for the US restrictions . What I want to ask here is (the opposite basically): what are the motivations for being as non-restrictive as the countries mentioned by HRW above, e.g. why allow people in prison (never mind after release) to vote? Granted, it will be difficult to make a world-wide survey, but I'd like to hear some arguments that are raised in countries that have least restrictive laws on criminals voting. | The most trite answer is a civil rights protection against the following algorithm: Win a legislative election. Pass any law which disproportionately imprisons the supporters of your opponents. Profit. This is relatively hard to prevent through other constitutional means, since the law doesn't need to be exclusively or primarily politically targeted to have an effect. | {
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32,429 | Did any group in the UK oppose Falklands war? If Yes, Were they political groups or non-political/human-rights groups? What was their rationale/objective? did they gain any public support? Were they arrested? | On the 3rd April 1982 , at the time of the onset of formal conflict in the area of the Falkland Islands (or to the Argentinians, the Malvinas) Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government obtained the support of Michael Foot (the leader of the opposition Labour party), as well as the SDP , its centrist breakaway offshoot, and the third largest parliamentary party. This meant there was no mainstream opposition within Westminster. This didn't mean, however, that the idea of a conflict in the South Atlantic was universally popular with MPs, either on the left , or the right of the House. Opposition ranged from conscientious objection to war, to a realisation of the large potential economic, human and political downsides of a failed military campaign. Outside of Westminster, opposition to Mrs. Thatcher's policies came primarily from her natural opponents on the political left , either objecting to war in general , or to a war with strong perceived colonial overtones. Human rights as such doesn't seem initially to have been a primary general motive, since the Argentinian soldiers were military invaders, who had interned the residents of the islands. This changed to some extent with the sinking of the light cruiser General Belgrano by the submarine HMS Conqueror. This sinking killed a large number of conscripted Argentinian soldiers, and has been a matter of considerable controversy in the intervening years since. The parliamentary opposition was certainly allowed its view, but undoubtedly, some protesters were arrested during demonstrations. Of course, the authorities viewpoint is that they were arrested for their actions rather than their views or their peaceful expression of them. | {
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32,453 | In this age of information and mobile phones with Google in our pocket, I ask myself, and hereby you: Why don't politicians get fact checked immediately? I guess that a lot of what a politician says is free speech and his own opinion and cannot directly be corrected but, if we take the good Mr. Trump as an example (and I know I beat a dead horse at this time), we have a lot of occasions where a reporter with a phone could just invalidate most of what he is saying. This is also highly noticeable on campaigns where a lot of politicians make ludicrous statements or straight up lie to their supporters. As a person who watches the political downfall of the American democratic system with great pain, I try to comprehend how people are still putting up with this utter nonsense. Why is there no public or government agency immediately fact checking most of what politicians are saying? The truth, even when not a lot of people care, should be the most important thing. | Fact checking is neither easy nor instantaneous. The time taken to fact-check even a simple statement and do it thoroughly is measured in hours, not minutes. For example, let's take one of Trump's most famous and simplest lies, one most clearly known to be false, that his inauguration was the biggest in history. To get a definitive answer you need to: Go and find photographs of the crowd Check that those photographs are not selective or published by biased sources Compare to photographs of previous inaugurations Check that those previous photographs are not selective or published by biased sources Get metro ridership records Check that those ridership records are genuine, not selective and not biased (yes, the Trump administration published statements including only half the ridership from the Obama inauguration in an attempt to claim the Trump inauguration was bigger) Verify other claims and data that one side or the other is using in support of their case Get multiple sources for anything you claim. None of these are trivial to do, or can be done by a journalist standing in a press room whose job is to report on what is being said in the room. | {
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32,527 | Thursday reports relative to the Juncker-Trump meeting: Europeans agreed ... to buy billions of dollars of American soybeans. Now, my question is quite simple: Does the European union buy soybeans or do companies within EU member nations actually buy soybeans? And if the answer is that the companies are the actual purchasers, can the EU Commission force or otherwise obligate companies to purchase US soybeans instead of their existing non-US suppliers. | According to Reuters , it's not the EU but companies: “It is not the European Commission that buys, but the industry, and traders who look for goods where they are the least expensive for their financial interests,” one European soybean trader said. Reuters also quotes a market reseacher saying that the statement is "largely symbolic", and that soybean imports would have increased anyways for economic reasons (because of a decrease in price in the US and an increase in South America). CNBC also agrees and says that the EU has no real measure to increase purchases, as there are no taxes or similar on soybeans which could be lowered or removed: According to Donovan, even though the EU promised to buy more soybeans, it doesn't actually have the power to force European farmers to purchase more from the United States. "The U.S. is already the largest exporter of soybeans to the EU. There are no subsidies, trade taxes or quotas on soybeans in the EU. Private farmers decide whether to buy more soybeans or not," he said. According to Thinkprogress , the Wall Street Journal also agrees (I'm citing TP because the WSJ article is behind a paywall): According to the Wall Street Journal, Juncker, as the head of the European Commission, has little power to promise increased soybean or energy purchases, as they rely on private companies business decisions and “market conditions.” “[The LNG and soybean pledge is] a bit of a stunt,” an EU official told the Journal. “You give something without giving anything.” | {
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32,582 | President Trump repeatedly talked about China's unfair trade practices. What were those? Do other countries like China install unfair trade guidelines? Or, is China being targeted "unfairly"? | Peter Navarro, the White House National Trade Council and Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Director, put out a report called "How China’s Economic Aggression Threatens the Technologies and Intellectual Property of the United States and the World". In it there are many specific accusations against Chinese "economic aggression", with evidence cited for each. There's also a video of Navarro doing a press conference about the report. Here are the accusations: Physical theft and cyber-enabled theft of technologies and IP Physical theft of technologies and IP through economic espionage Cyber-enabled espionage and theft Evasion of U.S. export control laws Counterfeiting and piracy Reverse engineering Coercive and intrusive regulatory gambits Foreign ownership restrictions Adverse administrative approvals and licensing requirements Discriminatory patent and other IP rights restrictions Security reviews force technology and IP transfers Secure and controllable technology standards Data localization mandates Burdensome and intrusive testing Discriminatory catalogues and lists Government procurement restrictions Indigenous technology standards that deviate from international norms Forced research and development Antimonopoly law extortion Expert review panels force disclosure of PI Chinese communist party co-opts corporate governance Placement of Chinese employees with foreign joint ventures Economic coercion Export restraints restrict access to raw materials Monopsony purchasing power Information harvesting Open source collection of science and technology information Chinese nationals in U.S. as non-traditional information collectors Recruitment of science, technology, business, and finance talent State-sponsored, technology-seeking investment Chinese state actors involved in technology-seeking FDI Chinese investment vehicles used to acquire and transfer U.S. technologies
and IP (mergers and acquisitions, greenfield investments, seed and venture funding) The report makes the case that they are all done in bad faith as part of a deliberate concerted effort to: Protect China’s home market from imports and competition Expand China’s share of global markets Secure and control core natural resources globally Dominate traditional manufacturing industries Acquire key technologies and intellectual property from other countries, including the United States Capture the emerging high-technology industries that will drive future economic Growth and many advancements in the defense industry The tariffs are therefore partly retaliations in response to what the Trump administration views as aggressive actions by the Chinese state. | {
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32,626 | We have had a couple of questions that discussed both the pros/cons of direct democracy in theory, as well as whether it was ever implemented in actual polity. But these are not necessarily very illuminative - the former is just that, theory. Which is rarely correct when applied to live, breathing apes. And the latter is very likely to be affected by small sample size issue - the details of implementation and details of polity may very well affect the outcomes, due to how little direct democracy has been tried. So, what I would like to know, is whether direct democracy has ever been studied in a lab - more specifically, in a large, controlled study by professional political science researchers, with control groups having other forms of governance like representative democracy? If so, what were the observed outcomes and how closely do they track the predictions from theories? | Actually, contrary to my pessimistic expectation, some studies exist, e.g. "Direct Democracy and Resource Allocation:
Experimental Evidence from Afghanistan" : Direct democracy is designed to better align policy outcomes with citizen preferences.
To test this proposition, we randomized whether 250 villages across Afghanistan
selected projects by secret-ballot referenda or by consultation meetings. We find that
referenda reduce the influence of local elites over both project type and location.
Consistent with previous experimental results, we also find that referenda improve
villagers’ perceptions of the local economy and of the quality of local governance.
However, we find no systematic evidence that selecting projects via referenda increases
the average impact of such projects (Let me look at their related-work section to see what else is there.) One other similar study they mention: Using experimental variations similar to those employed in this
study, Olken (2010) finds a strong positive effect of the use of direct democracy in Indonesia on villagers’ satisfaction, but no effect on the choice of the general project itself, other than a relocation
effect of women’s projects towards poorer areas. The paper also cites a fairly cited (elsewere) work: Matsuska, J. (2005), “Direct Democracy Works,” The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 19(2), 185-206. but this paper turns out to be mostly a historical & observational (rather than experimental) account. It does have some theoretical & empirical observations which pertain to your (farily open) question though: Of course, the bottom line is whether direct democracy makes government
better or worse. This question may not have an objective answer since whether a
policy is good or bad so often is in the eye of the beholder. Nevertheless, some
research has attempted to assess the quality of direct democracy policymaking in
terms of efficiency, utility and other concepts that economists traditionally use to evaluate outcomes. There's 5 pages following that reviewing various works, which is too much to cover here. | {
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32,645 | Various (western) commentators and politicians state that "the only one happy with/benefiting from [insert bad scenario here] is Putin/Russia" (I'm not sure which one(s) of the two they mean). Examples of "bad scenario here" may be a no-deal Brexit, a weak government after the Swedish elections, or just general disarray within the EU. I don't understand the reasoning. Why would Russia or Putin benefit from problems in the EU or individual EU countries? Although trade has decreased since 2012, Russia still exports a lot of raw materials to the EU . If crisis strikes the EU or individual EU countries, those exports may well drop. If not in economics, where would be the supposed benefit for Russia or Putin? Related (opposite) question: What political benefit would there be in stronger ties with Putin and Russia? NB: I welcome answers focussing either on Putins aims or on Russias aims. | There is currently a power-play going on between the EU and Russia concerning the political influence over the countries between them. The most visible struggle is certainly the Ukraine conflict . But there are also other countries in the geographic region of not-quite-Europe-not-quite-Asia which are currently wondering whether they should side with Russia or with the EU. Turkey, for example, recently made some EU politicians pretty nervous by responding to criticism from the EU with showing closeness to Russia . An EU which is weak and occupied with infighting would have difficulties exerting influence over East Europe / West Asia and make it easier for Russia to gain more influence in the region. | {
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32,655 | Why don't Democrats and Republicans collude to establish total and perpetual control of the United States? What makes them not do that? Is there any explanation other than prisoner's dilemma ? This question applies to any 2-party system, and it stems from Why don't China, Russia, USA and EU establish complete world dominance? Note: I am not fluent in US political/electoral structure. | I mean, we've had exclusively Democrat or Republican governments for well over 150 years, I'm not sure how else you'd measure "total and perpetual dominance". | {
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32,682 | In this answer the following scenario is presented: Russia invades a NATO member, say, Norway. NATO does nothing to defend Norway. In my opinion, this scenario is unrealistic because the very purpose of NATO is to defend its members from Soviet or Russian aggression. Article 5 states: Collective defence means that an attack against one Ally is considered as an attack against all Allies. If Russia attacks, say, Estonia, it would face the same consequences as if it attacked the United States. Obviously, many people believe it's not the case. What are rational, fact-backed reasons for the belief that NATO may not defend one or more of its members against Russian invasion? | Using military force is one way for NATO to counter aggression against one of its members, but not the only one. Article 5 of the North Atlantic treaty reads : The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force , to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area. (emphasis mine) Including does not mean that it's the only option. So while the use of armed force is one way to respond to aggression, the NATO has several options, for example: Retaliate by sending troops to attack the territory of the aggressor directly Send troops to secure the attacked borders Provide the attacked with logistic support (money, weapons, intelligence, consultants etc.) but leave the actual fighting to them. Impose sanctions on the aggressor Nothing. They might decide that the best way to "restore and maintain security" is to just let the attacker have that country. So if NATO makes the political decision to sacrifice a member in order to maintain peace and avoid a third world war, they would be free to do that. Whether this would be a wise decision would be a matter of personal opinion. | {
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32,714 | Note: This was originally posted in 2018, before the 2022 war. According to a Russian News Agency Ukrainian politician Evgeny Murayev said that Anti-Russian sanctions of the EU and the United States deprived the Ukraine
from half of its gross domestic product. [...] According to the parlamentarian, Russia and the EU lost only a small fraction of
their GDPs. For the Ukraine, though, the sanctions led to a contraction of the GDP
by a half. This statement is also published on Murayev's news site NewsOne.ua . Is the statement "sanctions against Russia harm Ukraine more than Russia", defensible? | By some metrics, Ukraine's GDP was divided by two between 2013 and 2015. However, this is misleading. As a consequence of war, annexation of Crimea, and a 70%-devaluation of Ukrainian currency, a brut series of Ukrainian GDP labelled in US$ shows that it contracted by a half between 2013 and 2015. But if we consider real activity (corrected from currency variations), GDP has "only" lost 8% in 2014 and 12% in 2015. I am not 100% sure whether these World Bank figures take into account the loss of territory or not. Wikipedia actually mentions less drastic reductions of GDP (6.6% and 9.8% in 2014 and 2015 respectively), but the sources are in Russian and I cannot check them. Moreover, anti-Russia sanctions can only explain a tiny fraction of that contraction. Russia traditionally is a major trading partner for Ukraine. Back in 2012, it amounted to a quarter of Ukraine's exports and one third of its imports. In 2016 , trade exchanges with Russia have dwindled to 10% of Ukraine's exports and 15% of its imports. This trade has first been affected by anti-Ukrainian sanctions taken by Russia in 2013 when Ukraine was negociating an association agreement with UE. the Customs Service of the Russian Federation put all Ukrainian imports on the list of potentially dangerous goods on August 14, which halted the shipment of goods from Ukraine for an indefinite time. It has been further reduced after the Crimean crisis and the civil war in Donbass. Moreover, the very industrial oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk have being damaged by the war, reducing the industrial production of the country, and nowadays they escape the central government's control. Since 2015, sanctions have not been alleviated but Ukraine's GDP has started to recover. Is the statement "sanctions against Russia harm Ukraine more than Russia", defensible? No. Although precise figures are hard to find, Western sanctions against Russia have been decided at a point when Ukraine-Russia trade had already shrunk because of the war. Moreover, Evgeny Murayev offers neither details nor explanations to sustain such a paradoxical claim. About the claim Note that Evgeny Murayev, formerly a member of Party of Regions and now a chairman of For Life is a russophile politician and opposed to anti-Russia sanctions from the get-go. | {
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32,735 | In the US, various states have different rules on how parties may hold their primaries: some require direct ballots, some require caucuses, some states hold "open" primaries and some are "closed. But to me this seems perplexing as in principle political parties should be free to choose their candidates in whatever manner they see fitting, with no intervention by the state authorities. So why do governments in the US get to regulate how political parties conduct their business? | A substantial factor were white primaries during the defining civil right struggles and the case law that followed from that. From a law paper on the topic "Developments in the State Regulation of Major and
Minor Political Parties" (which is 74-pages long, by the way): If political parties were truly private organizations, they could exclude whomever they wished from political participation—a result that would conflict with the "White Primary Cases" in which the Court protected racial minorities'
right to participate in party primaries. [in footnote] Cf. Gray v. Sanders, 372 U.S. 368 (1963) (finding state action when the state enforces exclusion of voters); Terry v. Adams, 345 U.S. 461, 469-70 (1953) (holding that the use of a discriminatory preprimary election administered by a private association, which determined the primary winner, constituted state action under the Fifteenth Amendment); Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649 (1944) (determining that political party's exclusion of African-American voters in primary constitutes state action); United States v. Classic, 313 U.S. 299 (1941) (holding that Congress can regulate fraud in primary elections); Nixon v. Condon, 286 U.S. 73 (1932) (finding that party's exclusion of black voters when authorized to determine voter qualifications constitutes state action). And from Wikipedia's United States v. Classic : Many observers assumed that the court had already ruled in Newberry v. United States, that primary elections could not be regulated under the powers granted to Congress under Article I, Sec. 4 of the Constitution. But writing for the majority, Justice Harlan Fiske Stone argued that the Newberry court had been deeply divided on the issue and no majority had ruled one way or the other. Utilizing the reasoning by Chief Justice Edward Douglass White and Justice Mahlon Pitney in their concurrent opinions in Newberry, Stone argued that the Constitution's protection of the right to vote cannot be effectively exercised without reaching to primary elections and/or political party nominating procedures. Though broadly noting that the constitutional right to vote extends to a party primary even when it "sometimes or never determines the ultimate choice of the representative," the Court offered no standard for determining whether a primary "was made an integral part of the election machinery." However, in Morse v. Republican Party of Virginia, the Court clarified that this extends to virtually all primaries, noting that "Virginia, like most States, has effectively divided its election into two stages, the first consisting of the selection of party candidates and the second being the general election." So basically the Supreme Court decided that there can be no free elections in the US without free primaries. Morse v. Republican Party of Virginia, (517 U.S. 186, 205-07 (1996)), which cemented/clarified this is a relatively recent decision, surprisingly. However, the Fifteenth Amendment is relatively narrow. It prohibits the federal and state governments from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude". So based on it the government(s) don't get to regulate everything relating to primaries or nominations. In particular, it doesn't say who can or cannot be nominated in a primary. And the case law in this respect is much, much less straightforward (one reason why that law review is so long). I'm not going to get into the details here... but I will mention one case that limited the state's right to dictate every minute detail of how primaries have to be organized: Republican Party v. Faulkner County; without getting into the gritty case details, the principles derived in this case were (quoting from the law review again): Faulkner is significant because the Eighth Circuit used associational
rights as a substantive limit on the state's ability to dictate a
party's nominating procedures. A state can violate a political
party's associational rights if the state enacts a primary election system
that unduly burdens the party's association with its members. Moreover,
the court reached this conclusion by considering the actual impact
of the nominating procedure on the party's campaign activities. Thus, Faulkner suggests that courts balancing the burdens
imposed by an election scheme must consider evidence demonstrating
that a scheme actually interferes with the party's ability to organize
and campaign effectively. If the party can produce sufficient evidence,
they can object to a state-dictated candidate selection method
and the state must have a compelling justification for its electoral
scheme. The decision in Faulkner was based on broader principles previously set out by the Supreme Court in Eu v. San Francisco County Democratic Central Committee: "a State cannot justify regulating a party's internal affairs
without showing that such regulation is necessary to ensure an election
that is orderly and fair." So basically, in US jurisprudence, there is a balance of interests to be taken into account: fair elections stand in balance with unnecessary interference in party's internal affairs, the latter stemming from the right to political association. | {
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32,808 | For example, the Iran proliferation Deal. Letting aside considerations about where or not it was a good agreement, this is still the US agreeing to something and then not carrying it out. Other examples include the SALT 2 Treaty (signed, not ratified, mostly honored), the Paris climate accord. Current renegotiations of NAFTA. A lot of this specific to the current administration, but these things have happened before. I understand that this can be the result of the separation of powers between the executive and the legislative branch. But those considerations are irrelevant to countries that sign a treaty with someone, they are mostly interested in whether their counterpart will honor that treaty or not. If they commit to something and the other party states I did not actually have the authority to commit without another branch of my government then how will the next treaty be approached? I am specifically excluding bad faith treaties by rogue actors from consideration. Such as, for example, North Korea signing up to a UN convention against torture. Or even feel good treaties with lofty goals like "universal health care human rights" stuff that would in fact be hard to fully certify compliance with. Also out of scope is something like the ABM Treaty, which the US withdrew from in 2002, but after respecting it since 1972: given that duration, the US signed it and respected it, as far as I am concerned. Does the US have an unusually high track record, for a stable and advanced country, of not following through on its treaty obligations? Is there a risk that it becomes a less and less credible negotiating partner? Is this unusual when the parties are asymmetric, i.e. one is more dominant/powerful than the others? To limit the scope of the question, we will only consider: post-WW2 only. only state-to-state treaties trade/arms/numerical target, i.e. objectively verifiable treaties and accords. | I only have an indirect argument: The US is part of far more treaties than any other country (7,181 bilateral treaties; the next most active nation is France with 3,707 bilateral treaties). Somewhat predictably, the US has far more bilateral as percentage of its total treaties (87% of treaties entered by US being bilateral) than an "average" country (for which this fraction is 45%). Ref for these facts Miles & Posner (2008) "Which States Enter into Treaties, and Why?" Bilateral treaties get unilaterally exited more often than multilateral treaties do cf. Helfer (2005) "Exiting Treaties" : Not surprisingly, there have been far more ratifications of treaties (32,021) than denunciations and withdrawals (1547) since 1945. [...] of the 5416 multilateral agreements concluded after 1945, 191, or 3.5%, have been denounced at least once. In light of the 1547 denunciations filed during this same sixty year period, this small percentage suggests that a few multilateral agreements have been denounced by multiple states. As a consequence, it is likely (but not certain) that the US unilaterally exited more treaties than an "average" country, not just in absolute number but also as a proportion of treaties entered. If someone else can find a direct analysis... by all means, that would be a better answer. Clearly a database exist (with per country data) and was used by Helfer, but it doesn't seem to be public. Barely quantitatively, Helfer's paper only says about the US aggregate behavior: The unilateralist behavior of the United States provides a salient
example. The United States has recently refrained from ratifying—
or has withdrawn from—numerous multilateral agreements that
are widely ratified by other nations and that it at one time championed.
These treaties include the Kyoto Protocol, the Rome Statute
establishing the International Criminal Court, the Landmines Convention, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the Convention
on Biological Diversity, International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights, the United Nations Convention on the
Law of the Sea, and, most recently, the Framework Convention for
Tobacco Control and the Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention
on Consular Relations. By remaining outside these treaties
through non-entry or exit, the United States has, according to
many observers, cast doubt on its commitment to multilateral cooperation. And an important comment on another answer, which might get missed (because there are so many comments under it): regarding the US Constitution Treaty Clause : The body of law governing U.S. foreign policy recognizes three mechanisms by which the United States enters into binding international obligations. The term "treaty" is used in a more restricted legal sense [in the US] than in international law. U.S. law distinguishes what it calls treaties from congressional-executive agreements and executive agreements. All three classes are considered treaties under international law; they are distinct only from the perspective of internal United States law. Distinctions among the three concern their method of ratification: by two-thirds of the Senate, by normal legislative process, or by the President alone, respectively. The Treaty Clause empowers the President to make or enter into treaties with the "advice and consent" of two-thirds of the Senate. In contrast, normal legislation becomes law after approval by simple majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives and the signature of the President. And from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_agreement In the United States, executive agreements are binding internationally if they are negotiated and entered into under the president's authority in foreign policy, as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, or from a prior act of Congress. For instance, as commander-in-chief the President negotiates and enters into status of forces agreements (SOFAs), which govern the treatment and disposition of U.S. forces stationed in other nations. The president cannot, however, enter unilaterally into executive agreements on matters that are beyond his constitutional authority. In such instances, an agreement would need to be in the form of a congressional-executive agreement, or a treaty with Senate advice and consent. The U.S. Supreme Court, in United States v. Pink (1942), held that international executive agreements validly made have the same legal status as treaties and did not require Senate approval. And Pink has been reaffirmed more recently in Dames & Moore v. Regan: More recently, in Dames & Moore v. Regan, the Court
relied upon, inter alia, the Pink case to sustain President Carter’s
suspension of claims pending in American courts against Iran as
required by the Hostage Release Agreement of 1981, supra, and,
more directly, by Executive order. In light of Pink, the Court indicated
that ‘‘prior cases * * * have recognized that the President
does have some measure of power to enter into executive agreements
without obtaining the advice and consent of the Senate.’’ So simply relying on the US Constitution notion of "treaty" is misleading when there are two more categories under US law that are also treaties under international law. And the Congressional source on which that Wikipedia page is mostly based also says The Constitution is silent on procedures for modifying or terminating
treaties, and agreement has not been reached between the branches on a single proper mode. [...] Twice in recent years the method of terminating a treaty [in the narrow sense, i.e. one approved by 2/3 of the Senate] has
raised serious controversy within the United States. In 1978, President
Carter terminated the defense treaty with the Republic of
China [Taiwan] without the concurrence of either the Senate or Congress
when he established diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic
of China. In 1977, the new Panama Canal Treaty terminated
the 1903, 1936, and 1955 treaties with Panama. Although a new
treaty was approved by the Senate, some contended that the termination
of the earlier treaties required an act of Congress, thus including
approval by the House of Representatives as well as the
Senate. It also talks of controversies of treaty (again in the narrow sense) modification and reinterpretation by the Executive, which are more numerous (a bit too long to quote here). Also some treaties (in the narrow sense, i.e. 2/3 Senate approved) have an explicit clause that allows the President to terminate them; e.g. KORUS : If the President does invoke Article 24.5, and no further action is taken, KORUS will terminate 180 days after such notice is given. And enough scholars think that the President can exit a treaty by himself , regardless of clauses in the treaty: Whereas it was generally understood throughout
the nineteenth century that the termination of treaties required congressional
involvement, the consensus on this issue disappeared in the early parts of the
twentieth century, and today it is widely (although not uniformly) accepted that presidents have a unilateral power of treaty termination. This after Goldwater v. Carter (on Taiwan defense exit), Kucinich v. Bush (on ABM exit) etc. Finally, there's the issue of (extended) provisional application of treaties (in the narrow sense) that have been signed but not ratified, e.g. (quoting from Congressional service again): An example of a treaty pending in the Senate that has been provisionally
applied by executive agreement is the maritime boundary
agreement between the United States and Cuba, signed December
16, 1977. Originally, an executive agreement, by exchange of
notes on April 27, 1977, had established a modus vivendi on a provisional
maritime boundary to serve during that year while negotiations
were underway. The treaty signed on December 16, 1977,
contained a provision that the parties agree to apply the terms of
the agreement ‘‘provisionally’’ for a period of 2 years from January
1, 1978. According to the Department of State, ‘‘this agreement
constituted an executive agreement contained within the text of the
treaty.’’ The treaty was transmitted to the Senate on January 23,
1979, and debated in the Senate, but final action was not taken.
The treaty is still pending in the committee. [as of 2001] The provisional application was subsequently extended for additional periods, most recently
by an exchange of notes of December 30, 1997 and March
30, 1998. So such a "treaty" is applied for 20+ years and then denounced (say by a new president) does it really look like nothing happened, no exit from the "treaty" from the viewpoint of the international community (or other party to the treaty)?! And the middle category of congressional-executive agreements is also exteremely important in practice: In part because the enumerated powers of Congress and the president have been interpreted broadly, most agreements that are proposed as treaties could also have been proposed as congressional-executive agreements. For that reason, the U.S. government has frequently chosen to use congressional-executive agreements rather than treaties for controversial agreements that are unlikely to gain the required supermajority in the Senate . Examples of contentious proposals addressed in the form of congressional-executive agreements include the 1992 North American Free Trade Agreement ( NAFTA ) and the agreement whereby the United States became a member of the World Trade Organization ( WTO ) in 1995. And yes, these congressional-executive agreements are constitutional too because of Field v. Clark . NAFTA was challeged in Made in the USA Foundation v. United States , but this challenge was stopped in the Eleventh Circuit, which cited Field v. Clark (among other things) in their decision. The congressional-executive agreements are actually how most of the US international-relations sausage is made nowadays (quoting the Congressional service again) In the period since 1939 executive agreements [this refers to both congressional-executive and just executive] have comprised more than 90 percent of the international agreements concluded . [...] Most executive agreements are concluded under the authority of a statute [and are called congressional-executive in other places; ...] 88.3 percent of international agreements reached between 1946 and 1972 were based at least partly on statutory authority [meaning they were congressional-executive rather than purely executive]. So you can't just pretend these don't matter just because they're not called treaties in the US law. So arguing from "first principles" by just quoting the Constitution is a pretty poor way to come to any conclusion on this question because: (i) what is actually a treaty in US vs international law and (ii) termination/exit procedures are unclear in US law (for some categories) and varied in practice. | {
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32,892 | I was listening to Pod Save America and they were talking about the upcoming mid-terms and the "fact" that 46 house Republicans are retiring. According to them, that is unusual. Are there 46 House Republicans retiring? Is that unusual? Edit: The exact quote is: "Forty-six. Forty-six Republican House members have announced
they're not running again. That is a huge number of retirements." From the pod title "Exquisite Presidential Leadership" at approximately 19m:50s. | It depends on how exactly you count. For example, not contesting a seat because you are running for Governor is not really "retiring", nor is losing your primary. Among those not contesting their seats, "FiveThirtyEight" counts 26 pure Republican retirements and 8 Democrats. This is higher than average and obviously skewed but not truly exceptional. In 2008, 27 Republicans and 3 Democrats walked away from political life. In 1992, 23 Republicans and 35 Democrats quit (following the House Banking Scandal ). Those were both during Presidential election years. In the mid-terms in 1994, 9 Republicans and 27 Democrats resigned (and there was a massive anti-democrat swing). | {
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32,897 | It seems like there have been a number of unusual ideas in recent American politics. And that's saying something because, as a foreigner looking in, it's never seemed normal. Is Space Force being taken seriously? I just don't understand why it's being considered. Space travel isn't cheap. There aren't "enemies" in space. The potential dangers that could come from space, asteroids or solar failure or, more realistically, solar flares aren't issues specific to a nation. Also the United States is a formal signatory of the Outer Space Treaty , which prohibits many conventional and unconventional military activities. (Thanks, TylerH ) I'm not American. | The administration is taking it seriously, but so far has had trouble getting the funds for it as well as fully convincing the Pentagon that a 6th force, separate from the Air Force, is really needed. The motivating enemy is apparently... In 2007, China blew up a dead weather satellite with a missile, creating a massive debris cloud in orbit, which Pence called "a highly provocative demonstration of China's growing capability to militarize space". As for the infighting and funding... But the monumental task of standing up a new military department, which would require approval by a Congress that shelved the idea last year, may require significant new spending and a reorganization of the largest bureaucracy in the world. And the idea has already run into fierce opposition inside and outside the Pentagon, particularly from the Air Force, which could lose some of its responsibilities. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis last year said he opposed a new department of the military "at a time when we are focused on reducing overhead and integrating joint warfighting functions." This week [of Aug 10], Mattis said the Pentagon and the White House "are in complete alignment" on the need to view space as a warfighting domain. But he stopped short of endorsing a full-fledged Space Force. [...] The White House intends to work with lawmakers to introduce legislation by early next year, a senior administration official said, with the hope of standing up the first new military department since the Air Force was formed in 1947. [...] Some members of Congress advocated last year for creating a Space Corps in the Air Force Department, similar to how the Marine Corps is part of the Navy Department. Elevating the proposal to create a new department will mean additional Pentagon bureaucracy, critics say. [...] Before Trump's announcement in June that he wanted a Space Force, Mattis and Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson had cautioned against creating new Pentagon bureaucracy to address space issues. James said she thinks they're now "stuck because the president announced this by surprise." Gen. David L. Goldfein, the Air Force's top officer, and Gen. Stephen Wilson, the vice chief, sat quietly in the Pentagon auditorium as Pence spoke. Air Force Gen. Paul Selva, the Pentagon's vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a briefing with reporters that the Pentagon is very much in favor of establishing a Space Command as a way to speed up efforts in space. But when it comes to establishing a new branch of the military, Selva said, "there's an obligation" to present a set of options that can be presented to Congress. | {
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32,928 | PRC regularly devalues its currency to promote export. On the other hand, Turkey is worried about the plummet of its currency. Why two outcomes in the same type of case? | Trade surplus/deficit Devaluing one's currency means mostly one thing: It becomes more expensive to import products from abroad, while one's own products become comparably cheaper to buy on the world market. That means a country which exports lots of goods wants to devalue their currency while a country which imports lots of goods does not. In 2016, Turkey imported goods worth US $186 billion and exported goods worth US $156 billion. That means they had a trade deficit of 19%. However, China only imported goods worth US $1.23 trillion and exported goods worth US $2.27 trillion in 2016. That means they had a trade surplus of 84%. Which is why China wants to devalue their currency while Turkey does not. Debt management Another reason to devalue one's currency is that it reduces any debts denoted in that currency. If a country has a problem of too much public and private debt, then an easy way to get rid of it is to cause a hyperinflation. China happens to have a debt-to-gdp ratio of 47.6% while Turkey only has one of 28.3%. When you look at the private debt (debt of private citizens and companies in the country), you see the same picture. Private debit in Turkey was 170% of GDP, while China's is rumored to be over 300%. Which is why reducing debt through causing inflation seems more attractive to China than to Turkey. Foreign investor relations So why don't all countries get rid of their debt by adding a few zeroes to their bank notes? Because inflating your currency is a surefire way to drive away any foreign investors. Nobody will invest money into your country when that money might be worth nothing in a few years. Investors want stable currencies. Again, we observe the same difference in motivation between Turkey and China here. Turkey is actively inviting foreign investors , but China is quite reluctant to allow foreign economic influence in their country . | {
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32,947 | In the United States there are a number of liberal comedians who emphasize their liberal status in their comedy, and in particular a wealth of liberal comedy focusing on recent events/news. To name a few off the top of my head, there is "The Daily Show", "Last Week Tonight", and "late night". I'm unaware of any comedians that emphasize conservative commentary in a humorous manner. I'm aware of comedians who are also conservative, but not ones making regular conservative commentary using humor. Are there shows like this on the conservative side that I'm unaware of, and if not is there any reason for this to be primarily a liberal/Democratic phenomenon? | Dennis Miller is an openly conservative comedian. He had several television shows, although most have been short-lived since he came out as a conservative after 9/11. His radio show lasted until 2015. Miller is probably the most political, but there are other conservative/Republican comedians. Ranker.com has a list. Rush Limbaugh also included comedy in his show, although it often had a more serious tone. The farding in cars (pronounced like farting) show was pure comedy. Greg Gutfeld has a comedy show on Fox News. The 1/2 Hour News Hour was supposed to be the conservative version of the Daily Show . Jesse Watters hosts Watters' World, which is one of those reality comedy shows that goes around asking people on the street questions. It's also worth noting that it is easier to make comedy about the president than other politicians. So liberal comedians are more obvious when it's a Republican president. When it's a Democrat, liberal comedians have a different set of jokes. So right now, it is unsurprising that most people remember the liberal jokes about Donald Trump. Trump also took advantage of comedy. Is there anyone in the US that does not know that Trump wanted to build a wall, ban Muslims, and Make America Great Again? When liberal comedians pilloried those positions, they also spread them. Hillary Clinton's more nuanced positions didn't draw as much criticism nor repetition. People also tend to ignore the jokes about candidates they like. This leaves the unpopular Trump an open target. Meanwhile, people forget about fifty-seven states and the objectification of Kamala Harris . Much of comedy is aimed at twenty-somethings. People at that age tend to be more liberal than their parents and grandparents. For the most part, they pay little in taxes, so they have little concern about what has traditionally been one of the main Republican issues. They aren't the best market for conservative humor. This pushes conservatives into other venues: talk radio (Limbaugh); sitcoms (Tim Allen, Roseanne Barr, etc.); conservative news (Gutfeld, Watters, etc.). Meanwhile the liberals dominate the late night comedy space. It's interesting that Gutfeld is one of the more libertarian conservatives. Because a lot of comedy is about things that conservatives avoid discussing: jokes about farting and other offensive bodily functions; sex. Limbaugh disclaims the farding/farting comparison now. Howard Stern's view on taxes is quite conservative even while his views on sex aren't. Perhaps the real problem is that taxes just aren't that funny to people who pay them. So Stern and other comedians don't do a lot of tax humor but do do a lot of not so conservative body humor. If you select a group for their willingness to make body humor jokes, perhaps it is not surprising that their politics are often not conservative. | {
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32,991 | The recent headlines regarding the current administration revocation of clearances, prompts the question. I would like to understand why this group of ex-government personnel (not the line-level personnel) has clearances and how the stakeholders benefit from sharing information. I realize that this a politically charged topic and no inference should be drawn from the question. My work experience has brought me face to face with clearances: no explanation is necessary as to how they work. Please stay focused on the question. | Security clearances is something that qualifies you as an individual. It means that you have been evaluated and trusted to a determined security level. If you are working at Company A and get a security clearance L1 and you stop working there, you do not lose the security clearance. Of course, this does not mean that you can just appear at Company A and casually ask to see their sensitive files; since you no longer need to access that data to do your job you are not allowed access to the information. If you then see a job offer at Company B that requires a L1 security clearance, then you can apply and "use" the same security clearance and use it to access to the information related to the new job. You can repeat until the clearance is revoked. This approach has several advantages: Once cleared, if you want to change jobs you know beforehand that you qualify for any job that requires your security clearance. The government avoids checking you again and again. Since the procedure seems rather complicated and slow, that helps a lot. In case a former employer needs to contact you for something related to your previous work, you are already cleared. At the workplace site there are some questions about security clearances; this one gives more details. | {
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33,135 | From an article published in June 2018 on thelocal.de: Berlin has been one of the main lenders to Greece during its debt crisis. While conservative parties warned that supporting Greece would come at the cost of the German taxpayer, new figures show Germany has made money on the crisis.
The German government released figures on Thursday in response to parliamentary question from the Green Party which show that Germany has made €2.9 billion in interest payments on Greek bonds since 2010. Since 2010 Germany has been buying Greek government bonds as part of an EU deal to prop up the struggling Greek economy. The bonds were bought by the Bundesbank and then transferred to the federal treasury. Initial agreements with the government in Athens set out that any interest earned on the bonds would be paid back to Greece when it fulfilled its reform obligations. But the figures published by the government on Thursday show that Germany made €3.4 billion in interest payments on the bonds and only paid Greece €527 million in 2013 and €387 million the following year. That left €2.5 billion in profit, plus interest of €400 million on a loan from the KfW development bank. The Green party have responded to the figures by calling for debt relief for Greece. “Contrary to all the myths spread by people on the right, Germany has profited massively from the crisis in Greece,” said Green MP Sven-Christian Kindler. “It can’t be the case that the government makes billions in profits on Greek debt which it puts into the German budget,” he added. [...] On Thursday, Eurozone ministers will try to resolve their differences over the terms of Greece’s departure from its massive bailout programme with splits over the degree of debt relief needed by cash-strapped Athens. Is this the correct/complete picture? Did Germany make a profit on the bailout, apparently not [yet] paying back the interest? Or are there additional conditions attached? Note that this issue of interest return apparently only applies to the third bailout . Also Germany was (obviously) not the only country involved: In 2012 with Greece on the verge of bankruptcy, fellow Eurozone states rallied round to rescue one of their own. Part of the bailout package they agreed was to use almost 27 billion euros to buy up Greek debt to prevent a vicious circle that would see the country facing more and more expensive borrowing costs. At the time, the countries agreed that they should not profit from this action and that the interest paid to them by Athens linked to the bonds they had bought should be returned. To this day, that interest amounts to almost €8 billion (More precisely €7,838,000,000, according to an email sent by EU finance commissioner Pierre Muscovici to MEPs). Some of this money has been sent back to Greece but much of it remains in the hands of other European countries. [...] According to Euronews’ calculations, the Bundesbank, due to its position as the largest of Europe’s central banks earned €2 billion of interest since 2012 on the debt they purchased from Greece. France took €1.58 billion and Italy €1.37 billion. Documents obtained by Euronews confirm the figure for France, officials from other countries would not confirm or deny the amounts by the time this story was published. | No. As long as the original credit of 330 billion euros is not paid back, you can hardly argue that the interest should be considered as a profit. In fact, the starting time for interest payback has just been suspended by ten years, to 2033 - according to the German Department of Finance, this amounts to 34 billion dollars of unpaid interest. Additionally, the Greens are falsely implying the interest directly goes to the German budget - not true, it remains on a frozen account : Google Translate: When the SMP profits for 2014 were to be passed on to Greece, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, newly elected by the Greeks, and his financier Yanis Varoufakis had canceled the agreements from the then second aid package. The funds were kept in a blocked account by the ESM. The Greens, however, have given the impression that all these profits have flowed into the federal budget. The opposite is the case! The SMP profits were paid to Greece for three years. Only the years 2015 and 2016 are "lost" for the Greeks - by their own fault. And in 2016, Greece was promised that the country would be paid back the money in the blocked account, as well as all SMP profits starting in the 2017 financial year. That's exactly what the Eurogroup decided. Lying, without blushing, also is possible for the Greens! Quick calculation The ESM aides for Greece are currently at 176 billion euros . Germany takes over 27% of the ESM, So 47,5 billion are paid by Germany. The so-called profit of 2,9 billion is about 6% of this figure. Compare this to Eurozone inflation of 12% from 2010 to 2017. The profit does not even cover inflation losses. | {
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33,197 | In George Washington's " Farewell Address ", the first President specifically warns about the dangers of political parties. He admits that people tend to naturally align in groups, but also warns that political parties and bias can weaken the government and the unity of the Republic (look where we are today in our national unity: not so great). He warns that parties can lead to alternating domination over each other and to efforts to exact revenge upon one another, causing each side to commit atrocities against the other. He believed that ultimately political parties tend to push the people to seek security in an individual rather than the collective whole of the Republic (Candidate X being the "answer" rather than "the people as a whole"). This in turn can lead to despotism. Even today, if you look around you can see each party trying to dominate over the other, and making major moves to keep that domination (gerrymandering district lines to keep power, calling for multiple recounts when they don't win in contested states/districts, skewing polls to discourage voters, using the free press as a propaganda tool, using external organizations (PACs) to out-raise each other financially as a legal loophole to campaign finance laws, need I go on). So the question is: why wasn't a safeguard put into place to ensure parties could NOT exist in the federal government of the USA? To keep ALL government elected officials independent and only accountable to their local constituents for representation rather than their party? | A safeguard WAS put into place. We call it the Electoral College (although it is not named as such in the Constitution). It failed miserably at that goal. The original vision when the Electoral College system was devised had three aims: To prevent political parties from dominating politics. To prevent a populist from getting elected to office. To "handicap" larger states so smaller states could still have a voice. To prevent political parties, the original text of the Constitution required each member of the Electoral College to cast two votes for President (one of which could not be for someone from that elector's home state (to prevent the " favorite son " problem). The top vote-getter would be the President, and the 2nd-place vote-getter would be the Vice President. The idea here is that the President and Vice President would likely be from different parties, since nobody runs for 2nd place. Constitutionally, the Vice President is the head of the Senate, so the thinking was that the differing political ideologies between them would force them to work together to achieve some compromise or consensus to get things done. This plan went sour very, very quickly with the elections of 1796 and 1800 respectively. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were bitter political enemies. In 1796 with Adams as President, Jefferson leveraged his position as Vice President to attack Adams' policies, and the Adams administration turned out to be a very dysfunctional government. The election of 1800 was even worse. Both parties attempted to gerrymander their electoral districts to sway the vote, and the shenanigans resulted in a tie. If nobody gets a majority in the Electoral College, the Constitution says that the House of Representatives then votes to appoint the President. Both parties tried to collude with other factions within the House with endless ties as the end result. It took 36 ballots to finally break the tie, with Jefferson and Adams swapping their President and Vice President seats. Because the two back-to-back election cycles were such a colossal disaster, the 12th Amendment was passed, subtly but fundamentally changing how the Electoral voting system worked. Under the 12th Amendment, electors still cast two ballots, but they are marked specifically one for President and one for Vice President. This change basically abandoned the idea that the runner-up would be from the opposing party, and the President and Vice President have run together strategically on the same party ticket ever since. The idea that we could have a truly bipartisan government is a great idea in theory, but history has shown us that it was completely unworkable in practice (at least, with the system they tried anyway). In my personal opinion, politics always devolves into the worst form of tribalism no matter how great or small the stakes. In a naive, idealized form of democracy, elected representatives carry forward the values of their constituents in national policymaking. In reality, however, most elections are not about voting for your own values; they're about voting against the other guy's values, because those values will destroy the country. Political parties are the inevitable result of people banding together to prevent the other side from "winning", rather than a mechanism for carrying forward one's own ideals. This was as true in the 18th century as it is today. This isn't just an American thing; you see this in every democratic country in the world. Politics being what it is, political parties -- no matter how much we might wish it weren't so -- are an inseparable property of a representative government. | {
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33,204 | According to this video (from @3:05 to 3:40), Neil deGrasse Tyson says believing in something that is wrong threatens democracy. But this...
but this whole thing-- it's just a symptom of a larger problem.
There's a growing anti-intellectual strain
in this country that many th... that may be
the beginning of the end of our informed democracy.
O-Of course, in a free society,
you can and should think whatever you want.
And if you want to think the world is flat, go right ahead.
But if you think the world is flat and you have influence
over others, as would successful rappers
or even presidential candidates,
then being wrong
becomes being harmful--
to the health, the wealth,
and the security of our citizenry. If that is true, then how we are gonna define what is a wrong belief and which one is legitimate? | Yes and no. A democracy is merely a memetic system: it's a set of ideas codified into formal laws and informal ideology and norms. As such, specific beliefs can objectively undermine this memetic system, if they are popular AND contrary to the system's stability. A belief that a religious deity is strongly opposed to democracy can easily undermine democracy, if that belief belongs to a dominant religion. For example, both original Judaism (which codified G-d anointed kings and priestly hierarchy) as well as 7th century version of Islam are not very compatible with democracy. Neither are the religious beliefs enforced by, for example, the Tokugawa Shoganate, the Meiji Restoration, or the Russian Orthodox Church. A belief that a strong ruler is beneficial to the nation and that democracy is actively bad (for example, a view held by a large portion, if not an outright majority, of Russians who survived the 1990s; where even the word "democracy" is used as perjorative), is very threatening to democracy. Something similar happened during Germany's transition from the Weimar Republic in 1930s. Marxist beliefs (or, to be fair, let's restrict ourselves to Leninist-Stalinist ones, to exclude things like Trotskyism or anarchism) actively undermine democracy at the very least based on historical precedent (any country that implemented them, ended up as a totalitarian one); this was the official position of US government for a long time; up to and including prohibiting immigration for people who professed to hold such beliefs. More in line with Tyson's assertion, some beliefs can be so harmful in their consequences that they threaten the actual society, meaning that there just won't be a socium to sustain democracy if their holders have their way. To take an apoliticized example, imagine a sect whose members believe that AI is far superior to humans and that humans don't deserve to exist as a species. Imagine that sect's leader gaining a position as a leader in a powerful tech conglomerate, a blend of Google/Facebook/Monsanto/Pfizer/Amazon. They would be in an actual, somewhat practical position to both develop a general purpose malicious AI (and it doesn't have to be Sci-Fi "Skynet" type malicious, just mundane Paperclip maximizer ); and some sort of bioweapon which can wipe out humans. Having said that, as other answers noted, this general fact is not easily translatable into policy , for two reasons: It is actually very difficult to objectively determine which beliefs threaten democracy. Some people deeply believe that capitalism threatens democracy while the others believe that socialism is the threat. Some people believe that specific political beliefs threaten democracy (Germany forbids Nazi propaganda), while others believe that forbidding ideas threatens democracy (US freedom of speech protections explicitly protecting even Nazi propaganda). Along the latter lines, there are people - including US Founding Fathers - who argued that prohibiting ideas is more threatening to democracy than any ideas themselves. This is not to be confused with Tyson's assertion, which, for all its grandiose wording, is of a much more limited nature. All Tyson asserts, is that some beliefs may produce objective harm to the nation's population . It may not necessarily rise to the level of threat to "democracy" (but at the extremes, it may - see initial bullet points), but it may definitely cause harm. For example, before 19th century, there was a widely held belief that gentleman doctors did not need to wash their hands. That belief literally and objectively murdered uncountable mothers and babies at birth; until the end of 19th century. Similarly, as another answer noted, the belief that vaccines cause autism, objectively harms people's health (an in a case of truly severe pandemic may cause socium to fully disintegrate, or at least fully reform - see the social, political and economic effects of Black Death in Middle ages, or effects of Eropean germs on Native American nations). There is however a difference in most cases , between "harm to society" and "end to democracy", which for some reason Tyson glosses over. | {
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33,248 | I came across this xkcd comic joking about a flag with a phone notification bar, which made me wonder what restrictions there are on flag design. Is there some kind of committee that approves national flag designs? If I became the leader of some new country, would I be able to make the flag whatever I wanted, for example: | International politics is anarchy. There is no such thing as an international committee which needs to approve flags and other national symbols. However, more eccentric designs might run into some practical problems. When your design is too intricate, then it might be difficult to reproduce faithfully. You might have to live with some people using a simplified version of your flag. For example, the flag of Iran has two very thin bands with the inscription of the Takbir on it. This detail is often omitted on low-resolution depictions. When your flag violates any copyrights or trademarks, then anyone using the flag abroad might run into legal problems. You can of course add exemptions to the intellectual property laws in your own country to protect your flag, but you can't enforce these world-wide. When your design is not appealing to your own citizens, then they won't use your flag much. That means you lose the opportunity to use it as a symbol to instill a feeling of national pride and unity. This TED talk about flag design offers some very useful tips for good flag design. The talk mostly centers around the 5 basic principles of flag design : Keep it Simple: A flag should be so simple that a child can draw it from memory. Use Meaningful Symbolism: Everything in your flag should have a meaning which relates to your country's history, culture or values. Use 2-3 basic colors This makes the flag much easier to memorize and cheaper to reproduce. No Lettering or seals: If you need to write down what your flag represents, your symbolism has failed. Also, people might not be able to read it from a distance or in a low resolution representation. Be Distinctive or Be Related: Either create a truly unique design or a design which relates to the flags of other countries you have a close relationship with. | {
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33,257 | It is my understanding that people on the right side of the political spectrum generally believe in individualism in the sense that they support smaller government and the right of individuals to make decisions for themselves. Yet many conservatives also oppose individualistic choices when it comes to personal decisions, for example on the issues of legalized prostitution, abortion, and gay marriage. How does conservatism address this dilemma? | tl;dr - Conservatism does not explicitly support individualism. This is a by-product of its central claims. Conservatism is entirely comfortable with both individualism and the social policies you mentioned. What is Conservatism? First, it's important to understand what the philosophy of conservatism is. At its core, conservatism is an anti-utopian philosophy. While other philosophies like anarchism and socialism make grand claims about what we can accomplish by changing society, conservatism's central claim are two-fold: There is a limit to what human reason can accomplish. There is therefore a limit about what government can accomplish and how much social progress is really possible. And therefore, we should be skeptical about governmental change, especially in social policy. We should make slow, measured changes, rather than dynamic ones. How does it relate to individualism? Individualism is merely a by-product of the core conservative claims. In the United States, there is a history of rugged individualism. So if you accept that we should make only slow measured changes, if any, then you implicitly support a kind of individualism. Regarding the social policies you mentioned, conservatism is skeptical about producing social change through governmental action. Changing existing laws (for example) to legalize prostitution or gay marriage would be examples of producing social change through legislation, so supporting them would be un-conservative. | {
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33,299 | This is a question I have wondered more than once while browsing statute. Many states have laws against bestiality. For the life of me, I have never heard of this practice actually occurring and I find it hard to imagine the public policy problem these statutes are intended to resolve. Why do we have these laws? Although I have access to a law library (and therefore a law librarian) I am too embarrassed to ask them. Asking why some law is in place is often difficult. I'm looking for: Public statements by legislators regarding the need for these laws and why they are being supported. Every state I am aware of has these laws, so there should be plenty of extant material. Applicable statements from relevant judicial decisions. Statements from executive agencies which enforce these laws. Scholarly discussions about bestiality laws. | As Wikipedia indicates such state laws seem to have a curiously bimodal distribution. Some are two (or more) centuries old, and some are pretty recent, e.g. Arkansas has it since 1819 Alabama has it since 2014 South Carolina has it since 1712 South Dakota has it since 2003 Vermont has it since 2017 Virginia has it since 1661 I suspect the old laws have a pretty religious basis, or at least based on Victorian morality , like some sodomy laws of the time. Some of the newer ones seem to have a pro-animal-rights lean, e.g. Alaska's has provisions about reimbursing for the vet care of animals hurt this way. I did find one 2017 piece of news headlined "Push to make bestiality a crime in Ohio after man who had sex with daughters' boxers only got 30 days in jail" . According to Wikipedia, Ohio is one of the states with a recent (2017) law in this area. The animal-rights angle is not uncommon relative to other Western societies, e.g. Germany's 2012 ban contemporanous with news about "erotic zoos" and upheld in 2016. The Ohio story has some background: Eight states and the District of Columbia still lack anti-bestiality laws. Some states inadvertently lifted earlier prohibitions on human-animal sex when they were updating their laws to remove sodomy as a crime. The Humane Society of the United States led the lobbying effort to outlaw bestiality, but a much larger coalition, including domestic violence shelters, conservative Christians, law enforcers and psychologists, got behind the law this time. “We were able to explain that this is not just an animal issue,” said Corey Roscoe, the society’s Ohio state director. “This did have ramifications for human violence. Sexually deviant acts are a red flag to other acts of sexual violence.” Since 2005, arrests for animal sex abuse and exploitation in the U.S. have risen dramatically. The number of arrests in 2014 was more than double the total number of arrests in the 30 years between 1970 and 2000. Jenny Edwards, a criminologist in Washington who studies the issue, said the rise has been driven by the Internet. Online forums that exist behind powerful firewalls allow like-minded people to communicate and share animals for breeding and sexual experiences. “It’s been great for deviants,” Edwards said. A decade of research by Edwards also shows links between those who abuse animals and those who abuse other vulnerable groups, including children, women and other family members. [...] The Federal Bureau of Investigation singled out animal cruelty offences in its national crime statistics for the first time last year, in an effort to begin to definitively quantify the problem. | {
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33,331 | If 'anti-Semitism' is no different to 'racism', then why is it necessary to have a separate "...ism" that relates specifically to only one religious/racial group? | The easy answer is the same reason that any language has a word: it serves a useful function. English had a lot of words for rain because it rains a lot in England, and the words used differentiate between various types of rain because there is a useful distinction to make. Antisemitism gets it own word because, for historical and cultural reasons, there is value in differentiating it from racism in general (and also why racism is a specific word identifying a particular subset of bigotry). The historical context of WWII and the holocaust is one obvious reason: the Nazi's systematic murder of Jews on an industrial scale is important in recent history. And antisemitism in the 20th century is specifically tied to Nazi ideology (and consequential fascism) in a way that other forms of racism aren't. Pre WWII antisemitism was also different to racism in general. Limiting this to the UK and America (since we are taking about the English language) a lot of racism was about viewing dark skinned people as fundamentally inferior, which shows up in colonialism and slavery to say the least. Antisemitism of the period didn't view the Jews in the same semi-evolved subhuman terms that characterized more general racism. It had more in common with conspiracy theories, about Jews controlling all the money and being cunning, devious sneaks secretly running things. And not being trustworthy. Basically there is almost no overlap between the phenomenon of 19th century antisemitism (Jews are sneaky, rich and run the world to exploit everyone else) and 19th century attitudes towards black slaves (essentially dumb animals to be exploited and used). They have different immediate motivations and consequences, so of course they have different words. | {
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33,396 | I am wondering about developed countries in general, but my experience (and the focus of this question) is the USA and Canada. There are laws in place to prevent discrimination. It is illegal, for example, to deny service to someone because of their skin color. But what I don't understand, is why those discrimination laws also apply to religion? For example, denying service to someone because they are a Jew is also illegal. If you were to deny service to someone for being a flat earther, or an asshole, or a known felon, I don't think there is any law that would stop you. Yet all three of those things, like religion, is not something anyone is born with (unlike race or sexuality), but a choice. I am well aware that in some countries, religion is not a choice. You could be put to death if you decided to be an atheist or a catholic in many countries, for example. But in the US and Canada, nobody can force anyone to be religious, except maybe for your parents until you become old enough to move out. What I am wondering specifically is what is the justification used to separate certain beliefs (flat earth) from others (religions), and why is it legal to discriminate against one but not the other? Sometimes discrimination against religions even qualifies as racism (anti-semitism is described as a subset of racism in the answers to this question , and discrimination against Islam is usually described as racism in America), but it is obvious that religions are not races, so why is that? I do not condone any discrimination whatsoever, but I just don't understand the reasons behind the laws being the way they are at the moment. | You are looking at this through the eyes of a modern. Time for some history: One of the oldest European settlements on North America was made by Puritans, who were fleeing... government religious persecution*. One of the most influential groups in the formation of America were the Quakers, who came to America fleeing... government religious persecution. The American Founding Fathers were (with a few notable exceptions) men of faith, and since they came primarily from various different and somewhat incompatible flavors of Christianity or generic deism and since there was a long history of flight from governmental religious persecution in their political DNA they wisely decided to prohibit the government from persecuting religions . What constitutes a real religion as opposed to not is a hole with no bottom: categories are inherently fuzzy . But in practice they've been able to make it work well enough. So religion enjoys special protection primarily because it's a historically at-risk group for persecution, especially by other religions. Which means that such protections are still relevant, they prevent a powerful religion from oppressing members of a less powerful faith. | {
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33,485 | If a country was to disband any and all of its military, and sell off its military assets, wouldn't it be an effective way to prevent an invasion? Because after this, it's clear to anyone that this country is not a threat to anyone. No military action against it can be justified. Sure, a neighboring country that still has a military could walk over and occupy it with hardly any effort - but they would have no way to justify this as a "good" or "necessary" deed, not even to their own people or soldiers. Of course this only works in a modern democratic setting. Historically, monarchs probably wouldn't worry about what the common rabble thinks of them. But today - why isn't this being done? | Dogbert has something to say about this. http://www.lostrepublic.com/archives/15741 Imagine a situation where a country was concerned their neighbor would invade them. The kindly watching type (KWT) country looks at their irate and quarrelesome (IRQ) neighbor and rationally evaluates the situation as having a significant potential for the IRQ to attack the KWT. Suppose IRQ believes they have some kind of grievance that can only be answered by war. Or pretends they do. Now imagine that KWT make the change to having zero military, and nothing else is changed. Does this change their evaluation of IRQ? Does it change the evaluation that IRQ holds of KWT? If they anticipate that they can simply drive their jeeps over there and sit down in the president's chair, probably not killing anybody, probably not firing a single weapon, will IRQ be dissuaded or encouraged? Will the rest of the world be outraged by such a non-violent annexation? If all the KWT people can muster in response to the annexation is to put grumpy looks on their faces, does it make big media coverage in the countries that might do something about it? How does it compare to the news play if the KWT military fought fiercely but got brushed aside? In other considerations, the military does lots of other things besides defending the border. They are symbolic indicators of power for the leadership. They can respond to natural disasters such as fire, flood, earthquake, with relief and crowd control and anti-looting efforts and such. They can be places to provide training to people for a wide array of useful skills. The military is a traditional place to stick unmanageable youth until they grow up a little. These are all things that governments traditionally find attractive. | {
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33,528 | Cuba and Venezuela seem to share a lot in common. Both are effectively Socialist dictatorships. Cuba's government has been Communist for many years, while Venezuela has been socialist for much less. I would like to know why Venezuela's socialist economy has failed so catastrophically, while Cuba's has endured for so long? Both nations have governments which own the largest corporations, subsidise food, and limit private enterprise. It seems like these reasons cannot explain the disparity. | The reason Venezuela's economy collapsed was its over-reliance on oil exports. In the last half of the 20th century, the Venezuelan economy focused on growing its oil industry, while relying on imports for most other products. This worked quite well while the oil prices were exceptionally high. It stopped working in 2014 when the global oil price plummeted and the oil industry was no longer generating enough revenue to maintain the imports of critical goods from abroad. This chart shows you the imports and exports of Venezuela over the years (there is a huge gap between 2013 and 2016, but you can see two dots at the right edge which show you the numbers from 2016). Exports went down from 144B to just 26.6B and in turn imports were reduced from 44.5B to 15.1B (in US$). See the Wikipedia article on the economic crisis in Venezuela for details. Cuba did suffer a similar crisis in the 90s , which was caused by the dissolution of the Soviet Union which back then was Cuba's main trade partner. Cuba responded with diversifying their import and export sources and by becoming more self-sufficient in the agrarian sector. Today's Cuba does not suffer from an over-reliance on any one product like Venezuela does. Well, the Cuban sugar industry is important , but not as important as the oil industry is for Venezuela . | {
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33,607 | I know many conservative Americans (some in real life, but mostly on the internet) that are very patriotic - much more than many of their liberal counterparts. On the other hand, these same people, again much more than their liberal counterparts, are very hateful of the government and anything that could infringe on their freedom. These two positions seem to contradict, so what's going on here? How can you on one hand be extremely passionate about your country, but then be anti-government? Note that this feeling of anti-government is not directed towards any single government that exists at a particular point in time, but a feeling that is seemingly directed towards the concept of governance and control as a whole. Ans that does not seem to make sense. If you "love" your country, what exactly is it that you love, if not the government and the rules and structures and culture that it endorses, the history that it establishes, and the people that it protects? What else is there to define a country? Dirt? Apple pie? | Conservatives don't see the government as the "the country." To quote Ronald Reagan in his inaugural address So, as we begin, let us take inventory. We are a nation that has a government—not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the Earth. Conservative love of their nation is independent of its current government. Looking at a speech from Ted Cruz The idea that -- the revolutionary idea that this country was founded
upon, which is that our rights don’t come from man. They come from God
Almighty. And that the purpose of the Constitution, as Thomas
Jefferson put it, is to serve as chains to bind the mischief of
government. The incredible opportunity of the American dream, what has enabled
millions of people from all over the world to come to America with
nothing and to achieve anything. And then the American exceptionalism
that has made this nation a clarion voice for freedom in the world, a
shining city on a hill. Conservatives think what makes America special is that its government is restrained. The American dream doesn't come from what government does, it comes from what its government can't do. What's great about America is what its people do, its government often just gets in the way. The other key component to understanding this issue is that conservatives in America are not anti-government. When it comes to national security they are very pro-government. Much of the celebration of patriotism in America is centered around its armed forces who conservatives see as constantly making heroic sacrifices for the freedom of Americans and people around the world. For an example of how conservatives see the armed forces, see this speech by George W. Bush or basically any other speech by a conservative American politican. We have seen the character of this new generation of American armed
forces. We've seen their daring against ruthless enemies and their
decency to an oppressed people. Millions of Americans are proud of our
military, and so am I. I am honoured to be the commander in chief. I want to thank everybody in uniform who is here today: thank you for
your service, your sacrifice, and your love of America. When a conservative says he loves America, he's saying he loves the natural human institutions that a limitied government have allowed to grow. He loves the churches, communities, families, and busineses that flourish when they are protected but not controlled. He is grateful to the parts of his government that stay within their limited mandate of protection laid out in the constitution; like the armed forces. When he's upset at the government (as he often is), he's upset at it overreaching its mandate. He's mad because that government action hurts the free society he loves. He doesn't love America because it has the worlds best government, he loves America because a restrained government has led to a flourishing society. He wants to conserve that society by protecting it from misguided government action. | {
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33,612 | Any European cities I have ever visited had homeless or beggars on the street. Or these people may not necessarily be homeless but it is clear enough that they are extremely poor and need help from the social security. However, these European countries generally implement the good welfare system due to higher taxation, compared to other developed countries/districts including USA, Canada, Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong. The countries include even the first-world countries like Italy, Germany, France, and my Swedish friend said it is also common in Stockholm. So why is the homeless and beggars so common in Europe (Western and Scandinavia), despite its high-tax, large-welfare system, and why do these people not seem to have access to it? Is it only in prominent urban cities or also common in suburban and rural? EDIT Some people asked me some data source. According to the following data , homeless rate is much lower in Japan and South Korea (.004% and .022%), compared to Austria (.21%), France (.21%), Germany (.14%), Denmark (.11%), Sweden (.36%), UK (.46%), which is still higher than Canada (.09%) and mostly than USA (.17%). Another source is from this Japanese website , on which a Japanese NGO interviewed EU commissioners. The EU commissioners said there are about 900,000 homeless across the entire EU (0.17% based on 508M population) and from the way it is written, it only includes homeless and not beggars. While homeless rate in USA and Canada are on par with that in European countries, they don't implement the high-tax, large-welfare system. So if there are differences, these countries should rather have higher homeless rate. That is the point of my question. And in "European countries/cities", I meant that in Western Europe and Scandinavia, which are economically more developed and have greater social security. | I also wondered why there are homeless people in my home-country Germany even though the social safety system is legally obligated to pay the rent for people who can not afford to do so. In this case, the rent is paid directly by the municipal government to the landlord, so there is no way to misappropriate those funds. So I did some research regarding the reasons for homelessness in Germany. Most sources are obviously in German, so please excuse that I am not able to provide any good English sources. This answer is based on an articles by Nothilfe Mensch e. V. , (a charity organization which helps homeless people), an article by the Diakonie (a church-based charity organization) and an article by Brand Eins (an economic magazine). These sources point out that there are many ways to become homeless, but there is one path to homelessness which seems quite typical: A person gets into a troubling situation in their life. Addictions, job loss, death or destroyed relationships with loved ones, etc. Due to lack of help from their social surrounding, they are unable to cope with their situation. They develop mental health problems which then cause even more of the above problems and eventually the accumulation of debt. They don't pay their rent anymore, so the landlord tries to get them evicted. The eviction is successful and the person gets thrown out of their apartment. They neither have any people who can take them in temporarily, nor the money to pay for a hotel. So they have to sleep on the street. Due to the severe lack of housing in urban areas, landlords can choose their tenants freely. The homeless people are competing with others who seem much more financially and psychologically stable. So they have no chance to find a new apartment. Part of the eviction process is that the landlord needs to notify the social security bureau, who then send a letter to the tenant and inform them about what help they are entitled to. A "normal" person would then make an appointment with the bureau and file a request to have them pay the rent. But some people apparently don't do this. Why? Remember that we are talking about people with severe mental health problems here who are completely overwhelmed by their life situation. In order to obtain help from the social security bureau, they need to open that letter and reply to it. A letter which is usually found among unpayable invoices, legal threats and other problems they really can not deal with right now. In order to receive the help from the state they are legally entitled to, they actually need to become active and request it. This can be a difficult barrier for some people. | {
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33,677 | On the surface, the Skripal poisoning seems like a minor issue on the scale of international politics: a couple of Russian secret service agents poison a couple of Russian citizens in their UK home. Understandably a big enough crime for the pair of assassins to go to jail, but a relatively minor issue in the grand scheme of things compared to an event such as the invasion of Crimea. So why does the UK government raise so much fuss about the whole ordeal? What's the big deal? | One of the primary functions of government is to protect its residents from capricious actions of foreign governments. In fact, one of the tests for a government to be recognized as sovereign is that they reserve for themselves a monopoly on the use of force within their boundaries. Many governments refuse recognition of the various aspirational Palestinian governments precisely because they do not have this. You simply must have this condition to be considered sovereign in your own territory. Because of this, willfully using violence within the borders of another country without their permission has always been considered a red line. Doing that is simply incompatible with recognition of that government as a sovereign entity. The UK really has only two options here; either do nothing and tacitly admit that they will allow Russia to whatever it wants within UK borders (and are thus essentially a client state ), or publicly put a stop to it. The traditional way to "publicly put a stop to it" of course has always been war. | {
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33,883 | Trump administration proposes limiting green cards for those who took public benefits Do immigrants use up more welfare? This data says there is no correlation. Where can I find a scatter plot of welfare spending vs. immigrant rate? Yet this data says immigrants use more welfare (42% vs 27% for natives),
table 12, table 22. https://cis.org/sites/cis.org/files/immigrant-profile_0.pdf How can they both be true? | The two points are not incompatible; the first type of study says that immigrants aren't particularly attracted to countries/states with high welfare benefits, as opposed to (say) high salaries. The second point says that immigrants tend to use more welfare compared to natives once in a country. Now, I don't know if the second (non-peer-reviewed) [CIS] study is correct on this point. But I'm just saying I don't see any contradiction with the first line of inquiry even if this second finding is true. (You may want to challenge the latter on Skeptics SE.) Note that a CATO study finds the exact opposite of the CIS study Overall, immigrants are less likely to consume welfare benefits and, when they do, they generally consume a lower dollar value of benefits than native-born Americans. Good reasons to be skeptical of such think-tank publications (applies to CIS as well). I don't have a lot interest in this topic, but on a quick evaluation, CATO uses dollar amounts and CIS the number of people who ever used welfare in some way (it seems). The former measure is probably less misleading. Actually even using percentage of users (by category of benefits), CATO finds the immigrants use less. That's a more substantive contradiction with the CIS study if that's you're looking for. With such politically motivated studies (both CIS and CATO's), one needs to read carefully the sampling, inclusion criteria etc., and I don't feel terribly inclined to do that now. @John has posted a long profile/criticism of CIS; this bit is most relevant: A September 2015 report by CIS asserted that "immigrant households receive 41 percent more federal welfare than households headed by native-born citizens."[68] The report was criticized on the basis of poor methodology by Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute. Nowrasteh said that the report opted not to examine how much welfare immigrants use, but to examine households led by an immigrant so that the report could count the welfare usage of the immigrant's US-born children, which leads to a misleading estimate of immigrant welfare use. It turns out that the table snippet you have posted (which is from table 12) is actually titled "Table 12. Use of Means-Tested Programs by Household Head". So Nowrasteh's criticism is directly applicable to this table/snipped, even in the newer CIS report you have linked/quoted (which is dated Oct 2016). Nowrasteh turns out to be a co-author of CATO's own study on the matter, by the way. Following the breadcrumbs here, Nowraseth has a more detailed explanation why counting by
household gives an inflated use percentage (basically, immigrant families are larger than natives') Another problem with counting households rather than individuals is that immigrants and natives have different sized households. According to the American Community Survey, immigrant households have on average 3.37 people in them compared to 2.5 people in native-born households. All else remaining equal, we should expect higher welfare use in immigrant households just because they’re larger. CIS should have corrected for household size by focusing on individual welfare use – which is included in the SIPP. He also gets to an obvious issue I had remarked The third issue with the CIS report is that they omitted the cash value of welfare benefits consumed by immigrant and native households. CIS only analyzed the use rates for each welfare program but they do not tell you how much welfare was actually consumed. [...] That CIS did not include any information on the monetary value of the benefits received, which is vital to understand the costs and benefits of various welfare programs not to mention fiscal cost estimates, is noteworthy. @John Doe: yes the CATO study does include illegal immigrants; from its methodology section (page 2), which also helps explain the columns in the tables I quoted above: We define natives or native-born Americans as those who are
born in the United States, in its territories, or to citizen parents
living abroad. Naturalized Americans are those born abroad
who have since become naturalized U.S. citizens. Noncitizen
immigrants are foreign-born people who are not citizens of the
United States and who include green card holders, refugees,
asylees, temporary migrants, guest workers, and illegal immigrants.
Citizen children of citizen parents includes the children
of both native-born Americans and naturalized immigrants.
Citizen children of noncitizen parents are those who are born in
the United States to foreign-born parents who have not naturalized.
Noncitizen children have not naturalized. As noted in several places, including the comments below the question and on page 1 of the CATO study [relevant bit quoted below], there are substantial restrictions in benefits that illegal (and legal) immigrants may claim in the US: Temporary migrants are generally ineligible for welfare benefits.
Lawful permanent residents must wait at least five years
before they are eligible for means-tested welfare benefits, but
states have the option of providing those benefits earlier from
their own tax revenues.
Illegal immigrants are ineligible for
entitlement and means-tested welfare programs apart from
emergency medical care. Naturalized citizens, U.S.-born
children, refugees, and asylees are eligible for all entitlement
and means-tested welfare programs.
These rules have some
exceptions: children of lawful permanent residents are eligible
for SNAP benefits, and states can extend Medicaid benefits
to children and pregnant women regardless of immigration
status. Furthermore, in-kind benefits—such as the National
School Lunch Program; the Special Supplemental Nutrition
Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC); and Head
Start—are available regardless of immigration status. | {
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33,917 | At the moment (Sept. 2018) there's a discussion in the UK whether there should be a "second referendum" on Brexit. In the media there's already a discussion how people would vote. But upon what would they vote? The initial referendum was fairly clear. Should the UK leave the EU, following the Article 50 procedure? This was an option that was available to the UK, as it is a sovereign country. Parliament could decide, and therefore Parliament could also decide to ask the voters. Today however the UK has committed itself to leave the EU by March 2019. There are discussions over the exact terms of a secession agreement. But if no agreement could be reached, a no-deal Brexit would happen. This gives one possible interpretation of the "Second Referendum" - is the proposed EU-UK agreement acceptable, or should the UK choose for a no-deal Brexit? This is of course only possible if there's a proposed agreement in the first place. Voting on "Chequers" (May's current idea of Brexit) is pointless, as the EU already turned it down. Or would the "Second Referendum" instead be the same choice between Remain and Leave? Media polls seem to suggest this, but I don't see how this is an option. The UK cannot stop Brexit anymore, not even if 60% of voters would want to remain. It's the EU which would have to stop Brexit, and do so unanimously . And that seems beyond farfetched, with the current internal strife (Poland and Hungary at the brink of losing their vote, Italy being annoyed at the other 26 not taking refugees, Greece still sore from the bailout). Or am I overlooking a third option? Is there some other Brexit matter where the UK can and must make a yes-or-no choice? | As of September 2018, the answer is that nobody knows. A first unknown is whether there will be a deal to vote on. Clearly, if there is no deal, then "accept the deal" can't be on the ballot paper. A second unknown is whether, having triggered Article 50, the UK can unilaterally untrigger it - though EU leaders have said on several occasions that they would accept the UK back regardless. Under the terms of the European Union Withdrawal Agreement (Public Vote) Bill 2017-19 , the question would be to either accept the deal or to remain in the EU. John MacDonnell, shadow chancellor, said (without endorsing the idea) that any second referendum should assume the result of the first, and that the question should thus be whether to accept the deal, or reject it and leave with no deal . Meanwhile, Justine Greening, former Education Secretary, has advocated a three-way vote with preference voting . Finally, clearly if there is no deal to vote on - perhaps the least implausible scenario that leads to a second referendum - the only possible choice would be whether to remain in the EU or leave with no deal. The point I think is that the choice of question depends on the circumstances in which the referendum is called - who calls it and why. Most of the campaigners in favour at this point are disappointed remainers, who will endorse versions that have a remain option and don't necessarily care which leave options are available. But if it's called by the pro-Brexit side, the deal or no deal version would seem more likely. | {
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33,923 | Donald Trump was reportedly laughed at by delegates while addressing the United Nations General Assembly: In one of the more remarkable moments in the history of the annual UN summit, the chamber broke out in spontaneous laughter at Trump’s claim that “in less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country”. Clearly taken aback, Trump said: “I didn’t expect that reaction, but that’s OK.” Borger, J. (2018). Trump urges world to reject globalism in UN speech that draws mocking laughter. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/25/trump-united-nations-general-assembly-speech-globalism-america I am not entirely familiar with UN protocol, but from what I gather this was rather uncommon and perhaps even a first. Is it? Has something similar ever happen before? | Yes, it has happened before. The following excerpt is from a France 24 article : Light moments are exceedingly unusual in the UN General Assembly, which follows a strict protocol in with [sic] each world leader is escorted to the rostrum for an address on issues of the day. In 2015, Zimbabwe's then 91-year-old strongman Robert Mugabe was met with laughter when he shouted "We are not gays!," part of his longstanding insistence that homosexuality is non-African. | {
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33,937 | In developed countries, rail transport is usually provided at financial loss, and needs to be subsidised by governments . In countries who have refused to do so (mostly on the American continent), passenger rail transport has become anecdotal and rail remains used for freight only, while in countries who subsidise their rail network (mostly on the European continent), rail transport has decreased significantly since the 1950s. Government subsidy leads to many problems such as the imposition of cost-saving measures on rail transportation companies, preventing them from doing their job well. They are constantly looking for small, less profitable lines to close. When it's not the line it's the individual stations that might be considered unprofitable and are closed. They reduce the frequency of services, which by itself makes passenger trains much less attractive as the mean time of waiting for the train increases dramatically, which results in fewer passengers and an even less profitable line. Even if none of the above happens, transportation companies might be unable to buy new vehicles and may have to maintain their service with old and obsolete vehicles. However, rail passenger transportation is, from a purely engineering point of view, much more efficient than road transportation (both private vehicles and buses): Higher passengers per hour theoretically possible on a given line. A road lane can have a vehicle at most every 2 seconds, so if we assume 1.5 per vehicle (optimistic figure) that's 2700 passengers per hour. Rail can have 500 passengers per train and 8 trains per hour easily, that's 4000 passengers per hour. Because rail friction is smaller than that in pneumatic tires, the energy spent to transport each passenger is typically much lower (according to this wikipedia page Passenger transportation by rail requires less than one-tenth of the energy needed to move a person by car or plane ) Maximum speed much higher: a maximum speed of 115 km/h is usual between villages for regular trains; up to 200-300 km/h is common for high speed trains. In most countries cars can only go up to 80-90km/h between villages and 120-140 km/h on an autobahn, but even then traffic congestion makes such speeds rarely attainable, while traffic is planned in advance for trains and is a much smaller problem. (If, like in some countries, trains are running slower and/or traffic is poorly managed, that's because no effort was made and not an inherent flaw of rail.) Much better safety: in Switzerland 2017, there were almost 18,000 people wounded or killed by road, only 57 people wounded or killed by trains (excluding suicides) , this makes road 312 times more hazardous than rail. Train passengers can perform another activity during the ride, an option which is limited in road transport, even for non-drivers, as the comfort and space available is much lower. (Unfortunately some trains can also be uncomfortable but this is due to bad wagon design and not an inherent flaw of rail transport.) Rail transport is resistant to poor weather condition: fog, frost, snow, rain cause fewer problems than with road transportation. Theoretically, by the mechanisms of economic freedom and concurrence, offer and demand, capitalism automatically finds an optimal solution. This does not seem to work for transportation, as the optimal means of transportation (energetically speaking) is not financially profitable and needs to be government-subsidised, while an extremely sub-optimal solution (road transport) is economically preferable. What is the capitalist solution to make rail passenger transportation economically profitable again, like it used to be before road transport was a thing? | The idea that "trains are unprofitable" is quite a bit more complex. First of all it's necessary to look at the main "problem" with trains: They tend to lead to natural monopolies. Setting up a rail network requires a lot of government involvement (otherwise you will never be able to get your hands on all the land you need) and once a rail network is set up it's practically impossible to set up a competing rail network. The result of this is that whoever controls the rails controls the entire market. This causes the government to always be involved with train companies, thus bringing with it the inherent government inefficiency (even though not involving the government at all would be worse, so it's not a case of government failure). Next it's important to look at the primarily socioeconomical benefits (the positive externalities ) of having a rail network. Having a strong public transport system allows skills to move more freely throughout a country and allows employment demands to be met more flexibly. This is especially important for people who are less economically well off. And beyond that trains provide a well developed electric transport option, thus keeping greenhouse gas emissions at a minimum. And also importantly trains are amazing at decreasing peak loads on important roads, thus it's often economical to invest a bit in train travel to prevent a lot more investments in a road network for those two peak hours a day. The reason why trains failed in the US was primarily for political rather than economical reasons. Trains (and other public transport solutions) became "unsexy" politically, whilst at the same time car travel became extremely popular (linked to the "american dream") and subsidized. Both explicitly through investments in the road network and implicitly Road travel is massively subsidised in the sense that the negative externalities of travelling by car, including the release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, are not fully offset, and most major highways—which cost tens of billions to maintain—are still free of tolls. [...] Petrol is cheaper than in Europe (mostly because of much lower taxes). Source: https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2013/08/29/why-dont-americans-ride-trains So the real economical question would be: If all roads would be toll based to account for the road building costs + fuel would be properly taxed, how would that affect train travel? Right now train travel faces economically "unfair" competition in a lot of countries and that's without even considering the positive externalities that train travel brings. | {
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34,010 | Politicians are routinely hypocritical in support of partisan ends. I'll provide a few examples to demonstrate what I mean: When their party's nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court is facing confirmation, they insist that every candidate should receive a fair hearing and an up or down vote. When an opposing party's nominee is in the same shoes, they claim to be proud to play hardball to keep that person off the bench. When their partisans are accused of personal misconduct, they downplay or deny that there was wrongdoing, while they push for harsh accountability when their opponents are accused. When the other party runs up huge deficits they decry that party's gross irresponsibility, and then run up huge deficits themselves without a peep of complaint about their own party's actions. When the other party secures a diplomatic agreement they complain about being too soft on the nation's adversaries, and then when they are in power coo over the positive aspects of the nation's adversaries, presumably in the interests of diplomacy. Politicians who decry government regulation when another party is in power often actively support a great deal of government regulation when they are power. The rare politicians who take long term positions on a bipartisan basis, while hailed as statesmen by some observers are frequently decried as traitors by their fellow partisans. Politicians do not behave this way, because voters don't care, not by mistake, or because their hypocrisy is unlikely to be observed. While an occasional politician may indeed be dumb, as an occupational class, overall and on average, they aren't stupid. Politicians act this way, in part, because they know that they won't pay a political price with voters for taking inconsistent positions or acting hypocritically in pursuit of partisan advantage. And, this isn't because their hypocritical conduct is unlikely to be discovered. The portion of the voting public that is paying attention is routinely made aware of hypocrisy on the part of politicians when in occurs in news reporting, in published opinion pieces, on social media, in discussions with other people about politics, and in attack ads when election season rolls around. It seems to follow logically, that politicians aren't concerned about acting hypocritically because voters and other people whose support they need don't really care about this conduct. Whatever causes this behavior, moreover, has to be pretty fundamental, because this conclusion holds true robustly. While I drew my examples of hypocrisy above mostly from U.S. politics, the observation that politicians aren't worried about hypocrisy and taking inconsistent political positions over time, seems to be fairly universal. The same conduct is routinely seen in every other country with democratic elections of which I am aware. Even politicians in totalitarian regimes act this way, leading to sudden about faces on what is good and bad in regimes like China that sound like they come right out of George Orwell's "1984", and while totalitarian politicians don't have to campaign in democratic election, they too should care somewhat what people think about their actions, because still need public support to be legitimate and need support from leadership group elites. Political theory naively suggests that voters should care about hypocrisy Median voters tend to have fairly stable interests. For example, the extent to which U.S. counties are liberal v. conservative in their electoral behavior in the U.S. on relative basis has been largely unchanged for at least a century and a half. For example, rural Indiana and Arkansas have leaned conservative, while New England and major U.S. cities have leaned liberal since before the mid-19th century, even as the liberal and conservative political parties in the U.S. have flipped. The median voter theorem , which has considerable empirical support, argues that politicians pursue policies that favor the median voter. So, it would naively seem that voters should favor politicians who can make credible long term commitments to policies and political norms that advance their interests, over those who demonstrate hypocrisy who will betray their constituents from time to time. And, as I noted above, information about hypocrisy by politicians is one of the more widely disseminated kinds of information about politicians in our political system and most democratic systems. So, if any information about the conduct of politicians is available and influences voter conduct, information about hypocrisy on the part of politicians should be a powerful force influencing voter behavior. But, empirically, it also seems clear that voters don't care in a way that influences how they vote. There is no evidence that politicians who act or in a hypocritical manner have a harder time getting re-elected. If anything, the reverse is true. More generally, it seems that the public isn't very concerned about hypocrisy by politicians when their concerns are evaluated on the basis of their revealed preferences (i.e. by what they do rather than by what they say), even though many people in the abstract would say that politicians shouldn't be hypocritical. Why? My question is, why do voters not care when politicians are hypocritical in support of partisan ends? Is there any political theory literature that explains this phenomena? | Short answer: everybody hates somebody , and by extension that person/group's cherished pet cause. Seriously. Consider the following conversation: Person A: Hey there gun owner, did you know that you support school vouchers? Person B: I do? Why? Person A: Because the people trying to take your guns away hate them. Meanwhile, in a parallel universe: Person A: Hey there pro-choice person, did you know you hate school vouchers? Person B: I do? Why? Person A: Because right-to-lifers love them. This dialog rarely if ever is spoken aloud, but occurs internally as part of some calculus of politics. And of course, once sides are taken, politics is the mind killer : arguments (and scandals) are soldiers, any concession means aiding the enemy. Hence "hypocrisy". Note that the above narratives are perfectly comprehensible (from a US perspective) regardless of how you feel about any of the issues mentioned. This also explains the otherwise hard-to-explain juxtaposition of certain elements of party platforms like attitudes about economic liberty vs. social liberty. Indeed, a common trope of both history and fiction is that when one is involved in a sufficiently intense conflict, one is faced with the quandry of sacrificing principles in pursuit of one's goals or staying the true path possibly at the cost of victory. Even median voters have hot button issues, and while party platforms enforce a certain amount of adherence any given candidate will be hotter or colder on the radar of any given voter. So the median voter may very will flit back and forth between parties, but the x issue for their particular value of x is the driving force. | {
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34,013 | From a purely political perspective: If his nomination is withdrawn, won't Trump just nominate another conservative judge (who would presumably be confirmed by the republican-controlled senate)? | If senators can draw out the nomination process long enough, they have a chance of having a Democratic majority in the Senate during the next confirmation. Then Trump would have to nominate somebody that Democrats are happy with. | {
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34,053 | During his personal statement in confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Brett Kavanaugh said: This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election. Fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record. Revenge on behalf of the Clintons. and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/national/wp/2018/09/27/kavanaugh-hearing-transcript What in the world could he be talking about that would make people want revenge on him on behalf of the Clintons? | In 2012 when Mitt Romney was campaigning for president, CNN reported on the possibilities for US Supreme Court Justices that may come along with Romney. The Second of nine names was Kavanaugh. (The sixth in their little list was Neil Gorsuch). This is what CNN reported at the time: Judge Brett Kavanaugh, U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit Born 1965. Began his job May 2006 in a court that has seen several of its former members make the jump to the Supreme Court. A former top official in the George W. Bush White House. His nomination to a federal appeals court for the D.C. circuit was held up for three years by Democrats. Senators Patrick Leahy and Richard Durbin later accused Kavanaugh of misleading the Judiciary Committee during his confirmation over whether he helped formulate policy on the detention and questioning of accused terrorists held overseas by the U.S. military. He is relatively young and considered one of the brightest conservative legal minds. He co-authored the Starr Report investigation of President Bill Clinton and clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy and conservative appeals court Judge Alex Kozinski. https://www.cnn.com/2012/09/30/politics/court-romney-list/index.html , bolding by Elliot | {
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34,111 | It's said that the UK's Chequers proposal is "dead in the water" . Different questions here have dealt with UK politicians supporting or opposing the proposal, but I'm interested in the EU's perspective. What issue does the EU take with the proposal, either explicitly (e.g. statements by EU officials naming a specific issue with the proposal) or implicitly (e.g. EU requirements on a final deal, 'EU red lines' , which statements in the Chequers proposal do not meet)? Most of the statements I could find are nonspecific. Some examples (emphasis is mine): President Macron of France : It was a good and brave step by the prime minister. But we all agreed on this today, the proposals in their current state are not acceptable , especially on the economic side of it. The Chequers plan cannot be take it or leave it EU Council president Tusk : It must be clear that there are some issues where we are not ready to compromise and first of all this is our fundamental freedoms and single market and this is why we remain sceptical and critical when it comes to this part of the Chequers proposals Dutch PM Rutte : I’m still optimistic we can come to a joint position later this year and the Chequers proposal in itself is helpful but its [sic] not the outcome . | The EU fundamentally cannot accept the trade portions of the Chequers proposal which in short propose Single Market access for goods from the UK, without requiring the UK to accept freedom of movement. Equally allowing the UK to negotiate separate trade deals outside the EU's tariff and quota system, but then ship goods from the UK to the EU without customs would undermine the EU's trade borders. The Independent has the best summary of all the times the EU has said this is not acceptable, with similar "why" reasons each time. | {
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34,117 | On his Saturday Night Live appearance on the 29th of September 2018, Kanye West spoke on "abolishing the 13th amendment " . (This may have been stewing for a while, but that is when I first became cognizant of it.) 13th Amendment Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Clearly (I believe) he doesn't desire a literal return of race-based slavery. What indications in his other statements and material are there on his actual meaning? this represents good and America becoming whole again. We will no longer outsource to other countries. We build factories here in America and create jobs. We will provide jobs for all who are free from prisons as we abolish the 13th amendment. Message sent with love Screen capture of original source | He seems to have meant amending it (quote below) to remove the clause permitting slavery and forced labour as punishment for a crime . So let us ask this possibly dicey question: What, exactly, was Kanye trying to say? There is a fair chance he was referring to what’s called the 13th Amendment’s “exception clause,” as many speculated on Twitter. It’s the part of the amendment that literally allowed slavery and involuntary servitude to continue across the country, on plantations and within the barbed-wire fences of prisons. Scholars and prisoners’ advocates argue that its impact is still felt today through prison labor. The argument is that: The criminal justice system is strongly biased against poor black people. These people wind up in prisons that are run for profit. Part of the profit made by these prisons comes from forced labour by black people. That profit is partly spent on lobbying for increased use of prison as a penalty for crime, thereby ensuring a steady stream of profitable inmates. Hence this is a continuation of the enslavement of black people under the guise of criminal justice. | {
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34,153 | CRC Resolution No. 2018-002 on the ballot for Broward county in Florida reads: Shall the Broward County Charter be amended to give the Broward County Office of Inspector
General discretion , as opposed to a mandate , to commence an investigation if good cause exists
that an entity or person over whom the inspector general has authority has engaged in
misconduct or gross mismanagement (emphasis mine) I haven't been able to find what, effectively, the difference would be if the office had discretion instead of a mandate . Would appreciate it if someone could shed some light on the terminology and the effects that the different wording would have on their authority. | Well, the resolution includes the suggested amendment to the Broward County Charter at the end: Sec. 10.01. – Broward County Office of Inspector General B. Functions, Authority, and Powers. … (2) The Inspector General shall may commence an investigation if good cause exists
that any Official, Employee, or Provider has engaged in misconduct or gross
mismanagement. The only difference is that the word "shall" is replaced with the word "may". Supposedly, the usage of "may" implies that an investigation is optional, rather than mandatory, for the Broward County Inspector General. | {
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34,181 | I am wondering if compulsory voting systems allow for blank votes. By blank votes I mean an explicit act of choosing not to tick any option. Wikipedia seems to mix blank vote with various types of voting under the umbrella of protest vote, but I am interesting in the particular types of blank and "none of the above", because they somewhat defeat the purpose of compulsory voting. Question: Do compulsory voting systems allow blank votes or "none of the above"? | Belgium has de jure compulsory voting, which is de facto not enforced. Since it is recognized that filtering blank votes would be incompatible with anonymous voting, it is allowed, even when voting electronically. Invalid voting (e.g. picking representatives from different lists) is only possible when voting on paper and officially disallowed, but cannot be punished. However: blank votes are treated the same as invalid votes and as such the meaning that is assigned to the vote is not "none of the above" but "I accept the vote of the decision as made by the valid votes". So if you have 100 voters, 20 of which cast an invalid or blank vote, 40 vote for A and 40 for B, the result will be the same as if 50 of the 100 had voted for A and 50 for B. Election thresholds are also expressed as percentage of the valid votes. | {
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34,217 | Suppose a natural-born citizen of one of those countries principally objects to the notion of monarchy and in particular is unwilling to swear allegiance to a king or queen - are there any rights or privileges that would be denied to them such as getting an ID, a passport, a drivers license etc. ? What about a non-natural person otherwise qualifying for citizenship or a passport? | I have been a Canadian my whole life and I do not recall ever being asked to "swear allegiance" to the monarch verbally. Generally the monarchy is popular in a celebrity kind of way and while there are some anti-monarchists I believe it is not a significant political issue. Since individual rights are important to Canadians (and I imagine similarly to the people of the U.K. and Australia) political views are not a hindrance to living a normal life for the vast majority of Canadians. At this link are people who are openly anti-monarchy and I would guess they have drivers' licenses and passports. New Canadians have to declare fealty to the monarch when they make Canada's Oath of Citizenship . | {
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34,257 | Why is the debate on the composition of the United States Supreme Court so politicised? Many other countries, such as the United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, European Union, and others, have courts that are broadly comparable to the Supreme Court. Yet I've never been aware of a politicised debate on who to appoint to serve in the highest court of those countries. What is it with the United States system that appointments to the Supreme Court are the topic of such a politicised and polarised debate, whereas the same does not happen in other countries? | This is the confluence of a large number of factors, several of which appear in other answers, but I'll focus on just two. Short, vague, and old constitution The United States has one of the shortest (and oldest) written constitutions in the world. It started with less than 5 thousand words and remains under 8 thousand after twenty seven amendments (with one repealed). By contrast, the constitution of India , adopted in 1950, has over 146 thousand words. As a consequence of its brevity, many of the passages of the US Constitution are very vague and non-specific. This means the judiciary has very little to work with. This in turn creates a fertile field for politicization. Something which seems constitutional under one interpretation of one line/section may seem unconstitutional under another interpretation (of another line/section). And the entire constitutionality of something can hinge upon how one defines a given word or phrase. For example, many modern era decisions by the SCOTUS rely on the commerce clause or due process clause. But these don't say much more than "Congress can regulate interstate commerce" and "everyone has a right to due process", respectively. But there is no definition of what "regulate", "interstate", "commerce", or "due process" is (or even "everyone"). As such, how a jurist interprets the constitution—such as what these undefined words and ambiguous, imprecise statements actually mean—becomes a major factor in how that jurist renders decisions and decides constitutional and legal matters. This in turn tends to correlate strongly with political ideology, though in a somewhat skewed sense: it correlates to a party's ideology moreso than the judge's (historically speaking). It is not always easy to predict how a judge will rule when holding a lifetime position, but any given political ideology will have certain judicial philosophies which are more amenable to its goals. The relatively great power of the SCOTUS (far stronger than the UK's), and the lifetime appointments, make it a premium target for shaping the long term political future. Provided you put someone on the court who tends to rule in your favor. Which brings me to the second factor. Conservatives hate it when judges go liberal Seriously hate it. Not that I expect liberals would be any different with a judge they thought would be liberal turning out to be a conservative, but this simply hasn't happened that often. As a historical matter, (federal) judges as a group trend to the political left over their tenure. The people and intellectual groups the judges naturally associated with were already left-leaning, which helped pull them to the left. Thus a self-enforcing selection bias was present: leaning and pulling to the left eliminated and discouraged more ardently right-leaning potential jurists. Eventually, conservatives grew tired of Republican presidents nominating Supreme Court nominees that ended up being liberal. Thus organizations such as the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society arose in 1973 and 1982, respectively. These provided right-leaning legal societies, so jurists wouldn't be pulled to the left by left-leaning colleagues; they could stay firmly entrenched on the right. One of their major goals is to ensure that Republican presidents never again nominate a candidate who wasn't a sure-thing conservative. These are also exactly the organizations who compiled Trump's short list of potential Supreme Court nominees. | {
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34,322 | I did not pay attention to the news for a few days and am completely confused now. Last I saw, Kavanaugh was in the midst of his sexual assault hearings. I thought Trump had said he would let a further investigation be done. Fast forward a few days, I check on the news again, and I am seeing headlines about Kavanaugh already being sworn in and hearing cases as a supreme court justice! I feel like there is a huge piece of news in the middle that is missing, yet I'm trying to Google it and all I find are articles from a few days ago about the sexual assault proceedings, about the FBI doing next to nothing for an investigation, and articles from now about Kavanaugh being sworn in and already sitting in the supreme court. What are we missing? How did this just get fast tracked? Where is the politics in the middle? Where is the news leading up to a vote? Since the sexual assault allegations investigation sounds like a sham according to all the articles I see (many accusations were ignored), how was this allowed to proceed? How did we just go from " Republicans would like this done before elections, but there will likely be a drawn-out affair with investigations and such ," before the weekend to " Bam, it's all done and over with " after the weekend... what happened in between (or didn't happen that should have)? Preemptive disclaimer I am neither for nor against Trump or Kavanaugh, so this is not an "anti Kavanaugh" question, and I would prefer that we try to remain neutral. I don't know if he did or didn't do what he was accused of, and I didn't vote for either Trump or Clinton (though I did vote). But I am surprised about what just happened and am floored by the lack of proceedings between "we claim he raped us" and "he's our justice now" and am looking for the missing link. Update: Thank you to everyone who provided lots of pieces of data, both as answers and as comments! Lots of people have criticized the answer which I ended up accepting. My acceptance of it does not in any way endorse the politics that happened which it describes. Whether or not that answer provides all the details that each side would like heard or justifies what happened is not part of my question. Even if you do not like what happened politically, that answer does answer my question about "How did this just happen?" Several other answers do as well, but I can only accept one. | The situation is fairly complex so I'm not surprised it was confusing. Here's the general rundown (partially pulled from this article for brevity) Sometime in July, Ford (Kavanaugh's accuser) wrote a letter to Diane Feinstein (D-CA) with her allegation that Kavanaugh had assaulted her sometime around 1982. The letter purportedly requested anonymity and Feinstein appears to have honored that request. On September 12, The Intercept was fed the letter by an unnamed source . At this point, the confirmation process was nearly complete and the Judiciary Committee was set to hold a vote. The next few days saw rapid development of the story, as well as two less credible accusations. Ford's name was exposed and reporters interviewed people named in the letter. Democrats would start to demand hearings during this time. On September 27, both Ford and Kavanaugh testified in front of cameras and the Judiciary Committee. On September 28, the Judiciary Committe voted, entirely along party lines, to move the nomination to the Senate Floor. Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ) asked the FBI to investigate the allegations before a final vote. On October 4 the FBI reported back. The gist of the report (not made public) is that none of any of the allegations of Ford or the other two accusers made could be substantiated. The report was criticized for many reasons, most notably that the FBI had not interviewed Ford. On October 6, Kavanaugh was confirmed 50-48 How did this just get fast tracked? Where is the politics in the middle? It wasn't fast tracked. The process was nearly done (almost 2 months of interviews, investigations and meetings with Kavanaugh) when the allegations leaked. The problem for Kavanaugh opponents generally came down to The timing. There's no denying the leak was of tremendous benefit to Democrats . Prior speculation was that red-state Democrats would vote to confirm. The allegation ensured that didn't happen (with all except Manchin citing this as the reason they voted "No"). But it also meant that timing before the mid-term elections were seen as stalling for a post-election vote, when Democrats could potentially retake the Senate and block the nomination outright. There had already been attempts to stall the voting prior to this, and it was widely viewed among Republicans that this was an extension of those attempts. With Republicans in control, there was no convincing them to entertain any more delays. A lack of credible allegations. Ford was the only one of the accusers who made any allegations that could be taken seriously (the last accuser changed her story during a TV interview). She testified, with conviction, that it was Kavanaugh who had assaulted her, but nobody she named could corroborate her story , or even when it could have occurred. The FBI appears to have been unable to shed any light on when it could have happened. The other accusations had even worse credibility, with the second admitting she was quite drunk, and the third making outlandish accusations (that Kavanaugh was part of a sex ring). Ultimately, the vote on confirming Kavanaugh was about whether or not Senators, not the FBI or police, believed he was guilty of this crime. Having had additional (if criticized) background checking done was unlikely to sway too many people beyond what they had already decided. The politics were already set before the allegations. | {
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34,343 | The DUP have threatened to “vote down the budget” if their requirements for Brexit are not met. But what does this mean in practice? Will the Government have trouble passing a budget in this event? | The convention in the UK House of Commons is that the budget vote also works as a confidence vote in the government. So losing a vote on the budget is taken as a vote of no confidence in the government (as is the vote on the Queen's Speech). The last time the government lost a budget vote was in 1885, when Gladstone's government lost 252-264 and the government resigned the following day. Much of UK politics is governed by convention rather than law. The convention was that after losing a confidence vote the government had to call a general election. But there was no law requiring them to do so. The situation changed in 2011 with the Fixed Term Parliament Act (FTPA) which legally requires the government that loses a no-confidence vote to win a positive confidence vote within 14 days or be forced to call a general election. The Budget and Queen's Speech votes do not count as no-confidence votes for this purpose (thanks @MikeScott for pointing that out in the comments). The DUP could first vote against the budget and later vote for the government in a confidence / no confidence motion, where before 2011, the budget vote itself would trigger a general election. And the government wouldn't be (legally) required to hold a confidence vote if they lost a Budget vote. They weren't legally required to previous to the FTPA either but in practical political terms they were forced to; but the FTPA setting out the confidence / no confidence terms more explicitly may give them strong enough grounds to resist. Whether Mrs May could survive as prime minister following losing a Budget vote, and whether the government could plausibly continue in the event of Mrs May resigning, are questions that are very debateable, regardless of what the provisions of the FTPA allow. | {
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34,434 | In following the ongoing Brexit drama, I notice that the Northern Ireland border represents an important sticking point. In particular, both sides agree that there must not be a hard border. Not being familiar with Irish history, I'm curious why, since this sounds very non-standard. From what I have seen, this is because Northern Ireland is a country with split identities: a significant fraction wants to be part of Ireland, while an equally significant fraction would rather be part of the UK. Why can't Northern Ireland just hold a referendum similar to the Scotland independence referendum from a few years ago, and both sides agree to support the results? This would make things so simple. If Northern Ireland votes to stay in the UK then a hard border is obvious and acceptable, since they are now definitely part of the UK and should act in solidarity with them as well. If Northern Ireland votes to join Ireland, the question of a border doesn't arise in the first place (and they remain in the EU). My guess is that doing this would lead to violence, but I don't see why. After all the Scottish independence referendum didn't lead to violence, even though there was a sizable minority of Scotland that didn't like the result. I notice that Northern Ireland did actually have such a referendum in 1973, but oddly that didn't resolve the question: even with the boycott, the 591,820 voters who voted to remain is more than 50% of the electorate so the result seems clear. Apologies if I missed some important background, since I genuinely know little about Irish history. Tangentially related: Why is having border controls in Ireland so problematic for Irish nationalists? & Why is it impossible to leave the Single Market without a hard Irish border? | If you don't understand Irish history then you can't understand anything about Northern Ireland. Briefly, the whole of Ireland used to be part of the British Empire. This was due to some uncommonly bloody history since the Tudor era (roughly 1550 to 1600) in which the Protestant UK invaded Ireland and then tried to suppress repeated rebellions by Catholics. Part of this effort involved bringing Protestant settlers in from Scotland to displace the native Irish Catholics. This led to a strong Protestant presence in the north-east corner of Ireland. When the rest of Ireland won its independence in 1922 this Protestant area created a problem. The Protestant population were accustomed to being in a position of power relative to the Catholics (think Jim Crow ) and would fight to maintain that position. The nascent Irish Republic was not in a position to put down a guerilla war in its north, so a settlement was reached where Ireland was divided along the current border. The area chosen had an overall Protestant majority, but due to the patchwork nature of settlement and the significant Catholic population there are parts of Northern Ireland that are primarily Catholic. These people never accepted the legitimacy of British rule over any part of Ireland. At the same time the anti-Catholic discrimination remained in the North, creating an ongoing undercurrent of Catholic anger. During the 1960s and 70s the Provisional Irish Republican Army (aka "IRA" or "Provos") undertook a guerilla/terrorist war against what they considered to be British occupation. In the 1990s this was ended by the Good Friday Agreement between Tony Blair and Gerry Adams (there were others involved, but they were the key players). An important component of this was the European Union; because both Ireland and the UK were part of the EU the border controls between Northern Ireland and the Republic could be dismantled and citizens of both North and South could simply drive over the border as if it were not there. It's worth considering these border controls some more, to understand why this is such a sticking point. Before the border was opened the border posts had been manned by the British Army, so the IRA attacked them, so they were strongly fortified. If you crossed the border then you had to queue to have your car or lorry carefully inspected by nervous young men carrying fully automatic rifles. The IRA brought guns and explosives into Northern Ireland from sympathisers in the South, so anyone with a Catholic name would be singled out for extra scrutiny (at best). They were widely hated. To reduce the problem of policing the border to something manageable the Army also destroyed smaller roads and bridges that vehicles might otherwise use to evade their checkpoints, and erected fortified watchtowers on hills. In some areas these posts had to be resupplied by helicopter because supply lorries would be too vulnerable to attack. If Northern Ireland were to hold a referendum on union with the Republic then it would fail because Protestants are still in a majority there. However Catholics would still refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of this because in their view it should be the whole of Ireland (North plus South) voting, as Ireland should never have been divided. The word " gerrymandered " generally turns up in discussion of the subject. The UK government now has four basic options to choose between: Remain part of the EU single market, accepting EU rules and regulations, but without the seats in the EU parliament and other decision-making parts of the EU. This is not what the people of the UK voted for in the referendum. (Technically the EU free trade area was not on the ballot paper, but Leave campaigning focussed on issues such as free movement, EU regulations and membership costs which go with the EU free trade area). Implement a "hard border" between Northern Ireland and the Republic. This would mean a return of the hated border controls and quite possibly a resurgence of the IRA. This is not acceptable to the Irish Republic or the EU. It is also something that the UK government previously promised the EU that it would not do. Implement an equivalent border in the Irish sea between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, and keep Northern Ireland in the European common market. This would make Northern Ireland a de-facto part of the Republic for most purposes and hence is not acceptable to the Protestant majority in Northern Ireland. It would also be rejected by many in Great Britain, especially by Theresa May's own party, the full name of which is " The Conservative and Unionist Party ". Crucially, Theresa May's government does not have a majority in parliament at present and can only pass legislation with the support of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which represents exactly those Protestants. So if Theresa May looks like allowing such a thing the DUP will simply yank the carpet from under her. The " Singapore model ": abolish all import controls and duties on any goods from anywhere (anything more selective would run foul of WTO rules ). This would force the Irish government to impose a hard border for traffic leaving Northern Ireland, but at least it wouldn't be the fault of the UK. Some Brexiteers have seriously suggested this, but the economic and political implications make such a radical course very unlikely. Update: Jan 2021 We've pretty much ended up with option 3, softened somewhat by a free trade agreement. You can now cross the NI/Eire border without any checks, but ferrying goods over the sea between NI and Great Britain requires paperwork and possibly paying duties if you can't prove that the goods will stay in the North. Boris Johnson was able to negotiate this and push it through parliament, partly because he had a big enough majority not to need the Unionist parties, and partly because the Labour party decided not to oppose the only deal on offer. | {
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34,462 | In the past (perhaps during her Senate campaign), Senator Elizabeth Warren has mentioned that she has some Native American blood in her geneology. For some reason, Donald Trump has accused her of lying about this, and he's also made fun of her by calling her "Pocahontas". It seems reminiscent of the way he championed the "birther" movement that claimed President Barack Obama was not actually born in the US, and demanded to see his birth certificate. At a rally earlier this year he challenged her to prove it, saying he would donate $1 millon to her favorite charity. Today she released results of a DNA analysis that showed a strong likelihood that an ancestor 6-10 generations ago was Native American, and gave the name of a charity Trump should give the millon dollars to. Trump is now disputing that he ever made that offer (even though the media has been playing the tape of it all day), and other Republicans are saying that it's a really small fraction of her lineage (did she say otherwise?). Why does any of this matter? As far as I can recall, she doesn't refer to this much when discussing legislative policy. What point was she trying to make when she claimed Native American heritage? Are her opponents just trying to catch her in a lie, that she falsely claimed Native American ancestry to try to garner support from that constituency? Or is there more significance to it than that? Senator Warren has given some indications that she might consider a run for the Presidency in 2020. I'd hate to think that something trivial like this could derail such ambitions. | What point was she trying to make when she claimed Native American heritage? There's a few things to consider here Native Americans are a pretty well defined minority group, complete with an actual culture. Warren either sold herself, or heavily implied, that she was a minority, despite the fact that she was clearly not a member of that minority. She has never done anything culturally with Native Americans, nor did her parents live as Native Americans. Warren has been inconsistent on why she did it and how much she knew. In 2012, while running for Senate, she said she did it to " find people like her ". She was listed as a minority for most of her Harvard tenure US Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren said on Wednesday that she listed herself as a minority in directories of law professors in the hopes of networking with other “people like me” — meaning those with Native American roots.
Asked whether she considers herself to be a minority, the Democrat said, “Native American is part of my family. It’s an important part of my heritage.” Last week, Warren said she had no idea that Harvard was touting her as a minority in the 1990s. But two days later, she acknowledged that for years before she joined the faculty at Harvard, she had been classifying herself as a minority professor in a directory of the Association of American Law Schools.
That directory included Warren on a list of minority professors from 1986 through 1995. She then claimed "high cheekbones" as proof of her claim "I have lived in a family that has talked about Native Americans, talked about tribes since I had been a little girl," she said. "I still have a picture on my mantel and it is a picture my mother had before that - a picture of my grandfather. And my Aunt Bea has walked by that picture at least a 1,000 times remarked that he - her father, my Papaw -- had high cheek bones like all of the Indians do. Because that is how she saw it and your mother got those same great cheek bones and I didn't. She that thought was the bad deal she had gotten in life." More recently she has claimed that her parents had to elope because her mother was "too Cherokee" (a claim that seems less likely in light of the distant relationship from her test) My mom and dad were very much in love and they wanted to get married. And my father’s parents said, ‘Absolutely not, you can’t marry her, because she’s part Cherokee and part Delaware.’ After fighting it as long as they could, my parents went off, and they eloped. It was an issue in our family the whole time I grew up about these two families. It was an issue still raised at my mother’s funeral. Warren submitted several recipes for a cookbook entitled "Pow Wow Chow" that appear to have been plagiarized, and from non-Native American sources The 1984 cookbook Pow Wow Chow was edited by Mrs Warren's cousin Candy Rowsey and is billed as a collection of recipes from the Five Civilized Tribes. But it appears that at least three of the five recipes featured in the book were fakes, according to an investigation by Mr Carr. Harvard touted Warren as a minority professor as a way to blunt criticism that the faculty was not diverse (emphasis mine) "The fact that there never have been Asian Americans, Native Americans, gays, lesbians, Latinos, Latinas and women of color [on the faculty] is a subject of major concern," said Wilkins, who is black. Although the conventional wisdom among students and faculty is that the Law School faculty includes no minority women, Chmura said Professor of Law Elizabeth Warren is Native American. Warren identified herself as Native American on a Texas State Bar card Why does any of this matter? The problem, ultimately, is that Warren clearly derived some social benefit from the claims she made. Warren is basically a white woman, but by claiming to be a minority woman she could raise her social standing among her peers by being touted as some sort of ceiling breaker (i.e. being viewed as a a Harvard version of Rosa Parks), instead of a woman with white privilege . While the test does indicate that she indeed has a Native American ancestor, the test does not make her a part of any Native American tribe , which is what the box is meant to indicate. It raises questions about Warren's credibility. Consider that she may be facing off, in the Democratic primaries, against Corey Booker and/or Kamala Harris in 2020 (both are black). It's easy to assume they would want to question her about being labeled a "woman of color". | {
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34,490 | I am assuming that Trump calls Elizabeth warren Pocahontas because at some point in the past she made reference to her Native American ancestry. Is this assumption correct? If so, when/how did she reference her Native American ancestry? Was it on multiple occasions? | The earliest reference I know of is 1986, when she was first listed as a minority professor [S]he acknowledged that for years before she joined the faculty at Harvard, she had been classifying herself as a minority professor in a directory of the Association of American Law Schools. That directory included Warren on a list of minority professors from 1986 through 1995. | {
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34,494 | Suppose, hypothetically, it is determined that the Saudi Arabian government murdered Jamal Khashoggi over his opposition to Prince Mohammed bin Salman. I can understand why this would be an unethical thing to do, as it would amount to the government killing a political opponent. I am having trouble understanding why it would be of such a concern to the United States that the United States might sanction Saudi Arabia . The killing would be bad , and bad for the people of Saudi Arabia, but would it be bad for the United States? I have seen some discussion of how killing political opponents undermines Saudi Arabia's efforts to convince foreign businesses that the country is safe to invest in. I can see why this would be a concern to businesses. But again, businesses can make their investment decisions as they see fit without need for the U.S. to impose sanctions. Where does the role of the U.S. government fit into this? | It's especially an issue for the US because Jamal Khashoggi is an immigrant and permanent resident to the US. The Washington Post reported on 9 October that "US intelligence intercepted communications of Saudi officials discussing a plan to capture" Khashoggi. It was not clear whether the Saudi Arabians intended to arrest and interrogate Khashoggi or to kill him, or if the US warned Khashoggi that he was a target. The intercepted communication is deemed important because Khashoggi is a legal resident of the United States, and is therefore entitled to protection. According to NSA officials, this threat warning was communicated to the White House through official intelligence channels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamal_Khashoggi | {
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34,511 | This is a follow-up question to Why can't Northern Ireland just have a stay/leave referendum? As I understand the answers to that question, a key part of the problem is that a significant fraction of Northern Ireland wants to stay, just like a significant fraction of Northern Ireland wants to leave, and a subset of both sides are willing to kill the other faction to further their goals. Why are subsets of both factions willing to use lethal force against each other? People in the other countries of the world (especially developed ones) regularly disagree with each other, often severely, often in situations where the minority is almost a majority, but they don't seem to resort to violence anywhere as often; in fact they'd likely pour scorn on any suggestion to use violence. Examples: Roughly half of Britain didn't like Brexit, but if there've been terrorist attacks by Remainers on Brexiteers (or by Brexiteers on Remainers), I've not read about them. Roughly half of Scotland voted to leave the UK, but if either side have attacked the other, I've also not heard about them. Roughly half of the US votes for the party that does not win in every presidential election, but they don't attack each other. The Irish same-sex marriage referendum in 2015 also didn't result in violence. Point #4 implies that the Irish (and presumably Northern Irish) can disagree with each other, including over something that has deep religious undertones, without also trying to kill each other. Why doesn't the same apply to the question of staying in/leaving the UK? | Shall we start by seeing how historical violence is viewed by some people in Northern Ireland? There's still quite a lot of murals around. Just to be absolutely clear in case the imagery isn't obvious, the men depicted there are being celebrated for their acts of illegal violence. The Troubles is rather a large subject for an answer, but essentially it started out as a protest against discrimination by the police (Royal Ulster Constabulary, almost entirely Protestant) against Catholics. The police responded with violence and things escalated. The province became effectively a police state - random checkpoints, armed troops on the streets, use of live ammunition on demonstrators and suspected criminals and so on. There were areas of Belfast that the police wouldn't go without at least two armored cars. It is important to understand that the conflict was effectively "street level upwards", not primarily centrally driven and recruited for. Much of it more closely resembled gang warfare - gangs of young men with stones, petrol bombs and iron bars, who would cross over into an area of the opposite community and attack someone on the "other side". People joined up for safety, pride, defence of their community, and even for something to do (unemployment was extremely high at the time). Once someone you knew had been seriously injured or killed by the "other side", this became much more likely. Again I would urge you to think of this not as "normal political difference of opinions" but as "ethnonationalist civil war" - not quite as deadly as Yugoslavia, or Syria, it never quite escalated to genocide, but the same kind of motivational structure. It was brought to a conclusion in 1998 by the Good Friday Agreement, which concluded a ceasefire between the main warring groups and made agreements between the British and Irish governments. Among other things, Ireland formally renounced its claim to the North, and provisions were made for the "border poll" that allowed the possibility of a future peaceful transfer of NI to Ireland. It also established the NI Assembly at Stormont for peaceful devolved politics. Almost everyone has stopped fighting. But not everyone. There are some "dissident republicans". So what happens next? Nothing is certain, but the risk path is as follows: UK establishes border posts of some kind Dissident republicans vandalise them, or actually blow one up Police crackdown Belief that NI is returning to a state where Catholics are second-class citizens subject to police harassment Rise in street violence between gangs Armed groups declare that since the UK is not respecting the GFA and violence has resumed, they no longer consider themselves bound by GFA. It doesn't help that the path to peaceful resolution of issues - Stormont - is currently not functioning because the government collapsed over fraud in heating subsidies last year. Any kind of border infrastructure will be a problem for people. The border runs across people's farms and in some cases houses. Some of the proposed border plans present huge opportunities for VAT fraud or petrol smuggling, so organised crime is likely to start up around there. | {
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34,577 | Recently, there has been a huge debate about Senator Lindsey Graham's statements (regarding the DNA test and Iran) being racist. I'm a native Iranian, but I live in South Carolina and I hear these remarks from my friends — even my American friends — that he offended the Iranian people by his statements. I read a summary of his statements here from CNN . The apparent insult was: On Tuesday, Graham joked during an interview on "Fox & Friends" that it would be "terrible" if a DNA test revealed that he has Iranian heritage. His comment came in response to Senator Elizabeth Warren's decision to take a DNA test to prove her Native American ancestry claims. But it's still not clear to me: Is he really pointing to the Iranian people, or to the totalitarian regime of the Islamic Republic? Can someone explain to me why these comments went viral and were considered racist? Also, I can't understand why he chose the Iranian people to make a joke in relation to Warren's DNA test case? Because there is no connection between the Iranian people and Native Americans. | Let's get academic about it. I think the term racism is often used to address a basket of discriminatory positions. The folks over at Oxford Dictionary on Racism Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a
different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior. So then we follow up with Race Each of the major divisions of humankind, having distinct physical characteristics. A group of people sharing the same culture, history, language, etc.; an ethnic group. So then we need to infer intent. Since it's clear the comment: "I'll probably be Iranian. That'd be, like, terrible." The comment definitely isn't speaking about Iranians in a positive tone or sense. I'm not going to include the rest of the exchange because the hosts on the show quickly re-contextualize his comment : "Well, they have great people, just bad leaders," co-host Brian Kilmeade said. That's not a re-contextualization from Mr.Graham, but from the news anchors. So now they're guiding him, in defining the meaning of his quote. Or leading him to a better answer / position. So, he's discriminating against a people but we haven't proven one part of the accusation: based on the belief that one's own race is superior. We need to determine whether Mr.Graham indeed holds this value. Because he is clearly holding a very deep discriminatory attitude towards Iranians . An interesting additional quote... "Everything I know about the Iranians I learned at the pool room," [Graham] said. "I met a lot of liars, and I know the Iranians are lying." However... Graham has been really solid in his defense of Islam and it's clear he comes from a well meaning position . In terms of definitions, Mr.Graham is likely a bigot a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices ...and it's clear Mr.Graham is "obstinately devoted" to his perception of Iranians. Bigotry and Racism often get lumped together, so it's possible the definitions get mixed up. The accusation of Racism, is often more of an assessment of a person's openness to others, rather than some direct sense of racial superiority. Is Graham's quote racist? Maybe not by definition. But the common use term of Racism is very complex and nuanced, and it's likely many people would consider it racist. If you replace the word Iranian with any race, it's VERY bad... "I'll probably be Black. That'd be, like, terrible." Or Consider.... "Everything I know about the Blacks I learned at the pool room," [Graham] said. "I met a lot of liars, and I know the Blacks are lying." This simple word replacement really does demonstrate the intent. In my view, it's not racist by definition, but the tone is spot on. Remember definition of race is actually quite ambiguous... and depending on your definitions of race... and racism... Mr.Graham is indeed making a racist remark. Then there's a larger context : Elizabeth Warren released DNA tests in response to a claim Donald Trump made about her. There's an unsettling inference from Mr.Graham's joke. He's saying "If I took a test, I might discover I have DNA from a group of people I consider unfavorable." Implying, that Warren's test is a link to an "unfavorable" group of people. Update:
Race has come up in the discussion and I need to point out that race, isn't a real scientific distinction and it's purely a fabrication of the culture . Which means, that the broad definitions of race, will often help define how the term "racism" is directed and used. Since race and racism are linked, there's a real chance, they're interconnected. Which means the application of racism is likely tightly coupled to one's perception of race (including Mr.Graham's). To quote my source... Science today tells us that the visible differences between peoples are accidents of history. They reflect how our ancestors dealt with sun exposure, and not much else. | {
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34,625 | Why cannot residents from United States territories such as the CNMI, Guam, and Puerto Rico vote in general elections? (They can, however, participate in presidential primaries.) It seems unconstitutional because residents from these places are also United States citizens and should be granted the right to cast their ballot for the next President of the United States just like everyone else in the fifty states. | Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution begins: Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors... Until this section of the constitution is amended to read "Each State, Territory, or Federal District..." or to entirely rewrite the presidential election process to be based on citizenship of the individual voter rather than an electoral college whose members are determined by state laws, it is constitutional that residents of the territories cannot participate in presidential elections. | {
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34,639 | I treat reproductive human cloning as one of such things. Current technology is far from a success, and reproductive human cloning does not seem to be a near future possibility. So, any law against cloning seems to be a currently useless thing, like it's useless to promise someone not to punch their imaginary friends. What's the point of such laws then? Why are they adopted? | As I see it, there are fundamentally three reasons a person would outlaw an action that is currently impossible: To ensure that the first attempt is illegal If you refuse to outlaw an immoral act until it can be shown to be possible, you run the risk that a person can commit this act before it has been made illegal. Essentially, the legislative body doesn't want to risk the law falling behind the science. To attempt to keep it impossible The theory behind this is that if an action is illegal, there is less of a risk that a person will work out how to do it. Obviously, this reasoning can be taken to ridiculous levels but if there exists a credible possibility (in cloning, mammalian cloning has been possible for a long while) it can make sense to outlaw an act to dissuade people from working out how to do it. To clearly show a moral objection The law is not always about practicality – it can also be a way for a society to codify its cultural and moral beliefs. In this case, even if it seems unlikely that an actual human cloning could take place, it is a clear sign to the world that a specific nation sees the act as fundamentally wrong. | {
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34,671 | Modern Republicans are often accused of trying to suppress the right to vote for minorities. Are there cases where the modern Democratic party (ie post Jim Crow) is accused of suppressing the right to vote for demographics that are less likely to vote for them? Do they use the same tactics as Republicans are accused of, or are they different? Examples: closing of specific polling places not likely to vote for their party requiring specific IDs less likely to be owned by minorities purging voter registrations of specific demographics keeping voter registrations of specific demographics on hold misinforming specific demographics about voting location or time. | As far as I know, there are no reported cases of Democrats suppressing votes in the same manner as Republicans are seen to be doing, however there are still some accusations of voter suppression that have been leveled at the party. Scheduling Off-Cycle Elections Democrats have, in general, stood against attempts to bring local election schedules in line with one another. It is thought by some that this is because having these elections at unusual times leads to only the most motivated voters bothering to show up at the polls. Often, these are the workers directly affected by the election. For more information, take a look at this article . Primary Elections There have been accusations that Democrats deliberately make it difficult to switch your party affiliation to vote for an inspiring candidate in an attempt to ensure that mainstream, establishment candidates get the democratic nomination. For more information on the phenomenon, take a look here . In general, however, these cases seem more isolated than the Republican attempts, and to generally be isolated to elections with somewhat lower stakes. This is likely why they are less reported on, and not seen as such an intense issue. | {
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34,712 | The BBC reports that the European Commission has told Italy to revise its budget, saying that the draft presents particularly serious non-compliance with Eurozone rules. Yet the maximum permitted deficit is 3% and the Italian government states that its budget has a deficit of 2.4%. If the Italian budget deficit is less than the maximum permitted 3%, on what grounds is the European Commission telling Italy it must revise its budget? | It appears the problem isn't the deficit (the loss from an individual budget) but the size of the existing debt itself. From a report in the Guardian Italy’s public debt is worth more than 130% of the country’s GDP, the second-highest level in the EU after Greece and more than double the bloc’s limit of 60%. In effect, the EU don't believe that the budget the coalition have announced represents a serious attempt to control their spending, or to honour previous promises made when receiving EU financial support. | {
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34,724 | I thought theoretically the U.S. could be a democracy (because people have a say in the daily workings of the government) and an oligarchy ( the president, the Supreme Court, etc... are the only ones who have any actual power, meaning making all the big decisions). Is this true? | All modern democracies are representative; it's for purely pragmatic reasons hard to see how a large community could govern itself directly by the people without introducing representative intermediaries. The really interesting question for me is whether the United States, though formally a democratic republic, are factually ruled by a relatively small elite connected through family and business relations. It is surprising to a foreigner to see political family dynasties like the Kennedys or Bushes or Clintons (and now Trumps, for that matter). And one does not need to subscribe to conspiracy theories to recognize that the enormous wealth concentrated in the hands of a small number of billionaires results in an enormous political influence. The system of campaign financing through private donations appears to outsiders as a thinly veiled form of buying politicians which provides a direct conduit from money to power. The questions to tackle here are: How large is the number of people "in power" through family or money? How well are the democratic and legal institutions protected against illegitimate influence? How well do the media work? How independent are they? The last two points determine the crucial question: Can the people form an opinion and express their interests in elections independently of and against the efforts of the elites in politics and media? The current drift in the public political opinion is clearly towards defiance and independence from perceived elites. This is true for all political camps — examples are the emergence of the Tea Party, the election of Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders' surprisingly strong campaign and the rejection first of the primary competitors and then of Hillary Clinton in favor of the rogue candidate Donald Trump. This capacity for unexpected change often originating at the political base indicates robustness of the democratic process. 1 1 But even the public opinion swing towards defiance is developing under the ongoing influence of the elites. For example, Trump's rogue image may be mostly in style rather than substance, considering his wealth and politics benefiting the wealthy. The effect is that the economic elites have a factual collaborator at the helm, but one who is perceived as their rogue opponent. This outcome may be pure serendipity, but it's hard to see how it could be any better. The change in public discourse towards social media is ambivalent as well. Obviously a means to communicate directly with each other is prima facie a boost for a democratic discourse. On the other hand it clearly results in an abundance of false information, a loss in coherence in public opinion — which is not in itself a bad thing but makes the formation of disjunct echo chambers more likely — and an increasing volatility in the public discourse: The news cycle is shorter, what is swept into the foreground is less predictable, and the ebb and flow of the discourse seems stronger than with traditional media. | {
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34,727 | Background A few months ago the Swedish government sent a small booklet to all Swedish households titled "If crisis or war comes" which contains official information on how to prepare for and react to crisis or war. One part that stuck out to me was this: If Sweden is attacked by another country, we will
never give up. All information to the effect that
resistance is to cease is false. To me this seems like a dangerous thing to say. In case of an invasion there may very well be a time where it would be best to just surrender, war is rarely fought to the bitter end and allowing a way out could very well save many lives that might be lost in a futile resistance. Questions Why might a country have such a policy? Do other countries have similar policies? I am tagging this with the Sweden tag but I am interested in similar policies and their justifications from around the world. | We will never surrender! has a pretty famous history. The obvious advantage of such a policy is that it makes invasion less likely. Let's assume that Russia invades Sweden. A natural step would be to kill politicians until they find one that is willing to say that people should not resist and should instead return to their homes. So plans that Russia might make now would include such a step. But Sweden has already sent out this pamphlet explaining that that's not what to do. So in an actual invasion, many Swedes would ignore the politicians calling for submission. Russia may choose a more amenable invasion target. As you note, once invaded, such a policy is less helpful. In terms of other countries, I would point out that there is a small but significant group of people in the United States who believe that it is important to stockpile weapons in case of potential invasion. The movie Red Dawn was about such a scenario. | {
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34,753 | Inspired by the question We will never surrender! Why would a country have this policy? From the question text, Sweden recently issued a pamphlet to citizens regarding what would be done if war or a crisis happens. To me this pamphlet seems unnecessary, seeing as Sweden is generally a very safe country. My question is, why did the Swedish government issue this pamphlet? | As is noted in a comment on that question, the pamphlet is an updated version of "If the war comes" , a similar pamphlet that was released from 1943 to 1991. With the end of the cold war it was for the time deemed outdated. So the real question here is why they decided to update and release it again. MSB (The department of societal protection and preparation) has a statement about this (in Swedish): Vi lever i en tid där följderna av extremt väder, IT-attacker, terrordåd kan påverka att samhällsservicen inte längre fungerar. Regeringen, som gett MSB uppdraget, menar att informationen också är viktig sett till att den säkerhetspolitiska situationen i omvärlden har försämrats. Translation by me We live in a time where the consequences of extreme weather, IT-attacks, and terror can contribute to public services shutting down. The administration, which has given MSB the mission [to release this pamphlet], also deems the information important as the security situation[1] in nearby countries has deteriorated. So basically the current administration thinks that global warming and external threats, see Russian sabre rattling, has created a situation where the population of Sweden needs to, once again, be prepared to fend for themselves in the short term. It should perhaps be noted that the old pamphlet only talked about what to do in case of a war while this one also informs about more modern threats like hacks, natural disasters, and disinformation campaigns. 1: The word being translated here is "säkerhetspolitiska" which translates quite poorly. In this case it means that they think that the region (Europe) has become less stable in the same sense that the middle east can be considered unstable. It's not about changes in any single nation but rather in their relationships. | {
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34,928 | Presuming Donald Trump wants to become nominated for a second time, is the Republican party obligated to let him do so? Or can they put forward alternative candidates that would potentially defeat Trump in the primaries? Is there historical precedent for a party abandoning their previously elected President at the next election? | Gerald Ford came close to losing to Ronald Reagan in the Republican Party presidential primaries of 1976. For a variety of reasons it could be argued that's not precedent, but it certainly shows a challenger can put up a fight. So I'd conclude there is no obligation to renominate, or prohibition of alternate candidates. The convention tally reported on Wikipedia was: Gerald Ford 1187, Ronald Reagan 1070, Elliot L. Richardson 1. In the general election, Jimmy Carter defeated Ford. Gerald Ford's 895 day presidency was one of the shortest in US history. His decision to pardon Richard Nixon (who had appointed him vice-president) is thought to have brought his approval ratings down and make him vulnerable to criticism for covering up details of the Watergate scandal . | {
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34,966 | Recently, there has been a huge debate about revoking birthright citizenship from children born in the US to illegal alien immigrants. I read here that almost all left and right wings of the US political system will likely oppose this revoking birthright citizenship idea. Still, it's not clear to me that: is there anything to fundamentally prevent Trump's administration from revoking birthright citizenship, such as something in the US Constitution, or politicians just not helping Trump to do so because of the recent US political atmosphere? I will be very grateful if someone could explain this to me. | 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, 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. Amendments amend the U.S. Constitution, so they are a part of the Constitution. Only further amendments can alter the language of other amendments, as seen by the passage of 18th Amendment and subsequent repeal by 21st Amendment . Most argue that, in order to revoke birthright citizenship, you would need to go through the process of amending the Constitution , which doesn't involve the President at all. Some in the U.S. try to make the argument based on the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" , and argue that people born in the United States to non-citizen parents aren't "subject to U.S. jurisdiction." Whether that's a valid legal argument is a bit out of scope for this site, but at least one question about it has been asked at Law.SE . | {
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35,013 | I know there have been a number of instances where the United States Supreme Court has basically 'changed its mind' and ruled in a manner counter to a previous Supreme Court ruling. The most obvious being Brown v. Board of Education . Many of these cases are clearly examples of society moving on, for instance overruling decisions that a modern US person would likely have viewed as racist, sexist, or otherwise clearly 'wrong' by modern sensibilities; though that by no means applies to all of them. I'm wondering though if there has ever been a case of a the court changing its mind twice. That is to say that it originally ruled in favor of some concept X, later ruled against X, and still later overturned the second ruling by again ruling in favor of X? What keeps this situation from being more common? I know that Supreme Court Justices tend to be loath to overturn previous rulings. Not only has that happened, but given the highly polarized nature of American politics and the tendency of political parties to do everything they can to overturn any decisions made by the opposite party when they gain a majority, I'm a little surprised that Justices aren't more prone to the same, regardless of the general stigma against changing old precedents. | Yes. It has happened. This is rare, but it happens. One of the most recent examples involves sales tax jurisdiction. In Quill Corp. v. North Dakota , 504 U.S. 298 (1992), the U.S. Supreme Court changed prior law to prohibit sales taxation imposed on sellers of goods who have no offices for the conduct of business in the taxing state who deliver their goods via common carriers (e.g. U.S. mail, UPS, Federal Express, etc.). Quill Corp. hardened the rule of the case National Bellas Hess v. Department of Revenue of Illinois , 386 U.S. 753 (1967), in which the Supreme Court ruled that a mail order reseller was not required to collect sales tax unless it had some physical contact with the state. The Court in National Bellas Hess recounted some key cases in place before it was decided: In applying these principles the Court has upheld the power of a State
to impose liability upon an out-of-state seller to collect a local use
tax in a variety of circumstances. Where the sales were arranged by
local agents in the taxing State, we have upheld such power. Felt &
Tarrant Mfg. Co. v. Gallagher , 306 U.S. 62 , 59 S.Ct. 376; General
Trading Co. v. State Tax Comm'n , 322 U.S. 335 , 64 S.Ct. 1028. We have
reached the same result where the mail order seller maintained local
retail stores. Nelson v. Sears, Roebuck & Co. , 312 U.S. 359 , 61 S.Ct.
58; Nelson v. Montgomery Ward & Co. , 312 U.S. 373 , 61 S.Ct. 593.10 In
those situations the out-of-state seller was plainly accorded the
protection and services of the taxing State. The case in this Court
which represents the furthest constitutional reach to date of a
State's power to deputize an out-of-state retailer as its collection
agent for a use tax is Scripto, Inc. v. Carson , 362 U.S. 207 , 80
S.Ct. 619, 4 L.Ed.2d 660. There we held that Florida could
constitutionally impose upon a Georgia seller the duty of collecting a
state use tax upon the sale of goods shipped to customers in Florida.
In that case the seller had '10 wholesalers, jobbers, or 'salesmen'
conducting continuous local solicitation in Florida and forwarding the
resulting orders [386 U.S. 753, 758] from that State to Atlanta for
shipment of the ordered goods.' 362 U.S., at 211 , 80 S.Ct., at 621. It looked very likely prior to National Bellas Hess , that intentionally shipping goods to and advertising in a state would have subjected it to sales tax liability (something called "purposeful availment"), by analogy to other personal jurisdiction cases. In other areas of law the trend of the cases allowed a state to assert jurisdiction over someone outside the sate for any act directed intentionally towards a state, which a sale of goods for delivery in a state would include. This principal was eventually articulated directly in the personal jurisdiction context. See, e.g. World-Wide Volkswagen Corp. , 444 U.S. 286 (1980), and there had been every indication prior to National Bellas Hess that that was where it was going with the sales tax cases as well. In South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc. (U.S. 2018), the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Quill and Bellas and reverted the law to its pre- Bellas state. It noted its ruling for example, in a pre-Bellas case that: [B]usiness “is in no position to found a constitutional right . . . on
the practical opportunities for tax avoidance,” Nelson v. Sears,
Roebuck & Co., 312 U. S. 359, 366. The pre- Bellas rule continued in place for taxes other than sales taxes. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court held that “interstate commerce may be required to pay its fair share of state taxes.” D. H. Holmes Co. v.
McNamara , 486 U. S. 24, 31 (1988). In Wayfair , the U.S. Supreme Court noted of the clearest indications of the pre- Bellas rule in cases where the U.S. Supreme Court held that: “[t]he imposition on the seller of the duty to insure collection of
the tax from the purchaser does not violate the [C]ommerce [C]lause.”
McGoldrick v. Berwind-White Coal Mining Co., 309 U. S. 33, 50, n. 9
(1940). It is a “‘familiar and sanctioned device.’” Scripto, Inc. v.
Carson, 362 U. S. 207, 212 (1960). Why Is This Rare? What keeps this situation from being more common? . . . given the
highly polarized nature of American politics and the tendency of
political parties to do everything they can to overturn any decisions
made by the opposite party when they gain a majority I'm a little
surprised that Justices aren't more prone to the same, regardless of
the general stigma against changing old precedents. While there is intense partisan conflict in the U.S., most of that conflict is of one party relative to the other on the liberal-conservative scale, and not something absolute. For example, while Loving v. Virginia (U.S. 1967) (legalizing interracial marriage) took a position squarely opposed by conservatives at the time and one that even Martin Luther King, Jr. was reluctant to openly push and many liberals were leery of, at the time, by the 1980s there were formerly segregationist Senators in Congress who had staff members who were in interracial marriages and the rightness of the legality of interracial marriage was universally conceded. Essentially the same people were pro- and anti- legislation and legal action to reduce racial discrimination in the 1980s as in 1967, but the goal posts had moved. In part, this is because a binding U.S. Supreme Court opinion has a strong tendency to change conventional wisdom and beliefs among the entire populace except in rare cases (e.g. abortion). And, in part, this is because notable U.S. Supreme Court rulings are usually lagging indicators of social and economic trends that are already well underway when they are decided. | {
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35,110 | I have seen numerous reports that describe how the Democrats are confident of overturning the House majority in the 2018 midterms. Where does this confidence spring from? | Polling data -- which is what is being analyzed by organizations like FiveThirtyEight -- indicates that Democrats are likely to win a majority in the House of Representatives. Polling data is the best and most objective way to predict the outcome. However, there is no certainty. FiveThirtyEight gives Republicans a >12% chance of keeping the House. That's because polls have both random errors and potentially systematic errors. So no one is taking the outcome as a given. Polling data is imperfect, but it's the best we have. Regarding the comparison to the 2016 presidential election: Polls generally put Clinton ahead of Trump, but only just. In the end Trump ended up winning very narrowly (indeed he lost the popular vote by a considerable margin). This is not really a "debacle" as some put it, as it was within the usual margin of error of the polls. Ultimately, it was a close race. Before the election, FiveThirtyEight gave Trump a >25% chance of winning . Also, here is an article from 4 days before the 2016 election in which FiveThirtyEight discusses how close the polls are. So, in 2016, we saw again that the polls are not perfect, but they did show it was close and they still are the best we have. In terms of interpreting polls: I think a major problem is that the public misinterpret the polls and considers them to be more certain than they are. ( Even experts struggle to quantify the uncertainty. ) Suppose a model gives candidate A a 70% chance of winning and candidate B a 30% chance of winning. A lot of people interpret this as saying candidate A will win, but what the model is saying is that this prediction will be "wrong" 30% of the time. You should interpret 30% uncertainty as saying the election is very close and hard to call. Note that a 70% chance of winning does not mean the candidate will get 70% of the vote. In reality, it may be that candidate A is polling at 51% and candidate B at 49%. That 2% margin could just be a polling error and we are only 70% certain that A is ahead of B. Perhaps a good contrasting analogy is weather forecasting. If the weather forecast is for a high of 70'F, we aren't shocked if it ends up being 75'F or 65'F. An error of 5'F is pretty good. We accept that the weather forecast isn't perfect. The problem with elections are that they are more finely balanced than weather forecasting. (The 2000 presidential election came down to <0.01% in Florida.) If you correctly predict the vote shares to within 1%, that still may not tell you who wins. | {
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35,176 | As a non-US person, (German) radio told me the Democrats would now be able to force Trump to publish his tax return and prevent him from funding his wall. That's probably a nice little "haha" for us non-involved outsiders, but as an analysis of what this political event actually means, it's kinda petty. So my question is, based on previous presidents where the house was from the "other" party and expectations of what Trump's politics might change, what does this really mean ? Half hearted deals to keep things going? Both parties pushing political agenda forward trading one for another? Political stagnation? Nothing? A new president? | The majority party in the House of Representatives gets to appoint the Chairman of every sub-committee in the House, there are many of these. These chairmen are all Republicans, but will soon all be Democrats, every one of them. The ruling party needs no excuse to replace them, and all chairmen are always appointed from the ruling party. Each of these Chairmen has the authority to issue subpoenas (these are legal documents that can require the recipient to testify, to turn over records (like emails), and so on, refusing to do so is a crime that may result in being jailed for Contempt of Congress). It is the job of both the House and Senate, independently if they like, to oversee government operations, conduct inquiries, get testimony under oath (lying under oath is perjury, a felony that can be punished by five years in prison). YES, the House has the authority to demand from the IRS the Tax Returns of Donald Trump, pursuant to any number of investigations they might undertake to see if he is taking emoluments (payments from foreign countries) or profiting from his office or making decisions to benefit his own business, family, etc. The House does not need ANY excuse or evidence or permission to start such an investigation: They are in charge of oversight. Further, the House chairmen are free to re-open any investigation their predecessors have put aside. So they can re-open investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, or 2018 election. During this investigation, the Democrats requested something like 64 subpoenas of records and testimony; the Republicans denied every single request. Well, every single one of those subpoenas will now be issued, the witnesses heard under oath before a Democratic Chair, and that includes Trump's children, friends, business records, business employees, tax returns, etc. Unlike the Republicans that excused blatant lying by some of these witnesses and allowed some (like Trump's son) to simply refuse to answer, a Democratic Chair can compel testimony under penalty of Contempt. Further, for most of this testimony, it can be public if they wish, or be behind closed doors but all or some of the testimony revealed to the public. That is also within the purview of the Chair (with exceptions for some classified material). Although the House cannot unilaterally pass any law (they can introduce one, but both the House and Senate must approve and the President must sign; or if he vetoes, be overruled by 2/3 of both). But this power of investigation into corruption, self-dealing, foreign influence, and so on is actually a very big deal, and the results of the investigation can result in criminal charges. The House cannot be restrained or gagged by either the President or Senate, it is subordinate to neither one. Finally, only the House, after investigation, can bring impeachment charges against the President (actually they can impeach any executive or judicial branch federal government employee; including judges and Supreme Court justices). These charges must then be heard by the Senate, which may vote to remove the offender from office. It is unlikely they will, especially with a Senate friendly to the President, but you never know what they might uncover that would change the minds of at least some Republican Senators. So yes, there is a remote chance that even a "New President" is the result. P.S. Also, all spending bills raising revenue must originate in the House; including laws raising or lowering taxes (the Supreme Court has held). Neither the Senate or the President have the right to raise or lower taxes. P.P.S: All laws must be passed by both the House and Senate, by a majority in each. Typically the President must also sign a new law, but if the President Vetoes, then a 2/3 majority of each Chamber (House and Senate) can override a Presidential Veto and pass the law anyway. So Democrats can now block any NEW law. This also means they can prevent the repeal of any law, since repeal is treated the same as new law. So they will likely not allow any changes to the social safety net; Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, Social Security, etc. There has been talk of re-allowing health insurance companies to refuse to sell insurance to or to charge more to people with pre-existing conditions (e.g. a person has asthma, so they can be denied insurance even against unrelated diseases like cancer or tuberculosis). The House won't allow any such repeal or new law to pass. Also, since the House can veto a budget or other allocation of funds to build the Wall against immigrants spanning the border with Mexico, they can ensure that doesn't happen. | {
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35,199 | In 1988, Republican presidential nominee (and incumbent vice president) George H.W. Bush won 40 out of 50 states and a 7.8% margin in the popular vote . On the same day, Democrats in the House of Representatives won an 85-seat majority with a 7.7% lead in the popular vote. That's a 15.5% discrepancy between the popular votes for President and House. In 1984, Republican Ronald Reagan won re-election carrying 49 states and he won the popular vote by 18.2% while Democrats won a 71-seat majority in the House and won the popular vote by 5.1% . That's a 23.3% discrepancy. In 1980, Reagan was elected with 44states and a 9.7% popular vote margin . Meanwhile in the House of Representatives, Democrats won a 51-seat majority with a 2.6% lead in the popular vote. That's a 12.3% discrepancy in the popular vote. Going back further to 1972, Republican president Richard Nixon was re-elected with 49 states and a 23.2% margin in the popular vote . At the same time House Democrats in the house won a 50-seat majority with a 5.6% popular vote advantage . That's a 28.8% discrepancy. Why were there such a huge discrepancies? This has not happened since 1988. In 2016, the discrepancy between the popular votes for president and house was only 3.2%. In 2012, it was 2.7%. In 2008, it was 4.4%. In 2004, it was 0.2%. In 2000, it was 1%. In 1996, it was 8.5%. In 1992, it was 0.6%. Nowadays it seems most voters give all of their votes to candidates from the same party (at least for federal elections). So it's hard for me to understand how 30-40 years ago large numbers of voters were splitting their votes. What changed? Why were voters so willing to split votes 30+ years ago but not today? | Southern Democrats In 1972, most southern states were overwhelmingly Democrat. But these Southern Democrats had a different ideology than Northern Democrats. They were more conservative, particularly on moral issues (e.g. sex outside marriage and abortion bad). Democratic presidential candidates tended to have Northern Democratic ideologies. As a result, Southern Democrats often voted for Republicans for president, but they would vote for other Southern Democrats for Congress. In 1994, this changed. Southern Democrats increasingly voted Republican for Congress as well as the presidency. In fact, there is only one Southern Democrat left in Congress: Senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia. | {
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35,240 | According to several newspapers, e.g. this article , or even the (now former) Attorney General's resignation letter , President Trump asked Jeff Sessions to resign. Similar things are also shown in TV shows from time to time. If I remember correctly, the President can fire any cabinet member. So why would he request Sessions to resign instead of just firing him? | In addition to the niceties listed by another answer, this allows Trump to appoint a temporary replacement according to the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998: The Vacancies Act’s requirements are triggered if an officer serving in an advice and
consent position in the executive branch “dies, resigns, or is otherwise unable to perform the
functions and duties of the office.” The Vacancies Act: A Legal Overview It's not clear that this would apply to a situation where he is fired. In the case where it doesn't, the deputy AG, Rod Rosenstein, would assume the acting role, which is probably not what Trump had in mind. So it's pretty clear by getting his resignation he explicitly maintains the authority to pick his replacement. If he hadn't resigned, this almost certainly would have been challenged, as one government oversight writer says: [T]he moral hazard created by allowing the president wide discretion to make an unreviewable temporary appointment to act in place of a Senate-confirmed official he fired is one good reason why this omission might have been intentional on Congress’s part. On the other hand, for most positions there is no mechanism to fill a vacancy temporarily other than the VRA, and it would be odd if there were no mechanism whatsoever to fill vacancies that result from a termination pending confirmation of a replacement. If the Attorney General Is Fired, Who Acts as Attorney General? | {
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35,347 | As I understand, one of the sticking points in the Brexit negotiations has been Britain's level of obligation to a proposed customs union backstop. I understand also that this is essentially a transitional arrangement to keep the entirety of the UK in a de-facto customs union and single market, to avoid either the physical division of Ireland or the political division of the United Kingdom (the clue being in the name). What I don't think I fully appreciate is why the EU objects to the UK having the power to walk away from a backstop before a new arrangement is found. Is the reason economic - because it creates uncertainty? Is the reason diplomatic - because it undermines the EU's position in the subsequent talks? Or is there another subtlety I haven't grasped? | The EU is acting in the interests of the remaining 27 members. In this case it is specifically acting in the interests and on the instructions of the Republic of Ireland, which opposes a hard border under any circumstances. The Republic of Ireland, and so the EU, are opposed to the UK having the ability to unilaterally exit the backstop as it removes any power they (IRE & EU) have to ensure that a hard border is avoided. The European council - which is the body containing the heads of government of each of the EU countries - unanimously adopted a set of negotiating guidelines at a meeting in May 2017. These guidelines covered the border in Ireland. Subsequently, Michel Barnier et al have followed these guidelines closely, whilst leading Irish politicians, including PM Leo Varadkar, have been explicit in their desire for and support of the guidelines. | {
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35,350 | This may seem like a rant. But I will show a few point of similarity which will show that it is an actual question. First, states administer lotteries. Just as states administer both state and federal elections. Second, there has never been a mistake made in awarding or not awarding lottery winnings to a wrong ticket. And yet miscounting the votes seems to happen on a mass scale. Third, most lottery tickets are bought anonymously and the anonymity of the purchasers seems to be preserved even though it is known which ticket was bought at which location. So the anonymity of individual voters should be preservable even if it is known which vote is cast at which location. Fourth, the scale at which lotteries are administered is a few orders of magnitude more sophisticated than the voting. Some states have weekly lottery drawings. Whereas votes only happen every 2 years. Fifth, states don't have to hire (or elect) lottery officials for each location where a lottery is purchased. Lottery is sold through private merchants. So states actually have less control over how the lottery sales are conducted. And yet they seem to have better control over the security of lottery sales than they do over the security of the votes cast. And yet every election (nowadays) there seems to be a mess made somewhere when it comes to accurately tallying the election totals. What is preventing states from being as accurate about elections as they are about lotteries? | States administer election rules and aggregation, but local municipalities handle voter registration, management of voting locations, and vote collection and tabulation. Each one can have their own separate rules or nuances, which have to conform to overall state regulation, but still allow for variation. With variation and lack of standardization, you get the possibility of variation and error in the process. Lotteries generate revenue. A lot of revenue. As such, they are able to fund having uniform, standard, state of the art equipment and systems. Elections do not generate any revenue, and having the best equipment and systems is often seen as a luxury or largess. Machines are often old, malfunctioning, and there is a huge amount of variation within a state, let alone between states, in the types of machines that are used. Lottery sales are pretty constant, and all the employees at outlets have to do is push a button on a machine and collect money. Election polling places are manned by volunteers who then have to answer questions in legal grey areas or help people with problems that exceed the volunteers' expertise or knowledge, and they have to call upon this expertise very infrequently, often for different types of elections when they do. Elections are often managed by public officials whose continued success as public officials depends upon their systems not working optimally for selected portions of the population who are likely to vote against them. They have a vested interest in the elections not working properly for those selected populations. If I'm in charge of a system that I don't want to work optimally, it should not be surprising that the system does not work optimally. Finally, a purchaser of a lottery ticket has zero personal input on the lottery ticket, itself. Yes, they often can choose their own numbers, but the ticket that is produced is a standard, controlled document that is produced by the system. If I mis-mark my number selection form, the ticket will reject, just like a ballot might, or it will record my input incorrectly on the produced ticket, just like a voting machine would. In this regard, it's not that different. Those mistakes are more prominent in voting systems because each entry is noted and recorded. In a lottery system, it only becomes a large issue on a one in a hundreds of millions basis, and any kind of issue at all on a very infrequent basis, and mostly at a very trivial level. If there is a problem where I think my desires were not handled properly, my participation in the lottery is entirely discretionary on my part, subject to the terms and conditions set up by the lottery, so rejection of my complaints that my wishes were not properly followed allows for less recourse or potential mitigation than a system where I am exercising a fundamental right in society. MegaMillions: How to Play (winning odds) Powerball: Main Page (odds of winning link at bottom of page) To sum up - there are vast differences between how the systems are set up and operate, and to the degree that they are similar in important ways, the frequency problems are noticed and importance of problems, between the systems, is also different. There's not a lot that is equivalent or comparable there. | {
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35,377 | From journalist Nicholas Watt on Twitter : With two Tory MPs supporting Theresa May’s deal she has one breakthrough: enough tellers for her #Brexit vote I believe this is a reference to some system in use in the House of Commons. What is Mr. Watt referring to here? That two MPs need to be in favour to have a vote at all? Two MPs to count the votes? (I'm aware that the tweet is humorous — but I don't understand the joke) | From Parliament's website . Four tellers are required for a division to take place: two representing those voting for the motion and two representing those voting against. Two tellers - one from each side - are present in each division lobby to ensure a fair count. The result is then reported back to the occupant of the Chair, or the Woolsack, in the Chamber. So to even have the vote the PM requires two publicly committed MPs on the Yes side. Further definitions that may be of relevance for this answer can all be found on the same website. Division Divisions are used for counting those in favour or against a motion when there is a vote in the House of Commons or the House of Lords. The House literally divides, with members choosing to file through one of two lobbies on either side of the Chamber where they are counted and their names recorded. Division Lobby Division lobbies are the corridors that run along either side of the Chamber in both Houses. They are used to record the votes of members when there is a division. In the House of Commons the division lobbies are called the Aye Lobby and the No Lobby. In the House of Lords they are known as the Content Lobby and the Not Content Lobby. Teller Tellers are appointed to verify the count when there is a division in the Commons or the Lords and to report the result back to the House... Tellers, who are often party whips, are not counted in the totals of those voting for or against a motion. They are, however, taken into account when a quorum is required for a division. | {
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35,456 | Often you hear politicians say this "I don't answer hypothetical questions". Why can't hypothetical questions be answered? What are the grounds by which politicians justify saying that? Is there a way to properly answer hypothetical questions? | The vast majority of the time, a politician's negatives come from what they have said, not what they haven't said . A politician can refuse to answer questions a thousand times without it hurting their career. Anything a politician does say, even if it is reasonable, can be taken out of context, treated as an incorrect response when it is a fine response, replayed in an attack ad over spooky music with ominous narration, later misquoted, and treated as a sufficient reason not to vote for that politician even though it is such a small part of their platform (or not even part of their platform at all). The following are not examples of responses to hypothetical questions, but they are examples of how twisted quotes have been career-damaging and carried more weight than they should. Example: famously, Al Gore is misquoted as claiming that he invented the internet, which he did not exactly claim , especially in those words; though he did credit himself with advancing the adoption of the internet in many ways, including the Supercomputer Network Study Act of 1986, the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991, and other measures. Example: Stacey Abrams gave a speech suggesting that the blue wave includes immigrants, documented and undocumented. It is obvious that she would not have meant that undocumented immigrants actually vote in the mid-terms (no politician would be dumb enough to say and mean this in a public forum), but that undocumented immigrants support the blue wave (in non-voting ways, including moral support and advocacy) and are supported by the blue wave. But some people deliberately misinterpreted this quote in order to claim that she was encouraging voter fraud. Example involving a hypothetical: In the 1988 presidential debates, Dukakis's candidacy was sunk by a hypothetical question in which Bernard Shaw asked him "Governor, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?" Dukakis answered "No, I don't, Bernard, and I think you know that I've opposed the death penalty during all of my life." You probably want a president whose principals and policies remain constant regardless of whether they are personally affected; otherwise their policies were wrong to begin with, or they become a selfish hypocrite as soon as they find themselves in the same position as the rest of us. This was in no way a change from what was already well known about Dukakis's platform. Rationally, this answer shouldn't have changed the electoral math at all. The public nevertheless reacted as though he was a cold-blooded psychopath. (This example was incorporated from the replies) Hypothetical questions in particular have several other factors that make them politically dangerous to tackle: They exist outside of the politician's message. If a politician wants voters to associate them with healthcare reform, then they don't want to answer a hypothetical that could lead to them being associate with a different topic. Hypotheticals exist outside of planned responses. This means whatever answer the politician gives will not be premeditated, does not give the benefit of conducting any background research, and therefore, the response is more likely to be wrong . It also means that the politician has to formulate an answer without assistance from strategy consultants, the policy director, the communications department, and so on. It is not a practiced answer, and therefore more likely to be delivered nervously, ineptly, and with gaffes . Hypotheticals lack the full context of the situation. If you are asked how you would handle a foreign country killing an American journalist, in real life you might take into account things like what is our diplomatic relationship with the country, what is our trade relationship with the country, what is the relative military strength between us and them, who within that country perpetrated the killing, why did they do it, who else knew, who authorized it, and so on. In a hypothetical, a lot of this context is obscured; so how are you supposed to answer what you would do when you've been blindfolded from knowing like 93% of the information that you would realistically take into account? You probably wouldn't have an answer in one minute like the interviewer is expecting; you would probably ask the opinion of your chief of staff, vice president, senior adviser, the Pentagon Joint Chiefs of Staff, and then think about the issue for 80 hours. Many economic situations are multi-faceted, and an intervention in one area likely has downstream consequences, which is why you might not want to speak on an economic hypothetical without the full context of local conditions (maybe your intervention causes inflation to rise. Is the inflation rate comfortably low or dangerously close to hyperinflation?) and causes (are the students doing bad because of poverty, absent parents, bad teachers, underfunded schools, or badly designed standards? Your solution can't be agnostic of the cause). In a state governments vs federal government hypothetical, it is likely that the federal government will fall more in the center of a position, whereas state laws will likely fall further on both extremes, and you can likely contradict your own party platform if you start weighing-in on whether you would endorse states deciding for themselves (e.g. should a Republican say that they approve of individual states deciding to expand abortion availability?). Hypotheticals can take place within an impossible reality. Some hypothetical discussions give you a certain premise, but they also included other bundled assumptions that could not concurrently exist in reality, i.e. a paradox. It could be a sort of perfect storm concocted as a gotcha. "What if you raise taxes on highly profitable corporations and it causes federal revenue to go way down?" "What if you pass more anti-poverty measures and poverty goes up?" "What if a stateless territory with no government had a better educated populace than us? Would you consider eliminating public education then?" You should not accept the premise of a question if it is both impossible to exist in reality and also constructed to make you appear wrong no matter what. | {
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35,460 | What does pooled sovereignty mean? IIUC sovereignty is pooled in the EU in the sense that supreme legislative power is vested in others offshore. But is sovereignty pooled in, say, the UNECE automobile standards body, or the International Maritime Organisation? Or are organisations like these different. Perhaps they are bodies that domestic governments are not bound by treaty to respect(?), and can choose to demur at any time, so sovereignty remains onshore? | The vast majority of the time, a politician's negatives come from what they have said, not what they haven't said . A politician can refuse to answer questions a thousand times without it hurting their career. Anything a politician does say, even if it is reasonable, can be taken out of context, treated as an incorrect response when it is a fine response, replayed in an attack ad over spooky music with ominous narration, later misquoted, and treated as a sufficient reason not to vote for that politician even though it is such a small part of their platform (or not even part of their platform at all). The following are not examples of responses to hypothetical questions, but they are examples of how twisted quotes have been career-damaging and carried more weight than they should. Example: famously, Al Gore is misquoted as claiming that he invented the internet, which he did not exactly claim , especially in those words; though he did credit himself with advancing the adoption of the internet in many ways, including the Supercomputer Network Study Act of 1986, the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991, and other measures. Example: Stacey Abrams gave a speech suggesting that the blue wave includes immigrants, documented and undocumented. It is obvious that she would not have meant that undocumented immigrants actually vote in the mid-terms (no politician would be dumb enough to say and mean this in a public forum), but that undocumented immigrants support the blue wave (in non-voting ways, including moral support and advocacy) and are supported by the blue wave. But some people deliberately misinterpreted this quote in order to claim that she was encouraging voter fraud. Example involving a hypothetical: In the 1988 presidential debates, Dukakis's candidacy was sunk by a hypothetical question in which Bernard Shaw asked him "Governor, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?" Dukakis answered "No, I don't, Bernard, and I think you know that I've opposed the death penalty during all of my life." You probably want a president whose principals and policies remain constant regardless of whether they are personally affected; otherwise their policies were wrong to begin with, or they become a selfish hypocrite as soon as they find themselves in the same position as the rest of us. This was in no way a change from what was already well known about Dukakis's platform. Rationally, this answer shouldn't have changed the electoral math at all. The public nevertheless reacted as though he was a cold-blooded psychopath. (This example was incorporated from the replies) Hypothetical questions in particular have several other factors that make them politically dangerous to tackle: They exist outside of the politician's message. If a politician wants voters to associate them with healthcare reform, then they don't want to answer a hypothetical that could lead to them being associate with a different topic. Hypotheticals exist outside of planned responses. This means whatever answer the politician gives will not be premeditated, does not give the benefit of conducting any background research, and therefore, the response is more likely to be wrong . It also means that the politician has to formulate an answer without assistance from strategy consultants, the policy director, the communications department, and so on. It is not a practiced answer, and therefore more likely to be delivered nervously, ineptly, and with gaffes . Hypotheticals lack the full context of the situation. If you are asked how you would handle a foreign country killing an American journalist, in real life you might take into account things like what is our diplomatic relationship with the country, what is our trade relationship with the country, what is the relative military strength between us and them, who within that country perpetrated the killing, why did they do it, who else knew, who authorized it, and so on. In a hypothetical, a lot of this context is obscured; so how are you supposed to answer what you would do when you've been blindfolded from knowing like 93% of the information that you would realistically take into account? You probably wouldn't have an answer in one minute like the interviewer is expecting; you would probably ask the opinion of your chief of staff, vice president, senior adviser, the Pentagon Joint Chiefs of Staff, and then think about the issue for 80 hours. Many economic situations are multi-faceted, and an intervention in one area likely has downstream consequences, which is why you might not want to speak on an economic hypothetical without the full context of local conditions (maybe your intervention causes inflation to rise. Is the inflation rate comfortably low or dangerously close to hyperinflation?) and causes (are the students doing bad because of poverty, absent parents, bad teachers, underfunded schools, or badly designed standards? Your solution can't be agnostic of the cause). In a state governments vs federal government hypothetical, it is likely that the federal government will fall more in the center of a position, whereas state laws will likely fall further on both extremes, and you can likely contradict your own party platform if you start weighing-in on whether you would endorse states deciding for themselves (e.g. should a Republican say that they approve of individual states deciding to expand abortion availability?). Hypotheticals can take place within an impossible reality. Some hypothetical discussions give you a certain premise, but they also included other bundled assumptions that could not concurrently exist in reality, i.e. a paradox. It could be a sort of perfect storm concocted as a gotcha. "What if you raise taxes on highly profitable corporations and it causes federal revenue to go way down?" "What if you pass more anti-poverty measures and poverty goes up?" "What if a stateless territory with no government had a better educated populace than us? Would you consider eliminating public education then?" You should not accept the premise of a question if it is both impossible to exist in reality and also constructed to make you appear wrong no matter what. | {
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35,491 | It occurred to me that if one is a supporter of X party living in a far Y state, one might cast an indirect vote against Y in the house and presidential races by not taking part in the census. Due to apportionment, if there were enough boycotters, the state would lose electors and eventually representatives. Besides the potential personal ramifications (e.g. a fine under US title 13), how might this backfire in other ways? | This is a bad idea for two reasons: it'll cause a decrease in state funding for where you live, and it may be tricky to actually cause your preferred party to get that representative/elector. First, there are definitely other ways it would backfire, since census data isn't only used for apportioning representatives. It is also used for determining where federal and state funding should go : How Our Data Are Used ... To distribute more than $675 billion in federal funds to local, state and tribal governments each year. Census data informs how states and communities allocate funding for: Neighborhood improvements Public health Education Transportation Much more If a large group of people of some political party in some state boycotted the census and it wasn't corrected, then that state would receive a smaller portion of federal funding, which would probably be spread fairly evenly over other states (i.e., both Party X and Y in other states benefit). However, state funding for roads, hospitals, schools, etc. would only be diverted away from areas where the Party X boycotters are concentrated, to the benefit of Party Y supporters as they would receive a portion of the diverted funding. Second, if you want a deep Y state to lose a representative, presumably you want that representative to go to a Party X state in order to represent the party you prefer. However, there is no guarantee that the representative wouldn't just go to another deep Y state. After a census, representatives are reapportioned based on a formula intended to appropriate representation. The gist of it is that each state starts with 1 representative, and then the next 385 are given one at a time to states based on a ration between population and representatives it was already given. Here's the order of apportion for the last census. So, not only would you need to get enough people from some party in some state to boycott the census and drop that state out position for what would have been its final representative, you wouldn't really help your party unless the new order of apportion would result in your party getting that extra representative. Someone with a political science or mathematics degree (or just some spare time) might be able to calculate which states and how many boycotters are needed to give a new apportionment order that helps one party, but I can almost guarantee one thing: if tens of thousands of Party X voters suddenly disappeared from a deep Y state, somebody's going to notice and try to correct it. | {
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35,565 | Eurosceptic political parties in Europe have been on the rise over the last few years. What are the reasons for this? What are the main arguments made by Eurosceptics against the EU? | Taking Benefits for Granted The last time I was to Belgium, we didn't actually stop in Belgium. We drove right through from the Netherlands to France. I'm old enough to remember having to stop at borders for long waiting lines. Earlier this year a young colleague of mine decided to tour south-eastern Europe on his vacation. He went into a train to Vienna and by bus and train from there. No plan, just a backpack and a credit card. As he told it, he was surprised that in the train to Serbia people came and wanted to see his papers. He was glad that his national ID card was enough, because he had not thought to bring a passport. We had a good laugh at the office when he told the story. A Perception of EU Overreach They thought they were getting into a free trade area, now the EU is regulating the shape of cucumbers, the power of lightbulbs, and refugee rights. What has that to do with free trade? Well, people in some of the older EU member states have always seen the EU as a political project, with an ever tighter integration . Others just wanted free movement and structural and cohesion funds , with no strings attached . Nobody told them it doesn't work that way. (Or rather, it could work that way if there was consensus. But if the net payers have different ideas from the net recipients, things get ugly.) A Perception of Demands for Bailouts During the banking crisis, some EU/Eurozone members had to be funded by others. Among the stable and strong economies, there is a perception that some south-eastern members are profligate wastrels who want others to subsidize their laziness. This is not entirely accurate, of course. Industries in countries like Germany, France or the Netherlands benefit from the weaker Euro which would be grossly undervalued if it was just for those countries. Look what happened to the Swiss Franc . The Euro is kept lower by the bad credit rating of some members. Biases enter this perception. Just compare the Latvian financial crisis with the Greek one. Greece got much more blame. A Perception of a Lack of Democracy While the EU parliament is elected by the people, the rest of the EU decisions are made by representatives of the member governments (who are elected by the people, either directly or indirectly). There are two or three steps between the popular vote and the EU commissioner. This lends itself to claims of missing democratic legitimation. Fear of Change in a Globalizing World Things are changing. Fast. Think back 10 years and the iPhone was a novelty. Now we have selfies, emoticons, and uber. Amazon is replacing shops. Imagine what will happen when autonomous cars replace trucks and delivery vans. Quite a lot of people feel threatened by the pace of change. Populists see the distant EU as a perfect scapegoat for all the problems. If something goes right, they take the credit. If something goes wrong, they had no choice, it was the EU. Yeah, sure. | {
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35,594 | When the UK voted for Brexit, then it was generally expected that the pro-Brexit politicians had some idea of how negotiations for a Brexit deal would fare and what the outcome would be. Now years later, we are at a point where May's got one last deal to offer that very few in the UK like and if it's not accepted, nobody knows what is going to happen. How did it come to this? Why have the negotiations been so difficult? | it was generally expected that the pro-Brexit politicians had some idea of how negotiations for a Brexit deal would fare and what the outcome would be. Who by? Everyone knew the lead Brexit team (Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg et al) had no plans for how this would work. They didn't even have any grasp of how much things currently cost, never mind how anything would be affected in future. The assumption by Brexiteers was entirely that Europe would have more to lose by losing UK trade than the UK would. So Brexit supporters claimed that the EU would grant us special deals, because they couldn't afford to lose that trade. The EU said that this was never going to happen, and a year later, the UK have found that the EU meant what they said. Theresa May might genuinely have the best deal available; the EU has no reason to compromise, because the UK has nothing they want that badly. For a few examples... The most significant trade for the UK is in banking services, and Frankfurt, Paris and Amsterdam will be more than happy to take that off us. Unlike heavy industry, office-based jobs like banking can be moved almost overnight: the physical infrastructure required is minimal; people at more senior levels in banking are already happy to move anywhere in the world; and for those who aren't, there's no shortage of "talent" in every country in the world to step in. Issues with the Irish border and the Good Friday Agreement were widely reported in the press. The Brexit team said that it wouldn't come to this, but presented no ideas for how it would work. There still isn't a good solution. The UK losing all science backing from the EU, as one of the main beneficiaries of research funding, was widely reported too. That's already happened, even before Brexit. So too was the lack of key medical facilities, in particular radioisotopes for cancer treatment, and there's still no news about that as far as I know. The UK civil service itself fact-checked the claims of Brexiteers and the effects of Brexit, and showed that all these were inevitable consequences. Remainers checked too, of course, but the key part is that government departments checked on the impact on their own systems and reported the problems they'd face. No Brexiteer presented plans for them at the time. So no, I'm afraid you're starting from a false premise that anyone who looked at the evidence could have thought the Brexit faction had any clue as to how these issues would be resolved. By definition, if you informed yourself then you could not think this was the case. I wouldn't dispute that people might have thought independence outweighed the impact of all these issues. You might guess that I'd disagree, of course, but it's a valid opinion and I respect the integrity of people with that opinion. Thinking that the Brexiteers had solutions though, simply because you can't imagine politicians causing this level of chaos to further their own careers - that's just wishful thinking. | {
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35,627 | I don't follow UK politics much, but I did get interested during the Brexit referendum two years ago. Back then, the main names I recall are David Cameron, Boris Johnson, and Nigel Farage, and maybe also Corbyn I think. At least, those were the names you constantly read about in the papers. I don't recall ever hearing the name "Theresa May". I also know that Boris Johnson and Farage were the ones that were mainly pro Brexit and Corbyn and Cameron were against it. Then the Brexiters won the referendum, and now that the negotiations are at the latter stage, I am again getting interested in UK politics. However, what I don't understand is, where did May come from? Why is she leading Brexit negotiations all of a sudden, when she played no significant role of promoting Brexit during the referendum? And I'm not seeing Farage or Johnson anywhere? What happened? In short: why aren't the main endorsers of Brexit, the ones we kept hearing about during the campaign in 2016, not the ones leading the negotiations? | In short all Leave candidates who put themselves forward for the PM job lost in a run-off to Andrea Leadsom (a Leave supporter) who then backed out.
Major Leave supporters were given top level ministerial jobs, including arguably the most important one of Brexit Secretary - the Chief Negotiator position - and then resigned when they were unable to deliver anything that they personally approved of as a consequence of the negotiations. In more depth... Your best starting place is probably here; Conservative 2016 Leadership Campaign .
It's difficult to assign motives if the individuals involved haven't made specific statements, and there's obviously a level of trust you'd have to place in those that have made them. The key points that left Theresa May in charge are detailed in the Wikipedia link above, but can be best summarised as; David Cameron calls a Referendum promising to stay on as PM no matter what the result. Leave campaign fronted by Boris Johnson wins the Referendum David Cameron resigns. Opening a Conservative Leadership election. Theresa May is seen as David Cameron's choice for successor, Boris Johnson as leader of Leave is seen as the strongest Leave supporting Candidate. Michael Gove declares himself a PM candidate, saying Boris is not up to the job. Boris says the lack of Gove's support means he cannot run for PM job . Conservative election rules mean a number of ballots are run until only two candidates are left. Realistically this would always mean one Remain supporter and one Leave supporter were the final candidates. Theresa May (Remain) and Andrea Leadsom (Leave) are final candidates, which would go to Conservative Party member for a vote. Leadsom withdraws from the race, leaving May to take the top slot "unopposed". Since the referendum a number of high profile Leave campaigners have been involved in the negotiations. Brexiteer David Davis was the lead negotiator as Brexit Secretary for two years before resigning, while Boris Johnson was the Foreign Secretary for the same period. Dominic Raab, also a long time Leave supporter, then took over as Brexit Secretary and lead negotiator until the final Deal was agreed on the 14th November 2018. He then resigned stating his unhappiness with the deal. As an aside, Nigel Farage was at the time the leader of UKIP, a separate political party with 2 MPs at the time, neither of which was Farage. There is no realistic way he would have been involved with running the country following the referendum. At best, he might have been offered a cabinet position, although I don't know if he could have remained an MEP under those circumstances. Party politics make that unlikely, because UKIP has been seen historically as a party drawing voters away from the Conservative party, making them unlikely to raise its profile in anyway, especially following the success of the Leave cause they had campaigned in favour of for such a long time. | {
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35,719 | I'm not an expert in politics at all, but I have been wondering about this for a while. If Church and State are supposed to be separated, isn't it a bit of a contradiction to have "God" so strongly "embedded" in politics? I'm thinking of: In God we Trust; official motto, printed on money. [...] so help me God; president swearing-in. [...] God bless America; pretty much closing every official announcement. And so on. How is explicitly acknowledging to believe in God, as a state, not being something that intrinsically goes against the principle of separation? | No, it isn't a contradiction under US law. This has been tested in the Federal Courts, see for example O'Hair v. Blumenthal , and Aronow v. United States . The basic reasoning is summarized in this paragraph from the Anonow case: It is quite obvious that the national motto and the slogan on coinage and currency "In God We Trust" has nothing whatsoever to do with the establishment of religion. Its use is of a patriotic or ceremonial character and bears no true resemblance to a governmental sponsorship of a religious exercise. Religion and the government have a lengthy history in the U.S. Thomas Jefferson's position was that no man should be compelled to support religion, but that all men should be free to profess their opinions in matters of religion. In context of today's politics and law, the profession of God in those contexts isn't compelling religion, but fits closer the freedom Jefferson described. In the US today, it is optional. So, U.S. presidents have never been required to add "So help me God" to their oath, but it became a tradition . Some U.S. state constitutions required it, and that wasn't viewed as a conflict in 1776, but the law evolved, and in 1961 the Supreme Court ruled against a state constitution that compelled the words "So help me God" in a state oath of office . The Supreme Court ruled compelling this unconstitutional and unenforceable but did not make optional words illegal. Thomas Jefferson avoided the word God in official context, but professed in words of his own ending his first inaugural address : And may that infinite power, which rules the destinies of the universe, lead our councils to what is best, and give them a favorable issue for your peace and prosperity. | {
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35,798 | The word "progressives" has always confused me. It's sort of like an antonym to "conservatives", but the difference is that "conservative" is a neutral word. It tells us that you want to "conserve" something, but that something may be both good or bad or irrelevant, so the word doesn't imply anything about the moral implications of being a conservative. But the word "progressives" derives from "progress" which is an inherently positive word, referring to a transition from a bad state to a good state. Hence the word "progressives" is not a neutral word. And yet, it is a commonly used word by everyone across the entire political spectrum. Why? Why would those that would not characterize themselves as progressives accept the use of this term and its obvious propagandaic potential? I mean, after all, who wants to openly admit they are anti-progress? There's been some pushback against this and I've seen people use the word "regressives", but it still surprises me when I watch, say, a right-wing politician describing their political opponents by using the word "progressives". Why would you willingly praise them like that? Even if that's not your intent, that's certainly the connotations that many people will make. | Almost every term can be appropriated to gain a positive or negative connotation. Even the term "Fascist" used to have a positive connotation once. It was derived from the Italian word "fascio", a bundle of rods. The symbolic meaning was "strength in unity". Who wants to openly admit they are anti-unity? That was before the Nazis murdered a couple million people and conquered most of Europe in the name of Fascism. Now "Fascist" is pretty much the worst insult you can use in a political context. Another such term is "Globalist" which once had a positive connotation but was recently malapropriated by the alt-right as a negative label to put on their opponents. So if you associate a positive term like "Progressive" with negative effects often enough, the term itself gains a negative connotation. It is of course also possible to do the opposite and appropriate a negative term and turn it into a neutral or even positive term. A good example is the term "gay". It once was a slur used to discriminate homosexuals. But nowadays no politician is ashamed to claim to "defend gay rights". Now regarding the question: Why invest all the work to give a negative connotation to the self-description of your political opponents instead of using your own term which is already negative ? Because it allows you to turn your opponent's reputation against them. When you convince people that "Progressive" is a negative term, then any situation where your opponents call themselves "progressive" can be used against them. The term becomes a " dog whistle ". Your opponents think they are describing themselves positively by calling themselves progressive, but your followers perceive it as them admitting their malicious intentions. | {
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35,837 | Impeachment seems to be presidential democracy's equivalent of parliamentary democracies' votes of no confidence. Why such a large disparity in numbers of them then? | One is an expected form of power transfer, the other is not. In a parliamentary democracy, each representative has a mandate from their constituents, and only in aggregate can they form a government. If that government can't command a majority in the parliament, they basically can't govern, but someone else might be able to. Depending on the exact parliamentary model, this might then involve calling a general election "out of season". Imagine you have 3 parties with the following seat breakdowns Red 35% Blue 45% Yellow 20% At the start of the parliament, Blue and Yellow agree to work together, and form a government (the "Green Coalition"). They total 65% of the seats, so can easily pass their legislation. At some later point, they have a falling out, and Yellow ask Red to table a no confidence vote, which wins 55%, and then form a new government (the "Orange Coalition"). At no point have the choices of the voters not been honoured. A president is chosen by all the people together. It's much harder to have a falling out with yourself over policy. An impeachment is by design not honouring the choice of the voters, but putting some other criteria above it. The people who make that decision also answer to the voters, it's in their interest to only try it when they think the public will agree it was warranted. | {
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35,850 | In his book "The Best Seat in the House", excerpted online here , former Congressman John Dingell expresses his feeling that there should be more bills passed by legislature. Yet [Congressperson Debbie Dingell's] efforts are often stymied simply because it is understood that even should a good bill make it through the hyper-partisan House, it will die a quiet death in the Senate because of the disproportionate influence of small states. With my own eyes, I’ve watched in horror and increasing anger as that imbalance in power has become the primary cause of our national legislative paralysis. Dingell then mentions his vote in 1969 to abolish the Electoral College via the Bayh-Celler amendment. Is our government paralyzed? What would it look like for the US government to heal from such a paralysis? | This is a matter of opinion that entirely depends on your worldview of what the role, size, and scope of government should be. The American political left favors things like universal health care, free public education, strong business regulation, reduced income inequality, and social welfare programs. Therefore, people on the left generally see a larger, more centralized government as a necessary instrument to bring about social change and implement the tax policies necessary to support them. For them, the slow, lumbering pace of the legislative process is an obstacle to getting things done. The American political right favors things like lower taxes, less regulation, free markets, individual liberty, and private enterprise. Therefore, people on the right generally see a larger, more centralized government as a threat to individual freedom and personal responsibility. For them, the slow, lumbering pace of the legislative process is necessary to restrain the government from becoming too powerful, and thus tyrannical. The framers of the Constitution deliberately designed the system with a fairly complex system of checks and balances so that laws enacted by the government would need a broader base of consensus than what was possible in Europe at the time. It should be noted that in the passage you quoted from your source, the author (John Dingell) is writing about his wife, who is also a House representative. Both are decidedly left-wing in their politics. Among other things, they have advocated for the abolition of the U.S. Senate as an institution, which is a fringe position in American politics. He's just bemoaning how difficult it is to push policy agendas like that through. | {
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35,851 | This is not a question about the ideological implications of supporting or not supporting Trump. It is merely a question about the rational behavior (or lack thereof) of a political party when faced with certain facts. And the facts are these. Donald Trump is monumentally unpopular. His disapproval rating has remained above 50 % (to be exact: an average of 52.1 % across multiple polls) for almost the entirety of his tenure - mind you that other presidents have had worse ratings by the end of their tenures, but nobody has had such bad ratings this early and this consistently as Donald Trump. This suggests that a majority of the population are fundamentally opposed to Trump, to the point where it is hard to see what could possibly change their stance when 2020 arrives. Further, it may well be argued that a major reason for Trump's 2016 victory was his opposition: Hillary Clinton. An often unliked and untrusted career politician with a plethora of personal scandals, who caused a historical divide even amongst the left-leaning populace, to the point where statistics later revealed that 1 out of 10 Bernie Sanders supporters ... actually voted for Trump ( no, seriously ). But will such a scenario repeat itself for 2020? Probably not, given the immense popularity of the most likely Democratic candidates, be that Elizabeth Warren, Beto O'Rourke, or Joe Biden. With all that in mind, why does the Republican party not take steps to generate a movement against Trump, so that they can present a more viable candidate of their own for 2020? Is that not the rational thing to do? Trump is almost guaranteed to lose given the current state of affairs which, as argued above, differ significantly from 2016. Supporting him means giving up the most powerful political office in the world to your political opposition: is it not worth it to swallow your pride to avoid that outcome? So why don't they? Is there political pressure not to from Trump himself? Is there a general lack of viable candidates in the first place? What rationale underlies their actions? Because as of right now, it seems the Republican party is by own volition taking the path towards defeat in 2020. | It may seem like a tautology, but Trump is popular where he is popular. Such is the case with divisive figures. In order to remain in office, politicians in those areas where Trump is popular feel the need to heed the will of their own personal constiuency and embrace Trump. To be fair, an opinion I share is that some of the popularity that Trump receives in no small part comes from how unpopular he is where he is in fact unpopular. That is to say that those who are ardent Trump supporters like him more because of who he upsets and how he goes about it. People running for office in these areas are more than likely going to embrace and hope to emulate the Trump presidential style because it makes them more popular where it actually matters for them. Someone running for congress from Oklahoma probably couldn't care less what Trump's poll numbers in California are. If he is popular in their district then they will continue to support him. Further, according to the most recent Gallup Poll Trump maintains 89% job approval within the Republican party. By contrast, Barack Obama's job approval for Democrats in his last week in office was 95% which isn't too far above where Trump is. The two have drastically different approval ratings from Independents, with Trump having 39% most recently and Obama holding 61% in his last week. 1 It is highly possible that the so-called "Never Trumpers" in the Republican party are in a tight spot, since they seem to be completely out of step with the rest of the Republican electorate. Many have already fled the Republican party which in cases of states with closed primaries means they have already abdicated any responsibility of helping the party choose the next nominee. Trump's style of always counter-attacking against perceived slights helps to keep all except the most outspoken against him in the party silent out of fear of retribution. This doesn't mean that those who approve of the job Trump is doing wouldn't support another Republican nominee more , but the current signs point to the Republican electorate being solidly behind Trump. But will such a scenario repeat itself for 2020? Probably not, given the immense popularity of the most likely Democratic candidates, be that Elizabeth Warren, Beto O'Rourke, or Joe Biden. I think you could be overestimating those politicians' overall popularity. Donald Trump wasn't supposed to be elected the first time around. I think you make a good point in that Clinton's unpopularity probably did help get him elected, but now that he's in office he is delivering on things that Republican voters want, so why would they switch? 1- For completeness, Trump has 6% job approval from Democrats and Obama had 14% from Republicans. | {
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35,894 | There is this question bugging me for a while now. I can't really state it other than the title of this question. What do I mean by that? It seems to me that, besides going to vote once every 4-5 years or taking the streets to protest some event or situation, the common citizen has no power whatsoever in a democracy. On the other hand, those (elected) in power control the institutions, the army, the police, everything. If they want to do whatever they want (see for example the situation in Hungary, Poland, and Romania) they can do it and the people pretty much have to watch (especially if some protest ends badly like the one in Romania from August the 10th )... Then wait for the next elections. So, how can the common citizen defend democracy principles? What leverage do they have against those (elected) that go in opposition to democratic principles? | Join a political party and become an activist for it. Being an activist gives you much more of a say in party policy and behaviour than J. Random Citizen because: You get to vote on internal party decisions, and since most people are not activists this gives you a disproportionate level of influence. The party needs activists and doesn't want to make them feel like their opinions don't matter. So your opinions carry more weight with party management than those of J. Random Citizen. If you feel the party is doing the wrong thing then you can put your case to your fellow activists, who are presumably there because they care as well. If you feel the opposition party is doing the wrong thing then you can present your views to voters when canvassing. If you do this effectively enough then you may be able to level up and run for office yourself, which gives you even more influence over the democratic process. Edit: Response to comments The question was about how to defend democracy. If that is what you want to do then a good place to do it is from inside a political party. If the party starts moving in an anti-democratic direction, for example by gerrymandering or pushing for voter suppression tactics, then you can argue against that. Of course "join a political party" is a good answer to any question that starts "How do I influence the government to ...", but that doesn't make it any less correct in this case. | {
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35,896 | According to Wikipedia, cultural Marxism is a conspiracy theory that says that the Frankfurt School wants to destroy Western culture by controlling the media, academia, etc., using as its method the advancement of gay rights, feminism, racial equality, etc. It names as prominent proponents of the theory "paleoconservatives" such as William Lind, who linked the theory to Jews, as well as the so called alt-right and white supremacists. This New York Times opinion piece says that antisemitism and belief in cultural Marxism are "inseparable". This is also the only definition and context that I have come across the issue. The theory uses antisemitic canards, and is always explicitly or implicitly linked to Jews (see eg this post on a neo-Nazi site which seems representative). However, in a recent question of mine, another user questioned if the conspiracy theory of cultural Marxism is indeed inherently tied to antisemitism. Have political scientists analyzed the origin and contemporary usage of the term in this regard? | Meaning of the New York Times quote This New York Times opinion piece says that antisemitism and cultural Marxism are "inseparable". What that claim in question means is not that " cultural marxism " is connected to antisemitism via the alleged "Cultural marxists" being also antisemites. It's the opposite. Those claiming that there is a dominating "cultural marxism" are conspiracy theorists. And these conspiracy theorists are almost always anitsemites , sometimes without even knowing it, and almost always denying it. Partly as they do not understand or deny the concept of structural antisemitism . The flavours of modern antisemitism Modern antisemitism doesn't need any real Jews to function. It sufficed historically that the Nazis equated Jews with Bolshevism, running the world — despite the inability to prove that for example Lenin or Stalin were anything "Jewish". It now suffices that these 'hidden agents' are now supposedly promoting a Marxist agenda in for example the media, despite nothing of that kind to be found in reality. What is antisemitism? However one defines antisemitism, two points must be kept in mind: first, antisemitism presupposes that the Jews are radically “other.” This simple central point is a universal, timeless characteristic of antisemitism.
There is one other point to be made about antisemitism: Antisemitism is not a Jewish problem; it is a non-Jewish problem. There is nothing that Jews can do about antisemitism, other than monitor it and do some little counteraction. I will return to this matter later in the discussion. — Leonard Dinnerstein: "My Assessment of American Antisemitism Today", in: Steven K. Baum (Eds): "Antisemitism in North America. New World, Old Hate", Brill: Leiden, Boston, 2016, p 53–60. What is " cultural marxism ", and where does that concept originate? Radically "others", infiltrating America, destroying it, planned since the 1930s, invented by Jews, yeah, we get that now. Case in point, but really stereotypical classic antisemitism paired with Holocaust denial from one of the inventors of that very concept: William Lind has long been a point man for cultural conservatism, a key player in the world of right-wing politicians, and, in recent years, the head of the Free Congress Foundation's Center for Cultural Conservatism. He also seems to be cultivating friends in some remarkable places. This June 15, at a major Holocaust denial conference put on by veteran anti-Semite Willis Carto in Washington, D.C., Lind gave a well-received speech before some 120 "historical revisionists," conspiracy theorists, neo-Nazis and other anti-Semites, in which he identified a small group of people who he said had poisoned American culture. On this point, Lind made a powerful connection with his listeners. "These guys," he explained, "were all Jewish." With "these guys" meaning the first generation of theorists from the Frankfurt School. One of them was Karl August Wittfogel , German name, German ancestors, and yes, a Marxist. Early on. But when he came to America – to "spread his influence in the culture industry"? — he even turned fierce anti-communist. Claiming that he was a "Jewish" is not even wrong. It's pure paranoia. And in a quite direct line, in America , that has a very nice explanation 'for everything', even Hitler: But the agitator's preferred method of establishing the connection between capitalism and communism is by suggesting that "atheistic Communism" was "originally spawned in Jewish capitalism and Jewish intellectualism." The most striking formulation of this theory traces all modernisms back to a common Jewish ancestor: One must remove the causes to get rid of recurring effects … we are concerned with liquidating the causes which created the concept of Hitlerism in the minds of men. These causes run back from Stalin to Lenin; from Lenin to Marx; from Marx to the Rothschilds; from the Rothschilds to the Bank of England; from the Bank of England to the pack of usurers who transubstantiated a vice into a virtue in the sixteenth century… — Quote: Coughlin , Social Justice , Dec.2, 1941, p4, quoted from: — Leo Lowenthal & Norbert Guterman: "Prophets of Deceit. A Study of the Techniques of the American Agitator", Harper: New York, 1970, p44. What proponents of "cultural marxism" see is something like this: A Flowchart History of "Cultural Marxism" according to 4chan's /pol/ And that looks pretty much like a duck. The role of The Frankfurt School® The Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, whether its members or their theories and other writings, can very well be criticised in many ways. Blaming everything on those theorists as planned, and successfully conducting an un-American campaign for over 80 years? Without understanding in the slightest what that Critical theory is critical about? That means: " Cultural Marxism n. 1. A meaningless phrase used to signal that the writer or speaker has no idea what he or she is talking about." This connection is analysed in quite a few books and articles about far right activists and haters . For example: — Jérôme Jamin: "Cultural Marxism and the Radical Right", in: Paul Jackson & Anton Shekhovtsov (Eds): "The Post-War Anglo-American Far Right: A Special Relationship of Hate", Palgrave Macmillan: New York, 2014, p84–103. DOI: 10.1057/9781137396211.0009 Illustrating how the pro-Israel conspiracy theorist Breivik got into believing in ' cultural marxism '. Although anti-Semitic attitudes are much more heavily stigmatised in post-Nazi Germany than other forms of racism, it is by no means true that there is no longer any anti-Semitism. On the one hand, there are phenomena known to researchers as ‘secondary anti-Semitism’ and ‘structural anti-Semitism’. ‘Secondary anti-Semitism’ refers to the cultivation of resentments against Jews not just by reference to the traditional prejudices that continue to exist, but also by using new motifs. One example of this is the idea that Jews, allegedly, prevent Germany from ‘putting its past behind it’. This is an ‘updated’ form of traditional accusations, such as greed and lust for power. Jews are once again painted as disrupting German national identity — but this time through Vergangenheitsbewältigung (the process of coming to terms with the [Nazi] past). ‘Structural anti-Semitism’ refers to ideas that are not explicitly directed at Jews, but are similar to anti-Semitic ideas in their concepts and argument. One example of this is the differentiation between and personification of ‘money-grubbing’ financial capital and ‘working’ productive capital (this refers to Hitler’s terms ‘raffendes/schaffendes Kapital’ ). This personalising and abbreviation of Marxist social criticism is structurally anti-Semitic and can also promote hostility towards Jews. — Sabine Schiffer & Constantin Wagner: "Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia – new enemies, old patterns", Race & Class, Vol. 52(3): 77–84, 2011, DOI:10.1177/0306396810389927 The "Cultural marxism" theory is antisemitism Now that the real origins of political correctness in the cultural Marxism devised by a clever bunch of foreign-born Jews had been revealed, the full extent of the damage they had caused could be spelled out. Here is a list cited verbatim from many of the websites devoted to the question: The creation of racism offences Continual change to create confusion The teaching of sex and homosexuality to children The undermining of schools' and teachers' authority Huge immigration to destroy identity The promotion of excessive drinking Emptying of churches An unreliable legal system with bias against victims of crime Dependency on the state or state benefits Control and dumbing down of media Encouraging the breakdown of the family — Martin Jay: "Dialectic of Counter-Enlightenment: The Frankfurt School as Scapegoat of the Lunatic Fringe", Salmagundi Magazine, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, 2011. ( archive.org ) Or quite drastically summarised in this analysis: Currently, the meaning of cultural Marxism is embattled and articulated for different political and ideological projects by the alt-left and alt-right, progressive and reactionary, socialist and fascist. The alt-right has constructed the meaning of cultural Marxism in a struggle to organize trans-national consent to fascism, and the alt-right’s meaning of Marxism is making an impression upon the minds of many. It is incumbent upon actual Marxists to look in the mirror held to them by the alt-right, and begin to counter the image and fascist movement behind it. This cognitive mapping of the alt-right’s discourse on cultural Marxism is a small gesture to that end. — Tanner Mirrlees: "The Alt-Right’s Discourse of “Cultural Marxism”: A Political Instrument of Intersectional Hate", Atlantis Journal, Issue 39.1, p49–69 2018. ( URL ) From the angle of philosophy: The story, repeated again and again, tells of how a bunch of Jewish intellectuals infiltrated America through the minds of its youth, culminating in the sixties counterculture, which is framed as a low point in the culture war for preserving traditional American values. (In its traditionalism, and preoccupation with contamination, the concept can be seen to have a certain structural similarity to the charge of “cultural Bolshevism” which Weimar-era conservatives directed towards aesthetic modernists of their day.) This conspiratorial and often anti-Semitic concept imagines the corrupting and feminizing influences of European decadence as having spread octopus-like throughout the American body politic in particular via its infiltration of the academy (Walsh 2015). The Cultural Marxist narrative attributes incredible influence to the power of the ideas of the Frankfurt School to the extent that it may even be read as a kind of “perverse tribute” to the latter (Jay 2011). In one account, for example (Estulin 2005), Theodor Adorno is thought to have helped pioneer new and insidious techniques for mind control that are now used by the “mainstream media” to promote its “liberal agenda” — this as part of Adorno’s work, upon first emigrating to the United States, with Paul Lazarsfeld on the famous Princeton Radio Research Project, which helped popularize the contagion theory of media effects with its study of Orson Welles’ 1938 broadcast of The War of the Worlds. In an ironical sense this literature can perhaps be understood as popularizing simplified or otherwise distorted versions of certain concepts initially developed by the Frankfurt School, as well as those of Western Marxism more generally. One such example might be the concept of “the Cathedral” (Yarvin 2008), developed by figures in the so-called neo-reactionary movement on the far right as a kind of critique of the hegemonic, unconscious consensus between powerful figures within academia and the media who use the concept of “political correctness” as a tool of oppression developed by those who (falsely) imagine themselves as being oppressed. Although the narrative of Cultural Marxism’s ineluctable triumph, which one encounters in all of these texts, seems patently false, defenders argue that seemingly unbiased research supports the claim that academics have moved markedly to left of the rest of Americans in recent decades (Abrams 2016). The polarization of these contested findings have in turn helped to breathe new life into the Cultural Marxist conspiracy theory, turning university campuses into sites of far-right activism in recent years. And though the analysis of Marxism proffered by this literature would certainly not stand up to scrutiny by any serious historian of the subject, we can nevertheless understand Cultural Marxism as a prime example of how the ideas of conservatism grow above all in reaction to those of the left (Robin 2011). — Marc Tuters: "Cultural Marxism", Krisis Journal for Contemporary Philosophy, Issue 2, 2018, p 32–34. ( PDF ) The following uses drastic language and hyperbole to illustrate how the New York Times article has to be read, and is therefore in quotes. You may read the above as the opinion of the author of this post. Please do not do that with the following material: Anyone insane enough to speak in earnest of 'Cultural Marxism' is per definition a right-leaning wing-nut . Right-leaning conservatives are increasingly and uninterruptedly fascistic since the 1920s. Those are then perversely and 'progressively* antisemites, by ignoring precisely what Marx analysed about capitalism and blame all the misgivings that are inherent to "the system" or the structures of it, onto a small group of outsiders — to them, or those who should follow their idiotic ideas. For ordinary Nazis, these were the Jews. These "unwanted elements" need not even be so much "real Jews", as 'Antisemitism' might imply. Right-wing antisemites find the Jews where they want to see them. This is "Structural antisemitism" or the anticapitalism as antisemitism of the idiots , as Kronawitter coined what is often ascribed to August Bebel. In other words: anyone claiming that in an increasingly fascistic world — that marches firmly to the right-wing abyss with names like Trump, Bolsanaro , Orban , Putin, Duterte –'cultural marxism' would be an increasingly influential position, says that what s/he sees in the world, or in his/her media-bubble, is not authoritarian, not fascist, not right-wing not inhumane enough for her/his likings. signals immediately that s/he is an extremist on the 'right' side, therefore a Nazi sympathiser and that means ultimately pro-genocidal Within the hermetic minds of those believing in 'cultural marxism', all of this answer is of course an example just proving their point. A maze without exits. Empirical case in point, from a now deleted comment: TL:DR: "A bunch of people who have ideological reason to like things that constitute cultural Marxism wrote pseudo-scholarly wording that amounts to "Anyone who disagrees with us must be an anstisemite, even if they are Jewish, the proof being that we said so". The fact that there can be non-antisemitic proponents of the theory doesn't get disproved, merely rejected based on no theoretical or empirical evidence. Well, brilliant. The theory is that "Cultural Marxism" is a "Jewish Invention" and "conspiracy to destroy". That is at the very core antisemitism. Now, conservatives can very well say "homosexuals no likey" for example. That is one questionable opinion that's tolerable to a certain extant. That is not antisemitic, 'merely' homophobia. But to say that "homosexualism gets promoted — by a conspiracy — to destroy American families and values — since the 30s" is just plain insanity on the one side. On the other side is that person an antisemite that says and does antisemitic things. The whole theory of "Cultural marxism" is antisemitic and anyone adopting an antisemitic theory is therefore an antisemite. It were those people who coined that theory that said "…and it was those Jews who did that, to the last man." If that is not recognised as plainly open antisemitism, we're lost here. On the genealogy of the very term "cultural marxism": The same scholarship that supports Schroyer’s analysis, for example, gives a degree of superficial credibility to the likes of Lind, Buchanan, or Breivik. Scholars such as Schroyer and Dennis Dworkin do not, however, suggest that the Frankfurt School or other “cultural Marxists” ever had a plan to destroy the moral fibre of Western civilization, or to use their critique of culture as a springboard to a totalitarian regime. That would be difficult to argue in all seriousness because Western “cultural Marxists” going back to the 1920s have typically been hostile to state power, social oppression of the individual, and Soviet Marxism itself. Moreover, they have shown considerable variation among themselves in their attitudes to specific social, moral, and cultural issues. There is no cultural Marxist master plan. More generally, serious intellectual history cannot ignore the complex cross-currents of thought within the Left in Western liberal democracies. The Left has always been riven with factionalism, not least in recent decades, and it now houses diverse attitudes to almost any imaginable aspect of culture (as well as to traditional economic issues). Many components of the Western cultural Left can only be understood when seen as (in part) reactions to other such components, while being deeply influenced by Western Marxism’s widespread criticism and rejection of Soviet communism. In the upshot, all the talk of cultural Marxism from figures on the (far) Right of politics is of little aid to understanding our current cultural and political situation. At best, this conception of cultural Marxism is too blunt an intellectual instrument to be useful for analysing current trends. At its worst, it mixes wild conspiracy theorizing with self-righteous moralism. Right-wing culture warriors will go on employing the expression “cultural Marxism” (or “Cultural Marxism”) in a pejorative way, attaching it to dubious, sometimes paranoid, theories of cultural history. There is nothing I can do to discourage this usage, and nor can I deny that it includes grains of truth in, for example, associating a more culture-oriented approach to Marxism with the Frankfurt School. I assume that this weaponized usage will continue. — Russell Blackford: "Cultural Marxism and our current culture wars: Part 2" , Cogito – Philosophy in the real world, The Conversation, August 2, 2015. More to he point: MacDonald was one of the earliest proponents of the concept of “cultural Marxism.” In The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Social Movements (1998), he argued that Jews criticize non-Jews’ desire to form “cohesive, nationalistic, corporate gentile groups based on conformity to group norms” while hypocritically pursuing their own cohesiveness. Jews, in other words, foist multiculturalism on the rest of us while maintaining their own ethnic enclaves. The phrase “cultural Marxism” had first appeared in right-wing circles only a few months before, in July 1998, when William Lind, leader of the far-right Free Congress Foundation, gave a speech he titled “The Origins of Political Correctness.” Lind described political correctness and cultural Marxism as totalitarian ideologies that were transforming American college campuses into “small ivy-covered North Koreas, where the student or faculty member who dares to cross any of the lines set up by the gender feminist or the homosexual-rights activists, or the local black or Hispanic group, or any of the other sainted ‘victims’ groups that revolves around, quickly find themselves in judicial trouble.” The phrase quickly became popular not just among white nationalists but also among paleoconservatives such as Patrick Buchanan, who, while campaigning for the presidency in 2000 on the Reform Party ticket, said, “America’s history and heroes and Western civilization itself are under relentless attack. The violence of this political correctness is nothing less than cultural Marxism.”
The Council of Conservative Citizens warned in one of its videos: “Racism, sexism and chauvinism are powerful weapons in the Marxist psychological warfare against traditional American values. Political correctness, the product of critical theory, is really treason against the US Constitution and against America.” The concept was similarly popular with the lingering remnant of white supremacists, Klansmen and neo-Nazis who remained active on the political fringes well into the twenty-first century. Indeed, many of these people and entities also embraced white nationalism through the 1990s and beyond in an effort to downplay their overt hostility to minorities and in hopes of making inroads into the political mainstream. — David Neiwert: "Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump", Verso, 2017. Any German origins for "Cultural Marxism"? Since Frankfurter Schule was indeed real and was a German thing, but almost everything else in this crazy conspiracy and what supposedly 'follows from it' is not,
let's look at the German word for 'Cultural Marxism': Kulturmarxismus. Google says: "Ngrams not found: Kulturmarxismus or kultureller Marxismus" (Although at the latest to be found in 1923 albeit clearly in a different sense .) And the DWDS – Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache shows the following corpus search chart: And curiously, most of these hits discuss Anders Bering Breivik and his world view or manifesto. This shows quite convincingly, that the 'Cultural Marxism' is a late, American invention. Invented by the radical right (— Thomas Grumke: "'Take this country back!' Die neue Rechte in den USA", in: "Die Neue Rechte – eine Gefahr für die Demokratie?" VS Verlag, 2004, p177.) If 'cultural marxism' was a thing, being that old, and an ideology of German origin, one should be able to find traces of it in some German books? Anyone who reproduces this conspiracy 'theory' should therefore have an easy time to reference the big word Kulturmarxismus (KM) in a book? Marxismus is no secret, gives you plenty of hits — thousands — in any search engine or library catalog. But KM? Google books gives for 'before 1990' almost exclusively false positives, hits based on bad OCR. Hamburg university library: 2 hits (0 before 1990), Bavarian state library: 3 hits (1). Dresden SLUB: 0 (0). . German National Library (Leipzig/Frankfurt): 2 (0). Google Scholar: 120 (2). Frankfurt University Library: 2 (0) ! Conclusion Academic cultural marxism was a tiny niche of analysis that lost almost all of its appeal and has barely any adherents now. Those antisemites and right-wingers that claim that cultural marxism exists in the way they want it to be — as a big conspiracy of 'praxis', and even based on this academic, sociologic analysis of music industry and theatre — stand there without any evidence: completely naked, empty handed and intellectually as well as morally bankrupt. The term “Cultural Marxism” seems to have originated from a work by Trent Schroyer in his book The Critique of Domination: The Origins and Development of Critical Theory from 1973, in an attempt to synthesise Marxism and the Frankfurt School. The term was not meant as to be referring to a conspiracy, before the far right hijacked it.
The usage and spread of the term Cultural Marxism referring to the conspiracy started in the USA via figures such as Paul Weyrich, who amongst others “hosted weekly lunches for Republican leaders, mentored a generation of ultra-conservative politicians, started his own TV channel and founded both the Heritage Foundation and ALEC,” and William S. Lind, a conservative American author believing in a Marxist plot, appearing regularly on Weyrich’s TV channel.118 Ever since, the term has been used increasingly by cultural conservative nationalists as a pejorative term for its political opposition, crossing the ocean to Europe where the conspiracy soon got caught on, […] — Laudy van den Heuvel: "Who is (still) afraid of spectres haunting Europe? Comparing the concepts of “Judeo-Bolshevism” and “Cultural Marxism” in their respective notions of ecology", Master Thesis, Lunds Universitet, 2020. ( PDF ) | {
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36,009 | In developing countries, a mass protest could reasonably end up in the local politicians finding themselves in jail or worse, such as what happened in 2011 to Qaddafi. On the other hand, the governments of developed countries are only responsible to voters during elections. Therefore a protest by a small percentage of the population (even if large in absolute numbers) should be of little concern to those in power. However we frequently see examples of politicians creating concessions under the pressure of protests - for example the French president recently agreed to change the scope of the tax increases under pressure of massive protests in Paris. What's the reason behind this? Why care about protests at all? | Stability. Security is an illusion. Take this to mean even security in the belief of a set of rules as protecting you or anyone else. If rules by themselves are enough then making murder illegal should solve all murder. Protests mark civil instability. Any instability can be a potential weakness to be exploited. The instability of a protest can have far reaching effects. Physical Security: They matter because they are frequently the last line of peaceful action, if they themselves are even peaceful. A protest left unchecked quickly becomes a riot. And riots are not good for politicians. Many people judge politicians by how well they handled protests as well.
And there are countless examples of protests involving the loss of life. Political Security: Rules only matter when enough people follow them. If a protest has enough support, it can lead to a coup. Even without the protest itself being a physical threat, they are a clear political message. A common trait among protests is that they are usually very one-sided. Support for the protest is high while opposition for a protest is usually low. A small group of people feel passionately about something that the rest of the people don't feel strongly for or against. This means that it is typically inexpensive politically to listen to a protest. Concessions can be made with protesters often without upsetting your own supporters too much. History: Countless protests throughout history have shown to have mattered. They are proven to be meaningful. Protests have also established themselves to be dangerous to the situation that produced the protest. In this sense, protests can be viewed as a symptom of an underlying problem that doesn't go away when the crowds disperse. Politicians know this. | {
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36,049 | Well living in the Netherlands it is quite common to see parties come and go, where one party splits up and later merges to different parties as situation changes. I keep reading that "internally there is a lot of struggle to get the same opinion within the British government". To me this means that the government is unable to continue ruling and is better of splitting up, where both sides can advocate their goal and thus focus better and actually achieve something. Why is there no talk about this at all? Nor splinter groups gaining traction? | A common answer to this is that the UK uses a " First Past the Post "(FPTP) voting system (where each individual MP is elected from a constituency election, where most votes wins), whereas the Netherlands uses a form of list based proportional representation (PR). In each of these election there is a strong spoiler effect , where multiple similar candidates are likely to lose to an individual with united support, whereas in PR a party evenly dividing would expect to have the two new parties retaining approximately the same number of total seats. The FPTP voting system also makes it much easier for a single party to win a parliamentary majority compared to PR, since it doesn't need an absolute majority in vote share (in recent history, figures around 40% have been enough). Together these two phenomena encourage long-lasting, stable parties, since actually splintering can wipe out a party's seat count remarkably quickly. An even stronger effect is seen in the US, where politics has effectively reduced to a two party system for virtually its entire history. There is even a political science rule of thumb called Duverger's law which states this to be a general principle of FPTP versus PR. | {
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36,055 | This question as quite hypothetical as I don't believe it will come to pass, but… There is an ongoing situation in which Theresa May, Leader of the United Kingdom Conservative Party and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, is facing a leadership challenge. If she loses, she cannot take part in the subsequent leadership election. It has been said that currently, the Prime Minister faces a rather impossible job. I can imagine many good reasons to not want the job. In theory, if there is a leadership election but no candidates (or no candidates with enough support to get their name on the ballot), what happens next? Will the position remain vacant? | Conservative party rules require that the Leader is an MP. The party's constitution only requires that "There shall be a Leader of the Party, drawn from the Members of Parliament" It doesn't give any remedy in case no MP is willing to stand. It would be a big problem for the party, but no laws would be broken. The existing Leadership would probably remain in a caretaker role until someone is willing to stand. In terms of the constitution, the Prime Minister and Cabinet must nominate their successor. Normally this would be either the next leader of her party, or the leader of the opposition (in case that she had lost a vote of confidence and the leader of the opposition had been able to form a coalition). In the exceptional circumstances of there being nobody willing and able to form a government then surely MPs would have no confidence in the government, and a new election would be held. These would not be business as normal, and would probably lead to a collapse of the party. For all sorts of reasons, this isn't going to happen. | {
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36,061 | Given that the Prime Minister's activity that has given rise to discontent in her own party, that any EU deal is subject to an imminent meaningful vote, and that no alternative candidate nor markedly better prospects for a deal resolving the NI backstop are obvious (the EU will hardly allow the UK a unilateral right to disengage unless the NI situation is resolved satisfactorily), what are the reasons why an MP would write to the 1922 Committee targeting the PM, rather than simply wait the extra day or two, and vote against her proposed deal? | Brexit is a submarine made out of cheese . Nobody sane at all thinks there is a good Brexit deal to be had. (Every proposed "good Brexit deal" uniformly assumes they can dictate terms to the EU; that has not proven to be the case). However, May has been forced (in order to become PM) to pretend there is a good cheese-submarine, and has in fact built a cheese-submarine. This cheese-submarine is bad. Of course it is, it is a submarine made out of cheese. May has to pretend it isn't bad, because it is the result of 2 years of her leadership. Everyone else is free to say "that cheese submarine is bad". And they are right. May has to say "no, it is a good cheese submarine", because it is the best cheese submarine one can expect (which isn't very good). They also say "I can make a better cheese submarine". Which is pretty much a lie; nobody actually thinks they can make a better one. But, it is a lie you really cannot prove to be a lie unless the person making the lie becomes prime minister . So by stating the clearly obvious "that cheese submarine is bad" and the impossible to disprove "I can make a better one", you position yourself (or your faction) to take over the UK government. At that point, well, you sort of won already. You'll probably try to ship a slightly modified cheese submarine, or maybe just let the cheese submarine sink; that is a problem for another day, after your faction is in control. Defeating this particular cheese submarine (voting against the brexit deal) does not directly get you control of the UK. In fact, once you do that, you might be obligated to propose a better cheese submarine solution, and that isn't a winning move. Instead, point out the failures of May's cheese submarine (which are large, obvious and undefendable), and use that to unseat May, then get control yourself. Once you have control, you could even just push forward May's cheese submarine as "the best you can do now that May wasted all that time" or whatever. Or force a hard Brexit, and try to get the country to rally behind you. Or negotiate more time from the EU. Or revoke Brexit, then reinvoke Brexit to get yourself 2 more years of power and cheese-submarine making room. The important part is, nobody actually has a better cheese submarine plan, but many people do want to have power and be in charge. | {
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36,066 | So Theresa May is facing a vote of no confidence in her leadership of the Conservative party today. It's unclear if she will be ousted or not. What happens if the vote fails? | Under current Conservative Party rules, she remains leader, and cannot be subject to a party confidence vote for another year. Being a party matter, none of this affects any parliamentary vote of no confidence which might take place. Source: BBC News . See also: Leadership Elections in the Conservative Party , House of Commons briefing paper 01366, July 2016. | {
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37,139 | Britain held a referendum on EU membership in 2016, Leave won, some other stuff happened, there was and is load of a drama and the UK is possible maybe who knows perhaps due to leave in March of next year, with future arrangements still very much up in the air. The consensus appears to be that the whole affair—from the bottom-of-the-barrel campaigning from both sides during the referendum to the vote of confidence against the Prime Minister after she offered a disappointing but EU-approved deal to Parliament last week—has been a bit of a shambles. What I don't understand though, is why the UK and the EU found themselves in a position where they had only couple of vague lines ( Article 50(2) of the Treaty on European Union (TEU)) to go on when beginning to work out their post-Brexit arrangements. The TEU has been in force since 2009, and the UK has had a turbulent relationship with the EU (and its antecedents) since the 1970s , so surely somebody could have seen this coming and planned appropriately? Rather than waiting until the UK had already decided to leave, running the risk of having burnt some bridges , being made an example of and having to bargain from a weakened position, why did the UK not introduce any sort of contingency plans over the past 9–46 years, when the going was good? Whether these would have been unilateral deals with individual countries (EU members or otherwise) that would take effect in the event of loss of EU membership, like this one the UK signed the other day with Switzerland, or even deals in place with the EU has a whole, it seems like a very obvious move to make that nobody seems to have. They say you should ‘hope for the best, but plan for the worst’, so why doesn't Britain seem to have done any such planning pre-2016? | It would have been difficult to agree deals with the EU before the referendum and the Article 50 declaration, because the EU would have been put in a spot dealing with hypotheticals. They had no mandate to negotiate anything for the EU27 back then. It would have been both difficult and possibly illegal to agree deals outside the EU for post-Brexit trade because as an EU member the UK was not supposed to negotiate trade, and had no more staff experienced at it. It would have been extremely helpful if the UK government had found a consensus negotiating strategy supported by a majority of parliament in the time between the referendum and the formal Article 50 declaration. Failing to do that looks quite inexcusable. Two years should have been enough to negotiate a Brexit deal, to get a decent start on the post-Brexit relationship, and a transition deal to link the two. But that would have required a majority for any one future in the UK. All they had was a slim majority against the status quo. Compared to that, the need for the EU27 to define their position was easy. (Consider the difference between a constructive vote of no confidence and a motion of no confidence . One requires a majority for the new government, the other just a majority against the old one.) | {
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37,152 | Why did the United Kingdom invoke Article 50 before it had reached a negotiation position? Two years is a short time to negotiate something as complex as a withdrawal from the European Union, yet the UK Government did not agree with itself on a negotiation position until 16 months after it triggered Article 50. A brief timeline of Brexit: 23 June 2016, the United Kingdom votes to leave the European Union 17 January 2017, the Prime Minister sets outs the government's objectives for the negotiations in the “Lancaster House speech”. 29 March 2017, the United Kingdom invokes Article 50 June–December 2017, the UK government publishes a series of position papers in preparation for Article 50 negotiations 12 July 2018, the Government publishes its negotiation position, known as the Chequers plan 14 November 2018, The United Kingdom and the European Union negotiators reach a draft withdrawal agreement (16 December 2018: date of this question) 29 March 2019: The United Kingdom is scheduled to leave the European Union 23–26 May 2019: European Parliament Election (perhaps the UK and/or the EU wanted Article 50 triggered such that UK leaves EU before those elections?) I don't understand the timing of invoking Article 50. Why didn't the UK wait until it knew what it wanted? | You've missed one important occurrence in the sequence of events, which is something that none of the other answers have addressed: 18 April 2017, Theresa May calls a general election Calling a general election exactly 3 weeks after invoking Article 50 was an attempt to gain a greater majority in parliament, as at that moment the Conservative party were doing incredibly well in the polls, at one point holding a 21-point lead against the main opposition Labour. Invoking Article 50 at this point would allow the conservatives to outline their Brexit position during the election campaign, effectively allowing the people to vote between the parties for their version of Brexit. Each party would be campaigning for what their Brexit negotiation position would be, so it would be a de facto second referendum. Triggering Article 50 before calling the election meant that rather than allowing their opposition to campaign on a "we won't invoke Article 50" or "we will hold a referendum on what us leaving should entail", they had already triggered a countdown that would mean their opponents would have to either promise to revoke Article 50, or come up with their own Brexit plan in 2 months to convince voters, followed by only 21 months to negotiate it. Had the conservatives gained votes based on the poll numbers before the election was called, there would have been a significant conservative majority and May wouldn't have even needed all of her own party to agree to what the deal should be. The concerns of the Eurosceptic hard-brexiteers (that are causing so many problems now) could have probably been ignored. Of course, this didn't happen, and the conservatives lost their majority. To summarize: before coming to a firm decision on the conservative Brexit position, Theresa May called a general election in an attempt to gain a greater majority in parliament (which the polls all but guaranteed she would get) so that she wouldn't have to compromise so much with the most Eurosceptic in her party. Triggering Article 50 before calling the election was an attempt to force the opposition parties to turn the election into a vote on which version of Brexit voters wanted. Note : this was the intention, but it didn't turn out as the conservatives wanted as Labour refused to clarify their Brexit position other than that they would "deliver Brexit". They instead made the election about the conservative's domestic record, which was much weaker, which led to the conservative majority collapsing. | {
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37,238 | According to the BBC , Spain wants to increase the minimum wage by more than 20%: Spain's minimum wage will jump by 22% in 2019 - the largest annual
increase in more than 40 years. It means millions of low-paid workers could see a pay rise from €736
($835; £665) to €900, effective from January. An increase to the minimum wage is also a topic where I live (Romania) and I've often heard analysts arguing that large increases like this are rarely followed by a productivity increase of the same amount and that it might even make some investors leave the country. Why would the government increase the minimum wage by such a large percentage in one go rather than by a smaller percentage more often (e.g. yearly)? Theoretically, such a strategy should minimize the risks. | You're looking at the policy economically rather than politically. Spain has to have a general election by July 2020. The government are contemplating having it earlier, possibly in May 2019 (to coincide with regional elections). So announcing a flagship policy of the "look what we're doing for our people" variety, a few months before an election, keeps it in people's minds. Also, it won't have had an opportunity to have negative consequences prior to the election, so there's only upside at this point. Obviously, this wouldn't work as well, politically, if you announced a much smaller increase, even if you plan to give further increases in subsequent years. The Euro in the pocket is worth a lot more than promises. It could have economic harm subsequently. However, given there would be 4-5 more years before the next election, the minimum wage rise will be old news and a downturn can be blamed on other things. | {
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37,255 | I noticed a lot of hate focused on the idea of Nazism, especially with Hitler's reputation and whatnot. But I was wondering, because Hitler's scheme was far from 'socialist' and more fascist than 'nationalist'. Simply put, you could be (non-)racist but still be a Nationalist Socialist. Or am I just not understanding what a true nationalist-socialist is? | National Socialism is a specific thing. You can't just take parts of the name and then assume what it means based on these parts (another example: The Democratic People's Republic of Korea is not a democracy). National Socialism is not simply a nationalist version of socialism (Stalin's Socialism in one country would be closer to that). National Socialism is the ideology that Nazi Germany had. It is inherently antisemitic, racist, nationalist, völkisch, social-Darwinist, anti-communist, anti-liberal, and antidemocratic. Nazism cannot be separated from these ideas. National Socialism did not want to change the relations of production (as socialists would), and expressions that might hint towards socialism were only catchphrases used for propaganda purposes. Some try to temporarily separate Nazism from some of these concepts in an attempt to whitewash it and make it palatable to the mainstream. This is not possible. If you consider antisemitism, racism, or genocide to be "bad", then you should also consider National Socialists and those trying to defend them to be "bad". | {
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37,261 | Legally speaking, is there any laws against a former president that has served 2 terms from being vice president? | The last sentence of the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution states that But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States. [ source ] According to the Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. [ source ] This should legally forbid a former President that has served 2 terms (or more then 1 term and 2 years) from becoming Vice President. | {
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37,345 | According to Fox , President Trump may have ordered troops withdrawn from Syria due to President Erdoğan giving advanced warning of an imminent anti- PKK Turkish invasion. Why would this motivate the US to withdraw, instead of a Turkey-US collaboration? The above source suggests Erdoğan recommended such a withdrawal; why would Turkey seek it? | This is Turkish-US cooperation, as it works out in practice. Up to now the two countries have been rather at odds over Syria. The US's priorities have been twofold: destroy IS's territorial holdings, and avoid committing US ground forces wherever possible. A side benefit is doing anything to destabilise Syria to prevent Assad from regaining control of the country, since denying Russia and Iran a stable, reliable ally has no downside from the US point of view. Turkish priorities are somewhat different. Their first priority is preventing the formation of anything resembling a Kurdish state on their border. Anything that weakens Assad is also good since Turkey doesn't really want a stable unfriendly power on their southern border backed by other powerful states, but that's a lower priority. The US has long wanted Turkey to be more involved in Syria, since they have a competent military that could easily oppose IS and Assad. But Turkey wasn't particularly interested in opposing IS because it doesn't really pose a threat to them. They were happy to keep out of it and let the various factions in the civil war get on with it. Hence the US had to resort to using the much less capable Kurdish militias and so-called 'moderate opposition' (which was largely a fiction created by wishful thinking or attempts to make things palatable to the US public). Even last week (around 10th December?) the US announced the construction of new observation posts along the Syrian-Turkish border to help defend their Kurdish allies from Turkish intervene while they dealt with IS, amount with public warnings to Turkey not to take unilateral action against the Kurds. Two things have changed in the last week. The Syrian Democratic Forces (basically Kurds) announced victory over the last major IS stronghold in northeast Syria. And it became clear that Turkey was going to take unilateral action against the Kurds regardless of what the US wished. So US policy has pivoted. Now that IS is 'defeated' the Kurds are not needed. If Turkey essentially annexes the Kurdish parts of Syria, they will do a better job of a) securing it against an IS resurgence and b) prevent Assad from regaining control over the whole country. And more importantly, the more of Syria they control, the more leverage they have in the inevitable multi-party negotiations on the future of the country. This serves both the US and Turkeys interests. It isn't so much in the Kurds interests, but apparently they are expendable. So the US gets of of the way before Turkey comes charging in, and gets to disengage forces entirely from Syria, while still achieving its main objectives. Is just that Turkey becomes its main ally (which was always the preferred plan) rather than the Kurds. | {
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37,377 | Please help me understand this. Some brexiteer colleagues say it won't be a border, because of the Good Friday Agreement but WTO rules mean there must be a border. Will the UK then decide to break WTO rules consistently and prefer to upset the WTO instead of the Irish? So, is this a matter of illegality versus practicality? | It is not WTO rules which require a hard border , it is regulatory divergence. There will be a border in any scenario short of Irish unification. The Good Friday agreement says that it will be a soft border without intrusive limits and controls on cross-border traffic and commerce. Such a soft border is only practical if the rules on both sides of the border are compatible. There must be no taxes or tariffs if one shops at the grocer on the other side of the border. An electric appliance that is deemed safe on one side of the border must be deemed safe on the other side. If significantly different visa rules apply on both sides of the border, there must be controls to enforce them. Part of the promise of the Brexiteers was that the UK would be free from EU regulations and requirements. Once they use that freedom to make a divergence, then both the EU and the UK will have to police the border to make that happen. The EU plans to regulate some disposable plastic gadgets (like drinking straws) to help the environment. Imagine the UK does not agree. There would have to be EU inspectors at the border to make sure that consumers and businesses don't bring banned plastics over the border. The UK plans to limit the entry of EU citizens. EU citizens can travel to Ireland without limit. If the UK wants to stop them from crossing the border without paper trail, they have to send UK immigration officials to all border crossings so that EU citizens can get their documents stamped. | {
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37,447 | In the news, the reporters have been talking about "essential" (real quotes, not scare quotes) government employees being required to work without pay by these two statements (paraphrased). All employees will have to forgo pay during the shutdown. Essential employees will be working during the shutdown while non-essential employees will be sent home. One example of such claims: https://www.kcra.com/article/what-a-partial-government-shutdown-could-mean-for-you/25648684 I remember the Thirteenth Amendment banning "slavery and involuntary servitude" and this is in fact so powerful that the federal government cannot force private practitioners to take Medicare at all. I again remember the ability to draft for reasons of national security, but I know of no case where that drafting was not with full pay according to the normal government pay scales. But even if the government is really out of money (which it isn't; during a shutdown it should be running a tax surplus*), I can't imagine how this leads to requiring people to work without pay. My normal assumption would be you print unbacked money if you have to (and deal with the inflation later) to pay the troops. But they say the employees will be required to work without pay. How? *They say the shutdowns cost the government money. The net loss is due to the almost universal practice of paying all the government workers after the fact. | First, slavery has literally nothing at all to do with whether or not someone is paid, nor with how much they're paid. Slavery and involuntary servitude are forced labor, not unpaid labor. If you are paying someone millions of dollars but threaten to kill them if they quit, that's involuntary servitude. If you pay them nothing but they're free to walk away, that's quite possibly legal (volunteering is often legal), often non-criminal, and if it is criminal might be just a misdemeanor. Second, people who are required to work to a shutdown are in a pay status. They can't actually get paychecks until the government reopens, but they're legally entitled to their full pay for every hour worked. This is also why furloughed people aren't allowed to work: because federal employees are entitled to pay for hours worked, any work they do results in the government owing them money that hasn't been appropriated. Federal agencies can mostly only do that for essential tasks, so anyone not doing an essential task can't be allowed to work. Lastly, people are only "required to work" in a shutdown in the same way civilian federal employees are always required to work: refusing means you can be fired, but you're certainly free to quit. Refusing also means you pretty much won't be paid back wages when the government reopens (if you refuse an order to work you're placed in AWOL status instead of furlough status, and back pay isn't given to people in AWOL status). (I should note that this only applies to the pay for the hours you weren’t working; as mentioned above, employees are legally entitled to pay for hours worked. However, if you go AWOL after a week and the shutdown lasts for three, employees who spend all three weeks working are entitled to receive full back pay. Employees who worked for one week and were furloughed for two are entitled to one week’s pay, but will almost certainly get three [as Congress will almost certainly give back pay to furloughed employees]. Employees who worked for one week and were AWOL for two are entitled to one week’s pay, but will receive nothing for the two weeks they went AWOL and will possibly be fired.) Military personnel are truly required to work (refusal can result in criminal punishment), but the 13th Amendment doesn't mean the military can't punish desertion or refusal to obey orders. | {
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37,479 | I understand the concept in libertarianism that if corporation A dumps toxic waste in a river and downstream of this river corporation B bottles this water for consumption, that corporation B has had its property rights violated and thus can sue corporation A for damages. There is the case, however, of Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) which were phased out under the Montreal Protocol - which along with the related Kyoto protocol were the first universally ratified UN treaties. These chemicals, used as refrigerants, had been shown to be causing a hole in the ozone layer over the antarctic which could have spread across the globe. If, under a libertarian model, a person is responsible for their infringements on the property rights of others, yet the results of an action are spread across the whole globe and intractable, how, if at all, would the person or company be held responsible? The real-world response of a global commitment by all states to regulate the use of such a chemical seems antithetical to the libertarian model. | Same way CFC problem was addressed. As you will notice if you look at the detail of the issue (e.g., this blog post - which is overall very pro-regulation and pro-environmentalism and aggressively anti-free-market), CFC regulation by the government happened after the CFC market shrunk more than 75% already . In other words, 75% of the problem was solved by means that were arguably within Libertarian tool-set - publicity, etc... - even before the "official" libertarian tool-set (tort lawsuits against offenders) were engaged. You will note that this isn't a singular example. Same libertarian-acceptable approaches worked for many other negative externalities: obesity-causing companies (fast food, junk food) have changed their product offerings due to education campaign of their customers. For completeness, there are two main types of libertarian approaches: Make sure people are aware of the externalities. Then, the externalities become costs via social pressure (brand damage; people preferring competing products that don't have same externalities - e.g. electric cars vs. carbon fueled cars). If the externalities are provable, use lawsuits for damage. If a specific harm can be proven, the sources of extrenalities can be sued for that harm. That imposes costs on externalities as well - both legal risk and financial cost if the lawsuit is lost. Economic foundation for this can be found in the Coase theorem (discussed in detail in @lazarusL's answer). See this UCB paper for a specific examples . | {
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37,555 | I feel like this is a unique opportunity to pass effective campaign finance legislation. Politically I think not giving Trump the wall is the better strategy, which may be why such a deal will not happen. In terms of effect I think the pros of campaign finance reform far outweigh the cons of the wall, even if the entire 5 billion end up being wasted money. When I discussed this proposition with other people, with whom I tend to agree politically, many felt that there shouldn't be funding for the wall under any circumstance. What are the major political barriers to a deal like this happening? Edit: I guess the main point is that I don't see why democrats keep saying that they won't budge on funding the wall. Compared to taxes or health care or many other issues the downside of the wall is truly minuscule. Edit: I can see now that campaign finance reform may not be in the hands of congress or the president at the moment due to the supreme court. However the question to me still remains as to why so many democrats insist on not giving up 5 billion for something in return. I think the current dynamic would give the democrats a very good bargaining position if they were to offer wall funding. | The question is complex and poses potentially a multitude of possible subquestions because there are an infinite number of possible deals that Democrats could try to make. But, in the case of campaign finance, in particular, one of the biggest issues is that the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Citizens United v. FEC , 558 U.S. 310 (2010) dramatically limited the extent to which effective campaign finance legislation can be constitutional. And, it makes little sense to reach a bargain in exchange of legislation whose effect will be illusory because it will be struck down under clear constitutional precedents. | {
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37,560 | I have experienced the carelessness of the government bureaucrats. The assurance of them not losing their jobs no matter what, makes them behave utterly careless (at least in India, say in a Municipality office). Why are public institutions perceived as being inefficient? Maybe they are not, maybe it just appears to be so. | There is no one answer because some agencies are more efficient than others. For example, Medicare is much more efficient in processing and paying medical claims than private insurance companies are at the same task. Medicare devotes just 1.4% of expenditures for administrative costs ( a more skeptical analysis that used a broader definition of administrative costs came up with 5.2%), with the rest of its funds going towards payment of claims, while private health insurers devote 11%-20% of their expenditures to administrative costs, leaving a smaller share of its resources to pay claims. See also here ("Medicare outperforms private sector plans in terms of patients' satisfaction with quality of care, access to care, and overall insurance ratings.") and here (health care spending goes down while service utilization is unchanged when an average person transitions from private health insurance to Medicare). You can argue that Medicare is able to do that, in part, because by having a policy of paying the prevailing insurance company negotiated price of any provider that it is free riding on costs incurred by private insurance companies to negotiate lower prices with providers, but certainly, Medicare dispenses with significant expenditures associated with advertising and executive compensation that private insurance companies must pay that it need not. Less obviously, Medicare claims processing is more efficient because every medical provider processes lots of Medicare clams and learns how to do it correctly, while a medical provider may process claims from a smaller health insurer only sporadically. Similarly, Social Security is more efficient in its administration of benefits dispersal than than almost any private sector retirement plan (which average 1.5% to 1.8% administrative fees) in existence. Annuities, the closest private sector analogy to Social Security, have particular high administrative fees ( on average 2.3% ). Social Security may not maximize investment return (not so much because it couldn't, lots of states have public employees retirement systems that do so at a quite low administrative cost, as because it is mandated by law to invest in Treasury securities and nothing else, the safest investment in existence often operationally treated by economists as the risk free rate of return), but this is, in part, to provide maximum security when markets fail (Social Security was devised after the collapse of financial markets that led to the Great Depression left many people who had saved diligently all their lives penniless.) Social security isn't just an investment, it is insurance against other investments turning out poorly when bear markets destroy investment wealth. The U.S. Department of Education took over direct servicing of student loans because that turned out to be more efficient than what the private sector was doing. As Wikipedia explains , the system was put in place, while "[g]uaranteed loans—loans originated and funded by private lenders but guaranteed by the government—were eliminated because of a perception that they benefited private student loan companies at the expense of taxpayers, but did not help reduce costs for students." In general, government agencies can be very efficient at handling large volumes of administrative paperwork involving large numbers of small individual cases as the examples above illustrate, in part, due to economies of scale. Also, in some cases, it is hard to compare because there is no close private sector counterpart. One could say that the U.S. Department of Defense is very inefficient (and no one seriously disputes that there are many ways it could be made significantly more efficient even though the magnitude of potential savings varies greatly), but there is no private sector counterpart running the largest military force in the world by many measures. One could try to compare, for example, the efficiency of military defense procurement projects done by private companies under contract with the government to private sector manufacturing enterprises of other kinds, like automobile manufacturers. But, private sector manufacturing is arguably under pressure to achieve very different objectives - the best possible outcome at an affordable price, rather than the best possible outcome at any price because failing means the end of civilization as we know it. There are also areas where there is considerable private sector competition with public sector institutions, providing a means of comparison, but the public sector institutions aren't notably better or worse in efficiency than the private sector counterparts and both are equally inefficient. There is a good case to be made that this is true of schools, colleges, universities, and hospitals ("5 studies reveal that public and not-for-profit hospitals are more efficient than those in private ownership. One study concludes the opposite, and 2 could not demonstrate any significant differences between the different hospital ownerships."). (Although per student or per degree costs of community college programs in the public sector are much lower for better outcomes than their private sector counterparts despite low rates of government subsidies per student than any other form of public higher education). There is likewise no compelling evidence that private prisons are run more efficiently , controlling for the makeup of the prisoners supervised, than public prisons. Similarly, there are private sector businesses that are very inefficient and dysfunctional, often because they don't face much competition. The cable company is a private company, but has a monopoly franchise in any given place for an extended time period (because it is a " natural monopoly ", or at least used to be one), and unsurprisingly it has poor customer service and lots of inefficiencies and mismanagement that is allowed to persist. In addition to utilities, companies with patents (e.g. drug companies) can sometimes be inefficient because they have government monopolies. Indeed, one of the justifications for patents is that they are necessary to allow something inefficient (research and development that will often not pan out) to be conducted. Certainly, this isn't to say that there are no areas where the private sector does not get the job done better and cheaper than the public sector. But, even in those cases, this isn't universal. Some countries, like France and Sweden , do a particularly good job of public administration (anecdotal evidence here ). Indeed, the most prestigious university in all of France is a school for public administrators. Other countries, like the U.S., are worse at public administration, such as Italy . But, as these examples illustrate, there is no one compelling reason. Probably the most powerful reason that the private sector is sometimes better than the public sector comes from countries with many state-owned enterprises. Comparisons in those cases indicate that the single greatest factor is that money-losing private businesses promptly go out of business or are reorganized in bankruptcy, while deficits in state-owned enterprises are often subsidized and keeping them in business for a long time. (Also, some state owned enterprises are intentionally inefficient as a means of providing political patronage ). The fact that government institutions don't automatically shut down when they cease to be profitable as currently organized is sometimes a feature, rather than a flaw, however. Half of all private businesses fail within their first five years. Government institutions are frequently established to provide services that cannot for practical reasons, or should not, for moral reasons, be discontinued. For example, while in Japan and the Netherlands (both places where space is at a premium), public sensibilities are O.K. with tossing human remains in a dumpster if the surviving family fails to pay an annual cemetery bill, in the U.S., cemetery administration is often vested in a government because the time horizon over which we expect that it will continue to need to be maintained is infinite. Similarly, you don't want to nuclear waste disposal facility to just shut down and have its employees all laid off because fees from new waste deposits no longer cover its operating costs, even if the problem arose because an incompetent nuclear waste facility administrator a decade ago underestimated how long it would cost to keep the facility open in what was supposed to be a self-supporting enterprise. We want water and sewer systems, the military, law enforcement agencies, historical archives, the courts, real estate record keeping, a school for the deaf, and the like to continue indefinitely, even if this eliminates one of the easier ways to control inefficiency, by shutting down inefficient institutions entirely. Government ownership is often an alternative to utility regulation for natural monopolies that must also endure in the long run. When shutting down inefficient institutions entirely isn't an option, you look for alternative solutions like developing strong audit and oversight institutions with the power to bring about change when an institution operates inefficiently. Amtrak exists, for better or worse, because somebody in government decided in 1971 that the United States needed at least one passenger rail company when all of them were going bankrupt and all of the infrastructure involved in once private passenger rail system was at risk of going to waste. There are legitimate reasons to say that maybe the United States doesn't actually need a slow speed passenger rail system using 1960s technology. But, once somebody has decided that the service must be provided even though it doesn't make economic sense to do so, it is impossible to run that service in an efficient manner. | {
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37,635 | The US government is shut down, due to disagreements between President and Congress on border security funding. Both sides are in an apparent stalemate. So my question is simply, what happens if neither side backs down? Does the shut-down just go on indefinitely? How does this end? | If necessary, Congress can pass a spending bill without the president's support. Currently Trump claims he will veto any bill which doesn't include funding for the wall. However if two-thirds of each chamber of Congress agree, they can override a presidential veto and end the shutdown. The current Senate has already passed a spending bill without funding for Trump's wall once with a veto-proof majority of 100-0. Instead of voting on that bill though, the Republican-lead House of Representatives voted on a different bill with wall funding that was sure to fail in the Senate. The Senate won't change much in the next Congress, but the House of Representatives will have new leadership and can try to pass a similar bill to what has previously passed the Senate. If the Senate votes similarly and the House gets enough votes they can end the shutdown with or without Trump. | {
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