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37,680 | The President and other Republicans have been casting blame on the Democrats for being responsible for the current government shutdown. If Republicans had a majority in the House and the Senate at the start of the shutdown, and also have control over the executive branch, what actions by the Democrats could give the Republicans a logical reason to place blame on them? I’m sure there is something that I am missing (certain vote percentages, loopholes, who knows). | Rather than trying to address the claim of who is to blame, I will focus on the part of the question asking for the spefic actions that were taken and give you timeline of events to let you decide for yourself who deserves how much of the blame. 19th December, 2018: Senate passes without any dissent by voice vote a bi-partisan short-term spending bill without funding for Trump's wall. That bill is expected to pass the House and be signed by the President. [1] Fox and Friends, Rush Limbaugh, and Ann Coulter publicly criticize Trump for "folding" on the wall. [2] 20th December, 2018: The president informed us that he will not sign the bill that came up from the Senate last evening because of his legitimate concerns for border security. -- Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R) Instead of voting on the bill the Senate passed, the House with Paul Ryan (R) as Speaker passes a different spending bill with $5 billion in border wall funding. This bill is not expected to pass the Senate, and ultimately did fail in the Senate, where 60 votes were needed and Republicans only had 51 seats. [3] [4] 3rd January, 2019: The new House of Representatives with Nancy Pelosi as Speaker (D) passes a bill mirroring the one that passed the Senate. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) blocks the bill in the Senate, saying he will not bring a bill to vote without the president's approval. [5] | {
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37,784 | I often heard minimum wage discussions and typically a single figure is presented (where I live it is the gross monthly value, elsewhere I hear about the gross hourly rate). However, there are great difference in regard to cost of living within a single country (or even region), so having a single value seems like a "one size fits all" solution. This Pew Research Center article deals with a specific case from US and I will narrow my question to US to make it more answerable: One factor complicating the minimum-wage discussion is that the cost
of living varies widely – not just from state to state but within
individual states, something that’s especially true in large, diverse
states such as California and New York. The article dives into some financial figures but the bottom line is: while the cost of living can be quite different, there is a single value for the minimum wage. Theoretically, the minimum wage could be somehow tied to the cost of living. I think it could work similarly to different property taxes based on where you live. Why is minimum wage not tied to the cost of living or a similar factor? | Short answer - because that's what the proposers of the minimum wage legislation managed to push through. The USA had a long, long history of unsuccessful attempts to enforce a minimum wage limit, amongst other economic regulations, but the Supreme Court (for a time), in defence of businesses and the free market, ruled all those regulations unconstitutional (the so-called Lochner era ). Of particular relevance to your question are two of them: The first was in 1933. The Roosevelt administration attempted to include minimum wages in the National Industrial Recovery Act . This case did differentiate not only by region, but also by branch of industry (i.e., for example, the agriculture and textile industries would have different minimum wages). This was ruled unconstitutional in A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States , on the grounds that the federal government had no power to regulate intra-state matters (which, apparently, worker wages are). The second was in 1938, in the Fair Labor Standards Act - this time, at a fixed rate. This one was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1941 in United States v. Darby Lumber Co. , where it was ruled that Congress had the power under the Commerce Clause to regulate employment conditions. I don't have enough knowledge on the nuances of U.S. internal political games at the time, so I can't say what happened to cause one variant of the act to be declined, while another was upheld, but the end result was that fixed-rate minimum wages became a part of U.S. federal laws. Note that states still could have their own local laws regarding wages - for example, the state of Washington had minimum wage legislation that was held legal in 1937 in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish , a year before the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed. By the way, as it is stated in the article you linked, the situation is changing - some states are passing laws to adjust minimum wages according to the cost of living. To sum up - the minimum wage being constant and not linked to cost of living in the U.S. isn't an economically-based fact, it's just the historically established legal situation. | {
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37,825 | Last month the House of Representatives passed a temporary spending bill relating to Trump's border wall, which I believe is the following: Sec. 141. Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, there is appropriated for ‘U.S. Customs and Border Protection—Procurement, Construction, and Improvements’ $5,710,357,000 for fiscal year 2019, to remain available until September 30, 2023. H.R.695 - Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2018 It doesn't say in the text where this money would come from (or, at least, I didn't find it). Question : Are there any details as to where the $5,710,357,000 to fund part of Trump's wall would come from? An answer to What current source(s) of funding is Donald Trump planning to use to pay for the Mexico/US border wall? says it comes from "taxpayer money", but I think this question is more about whether the funds are coming from Mexico or the US. Here, I'm asking about how the US is going to pay for it (putting aside anything related to "Mexico will pay for it"). | You can think of the treasury of a government as a big pot of money. There are various streams of inputs (taxes, fees, fines, tariffs, new debt...) and lots and lots of streams of outputs (subsidies, welfare, wages for government employees, running cost of government departments, debt repayment, public construction projects, and many many more). But inside the pot it's all just money. There is usually no direct link between input streams and output streams. You can't say "income tax pays for medicaid" or "import tariffs pay for Homeland Security". Everything pays for everything. There are sometimes exceptions where certain government incomes go directly to the budget for a specific cause (like proceeds from civil forfeiture sometimes going directly to the budget of the law enforcement organization which confiscated the property or fuel tax which goes directly to a fund for transportation infrastructure ), but these are usually the exception and not the norm. Usually it all goes into the big pot and it all comes out of that big pot. When people say "Mexico will pay for the wall", then they usually mean "we will generate a new stream of income from Mexico to the US treasury which will be equivalent to what we budgeted for building the wall". | {
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37,875 | I don't understand why this is such a big deal. Many countries around the world have a hard border with a physical barrier in place to stop illegal crossing/smuggling. It doesn't seem inherently unreasonable that the US has one as well, especially given the border with Mexico is well known for illegal crossing and drug smuggling. Why is this seemingly normal function of government seen as such a contentious issue that it's worth shutting down the government for, and what do the Democrats have to gain politically from the continued illegal activity on the border? Surely Democrats are equally affected by the criminal behaviour as well(?). They could make a deal and get something that would make a real material difference to the electorate, and I don't see why they're going to the mat for this. | tl;dr: The wall is only an idea with lots of blanks. People on different sides of the divide fill in the blanks differently, so they end up with different conclusions. The Wall is just an abstract concept. A concrete project to build The Wall , a plan for how it would look, an estimate what it would cost, where exactly it would be located, or a clear objective that it would achieve, is not part of the discussion. And it gets worse: The problem The Wall is supposed to solve has not been clearly and fully defined. At this point in time, none of the involved politicians have enumerated the actual real life problems The Wall is supposed to solve, let alone explained how The Wall does so better than alternative options. So how come people on different sides fill in the blanks differently? There are plenty of strong assertions around the weakly defined The Wall project. These assertions usually carry along plenty of untrue implied statements. Let's give an example: OP's words "Many countries around the world have a hard border with a physical barrier in place to stop illegal crossing/smuggling" imply Continuous walls between countries are perfectly normal The Wall can and will stop or significantly reduce smuggling The Wall can and will stop or significantly reduce illegal immigration OP's words are true - if we assume "many" to mean "more than 2" - but all 3 implied statements are clearly false.* The comments provide anecdotal evidence that despite being obviously false, people do fall for these implied claims. While there are untrue or unproven implicit statements in circulation on both sides, I chose these particular claims because they are part of the original question I'm answering, and because they seem to be popular enough that I subjectively classify them as notable. The divide over the idea of The Wall is magnified due to the unfortunate fact that in the US there is a very peculiar situation where one of the major news networks specializes in the deliberate spread of false and misleading information. All in all, The Wall is an abstract concept that promises a simple solution to an oversimplified problem, and the question of how 'The Wall' would solve real world problems hasn't been answered yet. *Disclaimer: The below shows, on request, why the 3 implied falsehoods are such. It is not strictly relevant to, or part of, this answer, but it will satisfy some people's curiosity. 1) Continuous walls between countries are perfectly normal - false Only a tiny fraction of worldwide borders have walls, while the overwhelming majority or borders do not have man made barriers . If you follow the link, you'll notice that even among the small fraction of borders that have man made barriers, the majority of these are related to past, present, and/or probable future armed conflict, such as Ukraine-Russia, Korea-Korea, Saudi Arabia-Jemen, India-Pakistan, Syria-Turkey, etc. 2) Trump's wall can and will stop or significantly reduce smuggling - false A majority of drugs cross the US-Mexican border through ports of entry , therefore a new wall is entirely unable to affect a majority of smuggling. In addition, smugglers already use methods that do physically defeat current walls and will also defeat any new wall ( catapults , planes/drones , tunnels ). 3) Trump's wall can and will stop or significantly reduce illegal immigration - false In the public discourse "illegal immigrants" (incorrectly) refers to 3 kinds of people**: Visa overstays (who make up 40 %- 60 % of undocumented immigrants entering the US), asylum seekers, and people who try to cross the border undetected. Visa overstays are entirely unaffected by a wall. Asylum seekers can easily surrender themselves in any place where the wall has to move a few feet away from the border for physical reasons, without having to cross a wall. Asylum seekers can alternatively also surrender themselves at a border checkpoint. The last category - people who try to cross the border undetected - will be affected by a wall. These people already need tools/vehicles and often hire experienced guides to cross the border - a wall will force these guides to find ways to circumvent it (ladders, ropes, blankets). In addition to the above, the symbolism of The Wall plays strongly into a pre-existing political divide, as outlined in Michael Kay's answer . | {
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37,917 | In the " Dune Genesis " essay originally published in the July 1980 issue of Omni Magazine* Frank Herbert wrote: "I now believe that evolution, or deevolution[sic], never ends short
of death, that no society has ever achieved an absolute pinnacle, that
all humans are not created equal. In fact, I believe attempts to
create some abstract equalization create a morass of injustices that
rebound on the equalizers. Equal justice and equal opportunity are
ideals we should seek, but we should recognize that humans administer
the ideals and that humans do not have equal ability. " Did he try to say that humans have not the ability to administer successfully these ideals? Was he trying to say that humans doing it have not equal ideals? Simply saying that some humans have not the ability to administer the ideals while others have it? Or, the worst meaning to me, "some humans don't deserve equality because their lack of ability"? PS: I think people need to know Herbert's science fiction work to know his way of thinking, however you can't ask about the writers in Science Fiction SE. (*) Herbert, Frank (July 1980). "Dune Genesis". Omni 2 (2): p. 72. ISSN 0149-8711. | I think that Frank Herbert's points were these: Everyone is different, with different varying abilities. You might
be good at math, I might not be. I might learn by doing, you might
learn by reading. When people try to force people to meet a one size fits all standard
so that everyone will be equal, it ends up creating
injustices. Example: I'm not good at math, so I have a lower
standard to get an accounting job, but you get a penalty applying for
the same job because you're good at math, to make you equal with me. People should strive for equal opportunity and equal justice. Let
us both do the best we can do to be as good at math as we can be,
and let the whichever one of us who can do math the best get the
accounting job. If both of us commit the same crime under the same
circumstances, let us both be punished the same way, without respect
to social class or other qualities that have nothing to do with the
crime committed. Flawed human beings implement efforts toward ideals, so things
aren't going to be perfect, and we should try the best we can to
implement the ideals of equal opportunity and equal justice as
fairly as we can even though we're limited imperfect human beings. Human beings don't have equal ability, so don't try to force things
to turn out a certain way. Don't force someone who would rather be
outside working in the forestry service to work in a so-called
'better' job because his group is 'underrepresented'. If I'm not
good at math, don't pressure me to be a physicist which I may find
to be a frustrating job that I'm not very good at. Let me do what I
want to do and what I'm good at. | {
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37,965 | While there seems to be a good amount of discussion about the border wall desired by President Trump, I have not seen much in the way of discussion regarding state-based approaches; that is, given the current state of affairs in the US in regard to support for a full wall, why is there not more of an effort to allow border states to construct their own walls if so desired? It seems some politicians in Texas have considered the possibility, but still via reimbursement by the federal government ( https://www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/while-shutdown-continues-texas-state-leaders-mull-funding-border-wall/1698160867 ); is it due to the expense of building such a wall even for a single state's border being too costly for most southern border states, are there federal laws that would prevent states taking that course of action themselves, or is there simply not enough support in most border states for that to be a viable course of action for those who desire a full border wall? | In addition to the issue David S identifies: Cost. Texas has a state budget that runs about $108B/year. Cost estimates for a border wall vary a lot, but the most recent request to Congress from the Office of Management and Budget works out to ~$24.4 million per mile. Even if the state decides it only needs a few hundred miles of wall construction (perhaps because it believes the existing fencing and natural barriers are sufficient for the rest), the cost estimate (assuming such a large project is on-budget) would still be 5% or more of the state's annual budget. That's a substantial, though not impossible, amount of resources for a state to commit, and there would need to be popular support to raise the money through taxation or cuts to services; wall supporters would have to put their money where their mouths are. Maintenance. The structure will need to be maintained. Damaged portions replaced, debris cleared, flooding prevented, gates and locks opened/closed, etc... The state doesn't want to be on the hook for that cost in perpetuity. Would they transfer ownership of the wall to the federal government after construction or would the federal government pay for the maintenance of a state-owned wall? Either way, there'd need to be a legal mechanism to do that. Regulations. Big long walls violate all sorts of regulations. They interfere with endangered species, drainage, bird migration, etc... A state can't just build a wall inside of parks, the National Butterfly Center, and wildlife refuges. The federal government has the authority to issue itself certain waivers of these regulations for the purpose of building barriers at the border. Those federal authorities wouldn't automatically extend to a state that wanted to build its own barrier. Land acquisition. The government needs to acquire the necessary land, often from unwilling owners. This is likely to cost yet more money and will result in lawsuits from owners who do not have any interest in selling , lawsuits the state would have to fight in court. Other owners may support the wall, but the practical problems of people being stuck on the "wrong side" will have to be addressed. And those are simpler cases. Portions of the border are on tribal land , and the federal government has certain powers in that regard that states do not. Other portions are on federal land. The Boundary Treaty of 1970 prohibits construction of barriers in the Rio Grande's floodplain without the permission of both countries, something that requires the federal government. Public support. Politicians along the border do not uniformly support building a wall. Rep. Will Hurd, a Republican, has a district that covers 820 miles of the border in Texas. He's repeatedly opposed construction of a border wall and won the GOP primary with 80% of the vote (the general was quite a close race, but the Democratic candidate didn't support a wall either). Some landowners with property near the border are staunchly opposed , and Texas lawmakers, including Republicans, have noted the degree of opposition . Forcing the issue of building a state wall could be a risk for representatives of border areas that they might lose their next elections. 53% of Texan voters opposed building a wall in a Qunnipiac poll conducted last April, and national polls show majority opposition to a wall. Without broad public support or intense local support, there's little appetite for politicians to stick their neck out for such a project. | {
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37,987 | Title pretty much says it all. The Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate before the midterms, so why didn't they push through funding for the wall then? The Republicans had two years to do this, and the Democrats would've had a harder time opposing the bill. Why now? Did Trump, his administration's officials, or any prominent Republican ever explain why haven't they allocated the financing of "the wall" in the Federal Budget 2018? The only explanation I can think of is that Republicans were very confident they'd win the midterms, but that doesn't seem to match the media coverage I saw. | For funding bills, it takes 60 votes to pass in the Senate. Before the mid-terms, Republicans only had 51 votes (with some defectors, like Flake and Corker). They have 53 votes now but still need 7 votes from Democrats. | {
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37,996 | Hopefully, this doesn't happen, but what happens if the US shutdown continues until the 2020 elections? Does the Federal Election Commission (FEC) have funding? Will elections be post-poned? If the FEC does have funding, what would happen if a complete (as opposed to partial) shutdown occured during an election year and said shutdown lasts until the elections? | To address the technical question , FEC will not function during shutdown: https://www.fec.gov/updates/shutdown-announcement-2018/ . Like many federal agencies, the FEC will be unable to provide any services during the government shutdown. Most agency staff will not report to work, and the agency’s offices will be closed to the public. ... You will be unable to contact the FEC during the government shutdown. ... To address the theoretical question : It's unknown for certain what will happen (and the answers may possibly be impossible to obtain barring a Supreme Court challenge), BUT, philosophically speaking, one thing must be stated: Elections are run by the states (both Congressional, and Presidential). FEC facilitates them in certain ways (they enforce rules, mostly related to campaign finance), but FEC is not required to have and hold elections . They were held quite successfully prior to October 15, 1974 formation of FEC. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is the independent regulatory agency charged with administering and enforcing the federal campaign finance law . The FEC has jurisdiction over the financing of campaigns for the U.S. House, Senate, Presidency and the Vice Presidency. - from https://www.fec.gov/about/mission-and-history/ | {
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38,002 | We use computers (and AI) to engineer structures, to simulate car crashes and traffic patterns, and to do predictive meteorology. Is there a serious application of a Sims or a Civilization approach to world building? Being able to model political history and decision trees could be both risky and valuable. Is it already happening? Editing to clarify the scope of the question. Is it now likely we will be seeing the distributed and global nature of connectedness, and surplus computing power, applied in a way that attempts to solve persistent global political problems? Can we test policy in a way that resolves apparently intractable worldwide inequalities and prevents wasteful tests of strength? | To address the technical question , FEC will not function during shutdown: https://www.fec.gov/updates/shutdown-announcement-2018/ . Like many federal agencies, the FEC will be unable to provide any services during the government shutdown. Most agency staff will not report to work, and the agency’s offices will be closed to the public. ... You will be unable to contact the FEC during the government shutdown. ... To address the theoretical question : It's unknown for certain what will happen (and the answers may possibly be impossible to obtain barring a Supreme Court challenge), BUT, philosophically speaking, one thing must be stated: Elections are run by the states (both Congressional, and Presidential). FEC facilitates them in certain ways (they enforce rules, mostly related to campaign finance), but FEC is not required to have and hold elections . They were held quite successfully prior to October 15, 1974 formation of FEC. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is the independent regulatory agency charged with administering and enforcing the federal campaign finance law . The FEC has jurisdiction over the financing of campaigns for the U.S. House, Senate, Presidency and the Vice Presidency. - from https://www.fec.gov/about/mission-and-history/ | {
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38,011 | Just looking at the TV and I am seeing that the British Parliament rejected the Brexit deal (cannot find an online source yet for this, although multiple sources show this vote result as very plausible). Does this mean that Brexit is not going to happen or is this only one of the possible scenarios in the near future? An answer to this question is interesting especially when the UK can legally cancel the Brexit process . | Parliament has already voted on Article 50 and Article 50 has already been invoked. If nothing else happens between now and March 29th, EU membership ends for the UK. That was the case whether this vote took place or not. So that's the simplest answer with what is known to factually and legally be in place at this time. Anything else borders on wild speculation. | {
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38,046 | We keep hearing a lot about economic growth in the media and this answer shows us why it is so important: Therefore, we have three options: A constant increase in unemployment. (Generally feared and loathed.) Less time at work per person. (Sometimes impractical. Wastes
educational resources as people would still have to study and train
just as much only to produce less. Might reduce people's earnings,
etc.) Constant economic growth to create new jobs and counteract the
reduced need for manpower caused by technological advancement. The third option is generally preferred by policymakers, academics, the
public, etc. for the reasons described above, as well as other
reasons. However, perpetual constant economic growth within a planet having finite resources is not possible ( it is not sustainable ): Capitalism requires a constantly expanding production and consumption
of goods, which can only be achieved through the increased
exploitation of the planet’s natural resources at an unsustainable
rate. Because of this reality, sustainable development cannot be
achieved without a dramatic reduction in the levels of production and
consumption, which directly contradicts the growth logic that drives
capitalism. So, I am wondering if and how capitalism can deal with this? What if we reach the limits of the environment and economic growth is no longer possible? | Not all parts of the economy consume finite resources equally. In fact, only a minor portion of it is related to the manufacturing of goods in the industrialized countries. Most of the economy there is services by now and, even more related to your question, most of the growth is growth in services there. Manufacturing is on the decline while capitalism thrives. (US) Source Growth is growth in services. (UK) Source In fact, there is plenty potential for services to grow even more. For example, if you live in a western country and you get older, you wish there were more service workers tending to elder people available. In principle, services can be very eco-friendly jobs with a relatively small resource usage per job. Let's think, for example, about doubling the number of teachers in schools, which could likely be done with little additional resource usage. However, this does not mean that globally the use of resources is stagnating. Many products consumed in the US are made in China and even working in services consumes resources. Resource usage is still very much increasing. Source or Source Some resources are renewable : food, energy, recycled materials (to some extent), wood, .... They can indeed be consumed on an ongoing basis up to the extent that they renew. However, that capacity is limited and other resources become depleted. If resources become scarce relative to their demand, they also become very expensive. There certainly is a desire to use the best available technologies to use existing resources as efficiently as possible with current research boosting the efficiencies further. Saving the planet mostly probably means using rather less than more of the resources. This means that on average jobs have to be much, much more resource efficient and that global manufacturing may decline, which would mean that for example people might use things for a longer time or live on smaller space . The shift to these eco-friendly jobs could happen quite automatically in capitalism, although also quite late . A reasonable mind would probably play it safer and additionally restrict the resource usage in capitalism before just to be on a safer side, i.e. with a tax on resource usage, or other related stuff. However, it is much too early to deduce the downfall of capitalism because of that. If I would be worried about capitalism, I would worry more about ongoing trends in artificial intelligence and automation. Summary : Capitalism would likely use up all available resources before a significant change happens. Only if resources (finite or renewable ones) become scarce, they will also become expensive. The world economy will then shift to labor that uses low amount of resources. These jobs will mainly be in services and within services only those who use low amounts of resources. | {
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38,076 | Can the Speaker of the US House of Representatives legally rescind an invitation to the President to the State of the Union address? If the speaker merely postpones, is this a valid workaround if it is not legal? | The State of the Union speech is purely a tradition. There are no laws regarding it, although there may be rules within each house of Congress that address it. The only requirement is specified in the Constitution (Article II, Section 3): [The president] shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient. How the president does this has changed over time - for a good chunk of US history, it was a letter delivered to Congress, not a speech at all. But the current traditions involve the Congress passing a joint resolution (both houses agree, but it isn't a law) scheduling a joint session, and then the Speaker of the House (presumably because it's the physically larger chamber) issuing an invitation to the President to deliver a speech (or other communication) at that time. More details from the Congressional Research Office here: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R40132.pdf All of which is to say, there are no requirements whatsoever on how the State of the Union is conducted, so Congress (and the Speaker specifically) can do pretty much anything they want. Likewise, there are no specific requirements whatsoever on how the President delivers it or what he addresses. | {
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38,104 | As far as I understand, Theresa May was elected to the leader of the Conservatives (and consequently Prime Minister of the UK) to make a Brexit deal ( source ): She [May] said there was a "big job" ahead to unite the party and the country following the referendum, to "negotiate the best possible deal as we leave the EU" and to "make Britain work for everyone". She added: "I am the only candidate capable of delivering these three things as prime minister[...]" She worked for two years on a deal that the Parliament eventually rejected , so she failed her main(?) task. Yet, the next day the very same Parliament gave her confidence that she should continue governing (and achieve a Brexit deal). How do MPs explain that on Tuesday they reject her deal, but on Wednesday they trust her to continue to get an acceptable deal (which she failed to do in two years, according to the vote the previous day)? | That is because there is a likelihood that the opposition party will gain power should the government be defeated in the confidence vote. According to the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 , the government has 14 days to try to form a new government or an early election will have to be called. The new government formed will also be subjected to a confidence vote . The Act specifies that early elections can be held only: [ ... ] if a motion of no confidence is passed and no alternative government is confirmed by the Commons within 14 days. The Conservative Party is currently in power on a "confidence and supply" arrangement with the Democratic Unionist Party. It would be difficult for the Conservative Party to find another party to form a "confidence and supply" arrangement. After the 2017 general elections, the Liberal Democrats expressed skepticism on forming a government with the Conservative Party, the Scottish National Party is opposed to the Conservative Party while the Sinn Féin has an abstentionist policy . These are the three parties with enough seats to prop up the government. After the damage inflicted on the Liberal Democrats by their coalition deal with the Conservatives in 2010-15, the centrist party ruled out any reprise. There was also no chance of a Conservative deal with the Scottish National Party (SNP), which won 35 seats but which is resolutely opposed to the Tories on both constitutional and economic questions. It appears that no one has even contemplated a grand coalition between Labour and the Conservatives, an arrangement that works in Germany but which is alien to the UK other than in wartime. Source: The Conservation: Can a minority Conservative government survive? Let’s look at the maths It's also worth noting that it is rare for a party's own MPs to vote against their government in a confidence motion. Most governments are defeated after the "confidence and supply" party (in the current case, the DUP) votes against it . However, the DUP is opposed to a Corbyn government so they continue to prop up the incumbent Conservative Party government. Not surprisingly, MPs voted entirely along party lines on the confidence motion: If no new government could be formed, an early election must be held in which the Labour Party is currently in good shape to win . As such, either way, the opposition Labour Party will likely gain power should the incumbent Conservative Party be defeated in the confidence vote. | {
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38,110 | Negotiations over the current US government shutdown have, as far as I've heard, mainly been between the President and Congressional Democrats. So far, Republicans in Congress seem to be siding with the President in refusing any agreement not including a border wall, but there seem to be some cracks in this. Suppose that a sufficient number of Congressional Republicans decided to break with the President and reached an agreement with Democrats, but which the President still found unacceptable. As I understand it, both houses of Congress could pass a spending bill along those lines. The President might then veto it (he could stall for up to 10 days first). Suppose, however, that Congress had the votes to override the veto (2/3 of each house). If they were to override his veto, would this end the shutdown, or would the President somehow be able to continue it anyway? I wonder if there is any argument that, even if Congress allocates money for the Government, it is up to the President to decide whether to actually spend it. | If Congress has the 2/3 votes to override a Presidential veto, they can pass any budget they want with zero consideration for what the President thinks. Ever since the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 , the President no longer has the authority to refuse spending Congressionally allocated funds. Therefore Republicans are free to end the shutdown by agreeing not to allocate funds for the Mexico Wall and obtaining the required number of votes from the Democrats. Likewise the Democrats could agree to fund the wall and obtain the necessary votes from the Republicans. Which side to blame for the shutdown is up to you. | {
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38,202 | If the United Kingdom chose to apply for a delay to Article 50, must they set a new (target) date in order to do so? Or could the UK suspend postpone Article 50 until further notice / indefinitely, without setting any new date? My question is from a legal point of view; whether the EU-27 would agree with such a move, even if possible, is a separate question. | The UK cannot suspend her Article 50 notification. It can merely retract the notification and that would have to be in good faith, i.e. with the intention to stay for the foreseeable future. So a retraction has no new set date. The UK and EU27, acting unanimously, can extend the negotiation period as long as they like. I'm not aware of any rule that would force them to set a date. Note that this requires unanimity, while accepting a withdrawal agreement merely requires a qualified majority. Article 50 was mostly written with the intention of never using it, so it is rather sketchy on details. Where beyond the article itself would one look for clarification? 50 (2) references TFEU , 50 (3) does not. As I understand it: Acting alone, the UK can: Decide to Remain before March 29th. Force a hard Brexit (i.e. no deal) on March 29th. A sufficient minority of the EU27 can: Prevent any deal, leaving the UK the choice between Remain and hard Brexit. The UK and a qualified majority of the EU27 can: Make a deal for a soft Brexit on or before March 29th. Agree on a hard Brexit before March 29th (not that anybody wants that). The UK and all of the EU27 can: Set a date later than March 29th for the default hard Brexit, and keep negotiating for any of the other options. I believe they could also set no date and keep negotiating. Follow-up: The BBC also writes that Article 50 can't be paused, only revoked or extended. | {
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38,207 | The Common Agricultural Policy is a system of state grants to farmers in the EU. Why do farms warrant public funding in this way? Isn’t this, in effect a form of protectionism? | Farmers receive subsidies in many many countries around the world, including EU countries prior to the CAP, the US, or Switzerland. One justification that's commonly offered is that self-sufficiency is a strategic goal that requires state support. The original policy was also devised when Europe was just coming out of food rationing that lasted for a decade after WWII. Nowadays, this productivity objective has partly been replaced with policies designed to safeguard the landscape and ecosystems through specific agricultural practices. And of course other sectors of the economy also receive subsidies and support from states in various ways. So what's specific to the CAP is not that farmers receive subsidies, it's that they may not receive subsidies from individual states, instead getting them solely through EU programmes. That's why the CAP was such a large part of the EU budget for many decades (less so now). EU federalists hoped that other sectors would follow but that never happened. In other domains (industry, defense, research, education, healthcare, etc.) individual EU member states fund specific policies or directly subsidizes businesses within the bounds set by EU rules (in particular the rules on “state aid”). | {
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38,294 | Are there any empirical reasons why Fox News receives overwhelmingly high viewership as compared to other news organizations? Sources: TVNewser TheWrap | Because there is only one Fox News and there are multiple competitors. Overall, CNN and MSNBC together are watched more than Fox ( source ). But they split the liberal viewership. So if they get 34% and 21% of overall viewership and Fox gets 45%, Fox is the most watched single network even as it is a minority of the overall market. If someone started a serious competitor for Fox viewers, that could reduce Fox's share. Or if MSNBC went out of business, most of their watchers would probably go to CNN. But as it is, they split the liberal market while Fox has the conservative market to itself. Some sources for the partisanship: Pew: Partisanship and Cable News . Pew: Political Polarization & Media Habits . | {
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38,336 | The Irish border seems to be the biggest obstacle to establishing an agreement on Brexit and we've seen considerable talk about hard and soft borders. There are two potential solutions that I have NOT seen discussed and I just want to float them here to see if there is any chance that either of them might present a possible solution. I expect both would be seen as somewhat "radical" in the sense of being a rather big step from the status quo but my knowledge of Ireland is far too meager for the reasons to be obvious to me. Solution 1:
Have Northern Ireland merge with the Irish Republic so that the entire island is the Irish Republic. In that scenario, ALL of Ireland would be in the EU and the Irish border would disappear. Great Britain, comprising England, Scotland and Wales, would be free to leave the EU and Ireland could stay in the EU. Solution 2:
Have all of Ireland join the UK on the same basis as England, Scotland and Wales. All of the enlarged UK could then leave the EU together. (Mind you, I could imagine this giving a lot of ammunition to the people who want a second referendum and if that happened, perhaps Brexit would be abandoned and the enlarged UK would remain in the EU after all. After all, the people in the Irish Republic could rightfully say that they weren't even consulted about Brexit.) I'd be very curious to know whether a reunification of Ireland - either as a single Republic or as part of the UK - is even imaginable or are the differences still so strong that it's unthinkable? From what I hear, the inter-Irish border is all but invisible since the Troubles ended and the two parts of the island get along fine. I also sense that the Catholic and Protestant Churches are far less influential than they were; after all, the Republic even permits abortion now, something that was unthinkable just a few years ago. The violence has either stopped entirely or declined a very great deal. The current prime minister in the Republic is apparently gay and only half-Irish, another sign that attitudes in the Republic have greatly changed. Could Protestants in the North be comfortable in an enlarged Republic? Would they need certain safeguards to even consider such a move? I would certainly not want to make any such move with the consent of a majority of those in Northern Ireland. | Solution 1: Have Northern Ireland merge with the Irish Republic so that the entire island is the Irish Republic. In that scenario, ALL of Ireland would be in the EU and the Irish border would disappear. Great Britain, comprising England, Scotland and Wales, would be free to leave the EU and Ireland could stay in the EU. This is possible under the Good Friday Agreement known as 'United Ireland' , however, it requires a majority of the people of Northern Ireland express this democratically (e.g. according to article 3.1 of the Constitution of Ireland ). For more information on the Irish reunification procedure, see this article by thejournal.ie . Personally, I think it is possible that this might happen in the long term, but then I'm thinking multiple years. It's also not something that the UK can easily ask for to extend the article 50 deadline because it requires asking what the people of Northern Ireland want. If they want to stay part of the UK, this isn't a solution. Furthermore, the UK sees Northern Ireland as part of its territory, so it won't want to give it up just like that. Solution 2: Have all of Ireland join the UK on the same basis as England, Scotland and Wales. All of the enlarged UK could then leave the EU together. (Mind you, I could imagine this giving a lot of ammunition to the people who want a second referendum and if that happened, perhaps Brexit would be abandoned and the enlarged UK would remain in the EU after all. After all, the people in the Irish Republic could rightfully say that they weren't even consulted about Brexit.) Obviously, the Irish people won't agree with this. The UK has no right to take Ireland out and Ireland will not be persuaded to leave the EU on its own. According to the Wikipedia page titled Euroscepticism in the Republic of Ireland : Euroscepticism is a minority view in Ireland, with opinion polls between 2016 and 2018 indicating upwards of 90% support for continued membership of the European Union (EU). | {
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38,373 | In the last few weeks, Juan Guaido, the head of the Venezuelan National Assembly, has been increasingly referring to himself as the legitimate President, as opposed to Nicholas Maduro who held dubious elections in 2018 . Many Western countries are now recognizing Guaido as such. How is Guaido doing this without another election or a coup? | Guaido's proclamation is based in several articles of the Venezuelan Constitution and the opposition dismissing the results of the 2018 elections: The article 233 states that in case of "absence" of the President of Venezuela, new elections must be started and in the interim the Head of the Venezuelan Assembly would act as provisional president. Last January 9 the previous mandate of Maduro did expire and the new one (based on the results of the 2018 election) began. Since the opposition dismisses the results of the 2018 elections, they state that the President is absent 1 and so Guaido can be proclamed as temporary President. Another point of contention is that Maduro was sworn in at the Constitutional Tribunal while the Constitution (art 331) says that it should have been sworn in at the National Assembly, but Maduro claims that the National Assembly has been found to be in contempt by the Constitutional Tribunal and so he must be sworn in at the Constitutional Tribunal. Additionally, there are references to articles 333 and 350 that claim for individual action in the case of attacks against the Constitution (so the Maduro controlled Constitutional Tribunal would not be the sole deciding power). If we go back in time, we find issues about how the Constitutional Tribunal members were elected and about changes to the Constitution, that were backed by Maduro supporters but protested by the opposition. In short, each side has its own "legal reality" and in one of them Maduro is President of Venezuela, and in the other he is not and Guaido has just filled in. How is Guaido doing this without another election or a coup? If you side with Maduro it is a coup (although an institutional one), if you side with Guaido it is just following the Constitution and the coup (if any) was effected by Maduro at the elections and before. Here there is an interview with Guaido commenting on the Constitution articles (in Spanish) Since all of my links are in Spanish, an article in English . 1 Most likely on the reason of el abandono del cargo, declarado como tal por la Asamblea Nacional (giving up the office, as stated by the National Assembly), but I have found no references specifying the claim. | {
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38,396 | In the year 20XX, Cthulhu is "elected" President of United States. Namely, by "elected", I mean that enough people in the right patterns and places vote for Cthulhu [1] that 270+ electoral votes by the current per-state electoral vote allocation rules would go to that name. [1] - I'm not sure how many legit ways there are to achieve that result, but let's assume for the sake of argument that it is write-in ballots. What happens then? Obviously, Cthulhu (being a fictional character) is not constitutionally eligible to hold the post of the President . So, the final outcome is obvious, someone else gets to be President. What my specific question is: What is the exact constitutional and legal process by which Cthulhu would be disqualified and someone else chosen? Would it be at per-state state elector level process? 12th Amendment process once the electoral college votes are read by VP to Congress? Other point? If the procedures would different depending on whether Cthulhu is elected from an established party, or an independent; if so, please explain both options process; but I'm kind of assuming that in the former case Cthulhu somehow manages to get declared a candidate by a party convention successfully. | Ignoring the absurdity of Cthulhu or any other fictional character winning the Presidential General Election, the premise as stated can't happen. Not all States accept write-in ballots. In fact, nine don't accept them at all, thirty-three do, but only if the candidate had already filed paperwork earlier. NBC did a small write up about in 2016 here and Ballotpedia has a blurb about it here . For the ones that required paperwork, all must abide by the Constitution in determining who is allowed on a ballot. To run as a write-in candidate in New york for example: You are required to file a certificate of candidacy with the State Board of Elections no later than the third Tuesday prior to the general election. The certificate must be signed by the presidential candidate and must contain the following information: Name and address of presidential candidate Name and address of any vice-presidential candidate, and a signed certificate of acceptance from such candidate Name and address of at least one elector, with an acceptance certificate and pledge of support signed by each such candidate for elector. New York State Board of Elections As for Cthulu being on the ballot in any other way, being fictional and as stated in the questions comments, not a U.S. Citizen he would be ineligible to run. Since his votes wouldn't count in most States, the next person to receive the most votes would win the electors in those States. | {
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38,414 | It seems strange to me that that the new green deal wants clean and renewable power from solar and wind energy yet oppose nuclear energy. I have been googling experts’ consensus on nuclear energy and even tried to google experts against nuclear energy and so far all the results say nuclear is the greenest and most efficient power source that will reduce carbon emissions. So, as far as quick search shows, nuclear energy seems to be by far our best option for green energy. The new green deal seems like a huge investment on inefficient technologies. | This is a broad topic, and for an overview I would suggest to look at the wikipedia article on the anti-nuclear movement . The main points are: accidents which pose a risk to humans and the environment (see Fukushima or Chernobyl). waste disposal: the problem of disposing nuclear waste long-term is still completely unsolved, and the waste poses a threat to humans and the environment. limited supply and dependency on countries producing uranium. nuclear proliferation: there is a fear that nuclear powerplants can produce material for nuclear weapons. Because of these reasons, nuclear energy isn't categorized as renewable (it depends on a non-renewable resource) or green (it at least has the potential to damage the environment to a high degree). Your point about energy efficiency is probably better addressed in a separate question. But see eg this question where I included a comparison on energy returned on energy invested; wind and hydro are well above nuclear, while solar is just a bit below it. | {
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38,478 | Post 1999 will anyone new be entitled to sit in the House of Lords by heredity alone? | Most 1 800-odd of the holders of hereditary peerages currently have three routes by which they might sit in the House of Lords: Be granted a Life Peerage. This has been done a number of times, for former Leaders of the House of Lords, for "hereditary Peers of first creation" and, possibly, some others. 2 Become a (senior) Church of England bishop. Be elected by their peers 3 to fill one of the 90 seats set aside for representatives of the (since 1999) excluded hereditaries. These are all interesting routes, but none of them fulfil the question's requirement that the peer sits in the House of Lords "by heredity alone". Nor does the death the of one of those 90: rather than their heir inheriting their place, all they inherit is eligibility to stand for the now vacant position, and the right to vote in the ensuing by-election. 4 The two exceptions are the Earl Marshal (who is, confusingly, a Duke rather than an Earl) and the Lord Great Chamberlain, who both retain seats in order to fulfil certain ceremonial functions. These two positions are themselves hereditary. The office of Earl Marshal is held by the Dukes of Norfolk (initially by the 6th Duke, and currently by the 18th) and, when the current holder dies, the role of Earl Marshal -- and therefore a seat in the House of Lords -- will pass to his heir, the new 19th Duke. The office of Lord Great Chamberlain, meanwhile, is hereditary "in gross", and accordingly there are currently fifteen 5 people, each "Joint Hereditary Lord Great Chamberlain", only one of whom exercises the office at any one time. Importantly, the holder of the office changes either when the current holder dies (in which case it passes to their heir) or upon the death of the Monarch, in which case the office passes to a different "branch". So yes, it is possible to sit in the House of Lords by heredity alone. And, if you're very lucky, it's even possible to do it without having to lose a parent. 1 All but the Earl Marshal and Lord Great Chamberlain. 2 But that's a topic for another question. 3 Pun intended. 4 Assuming they're a member of the same political party, as the seats are actually apportioned by the party memberships of the hereditary peers. 5 By my very rough count. | {
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38,568 | I know there's a lot of discussion at the moment of the EU introducing new "right to repair" regulations to try to reduce waste. I was recently told that this is effectively a reversal of existing policies and that EU regulations have actively prevented such activity on electrical devices, meaning small traders etc could only recondition, not repair (e.g. replace whole circuit boards, not fix individual components). I've searched for such a rule without success. Does anyone know if this definitely exists and, if so, where I might find the details? | No. There is no regulation that prevents a citizen from repairing themselves any kind of electronic device. The problem is that there is also no regulation that requires electronics companies to provide documentation or standardization of parts for the repair of these devices. This means that your company (let's say a company making TVs) can obfuscate access to their device by using unique proprietary parts (that only they produce). This has been in discussions for years particularly due to some manufacturers doing planned obsolescence (which is worth its own analysis). The EU proposal "right to repair" is following a world trend (the movement in US is even stronger) and it requires manufacturers to provide adequate conditions for third parties to repair the devices. Currently this has been enshrined in EU law (which is positive) but somewhat watered down ( see this article ): Everyday products including lighting, displays, washing machines,
dishwashers and fridges will need to be made to be more easily
repairable and longer-lasting from April 2021. ... However, campaigners have criticised the new laws for limiting access
to most spare parts and repair manuals to professional repairers only.
This may restrict the access of independent repairers, repair cafés
and consumers to some key replacement parts and information, limiting
the availability and affordability of repair services, they said. Campaigners blame strong pressure from industry lobby groups for
prompting the European Commission to water down proposals on
repairability in favour of recyclability. This was not totally unexpected since the EU members with large industries were against the proposal ( see this article ): The European Commission has put on the table proposals to make it
easier for consumers to have certain products repaired instead of
having to buy new ones. They would trigger substantial environmental
benefits by reducing waste and unleashing the potential of job
creation in the sector, according to Chloé Fayole from ECOS, co-leader
of the Coolproducts campaign, who attended the discussions. “At the
moment, consumers are forced to discard products, as repair is made
impossible or unaffordable.” According to their statements during the meetings, Germany, Italy and
the UK are currently blocking the proposals, while France, Poland and
Spain are either completely disengaged or have adopted a neutral
stance. Because of the high weight their votes carry, the proposals
are likely to be dropped from the agenda if their positions are not
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38,594 | Is the concept of nation explicitly ethnic? I always thought that a “nation-state” was a synonym for a sovereign country, but the Wikipedia article on the subject reads a little ambiguous. It is a more precise concept than "country", since a country does not need to have a predominant ethnic group. | "Country", "State" and "Nation" are often used synonymously to refer to political entities. But if you want to nitpick: A "country" usually means a geographical region. A "state" is a political organization which rules over a country. A "nation" is a far more fuzzy term. It usually means a group of people who are connected by culture and heritage. Some people might also consider common ethnicity to be a descriptor of nationality, but how ethnically homogeneous a group of people needs to be to be considered one nation is a matter of debate. So People can reside in a country, but you can not be part of a country. Mountains, forests or cities can be part of a country, but people can not because people aren't geographical places. For example, let's say you are a citizen of Arstotzka, but you currently work and live in Kolechia as a guest worker. You are currently present in the country of Kolechia. As long as you are in the country of Kolechia, you have to follow Kolechian laws, so you are a subject of the state of Kolechia. You would also be counted as part of the population of Kolechia. But as long as you speak Arstotzkan, live a typical Arstotzkan lifestyle, self-identify as an Arstotzkan and still have Arstotzkan citizenship, you are still part of the Arstotzkan nation. A nation state is a state where the majority of the population is considered to be part of one nation and where no notable numbers of that nation live outside of the state. Real world counter-examples are: Cases where nations are split by state borders. For example, the Korean nation is currently split across North Korea and South Korea. Cases where one state governs people who consider themselves different nations. For example, a lot of citizens of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland usually don't self-identfy as "United Kingdomers" but rather as "English", "Welsh", "Scottish" or "North-Irish" (although some people in Northern Ireland might consider themselves part of the "Irish" nation which is split between the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom). However, I would not be surprised if some people would dispute these two examples. You could claim that the people who live in North Korea and South Korea have diverged so far in their culture that they can no longer be considered one nation. One could also claim that the Scottish, Welsh, English and North-Irish are subjects of the United Kingdom for so long that they are now just different ethnic groups within one "British" nation. Which groups of people are the same nation and which are not can be a very subjective distinction. And people often try to establish their preferred definitions to achieve political goals. For example, when a region of a country is having a referendum for independence, then the proponents might claim "We should be independent because we are a separate nation" while the opponents might claim "We should stay together because we are part of one big nation". Who of them is right? That's a matter of personal opinion. | {
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38,634 | So apparently most of the U.S. government departments have been using Department of ... , like Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security. But it looks like there's a weird exception, Department of Education (ED). As we see it also use the pattern of Department of ... but its abbreviation is meaning Education Department. Why is it different from others? Why isn't ED abbreviated as DOE? Quote from Wikipedia: United States Department of Education : The United States Department of Education (ED or DoED), also referred
to as the ED for (the) Education Department, is a Cabinet-level
department of the United States government. | It's likely because there are two departments starting with E, the other being the Department of Energy . When the Department of Education was formed in 1979, the Department of Energy already existed. So the abbreviation DoE was already established for the Department of Energy. To avoid ambiguity, a different abbreviation has to be used for the Department of Education. | {
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38,651 | With the current situation in Venezuela, it seems like the US is once again weighing in against a leader that is textbook socialist or communist that is also a dictator. I understand the hardships that dictators in these situations often do and why, from a humanitarian point of view, we should want to hope for a free and capitalist Venezuela. However, I am wondering, from a USA first point of view, why we would want that. With socialism making countries less competitive on a world stage, wouldn’t that be good for our economy, due to the fact we are more competitive relative to them? Again, this is not a point of view I take, but I would love to hear a USA-first philosophy that suggests we should intervene and spend money. | If we extrapolate from the historical record, it looks like the U.S. couldn't care less if there is a dictatorship or not in Venezuela or anywhere else. What the U.S. seems to care about strongly is that a regime does not intrude on their trade interests . Communist and socialist regimes have a tendency to nationalize industries and push land reform, thereby ousting the current stakeholders, which might be U.S. companies. (Land reform usually redistributes land from large landowners to peasants; e.g. see the Guatemalan land reform of 1952 .) Therefore the U.S. likes to support right-wing regimes and military juntas aligned with the current business elites. Most talk about capitalism vs. communism, human rights, democracy etc. is just a pretext to justify military intervention to install a regime that is friendly to U.S. interests. I agree that the situation in Venezuela is a humanitarian catastrophe and I strongly oppose dictators and autocrats. But sadly, it looks like the U.S. is mainly interested in the Venezuelan oil reserves. [1][2] Here are two observations to support this argument: There are many dictatorships currently allied with the U.S. : List of authoritarian regimes supported by the United States . The people under these regimes face many hardships and human rights abuses. Why does the U.S. not intervene? There are many historical examples where the U.S. has helped to overthrow democratically elected governments to further their economic interests (or of U.S. based corporations): 1949 Syrian coup d'état 1952 Cuban military coup 1953 Iranian coup d'état 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état 1961 Democratic Republic of the Congo 1964 Brazilian coup d'état 1965 Dominican Republic 1973 Chilean coup d'état 1985 Nicaragua (I give no examples after the end of the Cold War because the targeted regimes like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria etc. were not democratic.) [1] "It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela." John Bolton on Fox News [2] Venezuela Taps Obscure Driller to Replace Big-Name Oil Firms Bloomberg | {
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38,663 | As said in the title: Can the US states veto laws approved by the Congress? For instance, the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 while it gave 90% of the funding from a Highway Trust Fund, however, required the states to pay the remaining 10%. Now, the Highway Act was a popular law, but I assume sometimes laws passed by the Congress that require the states to pay money are disliked by the respective states. In those cases, I can't understand the relation between Congress and the states. And another important question arises: What if the laws passed by a state legislature have contrasting points
to the ones passed by the US Congress? | If we extrapolate from the historical record, it looks like the U.S. couldn't care less if there is a dictatorship or not in Venezuela or anywhere else. What the U.S. seems to care about strongly is that a regime does not intrude on their trade interests . Communist and socialist regimes have a tendency to nationalize industries and push land reform, thereby ousting the current stakeholders, which might be U.S. companies. (Land reform usually redistributes land from large landowners to peasants; e.g. see the Guatemalan land reform of 1952 .) Therefore the U.S. likes to support right-wing regimes and military juntas aligned with the current business elites. Most talk about capitalism vs. communism, human rights, democracy etc. is just a pretext to justify military intervention to install a regime that is friendly to U.S. interests. I agree that the situation in Venezuela is a humanitarian catastrophe and I strongly oppose dictators and autocrats. But sadly, it looks like the U.S. is mainly interested in the Venezuelan oil reserves. [1][2] Here are two observations to support this argument: There are many dictatorships currently allied with the U.S. : List of authoritarian regimes supported by the United States . The people under these regimes face many hardships and human rights abuses. Why does the U.S. not intervene? There are many historical examples where the U.S. has helped to overthrow democratically elected governments to further their economic interests (or of U.S. based corporations): 1949 Syrian coup d'état 1952 Cuban military coup 1953 Iranian coup d'état 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état 1961 Democratic Republic of the Congo 1964 Brazilian coup d'état 1965 Dominican Republic 1973 Chilean coup d'état 1985 Nicaragua (I give no examples after the end of the Cold War because the targeted regimes like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria etc. were not democratic.) [1] "It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela." John Bolton on Fox News [2] Venezuela Taps Obscure Driller to Replace Big-Name Oil Firms Bloomberg | {
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38,685 | This answer argues about Russia's concerns over missile defense systems due to undermining of Mutual Assured Destruction: The basis for the modern stalemate is called Mutual Assured
Destruction. Under MAD, neither side can start a nuclear war because
both sides have sufficient firepower to destroy the other side even in
the face of a first strike. I.e. they can each fire in response before
the first strike reaches them. Missile defense systems threaten MAD, because they can (at least
theoretically) make it possible to fire a first strike and not be
destroyed in turn. This seems like a valid point, but I am wondering if this cannot be counteracted by also building such systems. It seems unlikely for NATO to give up already deployed systems, so instead of issuing concerns why not build more such systems? Question: Why doesn't Russia build more missile defense systems instead of complaining about NATO's systems? | Complaining is Cheap, Building is Expensive Simply put, it takes very little money and effort to complain, even on a diplomatic stage. (This is also why the most common reaction to a problem on the international stage is an expression of deep concerns .) It makes RF look more peaceful than it is, implicitly puts a defensive spin on some of the military activity (e.g. when it justifies its conquests as preemptive strikes against expansion of NATO), and also produces positive reactions in the home population (further worsens NATO's image in RF and improves RF's). Conversely, building more military units - of any sort, including missile systems - is easier said than done. RF, while big, isn't all that powerful economically compared to the NATO opponents, and also happens to have a lot of inefficiencies/corruption, so any major projects will have to take scarce resources from elsewhere. There's also the matter of not just resources, but the state of technology. A lot of the missiles RF still has date back to Soviet designs, and/or are joint projects that relied on assistance of Second World states whom RF has antagonised over the last 2-3 decades. Suddenly making a new set of missiles that are competitive with the opponents will require changes both in production and likely in design. And the state of affairs in RF's contemporary rocketry designs is controversial to say the least. Consider the criticism of recent ground-to-ground missile developments, or check the number of spaceships that ended up on the sea floor. This isn't to say that there is no work being done to upgrade various military systems. Of course some stuff gets done. But so, any actual upgrades are likely to be slower and subtler than complaints, because it's the very nature of complaints they are not subtle, and require little in the way of preparation. | {
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38,712 | In my understanding, generally, right-wing politicians are hard on immigration and foreign people in general. This typically goes well with anti-semitism, too. (See Nazis / Neo-Nazis). At least in the US, this also goes along with evangelical beliefs seemingly. But, how is it, that generally, in the US, right-wing politicians are pro Israel, at least traditionally? Note: President Trump may have brought somewhat of a twist here, but I am talking not about persons here, but the right wing in general. This might exclude some ultra-right wing. Feel free to address this in your answer. Note also: I am coming from a central european background, so my understanding of US politics may affected by this. | Americans on the Right tend to be Evangelical Christians. As Jerusalem is holy to Christians (as well as being central to several Christian prophecies ), there is a decently broad base of Christians who support Israel. This is evidenced by the demographic that tends to tour Israel At the moment, with security worries since the last Gaza war eased, the industry is booming. A record breaking 3.6 million people visited Israel in 2017, up 25 per cent from 2016 and the first time the number of visitors has ever exceeded the three million mark, according to tourism minister Yariv Levin. Of those tourists, almost 800,000 were American, and a growing proportion of those are evangelical Christians. The year before last, the most recent for which figures are available, put the figure at 13 per cent. While the US military is broad in its political views, the Right tends to view self defense as important. Thus many Right military members support Israel's right to defend itself Yet while Israel is hardly perfect, its response to the Great Return March is necessary and prudent. Under no circumstances can it allow Hamas to breach its border fence. Nor can it hold its foreign policy (including the location of foreign embassies) hostage to threats of Palestinian terror or Palestinian riots. Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, and it will be the capital of Israel in any peace settlement. The only way Jerusalem will not be the Israeli capital is that Israel ceases to exist. What's probably confusing about this is that once you move out of a more centrist Right, and into the Alt Right or Far Right, religious views tends to diminish, and thus anti-Semitism can grow there (remember, Jesus Christ was a Jew ). It's in these areas you find such fringes as Neo Nazis, skinheads and other hate groups. | {
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38,719 | I have recently heard an idea from a local journalist that even surprised the moderator (greatly simplified): Pay some amount for people that do NOT vote Heuristically this should lead to better results because those interesting in taking the money are less interested in politics, more egocentric, thus the result will be reflect options from those who understand the value of the vote, value more the politics than immediate financial gain. I am trying to find online resources about this idea, but everything I can find is related to the exact opposite (i.e. provide incentive for people to vote) Is there a theory, a study, paper etc. to provide more insight about such an approach to voting? I am mostly interested in a cost/benefit analysis of such an approach within a democratic system, or even better, within a democracy that seems to decline . | Some problems I can see with this idea: Unbalanced incentives In point two, you claim that this system would encourage votes from people who "understand the value of the vote", but is that really true? Votes are very important in aggregate but a single vote, not so much - the overwhelmingly most likely outcomes of adding one vote are either 1) your preferred candidate wins by one more vote than they already would have, or 2) your preferred candidate loses by one fewer vote than they already would have. It is extremely unlikely that your vote will turn a tie into a win, or a win into a tie, and hence you are almost always better off taking the money. Poor people are more heavily incentivised to abstain The (presumably small) payment is going to appear more tempting to a single parent on minimum wage than it is to a millionaire, leading to a skewed effect across the whole population. I also wouldn't rule out candidates trying to promote the payout amongst demographics likely to vote against them in order to benefit from the low turnout. Low turnouts lead to a reduction in perceived legitimacy of the winner In a democratic system, the winner wants to be able to point to the election results as evidence that the public supports their policies. Winning a plurality of the 10% of people who actually voted doesn't really show this. Cost An obvious point, but you're going to need to pay a lot of people. Approximately one third of UK registered voters don't vote , and that number is sure to increase under your scheme. If we pay £10 each then that's over £150 million (and probably rising) per general election, more if we're also paying not to vote in local council elections and the like. | {
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38,815 | I don't want arguments for or against the wall/barrier on the United States' southern border. I would like to understand what Nancy Pelosi means when she or any other member of the Democratic party claim that a wall is immoral. | Here are some examples of statements by Democratic politicians and my best guess at interpretation: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi called President Trump's planned border wall 'immoral' “A wall, in my view, is an immorality. It’s the least effective way to protect the border and the most costly. I can’t think of any reason why anyone would think it’s a good idea — unless this has something to do with something else.” Source What Speaker Pelosi seems to be saying here is that the border wall is immoral because it's costly but it's not even effective, and would therefore be immoral waste of taxpayer money. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stated that all Latinos wherever they're from have the right to enter the United States, so in her view, not letting them enter could be perceived as a violation of their rights, which could be considered immoral. Rep. Adam Smith, the new chair of the House Armed Services Committee, who, echoing many other Democrats, claims that Trump’s campaign for a border wall is rooted in “xenophobia and racism.” Source So in Rep. Adam Smith's view, if the border wall is rooted in 'xenophobia and racism', then the border wall is immoral because xenophobia and racism are immoral. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, stated “I hope folks have realized walls are deadly,” she said. “When people are so desperate they will flee their country to go to another, a wall doesn’t stop them. It just pushes them out to more treacherous, dangerous, deadly crossings where migrants die in the desert or drown in rivers.” Source So, in Rep. Escobar's view, the wall would be immoral because it would make migrants' journeys more dangerous and expose them to potentially greater harm that if there weren't a wall. | {
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38,857 | We are all aware voting is largely biased. Of course, it would be attractive to reduce that bias as much as possible because greater policy-based voting allows laws and regulations to better reflect the interests of society. So is it potentially practical to make the identity of political candidates completely anonymous? In such a way that, we would not know their gender, race, age, religious affiliation, and other physical characteristics or irrelevant characteristics. Hell, part of hiding some of these characteristics require cloaking their voice, their name (because most names are gendered and have some racial/ethnic connotation), et cetera. I understand this doesn't prevent much party-voting (voting purely for party and not for the stature of a candidates policies), and I am aware one can guess ones race/gender based on their platform - but it would be silly to expect any deterrent to be 100% effective. It seems the only question here is practicality, and that includes the legality of this. edit: This does not mean we hide the political history of candidates, or any other genuinely relevant piece of information for that matter | No, this isn't at all practical. You're removing virtually everything a voter could possibly use to decide who to support. If you don't know a candidate's identity, all you're left with is what policies they claim to support. But you can't even trust those , because you don't have any way to compare it with things they've previously done. There'd be no reason to even attempt to do what your constituents wanted, because it's not like anyone could hold it against you in a future election. | {
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38,905 | Check here and try to enter a number higher than $5600. I know this question might be oddly specific, but i have no idea why it would be such an odd number, and not just $5000. | The FEC raised contribution limits for the 2020 election cycle to $2,800 for each election period. The primary and general election each counts separately, so for both of those elections the maximum individual contribution someone can give to a single candidate adds up to $5,600. See also this announcement from OpenSecrets.org. | {
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38,945 | I recently had someone make the claim that several of the Framers of the U.S. Constitution would have likely agreed with an estate or inheritance tax. This theory was backed up by a few quotes from Jefferson, (who was generally very anti-tax) Madison and Washington. This theory contradicts much of what these men wrote on the general subject of taxation. The following is a quote that Jefferson liked to cite, to justify this theory: A power to dispose of estates for ever is manifestly absurd. The earth and the fulness of it belongs to every generation, and the preceding one can have no right to bind it up from posterity. Such extension of property is quite unnatural. — Adam Smith Adam Smith: Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue and Arms (1763) In Jefferson's own words - I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self evident, "that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living" : that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it. The portion occupied by an individual ceases to be his when himself ceases to be, and reverts to the society. Jefferson to Madison, Sept 6, 1789 My question is: What evidence exists that the Founders may have supported or rejected the idea of an inheritance or estate tax? From a Classical Liberal stance based on Natural Rights, would this form of taxation be considered "moral" or "just"? Answers can include writings, quotes, speeches etc., by the Founders listed above as well as, from others such as Samuel Adams, George Mason, John Jay or others. Any of the signers of the Declaration of Independence or any of the Framers of the Constitution as well as any of the philosophers who influenced them will be considered legitimate sources for making the case. | The following articles 1 2 state that founding fathers who supported estate taxes include Thomas Jefferson, Alexis de Tocqueville, Adam Smith, and Thomas Paine (as Aporter points out, de Tocqueville and Smith are not precisely founding fathers. Tocqueville was an early 1800's French Aristocrat (who briefly came to the U.S. to study the new form of government) who was not alive during the signing of the Constitution, and Adam Smith was a Scot whose writings were highly influential for the founding fathers). And Thomas Jefferson, who described "The Wealth of Nations" as "the best book extant" on political economy, famously wondered at about the same time whether all hereditary privileges should be abolished since "the earth belongs in usufruct to the living." He could have been quoting Smith with those words: It is "the most absurd of all suppositions," said Smith, "that every successive generation of men have not an equal right to the earth." Similarly, Alexis de Tocqueville identified the breaking-up of estates as one of the cornerstones of the young country’s success. “What is most important for democracy is not that great fortunes should not exist,” he wrote, “but that great fortunes should not remain in the same hands. In that way there are rich men, but they do not form a class.” Among those who attended Smith's lectures was the historian and jurist John Millar, who supported a change in the inheritance laws such that wills would be enforced only for a limited part of a person's property. Millar saw this as entirely compatible with a respect for property rights. He was joined in this, as in his enthusiasm for Smith, by Tom Paine. [The following Politifact article][3] adds John Adams and Benjamin Franklin as founding fathers who felt that regulation of estate passing should be the public's concern Basic property necessary for man to live should be left alone, Franklin wrote. But he continued that "all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition." We thought one sentence has particular relevant here: "Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it." In the book "Wealth and Our Commonwealth," William H. Gates Sr. and Chuck Collins write: "The nation’s founders and populace viewed excessive concentrations of wealth as incompatible with the ideals of the new nation. Revolutionary era visitors to Europe, including Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, John Adams, and Ben Franklin, were aghast at the wide disparities of wealth and poverty they observed. They surmised that these great European inequalities were the result of an aristocratic system of land transfers, hereditary political power, and monopoly." Noah Webster -- founder of Webster's dictionary and an editor of The Federalist Papers, believed that extreme wealth inequality spells the downfall of nations ... The causes which destroyed the ancient republics were numerous; but in Rome, one principal cause was the vast inequality of fortunes. This PBS article stated or paraphrased the views of James Madison, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington on estate taxes and/or socialized ownership of wealth, land, and stocks. James Madison warned that inequality in property ownership would subvert liberty, either through opposition to wealth (a war of labor against capital) or “by an oligarchy founded on corruption” through which the wealthy dominate political decision-making (a war of capital against labor). John Adams favored distribution of public lands to the landless to create broad-based ownership of property, then the critical component of business capital in the largely agricultural U.S. Current levels and trends in inequality would almost certainly have terrified the founders, who believed that broad-based property ownership was essential to the sustenance of a republic. Other be-wigged early presidents of the U.S. and half the crew on Mt. Rushmore — George Washington and Thomas Jefferson — believed that U.S. democracy would work best if citizens had a broad-based ownership stake in the economy. They too feared that extreme property inequality would prevent America from fulfilling its promise. Even Alexander Hamilton, favorite of the moneyed interests, argued that few people wanted to be wage laborers only, and he believed, like Henry Ford centuries later, that a strong middle class was needed to become energetic customers of businesses in the entire economy. Although quotes from founding fathers directly addressing an estate tax are scarce, it is commonly argued in related articles that they did not want a privileged aristocracy; and that they believed individuals should achieve wealth through merit and hard work, not inheritance. The founding fathers were rebelling against empires that had large concentrations of power, generational wealth, and class status that was earned through birth rather than labor. | {
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38,953 | The Conservatives in the UK are in a confidence and supply arrangement with the DUP in order to have a working majority in Parliament. Yesterday, three Conservatives left the party to become independent, which means that they have 314 + 10 DUP, which is 324 out of 650. Does this mean that they have lost the working majority and what does it mean if they have? Or is there any impact if/when they do? The Government has a page showing current parliamentary breakdown . | Not yet. Because Sinn Fein hold 7 seats, but they refuse to take their seats in the House of Commons. By tradition, the Speaker of the house doesn't vote.So in practice there are 642 votes in the Commons. That means that 322 votes are needed for a working majority in practice, which the government still has (with the DUP's support). At the time of writing the seat of Newport West is vacant after the recent death of the MP Paul Flynn (Labour) on 17th Feb 2019; he has been MP for that seat since 1987, so it can be regarded as a reasonably safe Labour seat in the upcoming by-election. This lowers the majority threshold to 321 seats until the vacant seat is filled. There is no immediate impact if they do fall below that threshold though. The only way it matters is if the government loses a vote of no confidence. It is not certain that the ex -Tory members who have joined The Independent Group would all necessarily vote against the government in a no confidence motion. | {
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38,967 | As a German I really don't get calling Bernie Sanders a socialist. In every country in Europe he would be a social democrat at best, but somehow in the USA he's a "socialist" and "communist" you should be afraid of. Examples of the media referring to Sanders as a socialist: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 | Basically Bernie Sanders used the wrong term and it stuck. For some unfathomable reason, he refers to himself as a socialist while espousing policies that are clearly social Democrat in line with most European states. He has done himself no favors. If he had said social democrat, he wouldn't have received as much McCarthy-ist style attacks. He is definitely espousing a European style model rather than a Venezuelan style model. Because of his mistake, the term's meaning has changed, and now others like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are calling themselves socialists too even though they're not.
The DSA themselves also describe themselves in terms that sound a lot more like social democracy than democratic socialism. Bernie's key policy positions are all Medicare For All, lowering prescription drug prices, a jobs program to shift America's energy production rapidly towards green energy, and tuition free public colleges. I could source this, but he says it in literally every speech or interview he's ever done, so that would be a bit redundant! Bernie Sanders gave a great interview in 2006 with Democracy Now where he explained his version of socialism. You can compare that with the DSA position linked above. | {
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38,969 | Is there a legal reason or law(s) that prevents the United Kingdom from having another referendum on Brexit? | No. The United Kingdom can hold as many referendums on this subject as it likes, as often as it likes. Obviously there are technicalities and bureaucratic measures that have to be accounted for, and some logistical concerns, but there are no legal restrictions to holding the same referendum after the same referendum again and again. | {
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39,009 | When Senator Bernie Sanders announced his campaign for the presidency , the term “ Democratic Socialism ” has been heavily thrown around in political discourse. However, people who believe in Sanders’s “Democratic Socialism” are often liberal, while those who are actual Democratic Socialists , often criticize liberals. In part, the reason is that Democratic Socialism would nonetheless mean further democratization and public ownership of the economy than currently exists. On the other hand, public ownership of the main productive assets is limited in comparison to what it could be in Social Democracy . I think [democratic socialism] means the government has got to play a very important role in making sure that as a right of citizenship all of our people have healthcare; that as a right, all of our kids, regardless of income, have quality childcare, are able to go to college without going deeply into debt; that it means we do not allow large corporations and moneyed interests to destroy our environment; that we create a government in which it is not dominated by big money interest. -- Bernie Sanders in Democracy Now!, "Vermont’s Bernie Sanders Becomes First Socialist Elected to U.S. Senate", Story, 8, November 2006 [ link ]. From the above statement, the questions remain as follows: What is the difference (if so) between Democratic Socialism and Social Democracy? Where do Social Democracies fit into the vision for Democratic Socialism? ; | First of all, at risk of stating the obvious, I think it is important to be clear that terms like these, especially democratic socialism, have politically contested meanings . To understand what is meant by them, it is important to look closely at who is using the term and who their intended audience is. It is also helpful to keep in mind that the meanings of these terms have changed over time . The concept of "social democracy" is the older of the two, by about a century. It was originally popularized by the Social Democratic Party of Germany ( SPD ), which was formed in 1863. Their initial platform called for basic rights we associate with social democracy today. However at the same time, the platform was explicitly socialist and anti-capitalist. Karl Marx famously critiqued that original platform, but the party also continued to engage and identify with Marxism over time. The term "democratic socialism" is newer and, at least until very recently, has never been quite as widely used . In the early 1970s, the declining Socialist Party of America took on the name Social Democrats, USA . A prominent defector from the party at that time, Michael Harrington led the formation a committee which later became the Democratic Socialists of America ( DSA ). The split was essentially about their stance towards capitalism, which the Social Democrats defended. The DSA supports similar social democratic reforms, but also seeks to replace capitalism. Although the DSA remained small for decades, it has grown dramatically in recent years and has been closely tied to the Sanders campaign. As a result, I would say that in the United States today, social democracy refers to a familiar set of pro-welfare policies . Some supporters of those policies ("social democrats") see these policies as a way of reforming and strengthening capitalism. Other supporters of very similar policies ("democratic socialists") see them as a step toward replacing capitalism with socialism. Is Bernie Sanders a social democrat then, or a democratic socialist? In my opinion, he is intentionally ambiguous about that because he wants and needs support from both groups. The DSA and other democratic socialists hope to further their goals through his campaign, even if many suspect he is more of a social democrat in his own views. | {
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39,012 | Every time we go shopping store shelves are full of food, gas stations are stocked up on gas, car dealerships have no shortage of cars, etc. But who is ensuring that all of the complex processes required to maintain this state of affairs go smoothly? Is it just the free market doing its thing without any coordination? Or is there an office somewhere in DC where a big committee draws up a plan to ensure that no shortages take place in the foreseeable future? | Although the United States generally avoids economic planning (and even industrial policy ), this is not to say the government leaves everything to the market. I don't have much expertise on this topic so I'm sure the following list will be incomplete. But here are some examples of ways that the federal government intervenes to ensure the continued availability of basic consumer products. Fuel and energy : 1) The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is an emergency supply of crude oil maintained by the federal government. This system was created as a response to shortages in the 1970s. It currently has about 30 days supply. 2) The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission oversees the development of energy transmission infrastructure like pipelines and the electrical grid. Food : 1) The United States government has intermittently held strategic grain reserves . However since the 1970s at least, these seem to have been for foreign aid, not domestic consumption. 2) The USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service closely monitors the national food supply month by month. 3) Other parts of the USDA provide subsidies, technical assistance, and other forms of support to farmers which help ensure an adequate food supply. General : The Federal Reserve tracks things like price inflation for durable goods , which may influence monetary policy and other measures. Finally I will note that during the Great Depression and especially during the two World Wars, federal intervention in the markets for basic commodities was far more active. See for example the War Production Board . | {
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39,060 | The U.S. Senate voted in February 2019 to block the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act , which in the words of the bill itself would prohibit: a health care practitioner from failing to exercise the proper degree of care in the case of a child who survives an abortion or attempted abortion. Fox News reports that the bill was blocked by Democrats in the Senate, including all of the Democrats currently running for president in 2020 (I could not find any coverage of this vote on CNN). The Fox News article mostly discussed the Republican support for the bill, but it does have some information about why Democrats opposed it: Opponents, noting the rarity of such births and citing laws already making it a crime to kill newborn babies, said the bill was unnecessary. They said it was part of a push by abortion opponents to curb access to the procedure and intimidate doctors who perform it, and said late-term abortions generally occur when the infant is considered incapable of surviving after birth. “This bill is just another line of attack in the ongoing war on women’s health,” New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen said on the Senate floor. ...Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., objected to Sasse's bill, saying the legislation was unnecessary and amounted to a political stunt. However, the article also recalls recent actions by Democrats such as Virginia Governor Ralph Northam and Virginia Delegate Kathy Tran, the latter of whom sponsored a state bill to allow third-trimester abortions and the former of whom endorsed it by saying "When we talk about third-trimester abortions, these are done with the consent of, obviously, the mother, with the consent of the physicians, more than one physician, by the way," Northam said. "And, it's done in cases where there may be severe deformities, there may be a fetus that's non-viable." Northam continued: "So, in this particular example, if a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that's what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother. So, I think this was really blown out of proportion." The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act seems to have been introduced at least in part in response to the suggestion that a live infant who survived a late-term abortion might not be resuscitated. If Democrats at the state level are introducing legislation to allow late-term abortions then why are Democrats at the federal level claiming that late-term abortions are so rare that this regulation of such abortions is unnecessary? Is this a just a disconnect between Democrats at the state and federal levels? I'm also not sure what Senator Shaheen's comment about "women’s health" has to do with the bill, since the law deals with infants who have already been born. Additionally, the law would prohibit prosecution of the mother who sought the abortion and allow the mother to obtain "appropriate relief" in a civil action against the physician who violated the law (e.g. "statutory damages equal to 3 times the cost of the abortion or attempted abortion"). Have any senators who voted against the bill provided a detailed argument for their opposition to the bill beyond the sound bites quoted above? | Technically infanticide is already illegal Roe v Wade legalized abortion. Technically, you cannot abort a fetus once it has left the mother and Federal law prohibits it . Kermit Gosnell , a late term abortionist, was charged with (but not convicted of) one count of infanticide, an assertion by members of his staff (testifying against him) that some fetuses from late term abortions were still moving, and Gosnell murdered them. Sen Tim Kaine stated Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who is Catholic, released a statement after the vote saying he opposed the bill because GOP statements about it are "misleading." "Congress reaffirmed that fact with its passage of the bipartisan Born-Alive Infants Protection Act in 2002. I support that law, which is still in effect. There is no need for additional federal legislation on this topic," Kaine said. Democrats fear it will lead to undue abortion provider scrutiny Sen Chuck Schumer said this Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) said on the Senate floor that the born-alive bill “is carefully crafted to target, intimidate, and shut down reproductive health care providers.” He also claimed the bill “would impose requirements on what type of care doctors must provide in certain circumstances, even if that care is ineffective, contradictory to medical evidence, and against the family’s wishes.” Democrats may feel it might be part of a broader push From Vox The bill may also be part of a larger strategy by Republicans of focusing on very late abortions in order to drum up support among social conservatives. Trump referenced the issue in his State of the Union speech, saying, “we had the case of the governor of Virginia where he basically stated he would execute a baby after birth.” | {
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39,100 | Michael Cohen, a former personal attorney of President Trump, in recent testimony before Congress, stated he would not accept a presidential pardon. Is this an option he has? If a pardon nullifies a committed crime, it seems like he should not be allowed to choose if he goes to prison or not because as far as the federal government is concerned, the crime is forgiven. An average person could not go to prison if a jury found them innocent. Why is this different? | It is possible to reject a pardon. Referring to United States v. Wilson : There is nothing peculiar in a pardon which ought to distinguish it in
this respect from other facts; no legal principle known to the court
will sustain such a distinction. A pardon is a deed to the validity of
which delivery is essential, and delivery is not complete without
acceptance. It may then be rejected by the person to whom it is
tendered, and if it be rejected, we have discovered no power in a
court to force it on him. There are also other practical effects to accepting pardons, such as waiving of fifth amendment rights relating to the pardoned crimes, since it would be impossible to self incriminate anymore. So there are reasons to refuse beyond "choosing to go to prison". | {
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39,118 | In the state I live there are some measures being discussed that are meant to combat human trafficking. A couple of the ones I've heard are: One is to close down illicit massage parlors Another is for hotel workers to report suspected victims of human trafficking (who are likely underage) Now, I've heard that there is some controversy to these suggestions. Some say that 1 will force victims out onto the streets and into more dangerous situations. I don't understand this objection as I had imagined that shutting down the shop would include rescue. An objection to 2 I heard was that 2 would put victims at higher risk of retribution from traffickers, and that it should only be done with the consent of the victim. This too I do not understand, as I thought there would be discretion on part of the law and that victims might have a hard time speaking up. Could someone explain the measures and the objections further? Some of these come from advocacy groups and while I value their insight and respect their work I have a hard time fully understanding. I don't know how to ask but I would also appreciate hearing any other aspects of the debate too | For case 1, the unstated assumptions are that prostitution will take place regardless of the government's attempts to stop it, and even if there are illicit massage parlors populated with victims of human trafficking, there are also illicit massage parlors with voluntary prostitutes. The voluntary prostitutes will not be "rescued" because, they don't need "rescuing" and if they keep doing sex work they will do it elsewhere. There are many values of "elsewhere" more dangerous for the prostitute and less desirable for society than an illicit massage parlor, e.g. city streets. For case 2, most mandatory reporting laws require that the mandatory reporter's personally identifying information be taken and made available. This information may be published to other law enforcement personnel and may appear in court documents depending on how a case proceeds. The reporter therefore can be subject to intimidation. Also, if you know who the reporter is, it is a trivial exercise for a criminal organization to determine when and where that person works and therefore determine who is likely to be the victim that caused the report to be filed. | {
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39,129 | I must've seen at least 3 Congressmen ask Michael Cohen, President Trump's former personal attorney, who Individual 1 was, despite the fact that in the beginning he had already said it was Donald Trump, and despite the fact that previous members had already asked him that question, as well. What is the reason for this? What benefit does it have when the statement is already in the record? | You're assuming that the questions are asked solely for the public record. Here's another reason... Members of Congress want video of themselves asking good questions that will be broadcast by their local news media and / or used in campaign commercials. And another... Often times you'll notice that committee seats are empty during hearings. That's because members come and go during the hearing. It's possible that one member asks a question that was asked by another member earlier in the day before the first member arrived. (Although I don't think that was the case in the Cohen hearing, as the entire committee seemed to be present for the duration.) | {
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39,144 | Republic of Minerva looks good. It fails in one thing. It fails to protect itself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minerva_Reefs Capitalism is good for pretty much everything but security. So a rich capitalist country paying US, UK, or China for protection seems like a good idea. | You're assuming that the questions are asked solely for the public record. Here's another reason... Members of Congress want video of themselves asking good questions that will be broadcast by their local news media and / or used in campaign commercials. And another... Often times you'll notice that committee seats are empty during hearings. That's because members come and go during the hearing. It's possible that one member asks a question that was asked by another member earlier in the day before the first member arrived. (Although I don't think that was the case in the Cohen hearing, as the entire committee seemed to be present for the duration.) | {
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39,229 | (Not sure if this is the right Stack Exchange site. I'm asking it here because the event in question, as well as the repercussions, are political in nature.) Wikipedia's article on Sandra Fluke includes a section about her testifying before Congress on whether "religiously affiliated institutions such as universities and hospitals should provide insurance plans that cover all costs for medicinal contraceptives." I don't understand how insurance works with birth control. My picture of how insurance works is, I pay the insurance provider a certain amount of money. In return, the insurance provider promises that if something untoward happens to me (e.g. I'm knocked down by a car), they'll pay for my treatment. The cost of the insurance depends on what I want coverage for (e.g. do I want coverage for developing skin cancer?) and any associated risk factors (e.g. do I have any family history of skin cancer?). How does this model work for birth control? Birth control works best if taken before the event, not after. It doesn't sound like something insurance works for because there's nothing to cover. Instead of paying the insurance company to cover all costs for contraceptives, I should logically simply buy the contraceptives from a pharmacist. Edit : to clarify the question. The way I understand how insurance works is, in the event of _____, the insurance company pays me for ____. Fill in the blanks. For example, in the event my house burns down, the insurance company pays me to repair it. In the event I am knocked down by a car, the insurance company pays for my medical procedures. In this case, we have "in the event of ____, the insurance company pays me for birth control". I don't see anything logical that can go into the first blank space. The only scenario I can see in which this would work would be, in the event I conceive, the insurance company pays me to terminate the pregnancy. However, this doesn't seem like what Sandra Fluke was talking about. | It seems like the core of your question comes down to a misunderstanding about how health insurance works in the US. I'm going to make the assumption that you come from a country where basic medical care is covered by the government and insurance is used primarily as backup for extra costs incurred beyond that. In the US, on the other hand, private insurance (for those who have it) is at the center of all health care. The expectation is that every healthcare expense (except for those that are excluded by the insurance companies) is run through insurance: from routine doctors visits, to prescription drugs, to ER visits or surgery. When you go to a pharmacy to buy contraceptives, the pharmacy bills the insurance company and charges you the specified copay (if applicable), just like with any other drug. Therefore, you shouldn't be thinking of US health insurance as being similar to car insurance but as being similar to a privately run version of the NHS. | {
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39,264 | And is the two-party system currently in place simply an emergent consequence of human nature? We often find that there exist sets of politically controversial claims that are strongly correlated, even though the validity of each claim is entirely orthogonal. For example, the normative claim that abortion is morally acceptable, and the descriptive claim that humans are responsible for climate change, are entirely independent of one another, yet we find that almost everybody is either a proponent of, or a detractor of both claims. Certainly more than we should expect if acceptance of either claim is a statistically independent process. Is it possible for there to be a government, whose laws and constitution are identical to that of the US, in which each senator and member of congress is essentially their own "party" with their own unique set of positions on issues, and where the correlation between different members' position on issues only reflects the actual correlation between the validity claims of the issues themselves, and not, say, some other latent construct like a "party"? And that the president was just some other candidate that had no common affiliation with any senator or member of congress? Is the current partisan system purely a consequence of human nature? Or is partisanship hard-wired in US law? | George Washington said : However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion. Washington opposed the development of political parties. The design was that the country would not have parties. But people banded together and made parties, thwarting his design. There is nothing in the United States constitution requiring parties. There is quite a bit of law promoting them though. For example, it is much easier to get on the fifty-one ballots (fifty states plus Washington, DC) for people who win the Democratic or Republican primaries. The one constitutional encouragement for the two party system is the national nature of the presidential election. In a parliamentary system, it is easier to have multiple parties. The first-past-the-post system also pushes towards two parties per district but is not constitutionally required. It could be changed legally. Duverger's law . A different system could be implemented, but it is unlikely that the existing parties will do so unless they determine that the system itself is making it hard for them. For example, moderate Democrats and Republicans might band together to make a system that allowed moderates to compete better. In many states, primaries are limited to just members of the party. So moderates like Joe Manchin and John Kasich are limited to just the moderates in their own party, while many of their natural supporters are of the other party or are independents. The current partisan system is not constitutionally mandated, but it is legally self-perpetuating. The parties resist reforms, like non-geographic districts, that would produce better representation but reduce their own power. | {
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39,277 | There are several countries in which all citizens have a right to healthcare that is paid for by the government, e.g. in Canada. Yet in some of these countries (again noteably certain parts of Canada ), there are further restrictions on the sale of private health insurance. For example, private insurance can not be used for procedures that are available via the public healthcare system. For example, prior to the 2005 Chaoulli v Quebec (AG) case, the Quebec Health Insurance Act and the Hospital Insurance Act prohibited private medical insurance in the Canadian province of Quebec. What is the rationale for such restrictions? | It's a lot easier to keep a public health system reasonably well-funded if the rich and powerful are in the same boat as everyone else. If they can just buy better coverage for themselves and their families without subsidizing the poor along with it, they'll push for budget cuts and more budget cuts and never a budget increase. They only have one vote each, but tend to disproportionately affect democracy through a variety of mechanisms. Extreme examples would be politicians and media personalities. | {
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39,325 | The US Republican Party's official color is Red yet in general political circles that color has been used by Socialist groups and movements. Since the party publicly condemns Socialism why would they brand with Red? | As Kevin Drum found (from the Washington Monthly ), from 1976 to 2004, the incumbent party's coloring alternated. As it happened, from 1976 through 1996, this meant that the Republicans were the blue party five of six times (1988 was the exception). But no one particularly noticed. In 2000 and 2004, the Republicans were the red party by that system. And in 2000, it mattered (Kevin Drum from another Washington Monthly article). Because in 2000, the race was close enough that the contested election in Florida mattered. So they spent weeks showing the states broken down under the 2000 color scheme. And because the challenger in 2000 (the Republicans) were the incumbents in 2004, they had the same color scheme even though it alternated. Then 2008 arrived and everyone was accustomed to Republicans being red, so it stuck even though it was the Democrats' turn. It might not have stuck if it were not that red communism collapsed in the early 1990s. So thinking about red being a communist color was not particularly topical in any of 2000, 2004, or 2008. Bernie Sanders started a revival of socialism in 2016, which continued in 2018. In that context, it seems more important now (in 2019) than it did in 2008 or 2012. TL;DR : Republicans did not choose red; it was chosen by a historical accident. | {
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39,363 | Since May has proven unable to get a deal through, there are now two alternatives left: no-deal, or an article 50 extension (which would then lead to further deals being put on the table, or possibly a referendum). Clearly, the EU would prefer a new referendum, which, most experts predict, would lead to remain winning this time (they only lost marginally last time around, and given what a failure Brexit has been, it is obvious to think that Remain would win if a referendum was held now). However, if they agree to a article 50 extension, it is not guaranteed that a new referendum is held: in fact, May might offer a new deal that is accepted. With that in mind, why doesn't the EU simply threathen to NOT agree to an article 50 extension unless a referendum is held? Clearly, this would lead to a referendum being held: nobody wants a no-deal. This seems like the only sensible thing to do from the EU's perspective, yet I am not hearing anything in the news about it? | Clearly, the EU would prefer a new referendum [citation needed] May might offer a new deal that is accepted The EU would have to approve it, and they've already been as clear as possible that this is the deal that has been negotiated. It is possible that if a new government was elected with a different mandate for a radically different deal, that would be worth exploring. Clearly, this would lead to a referendum being held: nobody wants a no-deal. Far from obvious: there definitely is a UK no-deal faction in parliament. Also, what if they hold a referendum and the answer comes back as Leave? Nothing has been solved but more time has been wasted. No, what's happening here is that the EU is forcing the UK to make a decision . It has to ask for an extension first, and present an offer that would result in some material change to the negotiation position. A referendum is only one of various options for that - fresh elections would also count, as would a change of PM without an election by means of a no-confidence vote. Crucially, to avoid timewasting, whatever the UK presents has to be acceptable firstly to the UK Parliament. Edit: see Verhofstadt "The European Union should reject a request from Britain to extend its Brexit deadline unless British lawmakers rally around a clear objective for what they want to achieve". As the comment says, trying to directly order around the UK political process would be unpopular. So they're trying hard to not specify a route out of the impasse, instead forcing the UK political factions to fight among themselves until a conclusion is produced. | {
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39,368 | There is a lot of rhetoric surrounding how politicians in the US obtain money for their campaigns. I am wondering why it is necessary for politicians to have any money for their campaigns, small money, big money, their own money, etc etc. It seems that a possible solution is to host a few debates, and to allot each candidate e.g. a webpage on a government site on which they can expound their views on X,Y and Z. Why can't we simply disallow campaigning altogether? What would be the challenges in implementing such a solution? | While one can imagine an ideal world in which the political landscape is dominated by a "pull" paradigm (voters actively go out to find the information on the candidates), in the real world it's dominated by the "push" paradigm (voters passively receive information given to them). If you're asking why we can't have the first instead of the second, well, that's not what's happened. The fact that we don't already have that shows that it's just against human nature. One can call it laziness, or rational ignorance, but whatever you call it, that's just not how humans naturally behave. A government website where candidates can put up their platform simply can't compete with daily bombardment of messages regarding current events. Even if some voters visit the site (and most won't), they're not going to come back to it day after to day to see commentary on the campaign as it unfolds. It's the same reason why companies run ads, rather than just putting up a website telling people how great their product is, and then sitting back and waiting for people to visit. If you're suggesting that we force campaigns to be run that way, consider: What is campaigning? It's going around telling people why they should vote for you. In other words, it's speech. Which is protected by the constitution. There are some that argue that it's money, not speech, that is being regulated, but when you prohibit people from spending money on speech, you're regulating speech. Campaigning can be categorized into four main types: Self-financing : A candidate uses their own money to fund their campaign. Independent expenditures : Non-candidates use money to fund a campaign that is separate from the candidate. The candidate does not have any access or influence over the funds. Media Coverage : Candidates can get exposure by getting the media (and this includes not only "establishment" outlets such as TV news and newspapers, but also social media) to give them attention. Contributions to candidates : People give money to a candidate, and the candidate decides how to spend it. The Supreme Court has found that the first three types are constitutionally protected [1] . The restrictions on the fourth are allowed, but eliminating contributions to candidates would just leave self-financing, independent expenditures, and the media as the only allowable campaigning methods. The first obviously favors wealthy candidates, the second means that campaigns are not accountable to the candidates (they are legally required to not be accountable), and the third allows large media corporations to dominate elections, as well as rewarding divisive behavior (the best way to get air time is to say something controversial). Banning contributions to candidates doesn't take money out of politics, it just gives more of an advantage to those who can pay for their own campaigns, have proxies act on their behalf, and/or manipulate the media. [1] Because this has involved striking down laws that prohibit speech based on how much money is spent on that speech, is it often characterized as the Supreme Court saying that money is speech. The Court has not said that money is speech, it has said that regulations on how much money can be spent on speech is regulation on speech, which is quite different. If there were a law that says that no one is allowed to spend more than $100 per year on firearms, that would clearly be a law regulating firearms, and acknowledging that fact would not be saying "money is guns". | {
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39,397 | Universal Basic Income is the idea that everyone receives some basic income so that poverty and inequality can be prevented, especially in cases of market failures and automation. Although I like this idea, would it not be better to satisfy everyone's basic needs as opposed to offering them an income? What I mean is, instead of giving everyone xxxx units of currency every month, why not assure everyone access to basic needs such as food, housing, healthcare, education, and social life-enhancing activities, by sponsoring those consumptions? I mean, many countries already do that for healthcare and education, and it seems equally achievable for food (e.g. a limited free quota of food from designated general stores in your area for every person per month) and housing (e.g. building a plethora of large housing complexes that consist of very small rooms that people who can't afford a place of their own can sign up for) and activities (e.g. sponsoring get-together activities such as sports, movie-watching, etc). I find this idea better for various reasons: It will directly target the problem. The problem is poverty. We want to ensure a minimum standard of living. Why not offer people those services and needs that ensure that standard of living, rather than just giving them a sum of money and hope they spend it wisely? Otherwise, we risk people misspending the money. For example, think of people addicted to drugs, alcohol, gambling, or simply people who aren't financially apt and spend beyond their budgets. It will be cheaper. This is obvious: by focusing on specific needs, you can streamline the delivery of those needs, and thereby achieve a cheaper and more efficient allocation of those resources. It doesn't distort incentives. If only basic needs are covered for, if a person in the society wants to do something that goes beyond those needs (like eat at a fancy restaurant or buy a diamond ring), then they still have to work for it. | Different people have different needs. Determining those needs is difficult, expensive, and subjective. Universal basic income has been proposed as a simple solution that should work well enough for most people with minimal bureaucracy. People with special needs would still need other forms of support. Some reasons why universal basic income is supposed to be a good idea: It does not distort the incentives. Unemployment benefits are often incentives against taking a low-income job. If you take a job, you lose the benefits, and your effective tax rate can easily be as high as 80% or even 90%. With universal basic income, a low-income job improves your standard of living much more. It simplifies the system. Instead of different benefits with different requirements, standard deductions, multiple tax brackets, and other ways of supporting low-to-middle income people, there would be just the universal basic income and a single tax rate. (In some proposals, there would be another tax bracket for high incomes.) Guaranteed income gives people control. When people feel they are in control of their lives, they tend to be happier and more productive. Of course, we don't really know whether universal basic income works as advertised, because there have not been any large-scale experiments with it. Edited to make the answer more explicit: There is no widespread agreement on what are the needs welfare is supposed to address, or who is entitled to which forms of support. When a new party or coalition gains power, it often changes the welfare system in various ways. Eventually the system becomes a complex patchwork of conflicting aims and requirements that is difficult to understand and expensive to operate. I listed a few points on how various UBI proposals try to fix the observed deficiencies in needs-based welfare systems. In particular, the third point explains why UBI proponents think giving people money is better than addressing their needs directly. | {
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39,405 | To my understanding, the lawful government of the United Kingdom has decided, following due process, that: The United Kingdom shall leave the European Union at a set date (currently 29 Mar 2019) The United Kingdom shall not accept the deal negotiated with EU27 The United Kingdom shall not leave the European Union without a deal Given that, what happens when the set date arrives (whether that is 29 Mar, or an extension is applied for and granted)? Can EU27 simply assume that "Since your Parliament ruled out both the negotiated deal and a hard Brexit, we assume that all treaties are still valid."? Can EU27 simply assume that "Since you did trigger Article 50 and declined the negotiated deal, we (regretfully) assume that all treaties now are void"? EU27 are supposed to honor the decisions of UK's legal government, but what are the options if the stance of that government is literally "we cannot decide"? | The United Kingdom shall not leave the European Union without a deal That is not a legal decision. This is just a wish that Parliament has expressed. If nothing else changes, as things currently stand¹ (2019-08-28T13:32Z), the UK is scheduled to leave without a deal on 2019-10-31 . Without any further agreement beyond this delay beyond the original Brexit date of 29 March, the UK will leave the EU on 31 October even if this happens against the wishes of Parliament. To change this, the UK must either: Unilaterally withdraw article 50 and cancel Brexit; or apply for another extension; or accept the Withdrawal Agreement and leave at or before 2019-10-31. Jon Worth regularly updates handy flowcharts on his weblog . The latest version is from 2019-08-28. Source: jonworth.eu , CC-BY-SA ¹The situation is still changing. | {
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39,470 | This seems like a major bug in checks and balances, since it requires 2/3 majority in both chambers to override the veto. Doesn't this give the President power to do anything they wish, as long as they have support from only 1/6 of congress (1/3 of one chamber)? (Actually it only requires 6.4% , by total number of representatives, since Senate is smaller than House.) That seems like it gives even a small minority party dictatorial powers. | It is a bug in the process, but it's one that has been present (and un-addressed) for more than a quarter century. When the National Emergencies Act was passed in 1976, it originally said that an emergency would be terminated if each house of Congress voted to do so. Thus a simple majority of both houses was supposed to be able to revoke the emergency. However, in 1983, the Supreme Court held in INS v. Chadha that Congress couldn't pass laws which gave Congress a "legislative veto" over the President's actions. Thus, any law which included such a provision (like the NEA) lost it. Without a specific provision in the NEA to create a special type of resolution that didn't need Presidential approval (which was now unconstitutional), it was changed in 1985 to the default "joint resolution" of Congress, which is a resolution passed by both houses and signed by the President, but which doesn't change the law (unlike a bill). This, in turn, means the President can veto it normally, which Congress can then override normally (if it has enough votes). And yes, to change the law to remove the President's power also requires enough votes to override the veto. It's much easier for Congress to give away power than to reclaim it. | {
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39,505 | Say we have three candidates: A, B, and C. Say, a voter wants to vote for C. However, he knows that C can’t win and hence choose A instead.
Hence, in a sense, the voter is “dishonest”. He doesn’t pick his most preferred candidate but strategically chooses the preferred outcome. What would be the term for that?
I looked for voters dishonesty on Google and couldn’t find it. | It’s called tactical voting . From Wikipedia: In voting methods, tactical voting (or strategic voting or sophisticated voting or insincere voting) occurs, in elections with more than two candidates, when a voter supports another candidate more strongly than their sincere preference in order to prevent an undesirable outcome. | {
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39,539 | What are the specific differences between something being legal and decriminalized, especially if it is labeled as completely legal/decriminalized? What examples of this exist? | Decriminalization means that some action (e.g., drug consumption) is no longer considered a criminal action, which means that you're no longer sent to jail or get a criminal record. However, you may still face fines, confiscation of relevant goods and other consequences. Legalization means that there are no legal repercussions for some action (e.g., drug consumption) whatsoever. Sources: Decriminalization versus Legalization of Marijuana (ThoughCo) The difference between decriminalisation and legalisation of sex work (New Statesman) The difference between legalisation and decriminalisation (The Economist, behind paywall) Decriminalization or Legalization? The Abortion Debate in Italy (Women & Criminal Justice) The Polygamy Question (Janet Bennion, Lisa Fishbayn Joffe) | {
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39,553 | As the Brexit deadline approaches, I've seen reporting recently over the British government using participation in the European Parliament elections as a threat to convince MPs to not force the government to seek a lengthy extension. For example, this snippet from a Bloomberg article (emphasis is their heading): Govt Doubles Down on MEP Election Threat (12:15 p.m.) Speaking to
reporters, May’s spokesman James Slack also hardened the government’s
language about the likelihood of a longer Brexit extension leading to
the U.K. holding EU parliament elections. “If we’re unable to win a meaningful vote this week, then the prime
minister will have to seek a longer extension. That will inevitably
involve participation in European parliamentary elections.” As someone not from Europe, I am uncertain why this is a viable threat to get MPs in line? I understand from What would a delayed Brexit mean for the 2019 European Parliament election? that the process might be messy (almost regardless of what the UK Parliament does it seems), but what in particular makes participation in the MEP Election so disconcerting to MPs that it could be construed as a threat, rather than a inconvenience to be put up with until the final Brexit agreement is settled upon? | Holding an EP election is an unavoidable physical fact that's hard for members of the public to not notice. For example, every registered voter will be sent a polling card. This makes it absolutely unambiguous and un-spinnable to the public that Brexit isn't happening yet. The government strategy is based on the assumption that the public support Brexit electorally, and therefore it not happening will cause them to do badly. Having EP elections forces them to actually fight an election. Although EP elections don't affect Westminster, everyone in the press and most of the political commentariat treat them as a poll on popularity of the Westminster parties. It seems likely that the Conservative party would do badly in this EP election which they don't want to fight. That would in turn increase their chances of losing a UK general election, which is an increasingly likely prospect for a government that can't pass its most important policy. (There is also the maximum-banter chance of having to fight both elections at the same time) | {
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39,629 | Andrew yang, a Democratic candidate for president current this date, has made universal basic income the foundation of his platform. This appears to be accepted as a “far left” idea. However, the way he has it proposed, is 1000 dollars a month, and that 1000 is not one top of current welfare but instead of. I.e. if you receive 1500 in benefit it’s a month, you now will get 1000 of the UBI plus the 500 in additional welfare. Logically speaking, this just sounds like a tax refund, as he is not purposing raising taxes. You get a 1000 dollars of your taxes back each month. This sounds like a conservative idea. The only flaw I see is arguing trust those that do not pay 1000 a month shouldn’t get 1000. | Forget about names, except for PR purposes. A clear-headed analyst looks that the net flow of money, now and in future entitlements. Call it "UBI" or "tax credit", call it "tax" or "mandatory insurance premium" or "tithe" -- people either give money to the government and government-affilated institutions like pension schemes and insurance, or they get money. Historically, some conservatives have supported welfare systems. In 19th century Germany, the rather Conservative Bismarck introduced worker's health insurance, in part to lure workers away from the Socialists. Conservatives are a mixed group and any one of them has many goals, some of them contradictory. A few generalizations: Conservatives tend to believe that those who earn money should be able to keep much of it. That goes against redistribution schemes (no matter how they are called). Conservatives tend to believe that welfare should go to those who cannot help themselves. Not to those who can (or could) earn their own living. To discourage lazy layabouts, there should be a clearly visible gap between the income of an unskilled worker and the income of a welfare recipient. Some conservatives are affilated with businesspeople and employers. Employers like to see workers who need a job to make ends meet, because that improves their negotiating position for wages and employment conditions. The second bullet point is the main thing. | {
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39,639 | The idea behind universal income is to take care of people who can't afford the most basic of needs. That sounds great. But why then should the income be universal when the situation where somebody cannot afford basic needs is not a universal situation? For example, in the USA, anybody making over 50.000 dollars should certainly not be struggling to make ends meet. We are probably talking at least half of the labor force. Why should they also receive a basic income? It just seems to make more sense to give a basic income to people that are already struggling, with an income below or at least near some sort of poverty line. The whole problem with UBI is financing it, and financing it would be a lot easier if we weren't wasting money giving 1000 dollars a month to a guy already making 6 figures.... Another argument is that incentives are not distorted. People who don't receive the basic income will obviously not have any change in their incentives*, and people who do receive the basic income are poor to begin with, so obviously their incentives are less relevant, since they aren't major contributors to the economy anyways. *not quite true that people who don't receive the basic income won't have distorted incentives. If you are only just ineligible for the basic income so that you would be better off working less and thus getting the basic income, that would be a problem ... but it's easily solvable: just make the payment of basic income linear so that those "discontinuities" are dealt with. | The problem of giving X to people earning much more than X is very easily solved by taking it away again through tax brackets. The real motivation for the universal in UBI is a privacy and dignity argument: Nobody deserves not to have an income below certain levels necessary to provide some kind of housing, food and other necessities of survival At the moment, all forms of assistance come with intrusive questioning intended to measure whether they "deserve" it. This is tedious, difficult, and wearing on human dignity, especially things like disability benefits where you are expected to prove what you can't do. Given that we assume everyone deserves something, there is no longer any need for the questioning. Removing it enhances dignity and also reduces bureaucracy. | {
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39,667 | I know we've come to expect unusual behavior from the present POTUS, but I really fail to understand the benefit for the US of recognizing Israel as owning the Golan Heights. For one thing, it overturns the general post-war consensus that nations can't increase their territory through military action. And, well, it doesn't seem like it will do anything except isolate the US diplomatically. This question shouldn't be construed in any way, shape or form as support for Assad's government. Or a strong desire to force Israel's hand to return it without security assurances from Syria. This is the full text of the tweet. After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israel’s Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability! –Donald Trump, via Twitter (2019-03-21) Edit: apologies to both answers given so far, but I'd like to shift the discussion away from the electoral motivations to what concrete benefits the US could expect if this policy was actually implemented. I.e. how is this good "for the US", rather than any political parties. | I'm not sure there is much benefit to the United States. It won't increase Israel's reliablity as a military ally or trading partner, since they already filled these roles without any US recognition of their possession of the Golan Heights. As the question noted, it will likely only score negative foreign policy points. However, it's not the US in some amorphous sense that's taking these actions, but the US President, Donald Trump. It's not at all unusual for a president to take actions that aren't to the overall benefit of their country for personal reasons. Consider Richard Nixon, spying on his political opponents out of paranoia. Or Nicolas Maduro, engaging in deficit spending to boost his re-election chances in 2013. For that matter, consider the policy of Trump himself toward Venezuela, which is unlikely to bring much benefit to Americans, but is intended to provide a rhetorical point about socialism in the 2020 elections. And there are several ways this recognition of the Golan Heights could benefit Donald Trump. Trump is making a play for Jewish voters. He hasn't exactly been subtle about it . The ‘Jexodus’ movement encourages Jewish people to leave the Democrat
Party,” he tweeted. “Total disrespect! Republicans are waiting with
open arms. Remember Jerusalem (U.S. Embassy) and the horrible Iran
Nuclear Deal! Since Jewish voters are more likely to be "pro-Israel" in a broad sense, actions that seem to favor Israel may increases Trump's standing among this demographic. If Trump sees recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel as an action that will help bring Jewish voters to his side, it's easy to see why he'd think the same about recognizing its possession of the Golan heights. Right-leaning people tend to be more supportive of the actions of Israel's government in general. Whatever Trump himself thinks, appearing to stand by Israel may increase the solidity of his support among his core base, For reasons why right-wing people might be more supportive of Israel, see the answers to this question. Trump himself is fairly hostile to Muslim people, as has been extensively documented. It is possible that this might motivate him to be unsympathetic to Muslim countries' land claims. As for the concerns that you mention, they aren't as important as one might think. Trump doesn't care much for international consensus or diplomatic isolation. He's made remarks that have been hostile to the traditional allies of the US, and drawn nearer to some traditional adversaries. I doubt diplomatic isolation is a major concern for him. | {
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39,688 | Pretty much the title. My attempts to search Google only brings in swathes or news items about extension, but no explanation of why it might be so, at least none that I can find. Attempt to make UK take part in upcoming elections and stay in EU out of inertia? It should be clear by now that no matter what the UK will not get their proverbial stuff together, so what's the point? Does the EU need more time for something? Way to give UK more of proverbial rope? Reasons to agree to extension elude me. | A no deal Brexit would also hurt the EU. Not so much as to offer the pact that the Parliament wants (in the case that the Parliament knew what it wants), but enough to provide an extension to see if the deal gets approved. In the worst case scenario, the EU has a few more days to roll out its own contingency measures for a no deal Brexit. It shows the EU as a reasonable actor that does not refuse to give some slack to the other side. In any case, the extension is not a big deal: a few days if the temporary agreement is not accepted, less than two months if it is accepted, and in neither case it will cause issues with the upcoming EU elections. And for "it is an attempt to force the UK to take part in the elections" comment, I do not understand what the EU would stand to win from the UK holding EU elections, and the EU is not interested in that: even the longer extension ensures that the UK will not have to elect MEPs. | {
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39,731 | There seems to be multiple definitions of freedom of speech out there, and I hear a lot about how companies like Google and Twitter are exempt from this as they are private entities and freedom of speech only applies to the government. This seems to contradict the following definitions: Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. Wikipedia Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. Article 19 clearly states "regardless of frontiers" and therefore surely these companies are violating human rights when they censor people on their platforms? Wikipedia states "without fear of...censorship..." which surely means that private entities fall under this definition too, which means they are violating free speech as well by censoring people on their platforms? What I am trying to ask is, does freedom of speech apply to private entities, and if not, why? | This is a common misconception. Freedom of speech does not mean that everybody can say whatever they want, whenever they want and wherever they want. It means essentially that people cannot be legally punished for expressing their opinions, except if said opinions infringe on other freedoms . This means that people are allowed to express their opinions, but it doesn't imply that any public or private organization has to offer their platform for them to do so. For example, if I write a political article it's up to me to find a support who agrees to publish it, I can't sue a newspaper because they refuse to publish it. Similarly, if I have my own website where people leave comments, I'm allowed to delete any comment I want since I'm the owner of the publication. The same applies to Google or Twitter: they provide a platform but they can decide what kind of content they accept or not (users agree to their rules when they validate the terms of use). This is why "freedom of speech only applies to the government", in the sense that only a government could prosecute somebody for expressing their opinions. In western democracies, governments are not allowed do that since freedom of speech is protected. By contrast, there are many countries where people can go to jail for expressing their opinions: this is what the absence of freedom of speech means. | {
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39,745 | I find the whole Brexit thing impenetrably difficult to understand. My main points of confusion: What exactly does leaving the EU entail? Just writing some letter announcing that EU tariff agreements will no longer be honored? If voters in the UK chose to leave the EU (years ago?), why have the concrete steps from point 1 not been done? Does the current prime minister want to leave the EU or not? If yes, what prevents the prime minister from unilaterally disavowing any treaties which constitute the bond with continental Europe? | The EU is like a club that countries can join. The club has rules, one of which is called Article 50 and was written by a British guy. Article 50 says how countries can leave the club, and that it takes two years during which time they have to negotiate the terms they want to leave on. A lot of people in Britain like being in the club, and a lot of businesses have come to rely on the benefits of membership like being able to sell their stuff to other club member countries. So to keep them happy the Prime Minister wants to keep some of the benefits of membership. But other people don't like the club and just want out completely, and she wants to make them happy too. Because it's impossible to keep everyone happy and no-one really thought this through back when the vote happened, it's all become a bit of mess. | {
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39,748 | Article 2, Section 4 of the US Constitution states : The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. This clause apparently lays out the requirements for removing a US Office, and requires that the Officer being impeached commit "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors". Does that clause mean that that the FULL EXTENT AND LIMIT of impeachable offenses are those listed? For example suppose a Party managed to gain control of 2/3 of the Senate and the House and they decided to impeach a sitting President of another Party for purely political purposes. I.e. the President did nothing, but the Congress impeached anyway, or the Congress invented some specious charge to justify the impeachment. In that case could the Supreme Court overturn an Impeachment? | In Walter L. Nixon v. United States (unrelated to President Richard Nixon), the court held that the judiciary could not review impeachment proceedings. According to the constitution, the House has the "sole power of impeachment" and the Senate has the "sole power to try all impeachments." The Supreme Court considered this sufficient evidence that the framers did not want the judiciary involved. Further, because judges themselves can be impeached, it would violate separation of powers to allow them to review such cases. | {
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39,765 | If this is too broad please leave suggestions and I'll try to narrow it down. Although I don't always agree, I feel like I can follow the arguments for and from most facets of the political spectrum from the social democrats to the neocons. Outside of that spectrum band [center +/- 2 SD] that I can actually wrap my brain around, only one group seems to consistently draw intelligent, thoughtful, well-meaning people: communists. Yet whenever I read people advocating communism it always centers around two things: Appeal to moral intuitions that I don't share. Appeal to Marx. Marx was a brilliant visionary in his day, but that was ~150 years ago. I suspect that economists have built on his work since then but these days I only ever seem to hear about the Keynesians and the Austrians, not the Marxists. What I'm not interested in I often when asking questions along these lines I get a litany of grievances against capitalism, but that doesn't actually address the question: it doesn't really matter how bad capitalism is if the alternatives are worse. I'm also tend to get a lot of anti-US stuff. But capitalism exists on a spectrum from Finland to Singapore, I'm not sure focusing on the US is helping things. What I am interested in A lot of people (not just me) seem unable to understand the appeal of communism in a post-Soviet world, but again so many intelligent and thoughtful people have rallied to the red banner over time and even today that I suspect that we're all missing something. So how do modern communists address the following points: Labor theory of value seems to be empirically inferior to demand pricing. Communist countries seem to tend towards totalitarianism more than their capitalist counterparts. Communist countries seem to have worse environmental records than their capitalist counterparts. Communist countries seem to have lower standards of living in general than their capitalist counterparts. These seem to me like pretty basic criticisms that any serious proponent of communism would have to address and has probably responded to a million times and has good answers to. How do modern, serious communists respond to these criticisms? Would prefer links to credible sources. | I'm going to try to make an argument that a modern Marxist Communist could make. Firstly, it is perfectly reasonable to argue that Marxist Communism has never been tried. Specifically, Marx considered Communism to be a stateless society "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need". What has been tried is state socialism, the so-called " dictatorship of the proletariat ". The distinction (to a Communist) is important as they aren't the same thing; Marx considered state socialism to be a pre-cursor to his conception of communism. More specifically, Marx identified that societies evolved over time and he hypothesized that state socialism would necessarily evolve into communism. Marx also identified as a scientist. This is important because, by the time Marx died, no society had instituted either state socialism or his conception of communism. As such, the experiment (what state socialism evolves into) had not been carried out. Subsequently, the experiment has been carried out a number of times. It turns out that, rather than evolve into communism, state socialism appears to naturally evolve into totalitarian dictatorship. In other words, Marx was partly right (in terms of societal evolution) and partly wrong (in terms of actual outcome). Unfortunately, at this point most Marxist intellectuals (pretty much since the Hungarian uprising ) have gone one of two ways. Either became apologists for the extant regimes or became resigned to having got it wrong/been misled. Eric Hobsbawm is a good example of the latter. I believe there could be a third, more positive, way for Marxist Communists. The evidence strongly suggests that state socialism does not evolve into communism. But it doesn't follow that no society could evolve into communism. Similarly, there is strong evidence that societies both do evolve and have natural, evolutionary trajectories. So, it follows that a Communist could go looking for what that societal evolution should be. It's just unlikely to include state socialism in the mix. If I was going to be controversial, I'd argue that this is a scientific Marxist position. As against the religious Marxist position that Marx couldn't have been wrong about anything. Unfortunately, the latter tend to be more common than the former in my experience but one can always hope. | {
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39,783 | I found the following one but as far as I can tell it is totally biased towards staying in the EU. https://comparethebrexit.com/ How can I get an impartial view of the effect of different deals (including Norway and Canada if possible). | While the data given seems factually correct, I agree that the framing on that website is biased towards staying in the EU (evidenced by only giving a button to contact your MP if you're worried about leaving the EU and the non-neutral exclamation points everywhere) As someone without a bone in this fight (As in: I'm a European, find Brexit interesting, think there are risks involved in Brexit, but there's no guarantee at all that the UK will be strictly worse off in a semi-pragmatic world) I find that TLDRNews (I'm not affiliated) tries their utter best to keep from pandering to emotions. They have outlined different possibilities for deals as given by both Brexiteers and Remainers and done their best to do both risk and benefit assessments of these possibilities. However: Benefit assessments are simply harder to make than risk assessments. This is because current benefits and costs (as gained and paid by being a full EU member) are known and were up until recently seen as a net-gain for the UK. As such: the disappearance of these are generally categorized under 'losses'. Possible benefits are harder to assess because these are all still hypothetical. Could the UK be better off in a few years time because they left the EU? It can, it could also be completely bankrupt, since no one currently knows the opportunities that will arise once Brexit is complete. This unknown outcome makes the framing of Brexit as a high risk-unknown reward decision factually and objectively correct . If you don't like that, and would instead prefer a nice list of why Brexit is the holy grail of democratic decisions, you should probably check your own biases. Just like people that say that the UK will 100% be worse off should check theirs. | {
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39,793 | As a fairly typical UK citizen, with a partner, children, job, mortgage, etc., what benefits can I expect to experience over the next five years as a result of the UK leaving the EU? I'm aware of several definite down sides (e.g. losing the right to live and work in the EU, losing the right to vote in EU elections, etc.) and a whole multitude of potential downsides (less staff for the NHS, less food that is lower quality and more expensive, etc.), and a handful of less likely but possibly critical, state-level failures (return of the Troubles, or NI opting to leave UK and join RoI, Scotland voting for independence, etc.). In the interests of forming a balanced and optimistic view of the future, I'm keen to understand what good things will happen. I'm particularly keen to find out about the things that are even better than we have already as members of the EU that will compensate for the things that we will lose. I'm not interested in speculative things that might happen 25 or 50 years in the future, rather what will definitely happen, or even probably happen, during the next few years that I will personally experience as a good result of the UK leaving the EU? | In decreasing order of certainty: If you work (or intend to work) in a field dealing with border/customs/phytosanitary etc., Brexit may have new job opportunities. If your job/income was somehow threatened by potential immigrants from the EU, it might be less so. If national legislation on environment or other business regulations gets streamlined relative to the EU-inherited one, you might benefit if you're in a business that can take advantage of that streamlining. If you work in a field that the UK government will be more protectionist of (in terms of imports), you might make more money. Something similar for subsidized exports. Those last two or three items are more contingent on no-deal Brexit, in which the UK will be completely unencumbered by EU with any sort of customs union sooner. As you can see I can't envisage unconditional benefits. If you look at the reasons why people voted for Brexit , you'll see that my 3 & 4 are based on that. I'm not sure if "not sending money to the EU" (another reason why some voted for Brexit) will translate into any personal financial benefits, given the potential for an economic downturn that might offset any gains from that non-contribution. But one could phrase that as a conditional benefit as well. The elephant in the room is of course how will British economy react (in the short run, since this is focus of the OP's question) to whatever flavor of Brexit passes. Unless you choose to trust the arch-Brexiteers' positive forecasts, the prognostic from more established sources is negative, e.g. Standard & Poors predicted UK recession until 2020 in case of a no-deal Brexit S&P's analysis sees a recession lasting four to five quarters should there be no deal before the exit date on 29 March. It sees the economy shrinking 1.2% in 2019 and 1.5% in 2020, and returning to only moderate growth the following year so that by 2021 economic output would still be 5.5% lower than in the event of an "orderly exit and transition period". Of course analysts aren't infaillible . But in this case I haven't heard from a non-politicized body saying UK will shrug it off. | {
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39,887 | The Department for Exiting the EU has said in response to the petition to revoke Article 50 that : “17.4 million people then voted to leave the European Union, providing
the biggest democratic mandate for any course of action ever directed
at UK government,” How was the size of the mandate determined? | This sentence simply means that of all the three referenda ever held in the United Kingdom , the one about Brexit was the one with the most votes for a single option. Note that the 1975 referendum to join the EU had 17,378,581 people who voted 'Yes'/'Join', only about 30,000 less than the 17,410,742 who voted to 'Leave' in the last referendum. If you look at the relative results (compared to 40 million registered voters in 1975 vs. 51 million in 2016), it's arguably a smaller mandate; in 1975, 43% of the people who could vote voted 'Yes', while the Brexit mandate is only 34%. | {
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39,892 | The House of Commons will today vote on a series of indicative votes, in order to find out "the will of the house", and thus break the current deadlock with Brexit. These votes come after the deal that Theresa May negotiated privately with the EU was rejected twice by the House of Commons. The question is, why didn't Theresa May consult the "will of the house" two years ago (i.e. before starting negotiations with the EU), given that any deal had to be ratified by parliament anyway? Why did she choose to go solo and define herself (not even her party) the UK red lines and what Leave was supposed to mean? | After the referendum there was no requirement to consult Parliament on any deal, the government could have simply agreed it with the EU and presented it as the only option on the table - take it or leave with no deal. Given that most MPs are strongly against a no-deal exit, it would likely have passed due to them having no other choice. However, thanks to legal action by Gina Miller the government was forced to promise giving Parliament a "meaningful vote" on the final deal. In December 2017 it was written into law. By that point the negotiations had already started and were going very badly. May had set out her "red lines", things she would not compromise on but which the EU had pointed out made the kind of deal she was seeking impossible. The problem was exacerbated by her failure to specify precisely what she wanted (the infamous "brexit means brexit" meaningless mantra), which seemed like an effort to delay giving her MPs any substance to argue over. So basically by the time she was forced to consult with Parliament instead of just ramming the deal through, it was already too late to do so without tearing the Tory Party apart and staring a prolonged debate during what was supposed to be a negotiation focusing on the detail of the withdrawal. Her plan thus became to leave everything to the last possible moment, in the hope denying Parliament any real choice again. | {
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39,963 | According to the Press Freedom Index , the US is ranked at a meager 45th position in the global ranking of countries. In comparison, New Zealand is currently at the 8th spot despite having an official " Chief Censor " position and routinely banning the circulation of documents the government dislikes, such as the Cristchurch shooter's manifesto. In the US such censorship would be impossible as the country's First Amendment provides the strongest protections for freedom of the speech in the entire world. So why isn't the US routinely ranked as #1 in freedom of press ratings? Are there topics which cannot be discussed in US media under the threat of censorship or persecution? | You need to keep in mind that the press freedom ratings is not a measure of freedom of speech, but freedom of the press, and the US is still ranked as "fairly good". Specifically, the index describes itself: What does it measure? The Index ranks 180 countries and regions according to the level of freedom available to journalists. It is a snapshot of the media freedom situation based on an evaluation of pluralism, independence of the media, quality of legislative framework and safety of journalists in each country and region . It does not rank public policies even if governments obviously have a major impact on their country’s ranking. They also provide more detail about their methodology and the questionnaire used to create the index is available online. I was unable to find a full report, but in a short analysis, the index specifically mentions Trumps hostility to the media. They go into a bit more depth about this in a press release for the 2017 data: In 2017, the 45th President of the United States helped sink the country to 45th place by labeling the press an “enemy of the American people” in a series of verbal attacks toward journalists , attempts to block White House access to multiple media outlets , routine use of the term “fake news” in retaliation for critical reporting, and calling for media outlets’ broadcasting licenses to be revoked . President Trump has routinely singled out news outlets and individual journalists for their coverage of him, and retweeted several violent memes targeting CNN. The violent anti-press rhetoric from the White House has been coupled with an increase in the number of press freedom violations at the local level as journalists run the risk of arrest for covering protests or simply attempting to ask public officials questions. Reporters have even been subject to physical assault while on the job. However, the Trump effect has only served to amplify the disappointing press freedom climate that predated his presidency. Whistleblowers face prosecution under the Espionage Act if they leak information of public interest to the press, while there is still no federal “shield law” guaranteeing reporters’ right to protect their sources. Journalists and their devices continue to be searched at the US border , while some foreign journalists are still denied entry into the US after covering sensitive topics like Colombia’s FARC or Kurdistan. | {
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39,966 | I wonder if after the current debate, the UK ends up leaving the EU on any terms, how soon can a future government conduct a referendum to join the EU? | They can do it right away if they have the majority vote. However, it will take some time to do so, even if the UK gets fast-tracked. It may help that most standards, laws etc are already in place. Also the UK may not get conditions of membership as good as when they had before leaving, and may be required to participate in the Schengen visa scheme and the Eurozone. | {
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40,046 | In the context of Brexit, there has been much discussion that the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland would mark the boundary of the EU. This has had large ramifications due to the length and porous nature of this border, and the large amount of interconnections between the economies of Ireland and Northern Ireland. There is currently a question exploring the nature of that hypothetical border , but I'm not interested in that here. Specifically, what I want to know is whether French Guiana , a part of France and member of the EU, has a similar 'hard' border. As is evident in the attached map, French Guiana is very isolated from the rest of the EU, and possesses a very long border with non-EU nations. It is also a border that is (presumably) virtually impossible to police, as most of it falls within the Amazon rainforest. While it isn't a member of the Mercosur trade block , French Guiana presumably is very reliant on trade with its neighbours. So, as the border of the EU, does French Guiana have an open and free-flowing border with its neighbours? Or are there border posts and heavily restricted movement? | Customs in French Guiana Yes, it is an external border for the purpose of EU common external customs tariffs. According to the EU's page on Territorial status of EU countries and certain territories It is a territory of the EU, EU customs rules do apply, EU VAT rules do not apply, and Excise rules do not apply either. The New York Times has an article about the French Guiana-Brazil border . A quote to set the mood: When you cross the border into French Guiana, you are not only in France — where French is spoken, French police officers patrol the border and people elect representatives to the French Parliament — but also in the European Union. The euro is the currency, and European Union regulations on matters like food safety apply. And a picture of the border, showing the French side: At the time of the article, the border was not yet in full operation: On its side of the bridge, France built a border police post, to manage customs and immigration services, that already appears weather-beaten and worn. On the bridge, which is more than four football fields long, the double white line at the center of the pavement is peeling away. Goods from French Guiana to the EU (mainland) Goods coming into the EU from French Guiana are subject to the following (from the Dutch tax agency website ): Exceptional areas within the EU countries Certain areas which are part of the EU customs territory, exceptional areas, are subject to special rules. These areas are: French overseas departments and territories, including Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Martinique, Mayotte and Reunion These areas are subject to special rules concerning excise duty and value added tax (VAT). Are goods entering the EU from one of these countries or territories? Then the goods are subject to the same tax rules that would apply if they came from a non-EU country. | {
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40,113 | I heard about some people arguing about ineptocracy as applying to the country I live in. I searched up the term and found these definitions : The phenomenon of governance or leadership by the incompetent. (..) a system of government where the least capable to lead are
elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of
society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded
with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a
diminishing number of producers. The first definition is really vague, but the second suggests that through direct vote, people that produce less are able to get some wealth from those that produce more. Also, this mechanism seem to be unsustainable on the long term, since those who produce are demotivated. I am interested in what ineptocracy really is about. Or is it just a buzzword without a deep meaning? Question: What exactly is ineptocracy? | I think you are right that it is just a buzzword. Back in classical Greece, philosophers attempted a systematic study of forms of government and came up with the distinction of monarchy (one good ruler), tyranny (one bad ruler), aristocracy (few good rulers), oligarchy (few bad rulers), democracy (many good rulers) and ochlocracy (many bad rulers). Political observers have expanded this system since, with terms like meritocracy and kleptocracy , but these are much more recent. Possibly the Greeks would have called a kleptocracy just another oligarchy, and your example of idiocracy just another ochlocracy -- note that ochlocracy is much less commonly used than the other five ancient terms. There was an edit, rolled back by a mod because it should have been a comment, that kakistocracy is a couple of centuries old. That makes about as new as kleptocracy, and older than meritocracy. Of course we're on Politics SE, and framing the debate is part of the political process. So instead of calling it a buzzword , one might call it a political slogan . Note that the tendency of voters to vote themselves funds from the public purse is not related to incompetence. Deciding how to lobby and knowing how to get away with it requires highly skilled political operators. | {
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40,120 | According to an article I read recently (I could not find it though), the easiest way to take down a big authority is by cutting the head - meaning the uppermost level of control of that authority - and causing enough chaos to be able to claim that authority yourself. What if whenever politicians became too shameless in their corruption schemes, someone hired a hitman that eliminates a few important figures, basically sending a message that most of the people are thinking: "We can see what you're doing and we won't just stay and do nothing"? In my very naive opinion, this will send a warning message to any future person occupying that role that they shouldn't fall into corruption schemes or at least not as much. I understand that in today's world the second part - claiming the authority - is complex or impossible, but it's not important. The goal of this is only sending the warning message. I know that my point of view is very naive, but I'd like to read some ideas about why this won't work. P.S.: I know this is a global community, so a little background might be helpful - this is coming from someone in Eastern Europe, where life standard is kind of low compared to Western Europe and politicians are more corrupt based on my biased opinion. | Basically because your idea (assassination of corrupt politician) undermines rather than reinforces the rule of law . Usually the definition of corruption includes some kind of illegal activity. Otherwise it's just stuff you don't like for personal moral reasons. And if everyone started to use assasination to solve their moral differences... the basis of the (modern) state as the sole authority for violence would cease to exist. And given that it's apparently a fairly popular idea, in some movies at least, here's some similar commentary on the idea : The violence could worsen the problem of corruption,” says Michael Johnston, a political scientist and professor at Colgate University. “It would legitimate violent action from the persecuted politicians, and encourage a hunt for the suspects. That is what will happen with Rodrigo Duterte’s tactics in the Philippines,” he explains, referring to the Philippine president who wishes to distribute 42 thousand weapons to ordinary citizens, especially community leaders, so they can go around the country killing people involved with any form of illicit activities, especially drug trafficking. In such a scenario, a climate similar to that of Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union would be implemented: any accusation, no matter how little justified by concrete evidence, would mean a death penalty or exile. And the dead corrupt politicians would quickly be replaced by other ones – as it already happens with members of the organized crime. And since that part doesn't get developed with any examples there, South Africa is perhaps an example where the whistleblowers are the ones that usually end up assassinated, nowadays. Political assassinations are rising sharply in South Africa, threatening the stability of hard-hit parts of the country and imperiling Mr. Mandela’s dream of a unified, democratic nation. But unlike much of the political violence that upended the country in the 1990s, the recent killings are not being driven by vicious battles between rival political parties. Quite the opposite: In most cases, A.N.C. officials are killing one another, hiring professional hit men to eliminate fellow party members in an all-or-nothing fight over money, turf and power, A.N.C. officials say. [...] The recent assassinations cover a wide range of personal and political feuds. Some victims were A.N.C. officials who became targets after exposing or denouncing corruption within the party. Others fell in internal battles for lucrative posts. Encouraging assassination as a legitimate political tool can easily lead to that since who has more money to pay hitmen? And to reinforce this idea, going back to Duterte, here's a quote from him : Rodrigo Duterte has warned journalists in the Philippines that they are legitimate targets for assassination if they do wrong, in the President-elect’s latest controversial comments ahead of being sworn into office later this month. Duterte was asked during a press conference Tuesday how he would address the country’s high murder rate for journalists, reports Agence France-Presse. “Just because you’re a journalist you are not exempted from assassination, if you’re a son of a bitch,” he replied. Interestingly, Duterte was apparently referring to (or perhaps reducing the problem to) the rather complex case of Jun Pala , who apparently himself was linked to a vigilante group that exposed and allegedly assassinated some [corrupt] politicians. And since this came up several times in the comments, here's a definition(s) primer : “Corruption” is a term whose meaning shifts with the speaker. It can describe the
corruption of the young from watching violence on television or refer to political
decisions that provide narrow benefits to one’s constituents in the form, say, of a new
road through the district. In short, speakers use the term to cover a range of actions that
they find undesirable. Because my topic includes both corruption and poor governance, I
omit both morally corrupting activities, on the one hand, and run-of-the-mill
constituency-based politics, on the other. I use the common definition of corruption as the
“misuse of public power for private or political gain,” recognizing that “misuse” must be
defined in terms of some standard. Many corrupt activities under this definition are illegal
in most countries —for example, paying and receiving bribes, fraud, embezzlement, self-dealing, conflicts of interest, and providing a quid pro quo in return for campaign gifts.
However, part of the policy debate turns on where to draw the legal line and how to
control borderline phenomena, such as conflicts of interest, which many political systems
fail to regulate. [...] one of the most important debates turns on the issue
of “state capture” or the problem of creating open democratic/market societies in states
where a narrow elite has a disproportionate influence on state policy. In those countries
outright bribery may be low, but the system is riddled with special interest deals that
favor the few over the many. In some sense, plain-old tyranny (which several comments addressed) is an extreme form of state capture. (When there aren't even pretenses anymore.)
State capture is of course somewhat different than "conventional" corruption because there's (usually widespread) institutional and legislative failure. Whether peaceful reform or violent revolution is the appropriate solution for such a state of affairs is a somewhat related but sufficiently different question, so I won't attempt to address that here. | {
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40,123 | As I understand it, most capitalists would argue that the reason the rich deserve their wealth is that they have worked for it, and the fact that they have managed to gain such wealth shows that they will do good things with it that will benefit everybody else. This position seems to be incompatible with widespread opposition to high inheritance taxes, which would help to ensure that people have worked for what they have and therefore have proven that they can use their wealth well as opposed to having inherited their wealth, proving only that they had successful parents. Is anybody able to explain how these positions can fit together? | Philosophical reason - why do some people in the government have a greater right to decide what to do with the assets than the person that owned them (through their will, by giving it to heirs/foundations/charities/donating it to the treasury)? Incentives 1 - most humans seem to value the welfare of their children more than they value their own. By imposing a high inheritance tax you are giving an incentive to these people not to work as hard/smart as they would have or to go live in other countries. Incentives 2 - by taxing 100% of inheritance, there is no incentive for anyone to leave any assets after they die. That means that instead of investing the wealth (so that the society benefits from it), they would end up consuming the wealth, making society poorer. Fairness/meritocracy argument - children already inherit the good upbringing from their parents, ethics, some genetic predispositions/talents, looks, experience. Few would argue for neutralizing such advantages by having all children raised by the state, for example. Why is inheriting wealth any different? Is it not better to aim for a society where every family is wealthy, rather than a society with no wealthy families? I would recommend watching Milton Friedman's "Free To Choose" series for a deeper discussion of these issues. | {
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40,197 | Years after the Brexit vote, long after losing her majority in the House of Commons, and days before the extended Brexit date, the Prime Minister (Theresa May) is now talking to the Leader of the Opposition . To me this seems like an obvious move (if 3 years too late), but it is apparently controversial. In most European countries, it is normal to seek compromise and consensus; The Netherlands has the famous polder model and Germany has often been ruled by a coalition of the two main rival parties. Yet in Britain, a government based on consensus appears controversial: it took years for Theresa May to make this move and then still under considerable criticism, being accused of giving influence to pro-Remain politicians or "marxists", although the Labour Party scored 40% in the 2017 elections. Why does a consensus-based approach appear to be so controversial in Britain? In the words of EU vice-president Frans Timmermans interviewed in Die Welt : „In welchem Land würde es fast drei Jahre dauern, dass eine Regierung, die sich nicht einig ist, mal daran denkt, in einer lebenswichtigen Frage mit der Opposition zusammenzuarbeiten? Das ist eigentlich unvorstellbar, dass das in Großbritannien erst jetzt passiert.“ My translation: „In what country would it take nearly three years, before a government, that is not in agreement gets the idea to cooperate with the opposition on a vitally important issue? It is really incredible, that this is happening in [Great Britain] only now.” | Press "Freedom of the press in Britain means freedom to print such of the proprietor's prejudices that the advertisers don't object to" Americans like to believe their press is neutral. In the UK, hardly anyone bothers to maintain this pretence, and the press are openly engaged as political factions. The press circulation is much larger than the membership of the political parties, and has an impact beyond its actual numbers in terms of influencing opinion. The three largest papers are the Sun (owned by Murdoch's News Corp), the Daily Mail (owned by Viscount Rothermere), and the Times (News Corp again). All have a right-wing anti-Europe stance, and will happily print inaccurate articles about Europe. Boris Johnson got a particularly bad reputation for this while working as a journalist before he was a minister. He is still employed as a journalist, and is in fact paid more for that than his role as a Minister of the Crown. The press benefit from controversy: it sells papers. Readers enjoy outrage bait that panders to their prejudices; a pre-internet version of the "fake news" problem. Sidebar: the Spiked/LM axis There is a small group of people who used to write for Living Marxism until it was sued out of existence for denying the Bosnian genocide, then formed a successor Spiked! . They seem to be surprisingly influential in the commentariat despite their small size, and despite the intellectual incoherency of having gone straight from revolutionary communism to libertarianism without passing through common sense on the way. One of these people is Brendan O'Neill. Another is Claire Fox, now Baroness Fox of Buckley. BBC Question Time A similar story prevails here . What ought to be a discussion show has succumbed to the temptation of getting on the most extreme guests possible, provoking highly strung arguments, and letting planted audience members inject outrageous questions. Edit: another example of the revolving door : the man who ran the BBC's political output during the Brexit campaign was later appointed as Theresa May's director of communications and is a "hard Brexiteer". Culture: The Establishment The leaders of the country overwhelmingly come from a very narrow educational background: private school followed by Oxford PPE . This produces people with a bulletproof opinion of their own correctness and practice in intellectual bullying. Culture: Ruins of the Empire This mostly manifests as a belief that Britain can "punch above its weight", and therefore does not need to engage in international compromise. While the influence of this in negotiations with Europe is obvious, I would argue that it also prevails internally. (This is easily a graduate-thesis size investigation!). It seems to me that the country is run centrally as a tiny empire. Councils have little power and little funding autonomy; council tax rates can be capped centrally, and they are dependent on "block grant". The relatively recent devolved assemblies also get little respect from Westminster; the Scotland Office and Wales Office still exist despite seeming redundancy. The Scotland Office has a substantial budget for anti-independence campaigning. The situation is even worse in Northern Ireland, land of No Surrender, where there has been no government for about two years following its collapse over a fraud scandal. Compromise is even more foreign there. People tend to forget that the UK had a live-fire civil war in living memory, but I think that matters to the uncompromisingness. Systems: First Past the Post The voting system at Westminster discourages coalition or minority governments, so there is no tradition of sound coalition-forming by seeking consensus. Edit: as a piece of metacommentary, this is the first time I've noticed an answer getting significant numbers of upvotes and downvotes. I am aware that it can be considered opinionated, but I think that's a symptom of the polarisation that leads to no consensus. Politically engaged people disagree on increasingly basic things. | {
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40,207 | Recently, a few aspiring 2020 Democratic Presidential candidates (specifically Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren) have spoken out in favor of "reparations" to black people for American Slavery, which was abolished over 150 years ago. Mirriam Dictionary defines a "Bill of Attainder" as: a legislative act that imposes punishment without a trial Bills of Attainder are specifically prohibited by the US Constitution in Article 1, Section 9. Of course, the idea behind banning Bills of Attainder was to prevent abuse whereby legislatures would target groups of people and pass laws summarily punishing them for perceived actions or transgressions. Would any Bill establishing "slavery reparations" not have to be considered an illegal Bill of Attainder since they specifically target non-black people and slate them for punishment without a trial? | No, on two counts First, if they were funded by reorganization of current government spending, reparations would legally be no different from any other government program that targets a group. This was established in Nixon v. Administrator of General Services , that a law burdening a group is not unconstitutional. However expansive is the prohibition against bills of attainder, it was not intended to serve as a variant of the Equal Protection Clause, invalidating every Act by Congress or the States that burdens some persons or groups but not all other plausible individuals. There's a little bit more about how intent to punish and legitimate purposes also matter. Further, even were they funded by a specific additional tax, reparations would legally be considered a tax, not a punishment. Note that everyone would likely be taxed, but, as with many existing government programs, the proceeds would not be distributed back to everyone evenly. Finally, reparations have been implemented by law previously in US history, for instance in the case of the internment of Japanese-Americans. To the best of my knowledge, there was no challenge on constitutional grounds, and if there was, it clearly was not successful. | {
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40,281 | It would seem that most people who are born will eventually enter the workforce. Maybe that entry is delayed due to college or enlistment or that very important backpacking trip through Europe, but it seems that most people born will eventually get hired somewhere. So when you hear that the economy increased by fewer than 200k jobs, but over 300k people entered the labor pool, doesn't that really mean 100k more unemployed people? It doesn't seem like any figure smaller than 300k jobs is even breaking even against population growth. What am I missing here? | The obvious answer is that people get older and (presumably, hopefully) retire from the workforce. If your country's demographic is otherwise more or less stable, it means that by the time those 300,000 people age up to enter the work force, a similar number of people retire from the work force and hopefully live on their pension plan. | {
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40,314 | In the USA, alcohol laws are very strict and specific, while in most other parts of the world they are very lax. What's the reason? | The "frame challenge" aspect of this answer is to note that, while the USA is stricter than many European countries, it is less strict than many other countries. Many majority Muslim countries ban alcohol outright, or put far greater limits on its sale than the USA. However drinking culture is more restricted in the USA than in Europe. The age at which you can purchase alcohol is only a little higher in the USA, but there is a difference. Much of this can be traced to the consequences of Prohibition, and the culture in which Prohibition arose. There is a religious tradition of Protestant piety in the USA, in which personal behaviour is emphasised over ritual. This led to movements that opposed alcohol absolutely in the 19th century and culminated in the constitutional banning of all social alcohol in 1920. Even after repeal of these laws in the 1930s, the culture of alchol consumption remained very different. The cultural effect of prohibition extends to the present day. | {
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40,334 | I was talking to a friend some time ago about American politics, political parties, etc. During this conversation, I thought of something: If a single party controlled both the House and Senate, they could always pass a joint resolution If the president also belonged to said party, the bills would never get vetoed The president couldn't be impeached, since the House and Senate are under control of the party Because of this, the party could make the Supreme Court judges "disappear" and appoint new ones. Despite suspicions, he/she couldn't be impeached The party can then pass any laws they like, pardon anyone they want (meaning they can do anything illegal and get away with it), and even pass constitutional amendments to extend their reign without the Supreme Court stopping them. I'm absolutely certain I've overlooked something that would make this impossible, and people have said so, yet never been able to find a reason. Is this possible, and if not, what stops it from happening? | Institutions and constitutional arrangements are important as they provide a buffer against temporary excesses, but the ultimate check is civil society, really. Otherwise look at Hungary, Turkey, etc. No amount of paper institutions is going to prevent a slide into something like that. Unless enough people say no. There have been a lot of papers on instability in democracies and (temporary) reverts to authoritarianism. In general, a long democratic history is good predictor of non-reversals. Here's one such paper : I present a new empirical approach to the study of democratic consolidation. I distinguish between democracies that survive because
they are consolidated and those democracies that are not consolidated but survive because of
some favorable circumstances. As a result, I can identify the determinants of two related yet
distinct processes: the likelihood that a democracy consolidates, and the timing of
authoritarian reversals in democracies that are not consolidated. I find that the level of
economic development, type of democratic executive, and type of authoritarian past determine
whether a democracy consolidates, but have no effect on the timing of reversals in democracies
that are not consolidated. That risk is only associated with economic recessions. As an aside: I think the US Supreme Court can still be padded , no need to kill anyone. | {
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40,340 | Looking at the Brexit opinion polls it seems that the public is consistently in favor of staying in the EU ever since July 2017, with the gap between 'leave' and 'remain' slowly widening over time. So why do British politicians seem to ignore their electorate and keep pushing for leaving the EU instead of at least voting for a new referendum? Did any MPs mention the poll results in public discussions within the House of Commons? | It was discussed in the discussion on one of the online petitions. The standard Tory line against it is: 17.4 million people voted to leave. After that, 499 Members of Parliament voted in favour of invoking article 50, and 122 voted against But Brexit, as currently being operated, is not a public-driven process. Even if it was, making it opinion-poll-driven on small daily fluctuations between 49/51 one way and the other would make no sense either. No, the absolute driving motivation is to keep the Tory party together and in power. There has been a risk of a split over Europe since at least the days of John Major. Everyone is aware that under the FPTP system a split would be completely fatal to the party. This causes an endless cycle of making concessions to one group within the party to prevent them defecting, followed by the discovery that those concessions have angered another wing of the party, or are infeasible to deliver, or the EU won't agree to them, and so on. It also explains the weird stasis where the government is unable to command a majority for its flagship legislation but has not yet lost a vote of no confidence. | {
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40,377 | I read this question on why countries impose term limits on leaders, but it seems that the answer is not what I wanted. The reason is basically "to prevent a dictatorship." The only issue is, the public would still be voting every so often on the new president, so he/she could only abuse their power for the same amount of time an ordinary one could. Also, if a leader were to be an exceptionally good president/prime minister, it doesn't make much sense to keep them from being reelected. I am aware that there was a custom in the US far before an actual constitutional reason keeping presidents from running for president more than twice, but this seems odd, too. There's not much of a reason for it. One reason one could think of is to let new people be elected, if one person has been consistently reelected for the past few terms. But if they have, they are probably good enough at their job to deserve it. I know there are several similar questions (like the one linked above), but I do not believe this to be a duplicate. It is instead expanding on a certain point made in it, which seems unaddressed in responses to comments and seems worthy of a separate question. | As an empirical fact, the very same person is much more likely to win an election if that person in an incumbent than if that person is not and there is an open race, or a candidate is challenging an incumbent. This is because, among other things, an incumbent has better name recognition, challenges to an incumbent from a member of the same political party are strongly disfavored (even though that party is likely to be the one preferred by most voters in that politician's district), an incumbent doesn't need to spend time engaged in non-political work for economic self-support, and an incumbent can't manipulate the levers of government to make the incumbent appear desirable in superficial ways that don't reflect the bigger issues that really matter in governing a political unit. Term limits periodically wipe out incumbency advantages so that the vote of the people reflects an unbiased view of their wishes prospectively rather than being influenced by the mere fact that someone has previously held the same post. This keeps elected officials in line with the wishes of the people, and also prevents incumbency advantages (like gerrymandered districts that put strong opponents in the same district while leaving incumbents in districts that lack strong challengers) from further accumulating over time, which may create an environment akin to a dominant party system, where there is a legal opposition but it has no realistic prospects of winning important political prizes in the near term. If an elected official is very hard to remove despite the formal electoral process due to incumbency advantages, at some point the elected official can effectively ignore the public and rule as he or she sees fit at whim, must like a dictator. This isn't an absolute freedom and an extreme act could get an opposition figure elected (if those in charge don't change the election laws to prevent that), but even a dictator still needs to maintain a basis of support and legitimacy to rule. There are many examples in newer democracies of Presidents or other leaders improperly manipulating, greatly postponing or even entirely dispensing with elections creating a one party state or a publicly acknowledge dictatorship. The threat is not hypothetical. Regular shifts in who holds political office through an electoral process (which may include term limits) is necessary, as an empirical matter, for a democratic electoral system to be healthy and functional. As one empirical example, jurisdictions with term limits tend to have more women, and generally more diverse groups of elected officials and the lagging indicator influences of incumbency are overcome. | {
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40,405 | Hard-Brexiteers would like the UK to have a "clean break" with the EU, and in particular they don't want any part of the UK to stay even temporarily in the customs union (the so-called backstop). This "clean break" would normally require a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, but a hard border would breach the Good Friday Agreement . It seems that the options "the UK leaves the customs union" and "the Good Friday Agreement is upheld" are mutually exclusive . As far as I'm aware, the only idea that some hard-Brexiteers have proposed to solve this contradiction is a soft border using "seamless technology". Even assuming that such a technological option is feasible for the trade of goods, wouldn't that leave a backdoor wide open for illegal immigration from the EU to the UK? If yes, are hard-Brexiteers ok with that? Alternatively, are there any hard-Brexiteers who support a hard border? To summarize, what do hard-Brexiteers see as the ideal outcome for the Irish border in the long term? | They tend to think it's somebody else's problem (Ireland's and/or the DUP's). Unless you are part of the DUP of course. See how Rees-Mogg has been punting the problem along the lines of: I agree with whatever the DUP agrees (or at least doesn't oppose) on Northern Ireland. And at the same time he says that in the case of no-deal Ireland would not dare to impose a hard border. Which is true to some extent . The DUP has given a number of somewhat contradictory statements on this, over time. From the somewhat famous denial that a hard border ever existed to the more recent position(s) that they would prioritize staying in the EU over splitting Northern Ireland from the UK . | {
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40,461 | This is a follow-up to this question about what hard Brexiteers want with respect to the Irish border . It appears that hard Brexiteers are mostly happy to leave this question for the DUP and Ireland to sort out, and they are OK with keeping it a soft border. They see it as a technical issue rather than a crucial aspect of their plan. What I still don't understand is this: for hard Brexiteers, taking back control of the UK borders to limit immigration is a major outcome of Brexit. Still, they don't seem concerned about leaving the Irish border open, even though it could become a major point of entry for illegal immigration in the future: Ireland will keep welcoming EU citizens who could easily cross the border. Ireland could even decide to join the Schengen Area in the future, making it even easier for any EU citizen to reach the British Isles. While the UK has an agreement with France (including significant monetary contributions ) for France to prevent illegal migrants from crossing the Channel, I'm not aware of any similar agreement between Ireland and France. Thus France has no particular incentive to stop migrants from going to Ireland. This is probably not a problem now, but after Brexit direct trade between the EU and Ireland is likely to increase (since it won't go through the UK anymore), with more opportunities for migrants to try to hide in the lorries going to Ireland and then cross the border. First question: in the hypothesis of a hard Brexit, isn't a soft Irish border a potential backdoor for illegal immigration to the UK? If not what is wrong in the above reasoning? Second question: assuming that this reasoning is correct, why don't influential hard Brexiteers campaign for a hard Irish border in order to actually control immigration? Optional related question: this answer claims that (some?) hard Brexiteers hope that Ireland will follow the UK and leave the EU as well, and that would solve the problem. This option seems very unlikely given that Ireland's economy relies on being part of the EU (let alone the growing Anglophobia in Ireland), but is there any evidence to back this claim? Note: for the purpose of this question, let's assume that a border is "soft" if people are generally allowed to drive through it on major roads without stopping (as is the case currently on the Irish border). As far as I'm aware, there is no similar case on any EU external border, except with countries which have agreements with the EU to allow for the free movement of people, for instance Switzerland (please correct me if I'm wrong). | What I still don't understand is this: for hard-Brexiteers, taking back control of the UK borders to limit immigration is a major outcome of Brexit. The UK's immigration controls are already independent from the rest of the EU. The UK's common travel area with Ireland existed for decades before the EU or its predecessor organizations came into being, and it could be ended without the UK withdrawing from the EU. To put it another way: The question of immigration controls between the UK and other EU countries is entirely independent of the UK's membership in the EU, because the UK has opted out of Schengen. Ireland also opted out of Schengen, and as I understand it the principal reason for that was to be able to maintain the common travel area. Still, they don't seem concerned about leaving the Irish border open, even though it could become a major point of entry for illegal immigration in the future. It is already a possible point of entry for illegal immigration, and it has been for decades, yet it does not seem to be a major point of entry for illegal immigration. There's no reason to think that would change. Ireland will keep welcoming EU citizens who could easily cross the border. It will be legal for EU citizens to cross the border into the UK, just as it is legal today for a US or Japanese citizen, or a citizen of any other country that enjoys visa exemptions in both Ireland and the UK, to cross the border from Ireland into the UK. Ireland has an independent visa policy for non-EU citizens, so there are people who can get to Ireland without a visa but who require a visa to enter the UK. Citizens of South Africa are, for example, in that category. These people can easily cross the border illegally into the UK today. The EU has nothing to do with this. Ireland could even decide to join the Schengen Area in the future, making it even easier for any EU citizen to reach the British Isles. If Ireland joins the Schengen area, it will be required to put immigration controls on its side of the land border between the UK and its own territory, at which point the UK will have no reason to avoid doing the same. This is why Ireland will not join the Schengen area unless the UK does. While the UK has an agreement with France (including significant monetary contribution) for France to prevent illegal migrants from crossing the Channel, I'm not aware of any similar agreement between Ireland and France. Thus France has no particular incentive to stop migrants from going to Ireland. This is probably not a problem now, but after Brexit direct trade between the EU and Ireland is likely to increase (since it won't go through the UK anymore), with more opportunities for migrants to try to hide in the lorries going to Ireland and then cross the border. Juxtaposed border controls do not require France to prevent illegal migrants from going to the UK; they allow the UK to send its own officers to France to do that. The reason this is seen as useful to the UK is that it should reduce the number of asylum applications. Irish officers will be able to inspect vehicles coming from France after they arrive in Ireland, and it is true that an asylum seeker who makes it through this inspection and furthermore manages to reach UK territory without detection could claim asylum in the UK. This route already exists, however. It could become more popular, as you note, if direct trade between France and Ireland increases. First question: in the hypothesis of a hard Brexit, isn't a soft Irish border a potential backdoor for illegal immigration to the UK? Yes, it is, just as it would be if the UK leaves the EU with a deal, and just as it is today. Second question: assuming that this reasoning is correct, why influential hard-Brexiteers don't campaign for a hard Irish border in order to actually control immigration? For the same reason that the border is open now: Because the costs of provoking more trouble around the Irish border are far greater than the immigration benefit of reducing illegal immigration facilitated by the open border. With regard to your "optional related question," the real problem with the border is the movement of goods, not of people, because the UK and Ireland are part of the EU's customs union, and the UK leaving that customs union will create a need for customs inspections at the border. That is why some people hope that Ireland will leave the EU; it has nothing to do with immigration. You are correct to note that Ireland is not going to leave the EU, however; current polls suggest 85% support for EU membership. | {
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40,489 | Julian Assange, one of the founders of WikiLeaks, and its most visible member, was arrested at the Ecuador embassy in London, after Ecuador withdrew his asylum Today, I announce that the discourteous and aggressive behavior of Mr. Julian Assange, the hostile and threatening declarations of its allied organization, against Ecuador, and especially, the trangression of international treaties, have led the situation to a point where the asylum of Mr. Assange is unsustainable and no longer viable Wikileaks then made this tweet Ecuador has illigally terminated Assange political asylum in violation of international law. He was arrested by the British police inside the Ecuadorian embassy minutes ago. This is a purely political decision either way, but what international law(s) are at play here? Can the mere act of withdrawing asylum really be illegal? | what international law(s) are at play here? In the case of Assange being removed from the Ecuadorian embassy with the consent of the ambassador -- only the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. Subsequent likely proceedings are not covered in this answer but, for example, the Universal Decaration on Human Rights can apply to extradition proceedings. Refugee vs Asylum seeker The parts of international law that I have read (few) mostly seem to cover refugees. I suspect that most of us use these terms to mean more or less the same thing. There may be a subtle distinction in law that I don't know about (unsurprisingly) However, there is a significant difference between withdrawing asylum in an embassy and expulsion from a country of refuge. Most International law seems to cover the latter. Definition of refugee At the beginning of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees it defines refugee. It does so by referring to older documents. Consequently I don't have a good grasp of how exactly one qualifies and what exceptions may exist. We can all be reasonably certain that someone fleeing war in Syria and crossing into Turkey should be regarded as a refugee in international law. Assange's case is not so clear. Citizenship and Asylum Prior to 2017 Assange was an Australian citizen in the United Kingdom seeking Asylum in the embassy of Ecuador against possible extradition to Sweden because he feared extradition to the United States where he expected to be mistreated. As phoog commented, in 2017 Assange obtained Ecuadorian citizenship. International laws do not provide for people to be an international refugee in their own country -- or at least that is not usually seen as an international matter. If Assange was an Ecuadorian citizen in Ecuadorian territory, the rest of this answer would not apply. I believe when you obtain citizenship in your country of refuge, you are now a citizen, not an international refugee. Embassies and Territory As the New York Times reports As a matter of international law, an embassy is not ''territory'' of the sending state; it is territory of the receiving state that is accorded, through various treaties and customs, some immunities from host-country law. This is important because someone being expelled from the London embassy of Ecuador is not being expelled from Ecuador. Can the mere act of withdrawing asylum really be illegal? International law on asylum applies where someone outside their home country applies for asylum in the country where they are present. Some international laws do cover the situation where asylum or refugee-status is withdrawn or where someone is expelled from a country. Generally a country "shall not expel a refugee lawfully in their territory save on grounds of national security or public order". Note that, with respect to Ecuador, Assange was not in their territory. lawfully or otherwise. We can look at some International law, along with other reasons why they likely don't apply to Assange. 1928 Convention on Asylum The 1928 Convention on Asylum was signed by Ecuador. The UK is not a signatory for geographical reasons so it does not apply to the UK nor to UK territory. It says Signed in Havana, February 20, 1928, at the Sixth International Conference of
American States ... Article 1.-
It is not permissible for States to grant asylum in legations , warships, military
camps or military aircraft, to persons accused or condemned for common crimes,
or to deserters from the army or navy. Persons accused of or condemned for common crimes taking refuge in any of the
places mentioned in the preceding paragraph, shall be surrendered upon request
of the local government. Which suggests someone who is sheltering in a legation should be surrendered if they were accused of the common crime of failure to appear in court after being granted bail. It doesn't explicitly say anything about withdrawing asylum though. 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees I believe this applies to both UK territory and to Ecuadorian territory. Crime Someone who has committed a serious crime is excluded: F. The provisions of this Convention shall not apply to any person with
respect to whom there are serious reasons for considering that: ... (b) he has committed a serious non-political crime outside the country of
refuge prior to his admission to that country as a refugee; A crime punishable by a year in prison may be serious enough. New citizenship C. This Convention shall cease to apply to any person falling under the
terms of section A if: (1) He has voluntarily re-availed himself of the protection of the country
of his nationality; or
(2) Having lost his nationality, he has voluntarily re-acquired it; or
(3) He has acquired a new nationality, and enjoys the protection of the
country of his new nationality; or ... Assange acquired Ecuadorian citizenship in 2017. Expulsion Sections 32 and 33 cover expulsion: Article 32 expulsion 1. The Contracting States shall not expel a refugee lawfully in their territory save on grounds of national security or public order. Of course there is another reason this does not apply to Assange -- he was not in the territory of Ecuador. Being moved from one part of London to another part of London does not constitute expulsion from a country. Certainly not from Ecuador. 1954 Caracas Convention on Diplomatic Asylum The UK is not a signatory to this since it is not a member of the Organization of American States. So this does not apply to the UK or to actions on UK territory. The governments of the Member States of the Organization of American
States, desirous of concluding a Convention on Diplomatic Asylum, have agreed
to the following articles: Article I. Asylum granted in legations, war vessels, and military camps or
aircraft, to persons being sought for political reasons or for political offenses shall be respected by the territorial State in accordance with the provisions of this Convention. ... Article III. It is not lawful to grant asylum to persons who, at the time of
requesting it, are under indictment or on trial for common offenses or have been
convicted by competent regular courts and have not served the respective
sentence, nor to deserters from land, sea, and air forces, save when the acts giving rise to the request for asylum, whatever the case may be, are clearly of a political nature. At the time of his Asylum request, I believe Assange was indicted for extradition to Sweden on charges of rape. Assange promised the court he would show up in court at the specified date for this matter to be considered. By not showing up, Assange became guilty of the crime of failure to appear. Other useful references Asylum Law - Encyclopædia Britannica The right of asylum falls into three basic categories: territorial, extraterritorial, and neutral. Universal Decaration on Human Rights - UN Article 14 Everyone has the right to seek and enjoy in other countries asylum from
persecution This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising
from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles
of the United Nations. | {
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40,621 | In the USA, Kinder Surprise Eggs are banned by the government. What is the reason? | They have tiny pieces that are considered to be a choking hazard. There have been some high profile and tragic deaths among children due to choking on toys with small pieces. So the United States is especially stringent in regulating children's toys. The Kinder Surprise Eggs are considered especially dangerous as they are embedded in a food product. So a young child might think the toy is edible as well. Wikipedia . | {
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40,628 | This rather old article argues about EU countries actual influence within the EU: Germany is over-represented in the European Parliament, giving it a
correspondingly high potential to influence EU policies, while other
countries are at disadvantage, according to a recent report by a
Romanian think-tank. EURACTIV Romania reports. Qvorum, a non-partisan think-tank which aims to stimulate citizens’
and social partners’ involvement in the policymaking process,
discovered that a number of countries have won privileged
representation in the assembly’s governing bodies, while other nations
are clearly under-represented. Ten years have passed and I expect things to have changed. I am wondering if there is a more recent influence related article. However, I am mainly interested in the causes of this difference in "influence". I expect that some objective facts such as population or GDP to be an important factor in influencing the number of representatives within an EU structure. Question: How is number of representatives within EU structures computed? | They have tiny pieces that are considered to be a choking hazard. There have been some high profile and tragic deaths among children due to choking on toys with small pieces. So the United States is especially stringent in regulating children's toys. The Kinder Surprise Eggs are considered especially dangerous as they are embedded in a food product. So a young child might think the toy is edible as well. Wikipedia . | {
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40,672 | I struggled to name what I'm asking about here. I'm talking about the kind of voting that happens on many websites, including stackexchange: you can upvote something (a question), or you can downvote it. In other words, you can cast a positive vote or a negative vote on anything. Note: I don't mean simply where you give each candidate (or whatever) a positive score from (say) 1 to 5. Youtube used to use this system for its videos, but switched to what I'm calling negative voting : thumbs up or down. Has this ever been tried for real-world elections? You could for example vote: Gaullists: 1 Socialists: 0 (no vote) Communists: 0 (no vote) National Front: -1 (negative vote) To tally the results the returning officer would subtract a candidate's negative votes from their positive votes, and award the victory in this district to the candidate or party with the highest net score. So, Gaullist, 2000 up, 1500 down. Socialist, 1500 up, 500 down. Communist, 100 up, 75 down. National Front, 300 up, 400 down. The winner in this seat would be the Socialist candidate. Has this ever been used for anything other than internet purposes? I'm pretty sure it's never been used for government elections at any level, or major political parties, but it would be interesting to know. Has any prominent interest group or academic ever proposed using it? What is the thinking on whether it would be possible to design a negative voting system which satisfied all the requirements of a fair voting system described by Arrow? Edit : It's gratifying that this question has received so much attention. I'd like to point out I'm not proposing this system or even trying to predict what its effects would be on elections, politics or governments. This isn't the place to make proposals, or to knock the imagined proposals of others. | This is functionally identical to range voting Mathematically, it is irrelevant which range you pick of a given size, be that 1 to 3, -1 to 1, or -997 to -995. Let's run your sample election at two ranges (I'm assuming 3500 voters as it's the smallest number you need, but you can add more voters and it does not change the result): -1 to 1 Gaullists: 2000*1 + 0*0 + 1500*-1 = 500 Socialists: 1500*1 + 1500*0 + 500*-1 = 1000 Communists: 100*1 + 3325*0 + 75*-1 = 25 National Front: 300*1 + 2800*0 + 400*-1 = -100 1 to 3 Gaullists: 2000*3 + 0*2 + 1500*1 = 7500 Socialists: 1500*3 + 1500*2 + 500*1 = 8000 Communists: 100*3 + 3325*2 + 75*1 = 7025 National Front: 300*3 + 2800*2 + 400*1 = 6900 As you can see, both the results and margins are the same. While there may well be cognitive differences (voting against might seem more aggressive than simply giving the lowest score, people may be more likely give the middle score as it is inaction) there are no mathematical changes based on the range you choose. This means that this method has the same advantages and drawbacks as range voting. While it may appear to violate Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, that is because it is a cardinal voting method, while the "universality" criterion of Arrow's theorem effectively restricts that result to ordinal voting methods. It also fails both the Condorcet and Majority criteria. Range voting has never been implemented for a national election. | {
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40,702 | How do Israeli educational institutions go about teaching the Nakba ? According to Wikipedia it can be summarized as following: The Nakba ("catastrophe", or "cataclysm"'), also known as the
Palestinian Catastrophe, was the destruction of Palestinian society
and homeland in 1948, and the permanent displacement of a majority of
the Palestinian people. | It depends. Yes, some schools teach it, some don't, and in varying ways. First, some context. The word Nakba has a variety of uses. To some people, it refers specifically to the expulsion of mostly Arabs from Palestine in 1948 (seemingly the usage in the question, and what I'm following here). To others, it is synonymous with the founding of Israel itself. Some Palestinian activists consider it an ongoing state rather than a one-time event, whereas some Israeli activists have argued for consideration of the expulsion and voluntary flight of Jews from Arab countries to Israel as a form of Nakba. As such, the various quotes in the answer might define the word slightly differently. One major reason this distinction is relevant is because one might imagine that a school might accurately represent the expulsion and killing of Palestinians carried out during the founding of Israel, but not portrary it as something negative. Indeed, at least as of 2011, this was a common portrayal of the Nakba in schools, at least according to at least one academic: The killing of Palestinians is depicted as something that was
necessary for the survival of the nascent Jewish state, she claims.
"It's not that the massacres are denied, they are represented in
Israeli school books as something that in the long run was good for
the Jewish state. For example, Deir Yassin [a pre-1948 Palestinian
village close to Jerusalem] was a terrible slaughter by Israeli
soldiers. In school books they tell you that this massacre initiated
the massive flight of Arabs from Israel and enabled the establishment
of a Jewish state with a Jewish majority. So it was for the best.
Maybe it was unfortunate, but in the long run the consequences for us
were good." That said, at least one textbook apparently omitted the subject altogether: The history textbooks for high school approved by the Ministry of
Education do not present a uniform narrative. In fact, one textbook
omits the subject altogether while another treats it in a superficial
and biased way. History and Memory in the Israeli Educational System: The Portrayal of the Arab-Israeli Conflict in History Textbooks (1948-2000) However, according to Wikipedia , newer textbooks tend to be somewhat more balanced: From the late 1970s onward, many newspaper articles and scholarly
studies, as well as some 1948 war veterans' memoirs, began to present
the balanced/critical narrative. This has become more common since the
late 1980s, to the fact that since then the vast majority of newspaper
articles and studies, and a third of the veterans' memoirs, have
presented a more balanced narrative. Since the 1990s, also textbooks
used in the educational system, some without approval of the Ministry
of Education, began to present the balanced narrative. As one of the sources referenced noted, some later Israeli textbooks (closer to the 2000s) took a more critical view: The years 1998–1999, however, witnessed the publication of a new
generation of textbooks, written according to a new history
curriculum, which differ substantially from previous textbooks. The
textbook for junior high does not elaborate on the issue but it states
that “during the battles many of the country’s Arabs were expelled.
Some ran away before the arrival of the Jews to the village or to the
Arab neighborhood in the city, and some were expelled by the occupying
force.” It also adds that “more than 600,000 Arabs were uprooted from
their places in the country and were settled in refugee camps.”79 The
teacher’s guide for this textbook is more explicit, instructing the
teacher to emphasize that “in this war over the home and the land
there were acts of expulsion by the victors. When the [Jewish] forces
conquered the mixed cities and Arab villages, Arab Palestinians were
expelled on more than one occasion. This is why the Arabs call this
period al-nakba (the disaster or holocaust).” Another junior high
textbook explained that in certain areas, where good-neighborly
relations existed between Jews and Arabs, there was an “explicit order
not to expel Arabs,” but “the expulsion of the Arab population of
Lydda and Ramla was confirmed by the political leadership.” This
depiction stands in sharp contrast to the narrative of the first- and
second-generation textbooks. History and Memory in the Israeli Educational System: The Portrayal of the Arab-Israeli Conflict in History Textbooks (1948-2000) Relatively recently, some prominent Israeli educators have also advocated for schools to teach it: Former education minister Shai Piron said Monday he believes students
at Israeli schools should be exposed to varied and even opposing views
regarding the establishment of the State of Israel, including the
Palestinian “Nakba” narrative, according to which the founding of the
Jewish state in 1948 is considered a national tragedy. Speaking at a conference in Tel Aviv, Piron, a Yesh Atid party MK,
said that “political education” requires of teachers to expose their
students to a wide range of different narratives and opinions,
according to Army Radio. The statement by Piron broke a long-standing taboo in mainstream
Israel, which has traditionally downplayed the Nakba narrative. Recent
legislative efforts by nationalist lawmakers have attempted to pull
funding from schools that mark the Nakba. However, a countervailing current has promoted the opposite trend , downplaying the expulsion in textbooks: Israel's education ministry has ordered the removal of the word nakba
– Arabic for the "catastrophe" of the 1948 war – from a school
textbook for young Arab children, it has been announced. The decision – which will alter books aimed at eight- and
nine-year-old Arab pupils – will be seen as a blunt assertion by
Binyamin Netanyahu's Likud-led government of Israel's historical
narrative over the Palestinian one. So overall, I would say that: Israeili schools generally teach about the Palestinians who were killed or expelled during the 1948 conflict, but often present it as justified or positive. However, this is not universally true: some textbooks encourage recognizing the Nakba as negative; conversely, others gloss over it altogether . | {
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40,912 | Every single country in the world except for the United States and Israel voted for the United States to end the embargo on Cuba. My question is, why Israel? Many of the nations on this list are allies of the US, but why does only Israel support the embargo? What does Israel hope to get from this? | Many countries consider themselves allies of the US, but few take foreign policy stances just because the US says so. (The US also does not always vote the same way as its allies.) The vast majority of the world consider the US embargo to be an act of revenge driven by the interests of Cuban Americans, and others who had property confiscated at the time of the revolution, and consider it completely unjustified as a matter of foreign policy, so they vote against it. Israel as a country is absolutely indebted to the US. The US is virtually the only country not condemning at least some of its actions in Palestine, and continuing to supply it with extensive military and civil aid without conditions. Without continued support from the US Israel (or at least its present policies) would be in severe trouble. Israel therefore, when asked to take an action that doesn't really inconvenience it much, votes with the United States. It isn't in a position to disagree with the US on foreign policy. | {
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40,928 | UPDATE : I reformulated my question to stress that my focus is on the influence of customs checks, not on the violence in Northern Ireland in general. My impression is that the EU and most British supporters of a soft Brexit agree that any solution that involves customs border between Ireland and Northern Ireland is dangerous. Is it? According to my experience, over 95% of private traffic on the customs border between Sweden and Norway passes through without stopping. I assume that a similar arrangement could be used on the Irish border. Is there evidence that irregular spot-checking of a small minority of private traffic by customs officers would provoke violence? Notes: I'm sure that military posts on the border could easily become targets of violence, which is something that happened during The Troubles, but this is very different from hardly noticeable customs posts that let the great majority of private traffic pass through (which is the case on the border between Sweden and Norway). I know that Northern Ireland is more violent than the European average, as shown by the murder of Lyra McKee, but this does not prove that lightweight customs checks would lead to increased violence. | New here, but there's a misconception in your question. The worry over the border isn't about some trade disputes and companies turning ugly over tariffs; this is about the establishment of any border at all between 2 regions of Ireland. I definitely can't go into all the details but here's a reference to the Wikipedia on The Troubles which is central to this conversation. From there, some simple Google-fu will let you find more information on the violence that was happening a generation ago over this very border. The Good Friday Agreement is a good place to start as well, although there is debate over whether that prevents trade checkpoints or ALL checkpoints. See other questions on this very site. And as for evidence of violence well... This happened just a few days ago After Update The problem is we don't know if they will be hardly noticeable customs posts or full-blown posts from a few decades ago. If there is actually a firm deal in place then all of this was rampant speculation, but most (myself included) have been focusing on the worst-case scenarios since they had seemed more likely for awhile. I'll kick you over to this question for some other references. The top answer mentions that legally, they can't just have small irregular spot checks for this one particular border since by WTO rules, they would have to use the exact same methodology for all customs. Now they could argue its only used for land borders, but what about all the traffic crossing the channel then? Again speculation, but I'm assuming they will have to default to greater border security than anyone is comfortable with unless a better deal can be reached. And as for the violence I referenced, yes the first half of the article revolves around the one particular murder. However, it also states that police are treating [it] as a terrorist incident. Violence is happening, and probably will continue to happen, for some time. However, any static 'customs' site of any form will by its very nature be a target for radicals. While it may not 'provoke' violence in the traditional sense, it will aggravate those who are already seeking an excuse for violence. Fizz also has a great followup . | {
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40,937 | Nobel Prizes aren't without controversy , and I was wondering if a Nobel Peace laureate has ever been accused of war crimes. For the purpose of this question, I will accept accusations of war crimes by countries or other international bodies including accusations dating before the peace prize was awarded. When writing an answer, please mention at least the following points: Who made the accusation? Note that the question is limited to countries or other international bodies. To get an idea of what constitutes an international body (or organisation), please consider the Wikipedia page on international organisations . What is the accusation, which war crimes are alleged? Since there seems to be some confusion as to what war crimes are, please see this accessible article the BBC wrote on war crimes . Who is being accused? Note that the question is limited to Nobel Peace laureates (all of whom are listed here ). Should the accusation be against an organisation that won a Nobel Peace price, that will also be in scope, even though the term laureate is normally meant to refer to people only. | The State Counsellor of Myanmar , Aung San Suu Kyi, has a Nobel peace prize and there are calls for some of her military leaders to be prosecuted for war crimes . She herself might also be complicit. According to Channel 4 reporting (Channel 4's interview with Professor Yanghee Lee, who is the UN Special Envoy, is available via that link): The United Nations Special Envoy on Human Rights in Myanmar, also known as Burma, has claimed that Aung San Suu Kyi could be complicit in the systematic persecution of the Rohingya people, in what bears all the hallmarks of genocide. Also: Henry Kissinger isn't an angel as already pointed out in a separate answer. (Aside: Nobel himself was considered a merchant of death , according to his pre-released obituary, when journalists mistook his brother's death for his own. This incidentally led him to create the Nobel Prize.) | {
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40,991 | According to this answer on Travel.SE, the Chinese National Bureau of Surveying and Mapping requires that published maps of China must include a certain deviation between the map and the real world. In the comments, the answerer says that although the statute doesn't provide a reason, it is commonly believed to be for national security. Have any Chinese officials or official documents provided a reason why maps must include this deviation? | Just to clarify, this isn't at all like the GPS Selective Availability case where bits were unavailable unless you knew the key. The Chinese don't have their own GPS satellites (duh) setting these coordinates. What this GCJ-02 business is is a non-disclosed, but not-so-hard-to-reverse engineer conversion algorithm from other coordinates. The big picture looks like this: That's the reverse-engineered conversion from the "bog standard" WGS-84, displayed as a vector field. As the blog from which I too that image says, the offsets are basically constant locally, but they vary across China. Google bought the China map data from an officially approved Chinese source company. Other maps providers (that didn't/don't operate locally in China) aren't skittish to transform/align the Chinese maps to WGS84. On Google something funny happens even when you’re viewing in the US: the Chinese border crossing plaza (on the north side) doesn’t line up with the Macau crossing (on the south side). This is due to a law where companies are forbidden to map China accurately, OpenStreetMap’s ability to avoid that law, and the independence of Macau and also Hong Kong (which has the same discrepancy). As for the reason, according to one Chinese developer in a post from April 2015: Before the WGS-84 <--> GCJ-02 transform algorithm leaked and made available everywhere on the Internet (eg. this repo), some people tried to get a lot of samples of WGS-GCJ point pairs and sold the dataset to people in need. But this kind of dataset is no longer useful because we now have the algorithm itself. Are all these in the Chinese law?
No. They are mostly in some vague administrative orders or industry regulations made by the government. There is a Code of Geological Survey ( http://www.gov.cn/ziliao/flfg/2005-08/05/content_20947.htm , Chinese), though. But it only says data obtained through survey is classified by default (Article 29) and companies without a permission cannot do survey (Chapter 5). Nothing about GCJ-02 is made officially public. Why does the Chinese government do this?
National security, they say. But people developing LBS apps tends to believe that it is because of money. The government charges Chinese companies for the "shift correction" feature. We need to make a reservation with the government and take the source code of our app to the bureau to get the feature compiled with our code. Since then Xinhua reported new regulations on maps being passed at the end of 2015, and taking effect in 2016. Amazingly these are available in English , but they say nothing about using some specific coordinates; so the ambiguity noted in that Chinese dev comment basically continues. The new regulations do say that maps must be submitted for government review, except in some very limited circumstances. For on-line maps there's this verbiage in the new regs (which doesn't clarify much): Article 33. To provide the public with services such as geospatial positioning, geoinformation uploading and labeling, and map database development, a provider of Internet map services shall obtain the necessary qualification certificate for surveying and mapping in accordance with law. To engage in Internet map publishing, a provider of Internet map services shall be subject to review by and approval of the competent publication administration department of the State Council in accordance with law. Article 34. A provider of Internet map services shall place its map data servers within the territory of the People’s Republic of China, and shall establish the management system and introduce safeguard measures for the security of Internet map data. The competent administration departments for surveying, mapping and geoinformation of the people’s governments at or above the county level shall, jointly with the relevant departments, strengthen supervision and administration of the security of Internet map data. [...] Article 38 A provider of Internet map services shall use maps that have been reviewed and approved in accordance with law, and strictly verify newly added content of the Internet maps, and it shall, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the State, file such content with the competent administration department of the State Council for surveying, mapping and geoinformation or the competent administration department for surveying, mapping and geoinformation of the province, autonomous region, or municipality directly under the Central Government. Basically it seems to be a system of: give us your maps and will give them back to you as we think they should be published... which at some point probably involves the coordinate system, but it's not mentioned explicitly in these regs. There are some up to 100,000 yuan fines for not following these regulations. Also according to a Chinese page , GCJ-02 (although developed by the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping) is not the same as the official Chinese CGCS2000 system, for which a lot public info is available. So it's hard to answer a "why" for something that's hard to even find an official record that it needs to happen... Unless the Chinese decide to change that (leaked code) and ban all prior maps, this doesn't compare to the SAASM , which supposedly changed keys (on the satellites and receivers) once in a while. SAASM even allows rekeying over insecure channels, while the older PPS-SM required a secure channel (e.g. taking the GPS device to an authorized/secure location for rekeying.) I suppose I should mention that the Chinese are building their own GPS alternative, the BDS (BeiDou Navigation Satellite System) , which apparently became operational in December last year, but that's a different story. And BDS broadcasts its location info in the aforementioned CGC[S]2000. Finally, Baidu "Total View" has a Street View equivalent with altered photos ... like [badly] disappeared buildings etc. You'd probably be hard pressed to find an official explanation for this either. That article contains some speculation about the reasons, but that's about it. | {
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41,022 | It seems the number of candidates for the 2020 US Democratic Party presidential nomination has now reached 21 "major" candidates, plus 200 (!!) additional filing candidates (though two of the "major" ones have not filed yet; the source is Wikipedia as of 2019-04-26). Obviously, there is no incumbent, nor a single prominent leader recognized by party supporters and apparatus - so it stands to reason there would be several candidates. It is also the case that a presidential nomination bid conceivably helps a politician even if s/he is not elected, through increased exposure to the public. But - 220 people? And even if we only count the high-profile/"major" candidates - 20 of them? This seems a bit peculiar to an outsider. What are the reasons for this glut of candidates? | The number of Declared Republican Candidates in 2016 was 17 according to Ballotpedia . Donald Trump and Jeb Bush Ben Carson Chris Christie Ted Cruz Carly Fiorina Jim Gilmore Lindsey Graham Mike Huckabee Bobby Jindal John Kasich George Pataki Rand Paul Rick Perry Marco Rubio Rick Santorum Scott Walker Also listed are another 9 Candidates who were at one point expected or touted as possible candidates, but who declined to run. Those would be major candidates. Along side that you can search the FEC filings themselves. Republican Presidential 2016 : 285 Candidates Democratic Presidential 2016 : 225 Candidates In 2012 there there 118 Republican Candidates and 51 Democratic filings with a sitting president running for re-election. In 2020 the FEC currently show 229 Democrats and 87 Republicans. So the 229 people running for the democratic nomination is not at all unusual (though there's still time for this to go higher), the number of high profile candidates is a little high, but not outrageously so. As a fun fact there are already 6 filed candidates for the 2024 Presidential Elections. | {
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41,027 | I'm over in the UK with quite an interest in US politics, and intrigued at Republican statements about tech and social media being biased against them. My curiosity is piqued because on the other hand, every time there's any discussion about regulating industries, the response of the same people seems to be almost always that free markets should be left to self regulate and not imposed on - essentially "it's usually wrong to interfere and let the pain fall where it will - the market will address it if it gets too out of hand", or something like that. Granted that's not an absolute - there are strong laws against many things - but why is it seen as okay that markets should self regulate, and then be upset when they don't self regulate as the speaker would wish? Surely the free market response enshrined in the Republican/Conservative perspective is squarely based on the principle that ideas compete, social medias compete, and the solution is to be better and more successful than those one objects to, not bemoan their successful stakes achieved by innovation and effort in a lawful and competitive manner in the open market? And if some ideas/products get less airtime, popular usage/support, or are less effective at penetrating, or the "other side" picked them up quicker and ran with them better, then that's their lookout (essentially "no social support for the losers, and no tax funds to prop them up either"). From here it feels like it may be a bit inconsistent - ("Everyone should follow these rules unless I and mine don't like them, in which case they should be different"). I'd be interested to hear especially Conservative perspectives on it. (Please forgive any ignorance about the subtleties of the various Conservative positions, if any!) | I think the misunderstanding comes from how conservatives complain about bias in media and tech. Conservatives often don't call for government action, they just want to shed light on the injustices. For example : “Some of us tell the truth about our government, they call us treasonous and say we’re speaking out of line and they’d like to punish us, and I think that’s part of what’s happening with social media,” [Ron] Paul told RT, adding that he hopes anti-government or anti-war voices can eliminate their “dependency” on the current social media platforms. “I’m just hoping that technology can stay ahead of it all and that we
can have real alternatives to the dependency on Twitter and other
companies that have been working hand in glove with the government,”
Paul added. Ron Paul doesn't call for the government to solve the problem. He says the companies are acting like a corrupt government and calls for people to use alternatives. Republicans want to bring corporate bias and misbehavior to light so people will be outraged and avoid the offending businesses. Then the companies will have to choose between fixing their problem or losing money. That's the free-market solution to companies behaving badly. The other free-market friendly intervention would be to prosecute fraud. One example comes from the Libertarian Party of Texas platform "The force of government must be used only in response to an attack, fraud , or other initiation of force against an individual, group or government by another individual, group or government." If Google says they're a neutral platform, but actually have algorithms designed to make sure no one can find conservative content, that's fraud. Most free-enterprise folks still think there's a strong role for government in forcing the perpetrator of fraud to pay damages or serve prison time. In cases where Republicans call for government regulation of speech to protect them from the big bad liberal media, this might be a function of not all conservatives sharing the same free-market/libertarian ideas about what the government should and shouldn't do. Many conservatives in the "religious right" would love to see free speech regulated better. One example comes from them wanting to protect their children from pornography . They'd be happy to restrict public access to certain speech and content, despite it reducing freedom, because they think too much of certain kinds of freedom is destructive to a moral society. This idea of conservatism as preserving cultural norms can be radically different from the libertarian, maximum-freedom philosophy. | {
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41,075 | I am a little baffled by the prominence of fishing in the debates over the UK's decision to leave the EU. The fact that the UK may regain control over fishing policy has had high visibility. However, the benefits of this have been poorly communicated. The primary association is being able to set fishing quotas. But it is unclear why this is a good thing. Fishing stocks have been declining over the last decades. Fish do not stay within the geographical boundaries of nation states. Fishing is a textbook case of the tragedy of the commons. If each country's fishing industry fishes as much as is rational, all will suffer, as stocks dwindle. Up until this point, there is no controversy. Some form of fishing quotas, agreed on a supranational basis, seems like a logical way round this predicament. The quotas the UK sticks to currently, within the EU framework, do not appear to be sufficiently stringent. UK fishing stocks are not being managed as sustainably as they could be. Even now, they face a long term existential threat of over-fishing. From the above, it seems like EU-level management of stocks is a necessary, albeit insufficient, aspect of responsible fishing. So what is the strongest case to be made in favour of the view that the UK setting fishing policy independently is a good thing? From my (limited) understanding of the stance of those who favour this, the UK ought to set its own policy so that we can raise quotas for our fishing fleets. This will be a short term commercial benefit but, as shown by the above, does not make a lot of sense long term. Is there a more sympathetic basis for wanting more control at a UK level? | The most charitable answer would be: none whatsoever. As things stand 80% of UK fish is sold in the EU -- this is about overall catch rather than UK water catch insofar as I'm aware, but it doesn't matter much either way. The UK basically eats imported fish (cod, salmon, haddock, prawn, tuna), and exports its own catches (langoustine, crab, mackerel). In 2010 , imports were £1.33Bn and exports were £2.23Bn. What more, UK fishermen sell the shipping rights of their own local waters. There's just no way whatsoever to twist this into something positive. If they lose access to EU fishing waters, they basically lose their (presumably higher value) export catches and instead need to focus on their (hopefully high enough value) local water catches, and try to sell that to whoever those who they sold their rights to is currently selling their local caches to now. However one wants to spin this it doesn't look like a positive development. | {
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41,162 | This question is based on the assumption that both Northern Ireland and Scotland want to stay in the European Union, where Northern Ireland unifies with Ireland, and/or Scotland gets its independence to rejoin the EU. Is there be a legal ground for stripping the United Kingdom of its UN Security Council Veto? | Article 23 of the charter: "The Security Council shall consist of fifteen Members of the United Nations. The Republic of China, France, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America shall be permanent members of the Security Council." So long as the UK continues to exist, it is a permanent member with a veto. Notice that Russia is not in that list, but it retains the permanent seat allocated to the USSR because it is deemed to be a successor state . So long as the UK breaks up in a manner that results in the Westminster part being deemed the successor state, it will retain its seat. It is difficult to imagine a disintegration in which this isn't the case, unless it's a wholesale Yugoslavia-style military collapse. | {
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41,207 | I read in a 2015 PIIE brief titled "Russia’s Economy under
Putin: From Crony Capitalism to State Capitalism" that : After nationalizing Yukos, the Russian government started
taking control of privatized companies in “strategic” sectors
such as oil, aviation, construction, power generation equipment, machinery, and finance. For example, in June 2006 the
government took 60 percent control of VSMPO-AVISMA,
a company that produces two-thirds of the world’s titanium.
In 2007, United Aircraft Corporation, a company that is 51
percent government controlled, combined all Russian companies producing aircraft. In 2011, majority state-owned Sberbank
bought Troika Dialog, the fastest-growing private investment
bank operating in Russia. By mid-2015, about 55 percent of the Russian economy
was in state hands, with 20 million workers directly employed
by the government, equal to 28 percent of the workforce (Aven
2015). This is the highest share in 20 years, after the two privatization waves in the early and mid-1990s. In comparison, 22
percent of the workforce was employed by the government in
1996. After last year’s EU and US sanctions on some sectors
of the Russian economy, this share is increasing, as companies
and sectors that previously depended on private financing from
abroad now resort to financing from state-owned banks, and in
case of continued difficulties, their ownership is shifted to the
government’s hands. The longer the economic sanctions last,
the more private businesses will be squeezed out and the higher
the share of the Russian economy will be converted into state
ownership. So, why isn't Russia more often described as socialist these days? Is it because of a lack of an overt socialist ideology (of Putin) that "state capitalism" seems a more preferred term for what's happening in Russia? | Because nationalization is not necessarily socialist Nationalization is the government taking ownership of private property. Socialism is "social ownership" of the means of production. Depending on what definitions of "social ownership" you accept, that may not involve the government at all. "Social ownership" usually also involves the distribution of the profits of the enterprises that become socially owned to go to everyone in society, or all of the workers of those enterprises, depending on what flavor of socialism is being discussed. The same is not true for nationalization; nationalization merely means the government owns it. Common forms of socialism may use nationalization as a tool, but it does not make all nationalizations socialist. In the comments, the question was asked as to what the differences are "in practice" as opposed to "in theory" between Putin's use of nationalization and Chavez's use of nationalization, that make Chavez's use of it labeled as "socialist" but not Putin's. The answer is, the excuse used for engaging in nationalization is different. In Chavez's case, the stated reason for nationalizing various private companies was to redistribute the profits of those companies to the people of Venezuela, e.g. nationalization is merely a means for achieving a socialist goal. In Putin's case, the nationalizations all have different reasons; the re-nationalization of the space launch industry in 2013 was justified with the excuse that the private companies had several failed rocket launches and that direct government oversight was necessary in order to ensure launches were successful. There's nothing particularly socialist about successfully launching rockets into space, and it's not automatically socialist for the government to take over a function that the private sector has allegedly failed to address well (e.g. "market failure"). You might say that this still doesn't describe a difference "in practice" as opposed to "in theory". That's because the practice part is the nationalizing, and the theory part is the reason why you do it (e.g. "socialism" or "national security" or "market failure" or whatever). Your mileage may vary on whether the reason actually matters in practice; I myself don't think it really does because it's seizing private property either way. | {
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41,208 | Today's Guardian article, " Local elections: Tories tipped for heavy losses ," contains the following statement: ...the Conservatives could lose about 500 seats to the Lib Dems and 300
to Labour. The latter traditionally makes fewer gains in the shires ,
where many of the elections are being held. I've never before heard the expression "the shires". What does this refer to? Is it strictly a geographic reference or does it have a more subtle political or demographic meaning? This was referring to local council elections affecting English and Northern Irish councils. | This is actually a surprisingly complicated question to answer, or at least to give specifics for. Briefly, a "shire" is a unit of land division, very similar to "county", the first being Anglo-Saxon, the second Norman. As such, many modern British ceremonial/historic counties have the form city name + shire , for example Nottinghamshire. In 1888 local government in England and Wales was restructured to create administrative counties , many of which retained the relevant ceremonial name. Further reform eventually culminated in division into metropolitan (urban) and non-metropolitan(rural) counties/districts with the rural ones sometimes named after ceremonial counties and the urban ones after towns or cities (this has since been further modified. As such "shires" here is being used as a short hand for non-metropolitan districts. More specifically, this will be more accurate for rural counties in the south and middle of England, where the Labour Party finds less support, although confusingly, many of these don't actually have names ending in '-shire'. Thus the meaning is party geographic, but mostly demographic. | {
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41,302 | For almost one year now, I have closely observed developments on stock markets. I mainly focused on major indices such as the Dow Jones and DAX (I am from Germany). Both indices suffered losses during the hot phases of the "trade war" between the US and China, but recovered when there were signs of relaxation. Imagine the following scenario for a president of the United States (POTUS): Start a trade war. Buy when stock prices are low. Proclaim agreement (or any sign of relaxation) Take the profits after markets react positively Is there any mechanism that would prevent such a scenario? Undoubtably, the POTUS' actions can have a large impact on stock markets. I would consider any investments made by a POTUS insider trades . Is the POTUS even allowed to act on the stock markets? | Is there potential for the President of the United States to commit insider trading? Certainly. The President has access to all kinds of material information that is non-public, either because it’s classified, confidential, or not yet cleared for public consumption. Some examples of material information that the President could have access to before the general public: Knowledge of the progress of trade talks (Have we made a breakthrough? Is the other side insisting on something that we’re never going to accept? Is this negotiation a priority for the administration, or will we drop it if we don’t get a great deal?) More critically, what is actually in these deals, before they’ve been publicly released? What concessions were extracted? What did we agree to? These details can have a huge effect on many industries. The decisions of departments under the control of the Executive Branch like the EPA, FDA, or FAA The President’s own decisions, for example, if the President knows they will institute tarrifs. (Though there is a lot of overlap with manipulation here) Is there any mechanism to prevent this? No, aside from public outrage and the democratic process. Until the current administration, every president in the modern era has voluntarily put their assets into a blind trust to prevent corruption (including insider trading) or the appearance of corruption. In a blind trust, one’s assets are being actively managed, but the owner is not aware of how they are invested and cannot control or influence their management. In this situation, insider trading is impossible since the President cannot actively manage their investments. This policy is not a law or rule, though, it was just a tradition; and there’s nothing stopping a president from refusing to do so (as President Trump has), in which case insider trading would be easy to carry out. NOTE: I am not aware of any evidence that Trump has engaged in insider trading or stock market manipulation, but it would be trivially easy for him to do so. So, what mechanisms can prevent this? It’s unlikely that the SEC could bring charges, even if they wanted to, as the President is likely protected by executive privilege. Pretty much the only options would be Impeachment or being voted out of office by a public outraged by a President who used their office to enrich themselves. As @Accumulation pointed out, the STOCK Act makes insider trading by politicians and government employees illegal, but without an enforcement mechanism that applies to the President, the only remedy remains Impeachment or getting voted out. | {
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41,348 | The UK is still part of the EU. So I am wondering, what is the legal basis of the decision to remove the words 'European Union' from the cover of UK passports issued since March 29th 2019 (the original date set for the UK leaving the EU)? | Both the Burgundy color and the words 'European Union' are recommended as part of passports issued by member states, but neither are compulsory. As such, the legal basis of the UK's decision is: there's no legal basis for this to be illegal. | {
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