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41,414 | When the United State Congress and the President are involved in a legal fight together, the resulting legal case originates in a US District Court for DC, as was the case for United States v. Nixon . The same seems to be occurring today, with President Trumps's lawsuit against Rep. Elijah Cummings (that lawsuit is technically leveled at a member of Congress rather than Congress itself, but would likely still apply since the suit specifies Cummings is acting in his official capacity as Chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee). Why are these lawsuits between the highest level of each branch of government not instantly heard by the Supreme Court, instead being relegated to lower courts to work up the ladder as if it were a typical court case? | U.S. Constitution, Article III, Section 2, The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, [...] In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make. Because the demand by Chairperson Cummings, is based on the Laws of the United States , the Supreme Court only has appellate Jurisdiction . To change that would require a Constitutional Amendment. In Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803) , Primary Holding Congress does not have the power to pass laws that override the Constitution, such as by expanding the scope of the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction. For those who have read the details of the complaint ; in THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION , concerning the Investigatory Power of Congress, pages 95-96: One limitation on the power of inquiry which has been much discussed in the cases concerns the contention that congressional investigations often have no legislative purpose but rather are aimed at achieving results through "exposure" of disapproved persons and activities: "We have no doubt," wrote Chief Justice Warren, "that there is no congressional power to expose for the sake of exposure." Although some Justices, always in dissent, have attempted to assert limitations in practice based upon this concept, the majority of Justices has adhered to the traditional precept that courts will not inquire into legislators' motives but will look only to the question of power. "So long as Congress acts in pursuance of its constitutional power, the Judiciary lacks authority to intervene on the basis of the motives which spurred the exercise of that power." As requested in a comment, I have added some references to cases (or controversies) involving original jurisdiction. The judicial power extends to controversies between two or more states and the Supreme Court was given original jurisdiction in which a State shall be Party . Some of those cases are: Rhode Island v. Massachusetts, 37 U.S. 657 (1838) , the court was asked to ascertain and establish the northern boundary between the states [...]. Nebraska v. Iowa, 143 U.S. 359 (1892) , the Court was asked to fix the boundary due to changes in the path of the Missouri River. New Jersey v. New York, 283 U.S. 336 (1931) , The State of New Jersey sued the State of New York and the City of New York to enjoin them from diverting water from nonnavigable tributaries of the Delaware for the purpose of increasing the water supply of the City. Pennsylvania intervened to protect its interest in the river. And, New Jersey v. New York, 523 U.S. 767 (1998) ownership of Ellis Island, as mentioned in the comments. | {
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41,431 | With a defense budget now totaling ~686-billion dollars a year – which is about the size of the next 8 largest defense budgets combined ( figure ) – why does the U.S military see the need to use mercenaries? Why, in spite of having the largest military budget in the world, is it still unable to accomplish things far smaller mercenaries assumingly can? Is it a matter of damage control for when things go "awry" during combat? Examples include but are not limited to the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen. Where mercenary groups such as Blackwater and others are not only involved in combat and trailing operations, but where private contractors are also heavily actively involved in logistics and support. | The US public opinion is highly sensitive to casualties among US troops. They are much less concerned about casualties to contractors, especially if they are not US citizens. At times the US government has more money than available troops. At times deploying contractors is easier under domestic US law. Legal oversight is mostly designed with the official armed forces in mind. | {
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41,523 | According to Telegraph Germany has just issued a law that allows electrical scooters on the roads: Germany has become the latest country to approve the use of electric
scooters on its roads as their popularity spreads throughout Europe. On Friday, the upper house of parliament voted to allow anyone over
the age of 14 to use an e-scooter as long as they stick to a speed
limit of 12.4mph (20km/h). When visiting Germany, it felt really strange to have a great infrastructure for slower 2-wheels vehicles, but no e-scooters at all, as this seems a great alternative for a car and it is also accessible to those who for various reasons cannot ride a bike. Question: Why did it take so long for Germany to allow electric scooters / e-rollers on the roads? | The debate over e-mobility comes in the context of an ongoing debate in Germany how public spaces for transportation are to be divided between the different modes of transportation. In the last century, many German cities were designed to optimize the use of private cars. Many urban populations are rising (and average cars are getting larger ...), and both traffic congestion and parking spaces are a real problem. The increase in the internet economy adds many more delivery vans, which are often parking in a questionable manner. At the same time, bicycles and public transport are demanding their "fair" share of the road (bus lanes, bicycle lanes, bicycle racks ). Depending on how one defines "fair," that could lead to a reduction in space for cars. Many motorists are upset about that. In prospect theory , motorists are moving into the domain of loss, which often leads to aggression. The initial proposal of the Department of Transportation would have put scooters up to 12 kph onto the pedestrian sidewalk and scooters up to 20 kph onto the bicycle lanes. The secretary of transportation, Scheuer , is seen as strongly in favor of the car industry and private transportation in cars. The current proposal keeps them off the sidewalks, but bicyclist's organizations complain about the increasing use of bicycle lanes without a matching increase in their size. | {
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41,569 | As part of a now-rejected deal with the Labour party, Theresa May seemed to open the door to a second Brexit referendum . Theresa May made her final big gamble as prime minister on Tuesday, offering Labour a “new deal” that included the possibility of a second EU referendum in what she claimed was “the last chance” to deliver Brexit. ... The most ambitious part of her offer involved plans to give MPs a vote on whether to hold a second Brexit referendum to approve a final deal. She said she would respect the result. Why did she do that? What was her gain in proposing such a gamble, and how does it fulfill her will to deliver Brexit? | (I'm turning my comment on Jontia's answer into an answer in itself, not because I think Jontia's answer is wrong, but because I think it doesn't fully explain what's going on.) Theresa May is dangling the offer of a Parliamentary vote on a second referendum (or 'confirmatory referendum' as some liken it) if Parliament votes through her Withdrawal Agreement Bill when it comes before them. Many members of Parliament wanted a second referendum to be part of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, but instead it's being offered as a conditional second vote. Why? Because Theresa May knows it will not pass as a vote in its own right. Each time such a consideration has been voted on in Parliament in the past few months, it has been defeated - firstly a number of times as an amendment (14th March, amendment (h) defeated 334-85 for example), and then twice during the "meaningful votes" debacle: 27 March 2019, proposition by Margaret Beckett, "Referendum on the Withdrawal Agreement" was defeated 295-268 1 April 2019, proposition by Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson, "hold a Confirmatory Public Vote" was defeated 292-280 As Jontia says, it's smoke and mirrors - she is hoping that the prospect of a vote on a second referendum is enough to gain votes to pass the Withdrawal Agreement Bill whilst knowing she is taking a very small gamble on the second referendum vote. | {
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41,700 | Background ( from Wikipedia ): In June 2016, in the aftermath of the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, [Gina] Miller privately engaged the City of London law firm Mishcon de Reya to challenge the authority of the British Government to invoke Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union using prerogative powers, arguing that only Parliament can take away rights that Parliament has granted. On 3 November 2016, the High Court of Justice ruled that Parliament had to legislate before the Government could invoke Article 50. If Miller hadn't done this, would May's deal (or something else) have rolled through, and the whole sorry mess be over by now? | Gina Miller's case has not changed the current situation at all, as the changes required to British law to enact Brexit require acts of Parliament, and always did. Gina Miller's case was solely about whether the government could enact Article 50 without an act of Parliament though executive powers, not about the subsequent process. | {
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41,715 | US threatens to arrest ICC judges over war crimes probe (Deutsche Welle) Is there any such law that would allow the U.S. impinge on another nation's sovereignty in order to prevent ICC judges from carrying their duties? Is there any international law that would permit the U.S. to do so, how would the U.S. justify such actions? The issue I see is that U.S. laws cannot dictate what's done outside its jurisdiction and the ICC judges being outside of the U.S. should be safe from U.S. authorities. | The ICC has approximately no legal status under the US Constitution. In particular: It is not an Article III (federal) court because it was not established by Congress. It is not treated as a foreign court under principles of comity , because it is not part of the legal apparatus of any sovereign state recognized by the United States. The United States has not ratified the ICC treaties, so the ICC has no sui generis legal status arising from such treaties. As a result, its judges do not benefit from any sort of judicial immunity . Under American law, the ICC judges are "just" private citizens holding, for all intents and purposes, a "fake trial" with no legal validity. So, to determine whether the Americans can prosecute the ICC, we need only determine whether they could prosecute private citizens engaged in the same acts. If the ICC merely claims that a war crime has been committed, then that is almost certainly protected speech under the First Amendment. Under very specific fact patterns, it might be defamation, but this would require the ICC judges to lie about the facts of the case, or for them to intentionally disregard evidence. I assume they have no intention of doing that. The United States might also try to raise various statutes relating to national defense and so forth, but it's hard to see how the speech of private citizens of non-US countries could plausibly be reached by such a law. If the ICC attempts to arrest or extradite American citizens, however, then we're getting into more dangerous territory. The US could consider that an act of false arrest, and has a wide array of legal options, up to and including the Global Magnitsky Act . This law allows the US to freeze the assets of foreigners who commit human rights violations outside the United States, and the US could plausibly determine that false arrest and imprisonment falls under that category. Finally, for visas, the American immigration system is notoriously opaque and unfair. It is very easy for the American government to deny visas or prevent the entry of anyone it likes, regardless of the surrounding circumstances. Since entering the US is a privilege, not a right, it is difficult to raise Constitutional arguments in this context. | {
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41,744 | After reading this article , I got to wondering why the US has 2 viable political parties while the UK appears to have many, even though both use first-past-the-post voting. Across England and Wales, voters turned away in anger from May's Conservatives and the opposition Labour Party of Jeremy Corbyn, which had sought a softer version of Brexit.
The Brexit Party came first while explicitly pro-EU parties - the Liberal Democrats, Greens and Change UK - were, combined, a few percentage points behind. That paragraph alone lists six parties. What are the differences between the UK and US that allow for a larger number of parties in the UK? Are all of these UK parties independent of one another? Do they form coalitions? | Duverger's law says that for a given district in a plurality (first-past-the-post) system, the number of parties will tend towards two. In the United States, there is an office with a national district, the presidency. As a result, the total number of parties tends toward two. If a third party becomes large enough, it takes over one of the other parties. This last happened in the 1850s when the Republican party replaced the Whig party over abolition/slavery. There have been two serious attempts at the formation of a significant third party, the Bull Moose party of the 1910s and the United We Stand party of the 1990s. Neither was able to get a president elected and both faded away. The way that House and Senate districts overlap may help too. In the United Kingdom, there is no national office and no overlapping legislative offices (members of the House of Lords are not elected). This makes it easier for a third party to dominate one or more districts. For example, the Scottish National Party dominates districts in Scotland. And Northern Ireland has two regional parties. In France, there is a national office, but the national office is not elected by a FPTP system. They have a runoff election . So there isn't the same grouping requirement in the first election. A voter can vote for a preferred candidate then and still vote between the top two candidates in the runoff. This doesn't have the same forcing to two effect as a plurality system. Germany's system also provides extra support for third parties with its compensatory seats for parties that are underrepresented from the geographic districts. This makes it act more like a proportional system under Duverger's law. | {
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41,761 | In the United States, conservatives tend to be against climate change regulations more frequently than the rest of the population. Conservatives in the U.S. tend to hold traditional and Christian values. However, none of these values are directly incompatible with climate change reform, nor with the idea of climate change itself. Moreover, I do not know of any Christian theologies or denominations that are incompatible with it. So, what caused this tendency to emerge in U.S. politics? | Big business Politics (of either mainstream party) in the USA is dependent on money from big business. Many of those big businesses prioritise short term profit over long term environmental preservation, or have bonus systems that promote short term (<5 years) gains over long term (>100 years) gains. Climate change action may reduce short term profits, in particular for businesses heavily invested in fossil fuels. Companies working in the oil and gas industry donate more to Republicans than to Democrats (see Western Refining and ExxonMobil in particular), and presently, the Republican Party is the primary home of conservatives in the USA. On the other hand, there is also a lot of money to be made in climate change action, and many high tech companies donate a lot more to the Democrats than to the Republicans, so one can equally argue that Democrat politicians support climate change action not out of idealism but due to corporate donations (I'm not saying this argument is right or wrong, but it can be made). Populism Climate change action may be (correctly or not) perceived to affect the short term lifestyle of consumers. Propaganda by big business may stress those aspects of climate change action that have such an impact. Some voters may dislike the idea of a impact on their short term lifestyle, and thus be happy to listen. Of course, for some people, such as employees in the fossil fuel industry (coal miners), the short term impact on their life may be major, in particular if they do not successfully transition into new industries (with or without government help). "Small government" conservatism Many proposals for the mitigation of climate change require government action including taxation, and many conservatives are inherently skeptical of any government intervention in the economy in general and of taxation in particular. A tax on CO₂ emissions is a government intervention and a taxation, and even many conservatives who support climate change action in principle may oppose such a taxation because they want to reduce taxation in general, preferring "market based" solutions such as CO₂ trading schemes (although the latter is still a government intervention; I don't know what such a market based solution would look like without any government-organised pricing of externalities in some way)¹. Denial In the USA (and, perhaps to a lesser degree, in Europe), there still exist mainstream politicians who either deny the science of anthropogenic climate change altogether, or state that the impacts are exaggerated. For the groups mentioned above (at least the first two bullet points), it may be convenient to deny that the problem exists, so that they don't need to answer why they won't support action to resolve the problem. See Fizz' answer for evidence on the partisan divide in accepting scientific findings on climate change. There may be a handful of people who state that God created the Earth and therefore humans cannot change the climate, but that view is probably not held by a large number of people (see also Rogers answer ). Even among those who accept anthropogenic climate change, some may argue that action is useless because other/bigger countries aren't taking action, but I don't know if this view is more prevalent among conservatives than among progressives. ¹ I suppose that a libertarian-legalistic answer would be that the inhabitants of Bangladesh in 200 years can simply sue all the world's industry emitting CO₂ between 1850 and 2050 for drowning them, or something like that. You may be able to tell I don't really buy this approach to environmental pollution including climate change. If one takes the "don't cause harm to others" principle to the extreme, that would imply radical environmentalism, as any air pollution or greenhouse gas emissions contributes to harming others at present and in the future. | {
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41,813 | I read a news article today that claims that a Congressional bill to provide disaster relief to US communities has been derailed, because a single member of the House of Representatives objected to it. How is it possible for a single member of congress to effectively 'veto' an entire bill like this? I thought most (if not all) votes in Congress are decided by majority vote. Was this vote different for some reason, which meant it had to be unanimous? (if so, why?) | The US house (and other systems ) allows for expedited voting via " unanimous consent " - without a proper vote where each member's position is noted, the Speaker simply asks for a voice vote and motions to pass with unanimous consent (which does not mean everyone votes "yes" but rather that anyone who would vote "no" effectively acknowledges that there are sufficient "yes" votes to pass, so they aren't going to waste their time). However, any member can object to a measure passing this way, which is what happened in this case, and demand a full vote. This objection then delays the measure because it must be scheduled for a full vote. Most reporting I have seen on the issue correctly describes this as a "delay" rather than a "veto" and indeed "delay" is a more appropriate description. | {
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41,828 | In the 2018 midterms, Democrats gained control of Colorado’s Senate and elected a Democratic governor (the previous three governors were Democrats, too). However, nearby states like Utah and Wyoming very consistently vote Republican. Why is Colorado so different than those other nearby states with a lot of rural areas? | One of the best predictors of voting patterns in the US is population density. You can see population density by state here . Although this isn't a perfect reflection of how urban a state is (a state with most of their population concentrated in cities could have the same population density as one with their population spread across their state, and the former would likely be more blue than the latter), this gives some indication. Colorado has a population density of 56 people per square mile, while Utah is slightly smaller at 39, and Wyoming has 6. Other factors include religion and how "cosmopolitan" the area is (and by that I mean interaction with other areas, such as being a tourist area). If you take out the greater Denver area (Denver, Boulder, etc.), and tourist areas such as Aspen, Colorado is quite red. See, for instance, this graphic . The only deeply blue counties are Denver, Boulder, Pitkin (contains Aspen) and San Miguel (contains Telluride, another tourist spot). You can see the locations of these counties here . Teton County in Wyoming also was blue in 2016, likely related to it containing Yellowstone National Park. Other large blue counties Arapahoe, Adams, Jefferson, and Broomfield are in the Denver area, and Larimer contains Fort Collins, another urban area. You can see an aberration in El Paso, being both large and red. This is due to Colorado Springs, a city with military ties that has become a gathering point for conservative Christians (Ted Haggard's megachurch, for instance, is located there). Utah politics are also significantly affected by religion, with the state being dominated by Mormons. There is a geopolitical feature called the Front Range Urban Corridor that contains such cities as Pueblo (another place that leans blue), Colorado Springs, Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins, and Cheyenne in Wyoming. Running along the eastern edge of the Rockies, it is significantly more urban and Democratic than most of the central US. Most of the support for the Democratic party in Colorado comes from people in this corridor. Clinton won only a plurality of Colorado votes, 48% to 43%. If we were to take out Denver county votes, the plurality of the rest of the state would go to Trump, 47% to 45%. Take out Denver and Boulder, and Trump would almost get a majority, 49% to 42%. Take out the FRUC counties of Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, Douglas, El Paso, Jefferson, Larimer, Pitkin, Pueblo, San Miguel, and Weld, and Trump would have won 51% of the Colorado vote to Clinton's 40%. | {
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41,837 | This question is based on the assumption that Boris Johnson gets prosecuted and found guilty of misleading the public during the EU referendum. Could this be used in court to argue that the results of the referendum are wrong and based on misleading campaigning, and therefore get a court decision to force the government to revoke Article 50? | No. The referendum was legally not binding , it just caused a political situation which made the article 50 notification seem a political necessity. The UK could have stayed or left regardless of the referendum result, so a court could not conclude from campaign "violations" that the notification was invalid. Also, many election campaigns contain predictions or promises that may or may not become fact, and courts involved into that is a very bad thing for democracy. It is for the electorate to judge the credibility of campaign speeches, as long as they don't sink to libel and similar offenses. | {
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42,010 | Here is a transcription of the recently popularized voice mail from John Dowd to Rob Kelner, the attorney of Michael Flynn, from CNN's Transcript released of Flynn voicemail from Trump lawyer showing possible attempt to obstruct . If I take the sentence in bold below and shorten and paraphrase it to get rid of the stylized and parenthetical voice messaging style of speech, I get If there's information that implicates the President, then we've got a national security issue we got to deal with, not only for the President, but for the country. Question: Why does John Dowd state that if there is "information that implicates the president" that there is a "national security issue" that these two lawyers need to "deal with"? What would "dealing with it" mean in this case? I'm only interested in answers that don't stray far from known facts . Opinions or pure speculation should not be posted as answers. Thanks! Hey, Rob, uhm, this is John again. Uh, maybe, I-I-I'm-I'm sympathetic; I understand your situation, but let me see if I can't ... state it in ... starker terms. If you have ... and it wouldn't surprise me if you've gone on to make a deal with, and, uh, work with the government, uh ... I understand that you can't join the joint defense; so that's one thing. If, on the other hand, we have, there's information that. .. implicates the President, then we've got a national security issue, or maybe a national security issue, I don't know ... some issue, we got to-we got to deal with, not only for the President, but for the country. So ... uh ... you know, then-then, you know, we need some kind of heads up. Um, just for the sake of ... protecting all our interests, if we can, without you having to give up any ... confidential information. So, uhm, and if it's the former, then, you know, remember what we've always said about the President and his feelings toward Flynn and, that still remains, but-Well, in any event, uhm, let me know, and, uh, I appreciate your listening and taking the time. Thanks, Pal. (emphasis added) The audio is available at CNN's Voicemail from Trump's attorney to Flynn's lawyer released and The Hill . | The worry here is that there is blackmail material. It's basically the same reason why homosexuals were barred from security clearances for many years. If a foreign power finds out that you have a secret that could be revealed to your detriment, then it would be possible that you would comply with their request rather than allow the secret to be released. And of course, once you've done it, they have a new secret that you don't want released. This is why the first request is usually something that seems reasonable but is technically illegal. When homosexuals were in the closet (and possibly even legally barred from expressing their sexuality, depending on state law), homosexuality was a blackmailable secret. So homosexuals generally couldn't get security clearances. Of course, a simple fix to this problem is to reveal the secret preemptively. Come out of the closet. Confess infidelity to one's spouse and reveal it to the public. Tell the vice-president that he misunderstood what you said. Release the domestic recording of the conversation with the foreign agent. Once revealed, the former secret is no longer a blackmail danger. The big problem here is that presidents cannot be denied security clearances, even if they can't pass the security check. Appointees and members of Congress can be denied security clearances, but presidents and vice-presidents need security clearances to do their job. So they get awarded the clearance by the election rather than by passing a security check. | {
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42,027 | I know that people living in comunities cooperate with each other when it comes to expenses to maintain the comunity. From what I understand, taxing property is a practice that started since before recorded history. Wikipedia - History of property tax : "Taxation has existed since the existence of civilization. Originally before the presence of monetary system, taxes were mostly paid as a percentage of crops raised.." The difference between then and now is that governments in the past have always taxed property (land for example) according to what it was producing. If your land was producing apples, you'd be required to give some apples to the government. From what I know people were never required to give pears or diamonds if their land was producing apples. Now we have to pay money if we own a house, a car or other things even if those things do not produce money (meaning they do not bring any income to the owner) Can someone please explain how I could make sense of this? What would be a logical explanation (other than "because we need it") Possible explanations and the reasons why I have a hard time making sense of them: If you sell your house with a profit, then your house "produces" money. The question that should follow would be: "Why not wait until I sell it? Why charge tax every year?" You could rent part of your house . If that is the case, wouldn't an "income tax" make more sense? (We would avoid charging people that do not have enough to sustain themselves) People need government services (schools, roads..). People also need houses. That means people have to pay for those services according to the value of the house . (This argument was brought by one of the commentators below) This sounds a bit like an "Association" type of logical fallacy. What am I missing? A nice house is a good indication that the owner is rich. Not necessarily. Maybe the owner just spent his last penny (and maybe his health) to buy, build or renovate that house. (In the US) Homeowners have to pay (practically under threat of eviction) for the public schools because they benefit from everyone being educated The argument implies that: 1 - Somehow the homeowners benefit from other people's kids' education more than the kids themselves and their families. (Homeowners pay, students don't) 2 - Public education is more important than the rights to ownership. If a location is needed for the question to be complete, please pick a country of your choosing (out of the 99% of the countries where the governments charge money for owning property / assets), although the United States law is what made me ask this question. | There are two issues with your question. The first is that you're approaching this from a wrong angle. The question is not how or whether a property tax is justifiable or justified, but rather how or whether its modern variation came into existence with any kind of sensible rational. The second is that your idea of there being some kind of barter system is misguided. With respect to the barter system thing, that only exists in economists' wet dreams. David Graeber in Debt the first 5000 years makes a rather interesting case that the sequence whereby barter preceded currency and then debt instruments is fantasy. Rather, the actual sequence was that debt instruments preceded both and that barter and currency (in equal measures to a large degree) then came in as units to settle those debts. And there is ample evidence that early currency instruments were basically fiat and really just records of IOUs. As to the first problem, historically, authorities have taxed just about anything they could creatively tax, with the main two drivers for doing so being a) whether they could come up with a metric by which they'd tax it (and check it's being paid) and b) whether they'd end up with a revolt on their hands if they tried it. In agrarian societies like the early Roman empire, at a superficial level there wasn't much to sensibly tax beyond wealth for owners (aka land) and labor for peasants (think serfdom). The metric for the latter was simple: a certain amount of time per year. For the former, it was more complex and revolved, as you suggest in your question, around how "well" the land was developed. But only to the extent that land that produced something deemed valuable was seen as worth more than land that didn't. And this was actually a debt obligation in principle, even though it may have looked like it took the form of barter in practice. There is more, because the above is somewhat superficial. Then, and later, there were plenty of other very creative taxes -- some progressive, most regressive. Think public urinal tax (by an emperor after which the French sometimes call their urinals), salt tax (salt was a necessity until refrigeration), hearth tax , window tax , glass tax , brick tax , wallpaper tax , you name it. The guiding principle in each case was: if a tax assessor can easily count it, then you can tax it. It's only in the modern era that taxing flows, as in profits, income, and consumption, came about. Before that, taxing wealth was the rule. And it's also worth noting that, in the past as now, there were "emergency" taxes that sometimes became routine. Charles I of England, for instance, worked around not wanting to call Parliament to get it to raise taxes by all sorts of measures -- some legal, some not (he was time limited for customs, but levied them anyway and merchants paid out of habit). The most colorful ones might be his declaring a state of emergency (there was none) to levy naval vessels from coastal communities (you'd pay the price of a boat if you couldn't provide one) and extending the levy to non-coastal communities (a first at the time); or unearthing a by then long forgotten tax on living outside of city walls. He even won court battles as he pushed this through. The English were so pissed at him that it triggered the English Civil War. Anyway, back to your question: Can someone please explain how I could make sense of this? What would be a logical explanation (other than "because we need it") The simple answer is: because, then as now, you can readily tax it. | {
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42,067 | This may sound like an easy question. Legislators make laws, the executive executes laws and the judiciary judges laws. Sounds simple. I've heard that the Justice Department is under the executive branch. I've also heard that judges and often presidents can make laws too. What about the District Attorney (DA)? I've heard a DA can choose to prosecute or not to prosecute people for virtually any reason. What would stop a DA from, say, not prosecuting his own family? What would stop a DA from not prosecuting presidents? In Indonesia we have Prabowo who's pretty obviously broken many laws. He makes ridiculously false claims. Often he later claims that he's being deceived. However, most people know that the claims are so ridiculous that there is no way he doesn't know or should not have known. Yet he is not even arrested or judged. It seems that there is a political decision not to cause even more problems. Is this what's happening in the US too? One of the motives behind this question is the conflict of interests between the executive branch and law enforcement. It is possible that the legislators create laws so vague that anyone can be sent to jail? Then the Executive Branch simply don't prosecute his "friends". It seems that there is a strong conflict of interest when the President handles the justice department. It means that the President can pardon or prevent prosecution for say most corrupt bureaucrats. I've heard it's a big problem in most countries. Basically, I see putting the justice department under the President's control seems to defeat separation of power. So I wonder why it's done that way? | I've heard a DA can choose to prosecute or not to prosecute people for virtually any reasons. The concept is called prosecutorial discretion . It is the authority of the district attorney for each district (and ultimately their attorney general) to choose whether or not to press charges in a case, offer a plea bargain or other alternate sentencing arrangement, or decline to prosecute. As a practical matter, not all cases have enough evidence to convict and the district attorney's office would prefer in many cases to get a plea bargain with a lesser sentence than have to spend the time and resources going through a full court case. What would stop a DA from, say, not prosecuting his own family? What would stop a DA from not prosecuting presidents? A district attorney should recuse themselves if a case is personal to them, and either leave the decision in the hands of a neutral assistant district attorney or escalate it to the attorney general. That's not to say that their relationship with a suspect can't cause them to get treated differently anyway , but that's just a fact of life. Since district attorneys are usually voted in such behavior can cause them to lose the next election. Prosecuting the President is a more complicated topic, but the President has no general statutory immunity to prosecution. The federal Justice Department's current policy is not to press charges against a sitting President, mainly because it would severely undermine their authority and such a drastic move is thought to be better left in the hands of Congress, who can impeach a President in order to have a trial which can result in removing them from office. On the other hand, some commenters have suggested state district attorneys could file charges against the President, and are most likely within their rights to do so. Considering how many other questions have talked about the possible effects of this, I'm going to just leave it there. I've heard justice department is under the executive branch The Justice Department is a part of the Executive Branch in the US and is headed by the Attorney General, who is a member of the President's Cabinet (states may have this structure or may have their Attorney General as a separate entity to the governor, and most actually elect their Attorney General rather than appoint them). The idea is that the Executive Branch is responsible for enforcing laws, so the Justice Department should be a part of it. The Attorney General is unique among Cabinet members in that they are considered to have a "special independence" from the President to practice their discretion as they see fit. I've also heard that judges and often presidents can make laws too. Not exactly. Only the legislative branch can make statutory laws, but the way other branches interpret and enforce those laws also have force of law as long as they are compliant with statute (except in the specific case of judicial review, where the courts can override the legislature). The President signs "Executive Orders" which outline how the Executive Branch is going to execute laws passed by Congress. Laws usually give the Executive Branch a goal to pursue and money to do it, but leave most of the specifics up to the actual agency executing the law - obviously lawmakers can't account for every individual situation under which the law is being applied. Some Executive Orders have been criticized for stretching a law further than it was intended, and some are criticized for implementing laws in such a way that it undermines the law itself (e.g. by using the funding in a way which is technically conformant but leaves little or no funding for an important objective of the law). The Judicial Branch (not to be confused with the Justice Department) is ultimately the arbiter of law enforcement (referring to the "enforcement of laws" in general, not just criminal law). The US uses a " common law " system, a part of which is the importance of previous case rulings ("precedent") in current cases. This means that some cases may "make" law by becoming the precedent cited in future cases for how to apply the law to a common fact pattern. Precedent can be overruled by new laws, and can also be tricky to apply since no two cases are exactly the same - sometimes there is some part of the fact pattern of a case that causes the result of the case to be different than precedential cases. The courts can also choose not to allow enforcement of a particular law if they find that it violates a part of the Constitution or a person's rights. In these cases (which usually involve criminal law but can involve civil law), appeals can be heard by district appeals courts and eventually the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is the ultimate authority on whether or not a particular law violates the Constitution (and how a law should be interpreted in general), and have the authority to make such rulings on both federal and state laws (which is unique from most of the rest of the government, where the federal government's structure and laws are separate from all state government structure and laws). This is probably the closest process to "making" law outside of the legislative branch - if the Supreme Court rules that a particular law violates the Constitution, the legislative branch has no direct recourse and must either change the law or accept that it will not be enforced (they can also begin the process of passing a constitutional amendment, but that involves the legislatures of the states as well). Is this what's happening in US too? I don't know much about Indonesian law or Mr. Prabowo, but false claims made in general are not a violation of law in the US. False claims about a person can be defamatory, but there exist almost no criminal defamation statutes - the person defamed can just be awarded damages and the defamer can be ordered to stop (which it would be a crime to ignore). Most precedent in this case has to do with the First Amendment's guarantee of Free Speech. | {
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42,114 | In America, during the past few years (when I started to actually follow politics), gun control has been something that Republican politicians are almost all very strongly against, while it is supported by basically all Democratic politicians. While I personally very much support it, it seems strange for it to be a policy of the socially liberal Democrats; the socially conservative Republicans are in favor of limiting things like abortion while liberal Democrats don’t want abortion to be heavily restricted. Additionally, libertarians, who are very socially liberal, are against it. What caused this to be a policy heavily associated with the Democratic Party, rather than the Republican Party? How long has this been the case? Is the Democratic Party's policy on this unusual among left-wing political parties in the world? | Since Ronald Reagan, the Republican party has had three main pillars: A low tax, somewhat libertarian group. A pro-military group. A moral majority , pro-life group. The moral majority group is heavily based in rural areas where gun ownership is common. The pro-military group includes many current and former service members who own guns. The libertarians are historically pro-gun. Until relatively recently, there were many pro-gun-rights, anti-gun-control Democrats. As the party has lost hold in rural areas, it has lost almost all of those (Joe Manchin is an exception). The Democrats modernly are an urban party. In cities, guns are much less used. In fact, it is common for it to be illegal to fire a gun except in immediate self defense in most places in cities. The police are closer (so self defense is less of an issue). Fewer people in cities own guns legally. Both the Republicans and the Democrats want to restrict things. The Republicans want to restrict lifestyle choices, like sexual behavior and drug use. The Democrats want to restrict financial decisions. In terms of guns, like in finances, Democrats are less concerned about freedom from government restriction and more concerned about freedom from violence (financially, Democrats are most concerned with freedom from being unable to finance essential needs). Freedom "froms" that concern Democrats: Financial need. Gun violence. Environmental damage. Prejudice (based on skin color, gender/sex, sexual orientation, etc.). Unfair labor practices like being fired without due cause. Government restrictions on abortion are the odd choice out from this perspective, but feminists (defined here as women worried about prejudice against women) feel strongly that the government should not have control over their bodies. Abortion is also often a backup plan for poor families that may not be able to afford quality birth control. Richer families are more able to handle unplanned pregnancies or travel somewhere where abortion is legal. In the United States, gun control is a modern phenomenon. At the founding, the chief worry was that a tyrannical government would take away guns. Most adult men owned guns, even in comparatively urban areas. Organized militias sometimes required able-bodied men to own guns. In the early twentieth century, Democrats began shifting from a rural, Southern party to one with many urban members, particularly in unions. In 1968, the traditional Southern members split off and supported a separate presidential candidate. In 1972, they supported the Republican Richard Nixon. By the end of 2014, almost all Southern Democrats had been replaced with Republicans. Some other countries around the world: Australia The National Firearms Agreement was organized by the conservative/right-wing Liberal party. Japan In Japan, gun restrictions have been passed by the conservative/right-wing Liberal Democratic Party. Of course, gun restrictions have some history in Japan, an urban country where weapon ownership was long limited to the elite samurai. New Zealand The left-wing Labour party is currently promoting gun control (in 2019). United Kingdom Gun control was passed in 1903 by the right-wing Conservative party. And in 1997 by both the Conservative party and the left-wing Labour party (control of the government shifted during the year and each party added some gun control when it was in charge). Communism Most communist countries implemented gun control strictly. They were of course left-wing financially but were often right-wing on issues of crime and morality. | {
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42,122 | I, um, know a guy, 'Bob'. Bob is in favor of social safety nets and LGBTQ rights (leftist). Bob is also very pro-capitalism and in favor of gun rights (rightist). We have terms in the political discourse like conservative, liberal, progressive, etc. The closest one to the above is, as far as I can tell, centrist . The problem is that it doesn't really fit. While the aggregate of Bob's positions might "average out" to the middle, none of Bob's opinions on those issues are actually towards the center of the spectrum: Bob is pretty far to one end or the other. If Bob tells people that he's centrist, they are typically surprised later when Bob espouses strong viewpoints that are actually left/right positions on the subject in question. This is difficult to explain to people when they ask, so is there an easy-to-grok term for this? I actually encounter people like Bob reasonably often. To avoid any confusion, I'm not looking for a label that captures Bob's specific mix of positions as I am a label that connotes the idea of a mix of strong left and right of center opinions. Update Apparently Paul Graham wrote an essay about this where he terms such people "accidental moderates". | I looked at your profile and saw that you're an American. You are confused by Bob because you assume that the political positions held by the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are directly analogous to what "Leftists" and "Rightists" should or do actually think. This is not the case. The parties in the United States effectively act as standing coalitions of broad swaths of people with different interests, and as a result adopt positions that don't actually make coherent sense when assessed for intellectual consistency. Let's look at Bob's opinions in detail to illustrate this a bit. Bob is in favor of social safety nets and LGBTQ rights (Leftist). As a matter of pure ideology, there is no intellectual reason at all for LGBTQ rights to be considered leftist, or in any way related to social safety nets. Many leftist governments around the world are notorious for treating LGBTQ people poorly; the most prominent example I can think of is Cuba, which until recently used to imprison people for life if they had AIDS. So why are they in the "leftist" coalition in the United States? The answer is because social conservatives interested in traditional marriage are in the Republican party (which is arbitrary and discussed later), and it's somewhat contradictory to have a party that favors the supremacy of traditional marriage and LGBTQ rights at the same time. So, the LGBTQ rights people end up in the Democratic party by default. Bob is also very pro-capitalism and in favor of gun rights (Rightist). What do gun rights have to do with capitalism? Like the other example, these are issues that are not directly related to each other; the United Kingdom is a country that is capitalist and has very prominent advocates for more capitalism rather than less, yet the idea of gun rights becoming a movement there seems like a long shot. This association is another product of the two party system. During the Cold War, groups of people with different political interests found it mutually beneficial to form a political coalition, namely free-market types, social conservatives, and anti-communists. The resulting "fusion" became the conservatism that found a home in the Republican party and was its governing ideology until 2015 (or arguably as earlier). The main thing that held these people together was a commitment interpreting the constitution as a document that generally restricts government power (at least domestically), so, when the modern gun rights movement started taking off in response to the Gun Control Act of 1968, the Republican party just happened to be the natural place for people with these interests to go. So... your confusion about Bob is really because you equate the hodge podge of political party positions, which are the product of coalition building and thus are not always consistent, with larger ideologies that tend to be normative and therefore should be consistent. But... you came here looking for help, asking a particular question; maybe now we can answer it: This is difficult to explain to people when they ask, so is there an easy-to-grok term for this? I actually encounter people like Bob reasonably often. This is hard to give an accurate answer to because we don't actually know how Bob arrived at his opinions, we just know they don't perfectly line up with the Democrats or the GOP. So I make the following recommendations: Ask Bob what he calls himself. If you are already talking to Bob about politics this much, it shouldn't be a rude question. Bob may have a specific identity that would explain his seemingly contradictory viewpoints as actually being the product of a consistent ideology you haven't heard of before, and he might be willing to share that with you (I'd bet if that's the case, he's probably a libertarian, but I wouldn't go around assuming that without more evidence). If Bob's opinions really are picked randomly, or if you do not find out how he arrived at them, I would describe him as "politically unaffiliated", "non-partisan", or, if it's not the
name of a party in your state, "independent." That conveys that he's not really a Democrat or a Republican, but it doesn't make him sound like he has opinions in the mushy middle the way that "centrist" or "moderate" does. | {
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42,145 | According to Wikipedia's article about Stability and Growth Pact : The fiscal discipline is ensured by the SGP by requiring each Member
State, to implement a fiscal policy aiming for the country to stay
within the limits on government deficit (3% of GDP) and debt (60% of
GDP) I don't know how it goes for other countries, but in Romania this figure (3%) is often mentioned in relation to government deficit and acts as a sword of Damocles for each government, as many analysts argue that the actual deficit will go beyond this magic number. I have tried to find why this figure was chosen and also heard that the local government suggested that it should be increased. Anyway, I have found only some discussions without anything clear about how EU reached this exact value. I expect that some economics computations to be involved, but I see a lot of discussions about this in the political space and none mention any economical computation. Question: How did the European Union reach the figure of 3% as a maximum allowed deficit? | The 3% deficit floor and the 60% Debt-to-GDP ratio were part of the Euro convergence criteria of the Treaty on European Union (Maastricht Treaty) . The framework is developed in Article 104c, with the specifics left to the Protocol on the excessive deficit procedure . As to where these limits came from, Luigi L. Pasinetti states in The myth (or folly) of the 3% deficit/GDP Maastricht ‘parameter’ : Nobody has ever been able to give any plausible explanation of why
these two figures were chosen. As far as the 60% ratio is
concerned, the most likely inference is that it amounted to
roughly the average observed in Europe at the time of
the drawing up of the Treaty, with both Germany and France
being near it. But other countries (notably Belgium and Italy) were
far from it; and since it would have been unreasonable (in fact
impossible) to require immediate adjustment, a proviso was added
(art.104c) stating that a higher Debt/GDP ratio than the “reference”
one would be acceptable if “the ratio is sufficiently
diminishing”. More difficult to explain is the choice of the
3% public Deficit/GDP “reference value”, especially if one
considers that, on this point, the Treaty is now being
interpreted very strictly, allowing for absolutely no deviation (not
even by any small fraction of a percentage point) from the 3% figure.
Such a rigid stance is so extraordinary as to lead one to think that
any justification can only be found in the realm of symbolism. The
whole of the Maastricht Treaty seems to have been reduced to the
fulfilment of this symbolic figure of a 3% public Deficit/GDP ratio
stated in one of its Annexes. But even symbols cannot escape
the reality of their implications. If a 3% public Deficit/GDP
ratio is to be rigidly adhered to and regarded as a symbol
of European fiscal and financial stability (even at the cost of
heavy sacrifices), it surely should be an absolutely necessary
condition for fiscal and financial stability. Nobody has ever proved this. In fact it cannot be proved,
as will be shown in the following pages. | {
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42,193 | In the US, can a former president run for president again , at a later time? Does it matter, whether his first presidency was one or two terms? Note: This is inspired from the TV Series "Designated Survivor", talking about the Character "Moss". He is a former president, running again. | Prior to the passage of the twenty-second amendment , Grover Cleveland served non-consecutive terms (and Franklin Delano Roosevelt served four terms). So clearly it was legal then. The active portion of the amendment's text is: Section 1. No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. Section 2 is just about when the amendment will be considered ratified. That was satisfied, so we don't need to care about that or the unquoted portion of Section 1 (the one person covered under that is now dead). So no person shall be elected more than twice. Nor may a person who was raised to the office from the vice-presidency for at least two years be elected more than once. The amendment says nothing about consecutive terms. It applies whether the person wants a third consecutive term or a non-consecutive term. There is some dispute about whether someone could be appointed vice president after serving more than six years as president, as that wouldn't be elected. If so, presumably that person could serve almost four years. But there's an argument that that should not be allowed. That argument says that someone who has been president is no longer eligible or qualified to be president. Which makes sense but is not how the amendments literally read. The basic problem there is that the twenty-second amendment talks only about election and doesn't prohibit people in the line of succession from taking office. Meanwhile, the twenty-fifth adds a new method of appointment for vice presidents without clarifying whether such appointees are limited by the twenty-second amendment. The dispute is basically over whether they should read the provisions literally, in which case this is a loophole. Or should they naturally extend the various provisions to come up with a reasonable system, in which case they'd make some new rule, like no one who has already served six years or more as president is eligible to become president again. In which case this would be a presidential qualification and no one could be appointed or elected vice president who didn't meet it. | {
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42,196 | Are intrusions within a foreign embassy considered an act of war? Let's say that the U.S. breaks into the Chinese embassy in New York and decides to arrest a criminal whom the Chinese government had given permission to hole up inside the embassy, would the intrusion be considered an act of war and why? | As far as I know there also isn't an international treaty formalizing what constitutes an "act of war," so it would be up to China whether or not to use the action to justify a declaration of war on the United States. With that said, I don't believe that incursion into an embassy has been used as a justification for war, at least since the Vienna Convention on International Relations was ratified (looking at the Wikipedia page on List of Attacks on Diplomatic Missions seems to support this). A real example would be the Iran Hostage Crisis , in which a group took over the US embassy in Tehran and held its inhabitants hostage with the eventual support of the Iranian government. In this case, while the US did not declare war on Iran it did make one attempt to rescue the hostages through military force. However, the main response of the US was to impose sanctions on Iran rather than attempt full-scale military action. If the US ever specifically called the action an "act of war," it isn't mentioned in the Wikipedia article, and wasn't used as a justification for declaring war on Iran. On the other hand, the Chinese may decide themselves that it is an act of war. The United States has the American Service-Members' Protection Act , which allows for the President to use any means necessary, including acts of war, to bring about the release of a service member being held by the International Criminal Court. The reason I bring this up is to point out that countries get to decide for themselves what constitutes a valid reason to go to war, there really isn't anything stopping countries from going to war except other countries stepping in, and the world would have a hard time stopping a war between China and the United States through military force. Whether or not the Chinese would have a convincing argument internationally for a casus belli is going to depend on the situation and what information is available. However, if the only purpose and result of the incursion is to capture a regular criminal, most countries would probably see a declaration of war from China as an extreme overreaction and an abandonment of its international obligation to try and resolve grievances diplomatically if possible. | {
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42,207 | Modern Monetary Theory states that a sovereign country will never go bankrupt. It can just print more money. Of course, printing more money would lead to inflation. But some countries have the opposite problem. Japan has deflation, not inflation. So why doesn't Japan fix that by printing more money? | Mostly because Japan doesn't actually have deflation at the moment (although it may have between 1998 and 2008). In the last ten years, Japan's inflation rate has been as high as 3.7%. Another way of saying this may be that they already did fix their problem. Japan had deflation, primarily between 1998 and 2008 with occasional returns since. But since October of 2016, Japan's inflation has been positive every month. So right now, they have no slack that they could fill by printing money. Some people might dispute that claim, arguing that an inflation rate of (e.g.) 2% would be better than Japan's 1%. But we can guess that the central bank of Japan is not among those people. Inflation Japan . CPI Japan . | {
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42,220 | What are the current progressive battlegrounds for “rights” in the UK? The reason I ask is that all of the areas I can think of could be said to already be relatively “progressive.” The Abortion Act 1967 makes abortion legal until the end of the 24th week. The wage gap is close to zero (and negative in some age groups) when subjected to a multivariate analysis . The Communications Act 2003 prohibits incitement to violence and menacing trolling. The Equalities Act 2010 prohibits discrimination against all the protected groups. The Employment Rights Act 1996 gives the right to leave for child care (eg. 52 weeks for maternity) and to flexible working patterns. The Working Time Act 1998 mandates 28 days paid holidays, breaks from work and attempts to limit working hours. The Pensions Act 2008 gives the right to an occupational pension. The National Minimum Wage Act 1998 gives a minimum wage. | Abortion is legal until the end of the 24th week. Not in Northern Ireland. UK progressiveness really ought to remember to look at the whole UK. I would say that the big areas at the moment are: Preventing a regression of rights, especially in relation to Brexit; this might include employment rights, and definitely includes the rights of the 3m EU nationals here. Immigration rights more generally: treatment of asylum seekers etc. The Home Office has operated an increasingly expensive, punitive and arbitrary process for legal immigration over the past few years in an attempt to discourage people. This includes the restrictions on spousal visas as well. Rights for trans people: e.g. GRA Scotland consultation . There is a significant anti-trans media and social media campaign on at the moment. Benefits for disabled people: again subject to arbitrary and unfair bureaucratic processes. This attracted condemnation from the UN . The right not to burn to death: Grenfell and related issues of safety in social housing. Housing availability and affordability more generally is an area of concern. Extreme poverty: see the UN Special Rapporteur on the subject. | {
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42,242 | Pete Buttigieg is running as a candidate for the U.S. Democratic Presidential Primary to become the Democratic Presidential Nominee. He recently(-ish) said he was looking into/supportive of a plan that involved adding seats the U.S. Supreme Court. This Fox news article states: He said the plan he finds “most intriguing” would expand the high court to 15 justices, with five appointed by a Democratic president, five by a GOP president, with the other five coming from the appellate bench and being seated only by the unanimous consent of the other ten. “It just takes the politics out of it a little bit. Because we can’t go on like this, where every time there’s a vacancy, there’s these games being played and then an apocalyptic ideological battle over who the appointee is going to be,” he argued. Boston.com quotes him as saying: but only 10 of them are appointed through a traditional political process [i.e. the president and the Senate], Democrats and Republicans,” he said. Vox says: Buttigieg has embraced an interesting idea (first proposed in this Vox article by Daniel Epps and Ganesh Sitaraman) by which Democrats and Republicans would get to name five justices each, and then those justices would jointly name another five members to the Court. I am not sure the exact process Mr. Buttigieg has in his mind, but that might be beside the point. My Question Is there a constitutionally valid way to enshrine a system of equal Democrat and Republican representation in the Supreme Court (with a ""neutral"" third portion)? According to the House of Reps website: Before Members are assigned to committees, each committee's size and the proportion of Republicans to Democrats must be decided by the party leaders. The total number of committee slots allotted to each party is approximately the same as the ratio between majority party and minority party members in the full Chamber. Committees members are chosen (somewhat) proportionally as opposed to half-and-half. I am not sure what would happen if a 3rd party got enough Representatives to demand a committee member though. Could a similar argument to that is used against partisan gerrymandering be used to assert that this type of Supreme Court structuring harms 3rd party citizens by excluding their party from the process? Possible Follow-up Questions: Which court would be able to rule on such a case, the "old" Supreme Court or the "new" Supreme Court? Would it be allowable for current justices to be removed if, say, 6 of the 9 were deemed "Republican"? ( Wikipedia says a previous law that would have shrunk the court only did so on the next vacancy) note: I understand this might be unable to be answered without specific details of a plan, but I am not sure. I also understand something like this will probably not pass both the House and the Senate. | First, the House and Senate operate however it is their rules say they operate. They can change how committees are apportioned by simply changing the rules. As-is, the few third party or independent members are such a tiny minority that it is more advantageous for everyone if they simply caucus with the party they find most agreeable. The caucus is what's really used for committees and such; Bernie Sanders is formally an Independent in the Senate, but he caucuses with the Democrats and gets committee appointments and such as a result. The first problem with Buttigieg's proposal is the presumption that we won't have a long string of Presidents from a single party. There may not be a second party President to appoint those members for an arbitrarily long period of time; certainly long enough for all prior appointments by one to have retired or died. The bigger problem to Buttigieg's proposal is the Constitution ...and [the President] shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court,... And that's all the Constitution says about how Supreme Court Justices arise. Congress does not have the power to place Justices there themselves. It is a power of the President to appoint Justices; the Senate simply exercises "advice and consent" to decide on whether or not to approve the appointment. So the only way to stop a Party 1 President from appointing someone to a "Party 2" Justice position is by the Senate not consenting; by basically doing what they did to Garland. And if Party 1 controls the Senate, that seems unlikely. Now, it has been established that Congress can decide how many Justices are on the court. So they could certainly pass a law that increases the size of the court to 15 Justices. But that's about the extent of their power over the Supreme Court. It is untested as to who actually decides who the Chief Justice is (by tradition the President specifically nominates someone for this post, but nothing explicitly requires it), but that's pretty much the only uncertain part about the composition of the Court. The Supreme Court doesn't even bring in lower court justices to fill in empty spots in the court (whether by recusal, death, or otherwise), ostensibly because that violates the one and only way the Constitution specifies that someone can act as a SCOTUS justice. So without a constitutional amendment to alter how Justices are appointed to the Supreme Court, the idea simply wouldn't work, as it's plainly unconstitutional. And the amendment would have to be more accommodating of the fact that the current two parties might not always be there, might not alternate power much for extended periods of time, or even that the political system might be changed enough to allow third parties (though in that case the changes would probably easily encompass changing this particular proposal). But with a constitutional amendment anything is possible. | {
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42,244 | On February 15, 2019, Donald Trump declared a National Emergency Concerning the Southern Border of the United States. However as far as I can tell, construction of the actual wall has yet to begin despite the national emergency. What is the reason for this? | The tl;dr is that a federal injunction is preventing the building of the wall, because it's likely that the Executive branch exceeded its Constitutional authority in trying to use the NEA (National Emergencies Act) to bypass Congress. This is how our system of checks and balances works. For those less familiar with the US system, it was designed to have three co-equal branches of government who are supposed to keep each other in check. In short: Legislative : Congress, in charge of creating laws Executive : The President & basically all other federal agencies, in charge of enforcing laws Judicial : The Supreme Court & all lesser federal courts, in charge of interpreting and applying the laws, as well as ensuring they conform with the Constitution In this case, deciding where money is spent, is a power given to the Legislative branch. The Executive was given the power to act quickly when Congress is unable to decide under the NEA by Congress. But, because Congress already had a chance to act and did not, the President lost his powers under the NEA. Given this situation, the proper recourse for the President would be to go back to Congress and petition them for the funding. This would probably require some sort of deal, given his party is not in control of both chambers of Congress. Certainly he could attempt some other method of circumventing Congress, but the separation of powers is pretty clear in this respect, so it's unlikely to succeed. The reasoning, however, I think is worth expanding on: You can read the ruling in full here . All the following quotes are from this source. President Trump used the National Emergencies Act of 1976, which was enacted “to insure that the exercise of national emergency authority is responsible, appropriate, and timely.” Comm. on Gov’t Operations & the Special Comm. on Nat’l Emergencies & Delegated Emergency Powers, 94th Cong., 2d Sess., The National Emergencies Act (Public Law 94–412) (page 13) Furthermore, they contemplated and dismissed Presidential veto during deliberations: Mr. Conyers. . . . Mr. Chairman, my final participation in this debate
revolves around the reason of this question: What happens if the
President of the United States vetoes the congressional termination of
the emergency power? Is that contemplatable within the purview of
this legislation? . . . Mr. Flowers. Mr. Chairman, on the advice of counsel we have
researched that thoroughly. A concurrent resolution would not
require Presidential signature of acceptance. It would be an
impossibility that it would be vetoed. Mr. Conyers. So there would be no way that the President could
interfere with the Congress? Mr. Flowers. The gentleman is correct. (page 14) This was subsequently overruled by the Supreme Court and the law amended. Also important is that in this case: Congress said no and the President is attempting to circumvent them. This appears to have been the first time in American history that a
President declared a national emergency to secure funding previously withheld by Congress. (page 8) To which the judge rules: The Court agrees with Plaintiffs that they are likely to show that the proposed transfer is for an item for which Congress denied funding, and that it thus runs afoul of the plain language of Section 8005 and 10 U.S.C. § 2214(b) (“Section 2214”). In fact, this is the first of three major points towards the injunction on the legality of the reprogramming of funding: Plaintiffs are Likely to Show That the Item for Which
Funds Are Requested Has Been Denied by Congress. Plaintiffs are Likely to Show That the Transfer is Not
Based on “Unforeseen Military Requirements.” Accepting Defendants’ Proposed Interpretation of
Section 8005’s Requirements Would Likely Raise Serious
Constitutional Questions. They conclude with: The Appropriations Clause is “a bulwark of the Constitution’s separation of powers among the three branches of the National Government,” and is “particularly important as a restraint on Executive Branch officers.” Id. at 1347. In short, the position that when Congress declines the Executive’s request to appropriate funds, the Executive nonetheless may simply find a way to spend those funds “without Congress” does not square with fundamental separation of powers principles dating back to the earliest days of our Republic. (pages 54-55) | {
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42,260 | All but one of the current candidates for the Tory leadership (and this role of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom) are proposing to renegotiate the Withdrawal Agreement between the UK and EU to some extent. Various EU officials have stated that renegotiation is impossible and this proposal has been widely derided in the media, by other politicians, and on social media. Is there any indication at all that the EU would be willing to re-open negotiations on this matter, before October 31st when the UK is due to leave with no deal. | Is there any indication at all that the EU would be willing to re-open negotiations on this matter No. BBC, Dec 2018 European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said there could be clarifications but no renegotiation. Reuters, May 2019 European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said on Tuesday that the European Union was not willing to renegotiate the withdrawal deal struck with the British government Guardian, May 2019 Shortly after May’s announcement that she was to resign as party leader on 7 June, European leaders spoke as one in reasserting their refusal to renegotiate the withdrawal agreement. Some may feel Merkel has been relatively sympathetic but Germany's position is indivisible from the EU's position Express, June 2019 Michael Roth, Angela Merkel's Europe minister, said there is no “appetite” across the bloc to reopen the 585-page withdrawal agreement. Angela Merkel’s EU point man insisted Brussels had been “crystal clear on this issue” ahead of the next round of voting in the Tory leadership contest this afternoon. Speaking ahead of an EU ministerial meeting in Luxembourg, Mr Roth said: “I don’t see any chances to renegotiate the package. Footnotes Theresa May's "red lines" 2016 Exit from the EU single market. Exit from EU customs union. End to "vast" payments to EU. End to free movement from EU into UK. Maintain the Common Travel Area and avoid a "hard border". Preserve the United Kingdom. I've seen no recent statement from Boris Johnson or Jeremy Hunt say ing they would drop any of these. | {
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42,284 | Can there be a United Nations (UN) resolution to remove a country from the United Nations Security Council (UNSC)? I am wondering if we can vote a country like France or China out of the UNSC. Is there any rule that forbid such a resolution to be drafted, or is anything possible? | Yes The first and most obvious method is based on the UN charter, Article VI, which says in its entirety: A Member of the United Nations which has persistently violated the
Principles contained in the present Charter may be expelled from the
Organization by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the
Security Council. Obviously, if expelled from the UN, a country could no longer be a member of the Security Council. Now, normally members of the Security Council have effective veto power, but Article 27 lists exceptions: Decisions of the Security Council on all other matters shall be made
by an affirmative vote of nine members including the concurring votes
of the permanent members; provided that, in decisions under Chapter
VI, and under paragraph 3 of Article 52, a party to a dispute shall
abstain from voting. The definition of disputes under Chapter VI is quite broad, so it seems likely that a country could bring a dispute to the UN focusing on a country's membership, and that country would have to abstain from voting on the issue. It could also be argued that the "recommendation of the Security Council," unlike "the affirmative vote of nine members," makes no mention of unanimity, and thus that a simple majority would suffice. Obviously this is subject to international jurisprudence, but since I doubt a case specifically dealing with this has come up, it's a viable interpretation. Further, since this site deals with politics, not law, we must consider that in reality a country practically can be removed from the UN security council regardless of the legitimacy of the legal justifications, assuming the countries that oppose its membership and especially, the other members of the Security Council, want to remove it and are sufficiently economically or militarily powerful. If the legal methods were invalid or insufficient, they would come up with some justification to declare the nation's membership invalid in the first place. The obvious historical precedent is Taiwan, the Republic of China, which the questioner may already be aware of. It used to be a permanent member of the UN Security Council as the successor state to the unified China that existed before 1949, until China, the People's Republic of China, became wealthy enough, and its control over the mainland obvious enough, that it made more sense for them to be a member of the Security Council. Then the PRC was recognized as the legitimate government of China, and they received Taiwan's seat on the Security Council, which they retain to this day. This was the General Assembly Resolution 2758 . Not only did Taiwan lose its seat on the Security Council, but its UN membership generally. While this transition was undoubtedly made easier by Taiwan's claims to be the government of all of China, which clearly were not practically true, I think an equivalent form of reasoning could be used for any other country. For instance, the General Assembly might decide that their membership is a priori invalid due to not being a "peace-loving state," a justification that could theoretically be applied to any country, or due to not actually being a legitimate nation at all. | {
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42,316 | I live in country with a communist ideology, and Marxism-Leninism courses are mandatory in college. As much as I appreciate some basics on dialectical materialism, I can't help but disdain the way Marxism are taught, that basically tells you to just accept stuff without questions and at the same time acts very smug about their "superior" ideology. It's especially hard to buy into Marxism because lots of terms and examples they cite to prove a point that are supposedly originated by Marx himself are incredibly difficult to verify. Did Karl Marx ever use any example that involved cotton and dollars to illustrate the way capital and surplus value were generated? According to this "Doctor" guy in whatever he has a doctorate in, Marx proved capitalists' exploitation in capital generation illustrated how surplus value is generated and appropriated by the capitalists, not the workers, for free, with this example: To create fabric, the capitalist needs $20's worth of cotton, $4 for machine deterioriation in the production process, $6's worth of labor effort. The true value of a man day (12 hours)'s worth of labor effort is $6, but the capitalist pays his workers only 3 and keeps the other 3 for himself as surplus value. Therefore the cost of production ends up only as $27 instead of $30, and the capitalist profits $3 dollars off his workers. That's the rough translation, but it kinda sounds suspicious that Marx just used "dollars" in his example for some reason. I mean Germany had its own currency back then right? Did he have beef with Americans or something, or were there no capitalists in Germany for him to "reveal their true exploitative nature"? I asked that lecturer and he just said "I learned this a long time ago but never really bothered to question if 'dollars' really made sense in the context of 19th-century Germany." Edit : To those who think I'm citing a translation of a translation of a direct quote from Das Kapital , it's not. It's just a translation the example written by the author of my textbook, so the exact wording definitely doesn't match the original. However, keywords like "dollars", "cotton" and "surplus value" should be immediately searchable together in at least a paragraph if such an example is that famous (even if I use translations, it shouldn't be too hard to search for the German word for "cotton"), and in this case they're not, which lessens the credibility of the claim that this was an example Marx actually made. | A searchable PDF suggests it's been freely translated: Apologies for using an image, but the side-by-side didn't paste sensibly. You can see that the currency is different but has been converted; the English uses dollars, the German original uses "sh", presumably for "schilling". Elsewhere in the text he uses pounds Sterling (abbreviated as "Pfd.St."). It's especially hard to buy into Marxism because lots of terms and examples they cite to prove a point that are supposedly originated by Marx himself are incredibly difficult to verify. Personally I agree with this - Marx is quite wordy, and has been translated with varying degrees of competence. He was also writing economics at a pretty early stage in the development of the science. Referencing only Marx is like trying to do psychology by only talking about Freud. | {
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42,357 | In an interview at the White House recently, Donald Trump is quoted threatening a journalist with prison time by saying: "You can go to prison instead," Is the president of the United States legally able to send someone to prison? | In a word: no. The President cannot just order someone to prison. The Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable search and seizure except on probable cause of a crime being committed. The Fifth Amendment requires felony charges to be brought by a Grand Jury. The Sixth Amendment requires trial by jury for criminal cases. | {
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42,362 | In some countries like the US the tax system is bracketed rather than continuous. There would be some obvious trade offs, but would it be worth considering eliminating the marginal, bracketed tax system in favor of a continuous, non-marginal tax rate system without brackets ? Picture a chart with income on the X axis and tax rate on the Y axis. In the current bracketed tax system the tax rate line increases as steps in a ladder . In a continuous tax system the tax rate would instead increase along some line or curve as income increased. This would shift the tax debate from, “Where should we place the brackets and how many brackets should there be?” to “Where should the line or curve start and how fast should it rise?” Update Thank you to all who have taken time to propose answers and comment so far. Your tremendous feedback unburdened some of my misunderstandings and helped me recognize some confusing points and distractions in how the original question was posed. To that end I offer this attempt to clarify the question. The focus of the question was intended to be a generic comparison of bracketed vs continuous systems that ignores whether the bracketed system is marginal. However, I don’t know enough about tax systems to know if any relevant bracketed tax systems are non-marginal. As such, despite the discussion of incentives in the original question, non-marginal bracketed tax systems were not intended to be the focus of the question . In an attempt to avoid this confusion I’ve updated the text in the question above to reduce the scope of the question such that it includes only the comparison between bracketed, marginal tax systems versus continuous, non-marginal, non-bracketed tax systems . Also, the wording of my original question included possible incentives for earners to not pass an income bracket. This wording understandably caused some answers to focus on an implied misunderstanding of marginal brackets. Even in the cases where bracketed tax systems are marginal I think some incentives (real or perceived ) for an earner not passing a bracket could exist. However, given that any possible incentives for avoiding crossing a tax bracket are a minor point and not the focus of the question, I’ve moved this discussion from the question’s introduction to the “Assumptions” section below. With these clarifications in mind please also note that I know next to nothing about tax systems. Where you notice an error in the following assumptions, please point them out and I will try to update to help others. Assumptions Rightly or wrongly, the following aspects of a bracketed, marginal tax rate system may seem confusing, be perceived as unfair, or disincentivize earning for some people in some cases: There seems to be a common public misunderstanding of how marginal tax brackets work. For example, the belief that earning into the next bracket may subject a person’s entire income to that bracket’s tax rate rather than just the amount earned within the bracket. For people who have such a misunderstanding, they may be reluctant to earn into the next tax bracket in order to avoid what they think will result in significantly higher taxes across their entire income. For those who do understand how the marginal system works, earning just under each bracket may still have a perceived advantage over going over a bracket in some cases. For example, while likely a minor concern, if the tax rate for the next bracket is believed to be significantly higher then the final tax percentage for all earnings may be seen to increase disproportionately for the amount earned when going over the next bracket. There may be cases where a discrete, all or nothing tax incentive is offered only to those whose earnings do not reach the next bracket. While tax incentives won’t necessarily have a 1 to 1 mapping to a tax bracket, this may happen for simplicity in some marginal tax systems. Calculating the base taxes owed (before applying tax incentives, loopholes, etc.) requires summing the taxable area under each bracket by first knowing the tax rate for each bracket where earnings were made, determining the amount earned within each bracket, multiplication of the rate and the total earnings for each bracket, summing each bracket’s taxable income with taxes owed for all the other relevant brackets, etc. While these calculations aren’t difficult, per se, they may require additional tax resources and make the system feel more complicated than necessary for some people – especially when brackets boundaries or their tax rates change. A continuous, non-marginal tax rate system without brackets would surely have it’s own set of problems but it would seem to avoid all points listed above. For example, as opposed to 1-4 above, in a continuous, non-marginal tax rate system without brackets: The public would be more likely to intuitively understand their tax rate because it is in line with what they expect when they hear “tax rate for X income is Y percent”. For example, they could find their income on the tax chart (a continuous curve) to find their tax rate. Multiplying their income by the percentage on the chart would yield their base taxes owed before any tax incentives are applied. There would be no need to use complex maths like calculus to derive the area under the curve because the continuous tax system in question is not marginal. Since the tax rate change is continuous there would be no specific point in the curve that could be seen to disproportionately increase the final tax percentage. While point 3 above could happen in a continuous system as well depending on how the tax laws are written, a continuous system would be more likely to change the way politicians communicate and how legislation creates tax incentives such that they would begin to apply in a continuously increasing or decreasing income range rather than applying in an all or nothing fashion at income X. This may cause the public to view the tax system as more fair . Determining the taxes owed (at a base level prior to any incentives, loopholes, etc.) would only require knowing the single tax percentage for the earned income in question. This would ease the burden on communication resources required to help the public determine their base tax rate prior to specific tax incentives. While a continuous, non-marginal, non-bracketed tax rate system seems like it may be perceived to be more fair and easier for the public to understand it would certainly have serious negative trade offs worth discussing. This was the impetus and background for the original question and should be seen as context for the question as posed above. | In most countries where this system is used, there is a level of continuity between brackets. For example, in the United Kingdom, where the tax brackets are defined as follows: 0% up to £12,500 20% from £12,501 to £50,000 40% from £50,001 to £150,000 50% over £150,000 In this scenario, if I were on a £200,000 salary, I would not pay 50% on the whole £200,000. Rather, my tax bill would be as follows: 0% up to £12,500 = 0.00 * £ 12,500 = £ 0
20% from £12,501 to £50,000 = 0.20 * £ 37,500 = £ 7,500
40% from £50,001 to £150,000 = 0.40 * £100,000 = £40,000
50% over £150,000 = 0.50 * £ 50,000 = £25,000
--------------------------------------------------------
TOTAL £200,000 £72,500 Talking specifically about the scenario on the edge of a bracket, if my salary were to go from £49,999 to £50,001, this £2 increase in salary would result in a 60p increase in my tax bill (20p for the first pound, 40p for the second pound). | {
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42,371 | Does the UK have a written constitution? I didn’t think it did, but then I found the following: United Kingdom's Constitution of 1215 with Amendments through 2013 [PDF] | Yes, the UK has a written constitution. All the parts of it are written down somewhere. What it doesn’t have is a codified constitution. There’s no one document entitled “Constitution of the United Kingdom”. Instead, there’s a bunch of laws, precedents and traditions dating back at least 800 years, which are often ambiguous or conflicting. But they’re written. Even the traditions with no basis in written law are found written down in places like Erskine May . | {
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42,427 | If I remember correctly in one Episode of Stargate SG-1, the president of the United States declares some state of national emergency (world was attacked by aliens) and was able to suspend elections, weaseling around the 22nd Amendment and being able to stay in office indefinitely by keeping up the emergency state. Is it (under current law) actually possible for the US president to stay in office longer than the usual two terms of four years or even forever, by using some legal tricks? | The short answer is no . The longer answer is that this framing isn't particularly helpful. There are a number of overlapping factors that prevent the president from legally suspending elections like some tinpot dictator. In particular Article II Section I of the Constitution and the 12th, 20th, 22nd, and 25th amendments which combine to define presidential elections and succession. Terms ending are not directly linked to elections being held. Even if elections could not be held for some catastrophic reason, the president should still leave office at the end of their term according to the line of succession (if no elections occurred at all many of their terms will have ended at the same time, but there should be a President Pro Tempore of the Senate because Senate terms are staggered). This is all theoretical since it's never been tested and hopefully never will be. Perhaps an even more boring reason why the president cannot simply suspend presidential elections is that the federal government does not run elections. The state governments do. A state government may have the ability to suspend or reschedule an election, and there are rules in place for if a state fails to make a selection on the prescribed day. If they still haven't named electors in time for the meeting of the Electoral College, that state will simply not cast any votes. The only legal way around any of this would be modifying the Constitution. Because of course you can make anything 'legal' if you change the definition of what 'legal' means. At the end of the day though, the real world isn't a game. Even if you could find some obscure and bizarre legal loophole to override precedent, the law isn't a set of magic rules. Its just rules that we made up. Nobody would have to accept it. A democratic government governs with the consent of the people. Attempting to use force to subvert the will of the people would be how a president becomes a dictator. | {
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42,443 | Why is Japan trying to have a better relationship with Iran? Shinzo Abe has become the first Japanese leader to visit Iran in 40 Years. Is it worth it for Japan to risk alienating the U.S., which is a major ally of Japan? Why does Japan think the risk is worth it, and what might be the advantages Japan may get from a closer relationship with Iran considering the consequences it may entail? Can someone explain to me the geopolitics involved in the decision? | The U.S. is likely to become less involved in the Middle East and Asia. Japan will need to secure oil supplies. Peter Zeihan has given many speeches over the last decade about how demographics and fracking affect geopolitics. Many of these speeches are on YouTube. In these speeches, he argues: The U.S. established a world order in 1945. The U.S. paid for a world-class navy that guaranteed freedom of the seas for its allies. The U.S. allowed its allies to export to the United States. The U.S. and its allies gave up direct control over their overseas empires. The U.S. paid for a world-class military capable of resisting Soviet expansion. Zeihan points out that this was essentially a deal to allow the U.S. to be the world's leading power to oppose the Soviet Union. But the Soviet empire collapsed during 1989-91. The U.S. is still carrying the costs of this deal. Zeihan predicts that this deal will unravel. Zeihan also points out that: Fracking means that North America no longer needs Middle Eastern oil. If the U.S. no longer needs Middle Eastern oil, then the U.S. no longer needs to control the Persian Gulf. If the U.S. abandons the Persian Gulf and South and Southeast Asia, then the East Asian countries will need to scramble to secure energy supplies. Zeihan omits the following points. These points reinforce his argument: The U.S.' allies de facto agreed that any conventional wars versus the Soviet Union would be fought in the allies' territory, and that the allies would suffer most of the casualties. Prior to the mid-1970s, the United States' foreign trade was roughly balanced. During the mid-1970s, the U.S. started to run large trade deficits, for the following reasons. It is difficult to tell which reasons are causes and which are effects: Individuals' foreign earnings became taxable income, subject to a credit for foreign taxes paid. This severely discouraged Americans from going abroad to sell American products. The U.S. became a net oil importer, and the price of oil went up. The U.S. auto industry lost market share both at home and abroad. Both the Federal government and many state governments began to run budget deficits. To the extent that the U.S. budget deficit is financed by foreigners' trade surpluses with the U.S., and to the extent that the U.S. intends to either not pay off that debt, or inflate away that debt, the U.S.' trade deficits are the means by which the U.S. collects tribute from its allies. Because the U.S. collects tribute via trade deficits, this tribute comes at the expense of American manufacturing industries and their job-base. Zeihan notes that the United States has been electing presidents who are less-and-less interested in controlling the Middle East. At some point, Japan will need to secure oil from the Middle East. The following points are not from Zeihan's speeches: Iran needs allies and know-how from direct investment. Iran has enormous unfulfilled economic potential, and Japan could help Iran achieve that potential. There are many similarities between Iran's situation and China's situation when it began its economic boom. China's government reduced its birth-rate in the 1970s; Iran reduced its birthrate in 1990. Changes in birth-rates shape future demographics and economies. The similarities also include having lots of smart people, a long history of civilization, and many industries that could benefit from foreign direct investment. Japan has the scientists, engineers, and capital to make direct investments. Currently, Iran is overly dependent on its alliances with Syria and Russia, and on Iran's complicated relationship with Pakistan. Israel cannot use emotional blackmail against Japan. American and European policies toward the Middle East are strongly influenced by Israel. Since the Iranian Revolution, Iran has been hostile toward Israel, and Israel has returned the favor. Most of the reasons that Israel has been able to influence Americans and Europeans do not apply to East Asian countries. | {
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42,475 | Can European countries bypass the EU and make their own individual trade deal with the U.S.? I am asking, because for instance Italy decided to join the Belt and Road before other countries meaning that it can make certain economic decisions on its own behalf, is it the case for all economic decisions, because it seems that tariffs are handled by the EU. | They cannot. It's an exclusive competence of the EU . So much so that the point played a major role in the Brexit negotiations. The reason there are two phases in the Brexit deal (leave first, then negotiate a trade deal) is that the EU cannot legally negotiate a trade deal with one of its own members. That being said, China's Belt and Road in itself is not a trade agreement. Rather, it is China extending loans so countries can build infrastructure that ends up streamlining commerce from China to or through the recipient country. On paper there's some potential benefit for Italy here if it ends up working in their favor. (That's a big if, but that's a different story.) Rather than containers being shipped to ports like Marseilles or Rotterdam and then to the rest of the EU, they'll get shipped to Italy instead. And Italy would then end up collecting more duties, since EU members get to keep a cut of the duties they levy on the EU's behalf. | {
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42,509 | Blue state California has a huge population, 39.5 million and urban rents are high. There are 130k homeless people. New York State has another 90k homeless people. Red state Wyoming has only 500k people, with a 2018 voter turnout of around 200k. If the State of California or a group of private citizens acquires cheap land in Wyoming, builds a city, fills it with homeless people, and supplies them, with the intention to capture the congressional /Senate seats, what could the Wyomingers do to stop them? | Nothing This has been done in American history, in fact, though by religious groups rather than states! For example, see generally Nauvoo, IL , a city that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints built to consolidate power, but there are other examples. What stopped the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints from using this population growth to wield political power in the state of Illinois? Violence . With their founder dead and hostilities increasing from the non-LDS residents of Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri (Nauvoo is near the border of all three), the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints left to colonize another area, ultimately ending up in Mexico in an area we now call Utah. If Utah had been in the US at the time, you could almost count the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints twice. What you are proposing is perfectly legal. It is just logistically difficult (move these people, provide them a working city, ensure that they are inclined to vote the way you want without bribery), massively expensive (Billions, if not tens of billions of dollars), and one wonders who would foot the bill for such a scheme. | {
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42,511 | Gerrymandering can keep a relatively unpopular party in power for longer than it otherwise would be. Assuming the unpopular party becomes even more unpopular, just how unpopular would they need to be before the stratagem of gerrymandering itself is insufficient to support them? For example, in 2016 gerrymandering enabled Republican candidates who received 50% of the popular vote to win 9 out of 12 available Congressional seats in North Carolina . That is, half the votes, but 3/4 of the seats and power. And suppose that as long as they hold 3/4 of the power, they'll continue to gerrymander. Now suppose in the future, the Republicans become more unpopular, and receive only 25% or 10% or even 1% of the North Carolina vote, can gerrymandering alone sustain their hold on the majority of seats, or is there some necessary numeric limit that would eventually be reached? Note: for the purposes of this question, please ignore other concomitant stratagems by which unpopular parties might squeak by, and also suppose there are only two parties contending. For US voting systems Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964) et al would apply, so that the gerrymandered districts must have approximately equal populations. | This is a rather simple mathematical exercise. If you allow me total freedom to draw districts within the current requirements, I can place anyone in any district I want provided they have equal population in the end. Connectedness in two dimensions is not enough of a barrier to stop this. In that case, my best bet is to fill as many districts as possible with 50%+1 of my supporters, and fill in the rest with my opponents. Since at least half the population of each district I win must consist of my supporters, we can easily see there is an upper limit on how many districts I can win: A party with x% of the vote cannot win more than 2x% of the districts no matter how they are drawn. In practice there's no way I can reach this limit--no court in the land would allow me to draw the kind of tortured districts needed for arbitrary assignment. 50%+1 is also nowhere close to safe--I'd need a small buffer in my districts so that changing demographics and opinions don't turn it into a gerrymander against me. I'd guess that overall this limits one's practical chances to 1.5x%, but this just an estimate, not a mathematical truth. | {
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42,592 | Does the North Korean leader have an heir apparent for his successor? I think he was hidden even during his studies in Switzerland. Is there any heir apparent? | Under dynastic considerations, either the eldest child or the eldest son of Kim Jong-Un would qualify. There seems to be at least one child, possibly a daughter, according to a BBC report . Since they are under-age, Kim Yo-Jong might lead a caretaker government until they are old enough. But that applies dynastic logic to what is not, formally, a monarchy. By persistent reports, the OGD is a central conduit of power from Kim to the WPK and the DPRK. Or one of the Vice Chairmen of the WPK might be well positioned to follow Kim. Much depends on the political dynamics of the change. Kim Jong-Un appears healthy. He could have several decades left to rule. By then, children and other relatives will be older. Do people in the DPRK believe that Juche and Kimilsungism is possible without a Kim? It seems that the military and government administration are firmly under party control. This might change. | {
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42,593 | I'm not sure if this is the correct exchange to be posting this question, so apologies if this is not the right place. I'm a US Resident, currently on a H-1B. I'm not a Green Card holder or a US National. I'm attempting to contribute to a candidate for the 2020 election but on the donation webpage, I see the need to certify that I am a U.S. citizen or lawfully admitted permanent resident (i.e., green card holder). I'm wondering if this makes me ineligible to make the contribution? Also what are the penalties for making a false declaration (I'm curious to know the law and reasoning behind this). The other side question is about buying bumper stickers and the like from the candidate's online store, I'm presented with the same declaration. Is buying merchandise also included in the scope and is it similarly illegal for me to have a bumper sticker on my car? Lastly are there ways for me to legally sidestep this requirement? A couple of thoughts that I have are My infant son is a US Citizen, could I contribute in his name? Could I ask a colleague at work who is a US Citizen to make the contribution and pay him? I'm not looking to do anything illegal as I don't want to adversely impact my future immigration application. In answers I'm looking to better understand the relevant provisions in law and the possible rationale of excluding legal residents and if it can be sidestepped while still staying in the boundaries of the law(s). | Under US law, only US citizens or permanent residents may contribute to political campaigns. Since you are neither, you may not contribute to a US political campaign and no campaign may accept your contributions. Also what are the penalties for making a false declaration (I'm curious to know the law and reasoning behind this). If you specifically falsely claim to be a US citizen: false claims of citizenship for the purposes of any state or federal law make you deportable from the United States and permanently barred from reentering. The only exception is for certain people who believe for good reason that they're citizens (both parents have to be current or former citizens and the person must have lived in the US before they turned 16). Falsely claiming citizenship is also a crime punishable by up to 3 years in prison. If all you say is "I am a citizen or permanent resident," that might not be a false claim of citizenship. However, other penalties can still apply: if your lie resulted in the campaign treasurer making an incorrect FEC disclosure you might get charged with making false statements, sufficiently large contributions result in direct criminal liability, and there are other theories that could result in prosecution as well. You can also be subject to a civil penalty, as can the campaign. Lastly are there ways for me to legally sidestep this requirement? A couple of thoughts that I have are My infant son is a US Citizen, could I contribute in his name? Could I ask a colleague at work who is a US Citizen to make the contribution and pay him? Both of these are illegal in their own right. It's still considered you making the contribution (which is illegal), but it's also specifically illegal to make a contribution in the name of someone else or to pay someone to contribute. Again, this might be prosecuted criminally or it might result in a civil penalty, depending on various circumstances. It's also worth noting that there's pending legislation (which has passed the Senate but not yet been taken up in the House) that would, if enacted, make any noncitizen who violated campaign finance laws to interfere in any US election both deportable and permanently inadmissible. | {
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42,600 | The current protests in Hong Kong have set me wondering where the police force are recruited from. Are they people who grew up in HK, or have they been bought in from mainland China? I ask because a standard imperialist tactic is to enforce your rule on province X using police or troops from province Y. That way your forces are not likely to be shooting their own friends and relatives. | The police force in Hong Kong is drawn exclusively from people residing in Hong Kong. From the entry requirements page of the recruitment section of the HK police force's website: If you wish to join the Hong Kong Police Force as Inspector or Constable, you are expected to meet the requirements listed below. Nationality You must be a permanent resident of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and have lived in Hong Kong for at least seven years. ... The auxiliary/reserve police force has the same requirements , so it is safe to say that the vast majority of the police force is native to Hong Kong, with some smaller fraction being long-term residents originally from elsewhere. | {
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42,635 | I read this article and it seems like activists from cultures without a long history of whaling are inconsistent in their criticism of Japan for its whaling. Many cultural cuisines like rabbits, cows, trout, pigs, chicken, reindeer or walruses are consumed without international criticism. Why does the international community strongly condemn whaling and not other forms of fishing and hunting? I'm looking for the stated reasons from environmental groups and governments that have signed the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling. P.S See also the statement from the Japanese Fishery Department. | I think there are two main reasons. Ethics (which does apply to dogs in many parts of the world) and the fact that there aren't that many whales (as opposed to dogs). Ethics It's seen as immoral. This argument also applies to dogs (note, pictures may be disturbing) . As such, you see a lot of outrage about dog consumption as well. For example, these quotes from a BBC article on dog consumption in Vietnam illustrate this point: The Hanoi People's Committee said the practice could tarnish the city's image as a "civilised and modern capital". [...] A growing number of people in Vietnam disapprove of eating dog meat but it still remains "very much a deep-rooted habit", according to Linh Nguyen, a journalist with the BBC's Vietnamese service. Threatened species The second argument doesn't apply to dogs: there aren't that many left. This raises conservationist issues as many people and countries don't think it's worth making (some species of) whales extinct just for some delicatessen. Specifically, some species of whale are endangered (per the WWF info ), meaning (from Wikipedia ): a species which has been categorized as very likely to become extinct in the near future. Endangered (EN), as categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List, is the second most severe conservation status for wild populations in the IUCN's schema after Critically Endangered (CR). The WWF provides some info on why whales are important for ocean life: Whales are at the top of the food chain and have an important role in the overall health of the marine environment. Unfortunately their large size and mythical aura does not protect them; six out of the 13 great whale species are classified as endangered, even after decades of protection. | {
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42,697 | What are the consequences for a developed nation to not accept any refugees? Are there grave consequences for not accepting any refugees? I am asking, because almost every country on the planet accepts refugees as if they were forced to do so, yet I don't see any law that forces any country to do so. What are the factors that compel countries to do so? | An important factor here is the treaties a country has signed up to. In this case, a relevant one is the 1951 Refugee Convention . From UNHCR : The 1951 Refugee Convention is the key legal document that forms the basis of our work. Ratified by 145 State parties, it defines the term ‘refugee’ and outlines the rights of the displaced, as well as the legal obligations of States to protect them. The core principle is non-refoulement, which asserts that a refugee should not be returned to a country where they face serious threats to their life or freedom. This is now considered a rule of customary international law. Then there is the 1967 convention , which Wikipedia has the following about: Where the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees had restricted refugee status to those whose circumstances had come about "as a result of events occurring before 1 January 1951", as well as giving states party to the Convention the option of interpreting this as "events occurring in Europe" or "events occurring in Europe or elsewhere", the 1967 Protocol removed both the temporal and geographic restrictions. This was needed in the historical context of refugee flows resulting from decolonisation. Many countries are party to those treaties, as illustrated by the image below: Image from Wikipedia, in the public domain The legend: Light Green = party to only the 1951 Convention Yellow = party to only the 1967 Protocol Dark green = party to both Regarding consequences As for consequences of not taking refugees in practice, there don't seem to be many, if any at all. UNHCR reviewed the treaties in 1989 and point 23 of that review illustrates the tone with which nations are addressed: The above is a general survey of the types of problems which impede the full and effective implementation of the 1951 Convention and its 1967 Protocol. They are presented with a view to opening constructive dialogue on how States and UNHCR, individually and jointly, might facilitate and improve implementation of the Convention and Protocol on a global basis. Furthermore, in its conclusion, it restates the goal, which is providing protection to refugees, not to force individual signatory states to take refugees: The ultimate goal of this exercise is to strengthen the collective capacity of States to meet the protection needs of all refugees. | {
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42,714 | President Trump has recently stated that he may issue an executive order to place a question on the 2020 Census about US residents' citizenship status. This comes after the Supreme Court has already issued a ruling that the Commerce Department's stated reasoning behind including the question was unconvincing. What are the stated reasons Trump and the Republicans want this question on the Census? What reasons have Democratic Party politicians and progressive pundits expressed for opposing it? | I think the best is for you to dive into the following two podcasts (both have a transcript) of Chris Hayes interviewing Dale Ho, one of the attorneys who filed the lawsuit (and won) against the Trump administration: Uncovering the Trump scheme to rig the census with Dale Ho Discussing the census decision with Dale Ho For what reason do Trump and the Republicans want this question on the Census? Their purported reason didn't pass a sniff test in court. The actual reason is discussed at length in the above two references, complete with a whirlwind tour of the evidence they presented in court to win their case -- namely, evidence that the Trump administration lied about its stated intentions, and evidence about its actual intents. In short, the Trump administration is seeking to suppress census participation in communities of color, which are more likely to have non-citizens and illegal immigrants around. Why do Democrats generally oppose it? The census results are very consequential when it comes to apportionment of seats in Congress and funding to districts: CHRIS HAYES: Right? I mean, these are the number of people, and then that is used by the states when they do their districts, is that how it works? DALE HO: Well, first it's used to apportion the number of seats that each states get in [...] the House of Representatives. And then the states use that data when they draw district lines for their own state legislatures. Which, they're required under the Supreme Court's decision Reynolds v. Sims to have districts that have roughly equal numbers of people in them. [...] CHRIS HAYES: All the sudden you're looking at a situation in which apportionment between representatives might be on the line. DALE HO: That's absolutely right. So if African Americans and Hispanics are undercounted then the areas, the states, the localities that have larger African American and Hispanic communities will have a lower population count, they'll get less representation. Federal funding is also dependent for a lot of programs on census counts. 900 billion dollars of funds for federal programs every year is allocated on the basis on census counts- As to: Why hasn't this question been on previous censuses? Per this link , the question has never been on the short form version of the Census since it was established in 1970 until now. (Though it apparently was on the longer form and forms through 1950.) But the article doesn't go into the underlying reasons it never made it in there. My first reference above does: citizenship simply doesn't matter from an apportionment standpoint. CHRIS HAYES: What does the Constitution say about the census? What is the idea behind it in the founding document? DALE HO: The idea behind it is that we need a complete and accurate count of the entire population of the United States because that's the basis for apportioning representation in the House of Representatives, which is based on, you know, population, right? So, it's a foundation pillar of our democracy and the fair distribution of political power as the founders envisioned. [...] DALE HO: [...] what the 14th Amendment does, after the Civil War, is it not only makes sure that everyone born in the United States is a citizen, but it makes clear that everyone gets counted for purposes of apportionment , unless you're in this sort of, you know, particular category people living on reservations that are part of Native American tribes and aren't subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. | {
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42,723 | Why won't the U.S. sign a peace treaty with North Korea? Is there a reason why it wasn't done sometimes after the cease fire? What was the purpose of not signing a peace treaty with North Korea if the U.S. was no longer interested in invading North Korea? | The significant misconception is that, from the information I've gathered, the US was never formally at war with North Korea. It and the United Nations intervened in the Korean War on South Korea's behalf to prevent the North from wiping it off the map. There is, therefore, no need for the US to sign a peace treaty with North Korea because a state of war never existed between them. Indeed, North Korea and South Korea have not signed a peace treaty with one another, and thus the Korean War is technically still ongoing, but that's a separate question. | {
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42,725 | In recent news in Canada it has been reported that Indigenous peoples are no longer supporting Justin Trudeau's Liberal government. In fact, support has dipped to 2 in 10 Indigenous saying they would support Trudeau in this year's re-election bid. This comes after Indigenous people were a big part of the Liberal victory in 2015. My question is: what exactly do they want and expect from the Canadian Federal government? The Federal government has given them suffrage, special exemption from taxes, and their communities are largely self-governed (i.e not subject to many provincial and Federal laws). What more do they expect from the Government? The Government has already given them essentially free reign to govern and live within their communities as they see fit. Why do they demand more support and resources from the government while simultaneously demanding their independence? https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cbc-election-poll-demographics-1.5189750 | The significant misconception is that, from the information I've gathered, the US was never formally at war with North Korea. It and the United Nations intervened in the Korean War on South Korea's behalf to prevent the North from wiping it off the map. There is, therefore, no need for the US to sign a peace treaty with North Korea because a state of war never existed between them. Indeed, North Korea and South Korea have not signed a peace treaty with one another, and thus the Korean War is technically still ongoing, but that's a separate question. | {
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42,745 | Is there a strong legal guarantee that the U.S. can give to another country that it won't attack them? I think because U.S. policy tends to drastically change every time the administration changes, some countries are reluctant to come to any sort of peace agreement with the U.S. I am talking about countries like North Korea and Iran. Is there a sort of legal guarantee that's legally binding that can convince a country that the U.S. won't attack them? If not, is there any non-legal guarantee the U.S. can offer on the table? | No such guarantee would be meaningful if the US administration and congress change their opinion. Whatever they write in law or sign, they can undo -- if not legally then in practice. The US had ratified a treaty with Panama about who had control over which part of the Canal zone, yet they deposed Noriega. The US had given security guarantees to Ukraine when Ukraine surrendered their nuclear weapons, and then failed to follow them. The US had made a deal with Gaddafi to make him drop his WMD programs and then supported his overthrow. For that matter, the US had made a deal with Iran on nuclear issues and it is generally understood that Iran held that promise, yet the US broke the deal. The only way for another country to be safe would be to join another strong alliance, or to retain sufficient military leverage to make an US attack unlikely. On the other hand, US foreign policy doesn't have to "change drastically" when the administration changes. Johnson and Nixon both fought the Vietnam war, Bush and Obama fought the Iraq counterinsurgency, and so on. | {
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42,764 | When elected, Trump made a big point that his opponent should be investigated and "locked up" over the email controversy. Almost immediately after winning the election, he made tacitly clear he was dropping that as a serious proposal, and to the best of my knowledge he did in fact drop it. For example I remember him saying something to the effect that it was old news and he wouldn't pursue it, very soon after. I don't recall the DoJ formally being directed/asked to begin an actual investigation or inquiry , although the claim was constantly reused to attack and score points politically and energise his voter base. If the DoJ was at any stage asked to look into it, it's pretty clear by now that they have no interest in taking it further either. Nor do I recall him objecting, or railing against DoJ betrayals, trying to fire anyone in DoJ, or significant action being instigated to force them to investigate/prosecute, for example (as he did with other blocked pledges/issues that mattered to him, such as "Muslim country visitors", Muller inquiry, and the border wall). It really seems as if it's just a rallying cry, of no real interest to him now he has beaten her long ago, but useful to energise and counterattack. But what about Trump's supporters ? They can see these things too. They must have anticipated her arrest and likely trial after such a build-up. They can see she is unarrested. They can see he hasn't made, and never did make, any real effort to get her arrested. They can see he stopped really showing he cared about whether she was arrested long ago (if he ever cared other than as a means to win the election) and that he has no interest whatsoever in having her arrested now or in future. They can see that she is, in effect, already broken as a political contender, and is being left alone in peace, as an individual. I can think of many things that, if I were a Trump supporter, I might chant. But a broken prominent campaign matter that he's made clear he bailed on directly after winning, and hasn't taken interest in pursuing in the years since? Why does that have any power, in 2019? I would feel that was a memory of betrayal rather that a positive attribute, and prefer to let it slide from memory, maybe chant something related to an area where he did visibly fight for what I'd voted and care about. So why are his supporters adopting that as a "lead" chant at rallies, and not chanting something else - anything else - to avoid focus on such a visibly broken promise from his past election that is fairly clearly, gone nowhere, going nowhere now, apparently was never seriously intended to go anywhere once it got him elected, and virtually certainly is going nowhere in future even if re-elected? | Two Minutes Hate People loved chanting "lock her up". So why should they stop? In some sense, that's why no effort has been made - actually locking up Clinton, or trying to, would detract from the purity of hating her and everything she represents. But what about Trump's supporters? They can see these things too I put it to you that they can't, don't or won't. They're watching a different set of news channels, pundits, and talk radio to you. They're not interested in having their prejudices unconfirmed. To substantiate that, consider this quote from the Atlantic : Most Americans do not live in a totalizing bubble. They regularly encounter people of different races, ideologies, and religions. For the most part, they view these interactions as positive, or at least neutral. Yet according to a new study by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and The Atlantic , a significant minority of Americans do not live this way. They seldom or never meet people of another race. They dislike interacting with people who don’t share their political beliefs. And when they imagine the life they want for their children, they prize sameness, not difference. Education and geography seemed to make a big difference in how people think about these issues, and in some cases, so did age. That's how the culture war operates. It's entirely symbolic. People who have bought into it fundamentally aren't interested in the underlying messy reality. After all, Clinton hasn't done anything personally to them. She hasn't even been responsible for any particular policy the hatred rallies around. What they hate is what Clinton represents . That's why they don't care about "outcomes". Offending liberals is the desired outcome. | {
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42,802 | There appears to be a line of argument used by a vocal minority that children should not be educated about homosexuality (and, I suppose, non-binary gender identities) because the proposals are to "promote that lifestyle" (or words to that effect). The people using this line of argument are often overtly religious, usually Christian or Muslim. It seems fairly uncontroversial to me to inform children of the existence of people who fall in love with other people of the same sex, and that these people are no less deserving of the rights everyone else enjoys. But this does not sound like "promotion." Is anyone advocating the promotion of homosexuality or non-binary gender roles in UK schools? Edit: This question is not opinion-based because, via contrast with "inform", it implies the definition of promotion for the purposes of this discussion. To clarify: here "promotion" is used in the sell/advocate sense. | It seems this issue came to media attention with Parkfield primary school in Birmingham in March 2019 . However, similar disputes in Birmingham schools do precede this kerfuffle. The school's leadership had started a 'No Outsiders' class. The point of this class was to teach children to be tolerant of people from different races, genders, or sexualities. This initiative failed completely when Muslim parents removed 600 children from classes for a day. This comes after 400 predominantly Muslim parents signed a petition in January demanding the lessons be discontinued. The school's regulator, Ofsted, then stated that Parkfield had an "outstanding" record of "tolerance, acceptance and mutual respect". Direct quotation from the 14th March article in The Guardian: Andrew Moffat, who was awarded an MBE for his work in equality
education, said he was threatened and targeted via a leaflet campaign
after the school piloted the No Outsiders programme. Its ethos is to
promote LGBT equality and challenge homophobia in primary schools. Moffat, who has been shortlisted for a world’s best teacher award,
resigned from another primary school in Birmingham, Chilwell Croft
academy, after a similar dispute. He is also the author of Challenging
Homophobia in Primary Schools, a teaching document. At one of the Parkfield protests, parents held signs that read “say no
to promoting of homosexuality and LGBT ways of life to our children”,
“stop exploiting children’s innocence” and “education not
indoctrination”. The evidence suggests that Parkfield attempted classes which challenged prejudices against race, gender, and the LGBT community. These classes were rejected by Muslim parents on the grounds that this was equivalent to teaching their children to be LGBT. The government's schools regulator however sided with the school's leadership and concluded the school had a good record of trying to deal with prejudice. Parkfield's Head, Hazel Pulley, has said the following on the issue : It's really upsetting for our staff, some of them are becoming ill,
some of them really don't want to come to school. Some say they've
been shaking. Losing weight, not wanting to eat food at all. And the
reason why is because they're met, especially the teachers of young
children, with parents accusing them of things that are just not
happening. For example, the parents of young children are saying "But you're
teaching them certain sexual activity, which we don't agree with."
Well we don't, we certainly don't do that. Or we're using clay models
or something to show children something of a sexual nature, we most
certainly do not do that. There's a real concern about the myths that
are out there, that we might be using, in assembly, pictures of our
partners or conversations with children and those things are really
not happening. ...I think it's very clear, from school that we would never ever
discuss sexual activity with very young children. We don't know whether this is evidence of a deliberate smear campaign by parents, or just a case of mass hysteria due to ignorance or prejudice. Given Ofsted approval, it seems unlikely that such allegations about explicit sexual content are true. The Parkfield Parent's Community Group published a statement on the 23rd February 2019. Their main concerns were that these lessons began without parental consultation, and that they were in effect teaching children sex; a claim which appears incorrect. The policy of the school is disproportionate, morally unacceptable and
violates the democratic rights of parents to have children educated in
consistency with their own beliefs and philosophical convictions. One 4-year-old Parkfield child came home and said that her teacher had
said “We can be a boy or a girl” and “wear boy’s clothes or girl’s
clothes”. Another one told her mother that she learnt “boys can marry
boys and girls can marry girls.” These are statements of legal fact. The parent's group statement affirms the right of individuals under the Equality Act to self-expression and protection from discrimination, however the distinction between education of the legal fact and "promotion" i.e. advocacy is blurred. There are claims of specific incidents which are regarded as crossing a red line. Specifically, the claim that someone can be a Muslim and gay, and that children were asked to write "being gay is OK". The statement does have a specific definition of promotion: Introduction to the book: “What we now need to be teaching is that
homophobia once existed but we don’t have it in our school today, and
that to be a person who is gay or lesbian or transgender or bi-sexual
is normal, acceptable and OK . Children need to be learning that they
may identify or may not identify as LGBT as they grow up, and that
whoever they grow into as an adult is also perfectly normal and
acceptable.” (No outsiders in our school – page 2) (italics added,
this is a promotion of a homosexual lifestyle). In this case there seems to be ambiguity on the question of promotion, as the parent's group themselves affirm the rights of individuals under the Equality Act. So this definition seems to leave more questions than answers. EDIT: To clarify a broader cultural and legal context on the topic of toleration, as it appears this is not understood. In the United Kingdom it is illegal to discriminate against someone because of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation. British society's toleration is rooted in the bloody turmoil of the reformation, in which Catholics and Protestants butchered each other because they sincerely believed the other side were evil agents of the anti-Christ, and failure to do so would put their immortal souls in peril. In 1673 the Test Act was introduced, requiring that anyone in the civil service must take communion in the Church of England. The first progressive legislation was the Toleration Act 1688 , allowing Nonconformist Protestants the right to assemble and worship. However, nonconformists had to wait until the Sacramental Test Act 1828 before they could legally take public office. Discrimination against Catholics was repealed in 1829 with the Roman Catholic Relief Act . Toleration was gradually extended to other groups. In 1967 the Sexual Offences Act decriminalised consenting relationships between adult men, the Race Relations Act 1968 ended discrimination in employment and housing, and the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 forbade discrimination by sex or marital status. In 1988 the Local Government Act's Section 28 forbade local government from promoting homosexuality. This was repealed by 2003's Local Government Act , and later sexual orientation became part of the Equality Act 2010. Toleration however is not afforded to groups believing in the elimination of sections of society. Groups espousing Nazi or Islamist ideology are banned and their members jailed, and similarly groups dedicated to political violence are forbidden (Northern Irish terrorism: IRA, UVF, etc). Schools are within their rights to educate children on the cultural and legal reality of their country. This is especially important given the unfortunate reality of widespread prejudice. Official records show on average 100,000 racist hate crimes a year in England and Wales. Hate crimes against gay and lesbian people have doubled during 2013-2018 to around 12,000 incidents, while hate crimes against transgender people have trebled. | {
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42,841 | Why does the U.S. tolerate foreign influence from Saudi Arabia and Israel on its domestic policies while not tolerating that from China or Russia? Is there a reason for this? AIPAC is known to be one of the biggest lobbying groups, yet we don't seem to care too much about the influence Israel has on U.S. domestic policies. But when there's a hint of involvement from Russia or China, people scream murder. Is there a reason for this? | AIPAC is not a foreign influence. It is a United States organization run by US citizens. When you hear complaints about Russia and China, they tend to be about actions that are believed to involve the governments of those countries. For example, the claim is that the Russian government spear-phished John Podesta to get his emails. Or that a Chinese company that is linked to the Chinese government put backdoors in their mobile phones. Or that a Chinese spy was embedded in the staff of a US Senator . I suppose it is possible that AIPAC is secretly run by Israeli spies, but it seems far simpler to regard it as simply an organization of people who are US citizens with a similar ethnic background to people in Israel. That would be sufficient to explain its actions. | {
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42,878 | In his 1870 work "No Treason" - Lysander Spooner writes: “But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist.” During the drafting of the constitution, did any of the contributors anticipate the fact that the document might not prevent voters and/or politicians from ignoring, reinterpreting, or transforming it drastically? Spooner was writing from the perspective of anarchism, and his critique can be applied to any government that claims to be "limited" or "self-limiting". I've read a good portion of The Federalist Papers, but have not encountered this position there, or in anything else I've read. Any recommended reading is appreciated. | Benjamin Franklin seems to have anticipated Spooner's argument. When asked what he and his associates had created, Franklin replied, A republic, madam, if you can keep it. The point being that in the final analysis, a constitution (or any law) is just a piece of paper, entirely dependent on the government's willingness to obey its own laws, and the willingness of the people to do something if the government is not willing. Quoted here , referring to Papers of Dr. James McHenry on the Federal Convention of 1787,
The American Historical Review, Vol. 11, No. 3 (Apr., 1906) , p 618. | {
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42,890 | If prospective United Kingdom MPs must swear allegiance to the monarch, and if MPs are needed to change laws, how might the UK become a republic, assuming sufficient public support? | Another revolution, obviously. They did that in 1649 . Much more likely, they would politely inform the Queen that the people don't seem to want a Queen any more. If that is really the case, and not just a vocal minority, then after some polite back and forth the Queen would probably step down rather than fighting a civil war which she is unlikely to win. While many Brits will be true to their oath, consider the difference between the individual monarch, the Crown , and the Crown-in-Parliament (which is a polite way of pretending that the monarch is still involved in legislation). There is the quip what when it comes to dusty, centuries-old rights and prerogatives, the British monarch gets at most one try at overriding the elected government. | {
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42,951 | Why hasn't the U.S. government paid war reparations to any country it attacked? According to Wikipedia, the U.S. has never paid any war reparations to members of other countries. It has only paid damage to its Japanese citizens for interning them and unlawfully seizing their assets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_reparations#United_States Considering other countries have paid reparations to countries they attacked, why hasn't the U.S. ever paid any reparations to a country or people from a different country? | The answer is right in the Wikipedia page you cited (emphasis added): War reparations are compensation payments made after a war by the vanquished to the victors. The United States has not been vanquished in a war, so it has not been in a situation where it would make a payment to a victor of a war. Being “vanquished” implies not merely “losing” a war, but being defeated so totally that that the victor can impose their will on the loser with impunity. Although the United States has “lost” wars, it has not been “vanquished” like any of the countries listed on that page. | {
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42,966 | As background, some answers of Why run for president if you have no chance to be elected? are relevant, so I will concentrate on the differences. There are currently more than 20 candidates for the Democratic presidential primary. Who will end up on top is not yet clear, multiple candidates currently on top in polls have realistic chances to win. But multiple candidates on the bottom have no realistic chance, as far as I can see. I'm German, living in Germany, but very well informed about politics. I never lived for an extended time in the US, so it is possible that I missed something basic - but explaining that could be an answer. I think having more candidates of a party competing has drawbacks for the party. It divides attention between candidates, so the realistic candidates lose media coverage and generally part of the possibility to make them basically known at all by voters spending little time and attention on politics. So it even reduces the number of voters that can make a rational choice between candidates. Candidates who quit their own candidacy can also support one or more of the realistic candidates, influencing the result and increase the probability of the own party to win. Basically, it uses a substantial part of resources for letting the own party win. Naively, these resources seem wasted to me. I assume there are advantages of not reducing the number of candidates. That can be in two distinct areas: Advantages for the unrealistic candidate personally that are unrelated to the election. And increasing the odds that the own party wins. For the party I see no obvious positive effects, personal benefits exists. A candidate can basically start a candidacy for a later election by starting to get known in the context. The candidate would use party resources for personal gain. That's not a problem in itself, but it happens in an extremely public way, which makes the whole party very aware of it. An answer could be that all current candidates are potential winner. That is theoretical the case, because major events can completely change what is most relevant for voters. I think that would happen only in the case of major - typically catastrophic events. Possible events would be things like outbreak of a significant local war, and realistic but improbable natural disasters like super volcano eruptions or major asteroid impact. Are there other reasons why all candidates can still realistically win? Are there other advantages of the current handling of it? | Most of them are just trying to gain national exposure and recognition. A highly-charged primary cycle is a perfect way to do it. Probably, one of the losing candidates will be offered the Vice-President nomination. Also, some of the other candidates may be offered Cabinet positions. Some other candidates will gain enourmous amounts of local recognition which can be used for future (and possibly even 2020 depending on when they drop out) Senate runs. Candidates like Steve Bullock, Pete Buttigieg, Beto O'Rourke, John Hickenlooper are good examples of this. | {
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42,977 | California has a system where two candidates, chosen in a nonpartisan primary, are on the ballot in each congressional or statewide race. It's sometimes called a jungle primary. This makes it so that some elections have two candidates from the same party; in 2016 seven congressional districts had two Democrats running against each other. The Senate race also had two Democrats. It seems really strange to make there be a chance of limiting the options for voters to one party. What are the arguments in favor of this system? | It would seem a reasonable assumption that the Democratic-controlled California legislature would have implemented this system in order to help elect more Democrats. There are few things more consistent than politicians favoring changes that benefit their own political interests. However, both in California and Washington, a top-two system was put in place not by a vote of the legislature but by an initiative. It was, in fact, opposed by the political parties, major and minor . In Washington, the Republican, Democratic, and Libertarian parties went so far as to attempt to use legal action to prevent the system from coming into force. In California the groups favoring the top-two system included the Chambers of Commerce and Republican ex-Governors, suggesting that they saw it as in the Republican's interest. As such, it is not clear that the system was designed to favor Democratic interests. Under the standard closed primary, many elections are effectively decided at the primary level. The general election is a foregone conclusion. As a consequence, everyone belonging to the minority party has no effective say in who is elected. They cannot influence the nominee of the majority party and their vote is largely ceremonial in the general election. Under top-two they do have a vote in the nomination process and in the general election can choose the lesser of two evils. Under the standard closed primary, the winner is not necessarily the preferred candidate of the majority of the electorate. Consider the choice of four candidates: A Democratic Socialist 39% A Centrist Democrat 26% A Republican 20% A Libertarian Republican 15% Results: Under a standard primary system, the Democratic Socialist wins the Democratic nomination, and then the general election, assuming party loyalty holds. Under the top-two system, the two Democratic candidates proceed to the general election, but the Centrist candidate wins because if he gets the support of the two republican candidates' supporters. | {
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42,987 | In the US, Indian tribes with official recognition from the federal government are given sovereignty and the right to self-governance. They are not subject to state laws in the state their reservation is in. Are these Indian tribal governments subject to the Bill of Rights of the Constitution? Can an Indian tribe deny the right to bear arms, the right to a trial, the right against search and seizure, the right to due process, etc? Also, are other Constitutional amendments applicable to the tribes? For example the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote, or the 26th amendment giving 18-year-olds the right to vote. | It would seem a reasonable assumption that the Democratic-controlled California legislature would have implemented this system in order to help elect more Democrats. There are few things more consistent than politicians favoring changes that benefit their own political interests. However, both in California and Washington, a top-two system was put in place not by a vote of the legislature but by an initiative. It was, in fact, opposed by the political parties, major and minor . In Washington, the Republican, Democratic, and Libertarian parties went so far as to attempt to use legal action to prevent the system from coming into force. In California the groups favoring the top-two system included the Chambers of Commerce and Republican ex-Governors, suggesting that they saw it as in the Republican's interest. As such, it is not clear that the system was designed to favor Democratic interests. Under the standard closed primary, many elections are effectively decided at the primary level. The general election is a foregone conclusion. As a consequence, everyone belonging to the minority party has no effective say in who is elected. They cannot influence the nominee of the majority party and their vote is largely ceremonial in the general election. Under top-two they do have a vote in the nomination process and in the general election can choose the lesser of two evils. Under the standard closed primary, the winner is not necessarily the preferred candidate of the majority of the electorate. Consider the choice of four candidates: A Democratic Socialist 39% A Centrist Democrat 26% A Republican 20% A Libertarian Republican 15% Results: Under a standard primary system, the Democratic Socialist wins the Democratic nomination, and then the general election, assuming party loyalty holds. Under the top-two system, the two Democratic candidates proceed to the general election, but the Centrist candidate wins because if he gets the support of the two republican candidates' supporters. | {
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43,149 | Looking at Wikipedia’s page on the 2016 election , I see that Clinton got 90.48% of DC’s vote; Trump only got 4.07%. This is by far the most any candidate got in any state; behind it is it Nebraska’s 3rd congressional district with 73.92% for Trump. Why is D.C. so Democratic? | Because it's just one (East Coast) city. When it comes to congressional districts, Nebraska's third congressional district isn't second in terms of the ratio of votes for a single candidate. DC isn't even first. Several districts in New York , for instance, went overwhelmingly for Clinton. She got a full 92% in the 13th district and 94% in the 15th. When we look at this, it's clear what's going on.
Washington D.C. can't really be compared with any state. It's quite small, and due to its size is much more urban than any of the 50 states. In essence, it's a city. Its surface area is 68 square miles, only three times that of Manhattan.
This is important, because Republicans have more support in rural areas, and Democrats have more support in urban areas. Congressional districts are often drawn to include both rural and urban areas, which means that these tendencies balance out a bit. But if your district is one city, it's likely to be more Democratic. And of course, most cities on the East Coast of the United States lean Democratic. So in essence, DC's voting pattern isn't unusual if we compare it to the proper metric, districts in other East Coast cities . As to why cities tend to be liberal, it's a combination of socioeconomic, cultural, and racial and ethnic factors, as outlined here. The occupations that most benefit from liberal policies, such as high social safety net spending, are concentrated in urban areas; those that most benefit from conservative policies are concentrated in rural areas. White voters are more likely to be conservative, and are concentrated in rural areas; African-American and Latino voters, as well as immigrants are more likely to be liberal and are concentrated in urban areas; moreover, exposure to people from different groups is correlated with greater acceptance of those groups, so even white voters in ethnically diverse cities are likely to be more supportive of liberal policies in that regard. College-educated voters are more likely to be liberal, and they are concentrated in urban areas. And so forth. | {
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43,160 | In the following NY Times article I noticed that the photo of a large number of people protesting included a fair number of black-and-white Puerto Rican flags as well as a larger number of red, white & blue flags: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/22/us/puerto-rico-protests-updates.html (small snippet of the original photo just to highlight the flags I'm referring to) Is there any particular significance to the B&W version? | It was used in 2016 as a symbol of protesting the US’s passing of PROMESA, a law making a board control parts of the island’s economy and having unpopular measures such as decreasing the minimum wage by three dollars. A group painted over a famous mural of the flag with black: After this, it became used all over to protest budget cuts and the weakening of Puerto Rico’s autonomy. Part of a letter from the people who painted the door (emphasis mine): The laws, the governors and the courts, up to this moment, have not served in the interests of the people. To replace these colors with black (the absence of light) creates new readings. Ours is a proposal of RESISTANCE, not to be thought of as pessimist. On the contrary, it speaks about the death of these powers just as we know them, but hope is still present in the white stripes that symbolize individual liberty and its capacity to claim and defend their rights. May this act serve as an invitation to reflect and to take action upon the collapse of the educational and health systems, the privatization and destruction of our natural resources, our colonial status, the outrage against our future workforce, the payment of an illegitimate debt, the imposition of a non-democratic government, the strangulation of cultural efforts among other things. This act is the evidence that there’s an artistic community that is not willing to give up, that will stand up and fight against the impositions of an absolutist government and its policies of austerity; their most recent example: the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA). The full letter (scroll down for English Source: Mother Jones . Image source . | {
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43,167 | The incidence happened in Hong Kong on 21st Jul 2019 Video footage showed dozens of men, mostly in masks, storming a mass transit station in Yuen Long late on Sunday, chasing passengers and beating them with sticks. Among those hurt in the attack were demonstrators returning from a large anti-government rally, as well as a pregnant woman and a woman holding a child ... Source: 'Where were the police?' Hong Kong outcry after masked thugs launch attack Hong Kong political scientist Simon Shen said it
was a terrorist attack ( source ). Is it a terrorist attack and why? | There is no single definition of terrorism that everyone agrees to. However, Involve violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that violate [... the] law;
Appear to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; ... Is used in the USA. (Title 18, section 2331) So was it violent? Yes. Was it criminal? Yes, I don't see any claim that this was a police action, nor was it self-defence. Was it intended to intimidate? Probably. They targeted a political group. It seems reasonable that the intention was to discourage others in the civillian population from joining this kind of group for fear of being attacked. Was it terrorism by this definition? It seems likely to be terrorism. | {
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43,211 | 53 countries, all of them former British colonies except for two, are in the Commonwealth. Why are countries such as India, which had a major protest movement to gain independence from Imperialist Britain, still in the Commonwealth? What is the benefit of staying in this organization? This is much broader than the question it was flagged as a duplicate of. | One of the perks of membership in the Commonwealth is that new heads of government get to meet the monarch of the United Kingdom (Queen Elizabeth II, as of 2019). Membership in the Commonwealth provides a very weak guarantee against coups d'etat . If your military unlawfully forces your government out of power, you can appeal to the last remnants of British overlordship. If your appeal is successful, the new government will be forced to either resign or have its membership in the Commonwealth suspended . Membership in the Commonwealth advertises to potential investors that: This is a country where English speakers are at least somewhat welcome. This is a country that respects English legal traditions. This country's claimed level of sovereignty is recognized by 52 other countries. This country is less inclined to have coups d'etat than certain other, unnamed, countries. | {
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43,219 | In my mind, only people that are already excited about the candidate would go. This means the attendees are mostly voting for the candidate anyway. Obviously this is not the whole story, rallies must be beneficial or candidates wouldn't do them. So how do rallies gain candidates votes? | Campaign rallies generate media attention. The media attention can gain votes for the candidate. Another issue is that campaigns don't necessarily need to gain supporters from the rallies. If the rally makes existing supporters more likely to vote, that also helps. You'll hear this referred to as turning out the base. Campaign rallies also might increase donations, which are also valuable to candidates. Or they might increase volunteers, which are valuable to campaigns. Or they might encourage attendees to go out and talk about the candidate. That word of mouth advertising can be more effective than other forms of advertising. | {
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43,233 | Most people in the US do not identify themselves as either Republican or Democrat (see Gallup data). There seems to be four possible explanations. These independent-leaning Americans prefer more far-right policies. But this seems unlikely, since the Constitution Party gets a microscopic amount of votes compared to the GOP. These independent-leaning Americans prefer more far-left policies. This too seems unlikely, given the amount of votes won by the Green Party. Most Americans are not fond of the current left/right political spectrum. Rather they'd prefer a completely radical approach to the economical and political system of the land. This seems more likely than the others, but still dubious, given that most Americans probably have little clue of the feasibility of the proposed solutions. Either way, the Libertarian Party and the Party for Socialism and Liberation (capitalists and communists, respectively) don't get all that many votes. Most Americans are somewhere in the middle of the left/right political spectrum and do not feel represented by either of the two major parties as the Republicans can tend to be far too right and the Democrats can tend to be far too left. This seems like the most likely explanation, or at least the most simple. Given that, why are there so few serious attempts at creating a third mass-appeal party that is more central on the political spectrum? The other 3 explanations above already have their dedicated parties: Constitution Party, Green Party, Libertarian Party, etc... but there doesn't seem to be any serious attempts at creating a central party? Decades ago, perhaps, such a party would have been unnecessary, since it would have overlapped with the GOP and the Democratic Party. But now that those parties seem to have become more extreme and the public seems to have become more independent-leaning than ever, surely such a new party would have a lot of potential? | Because the two main parties absorb emergent third parties Any time any third party starts to get serious traction in the United States, it eventually will find one of the major parties shifting its platform to absorb those voters into its coalition. Unlike most of the other parties in America, the Democrats and the Republicans are both in the business of winning elections . Allowing a third party to just show up someplace would be political malpractice of the highest order. The smart thing to do is to go straight to those voters and say "I know the New Center Party is offering you X, we can give you X also, and we have the additional benefit of being a real governing party that can actually make that happen." So, that's typically what happens. Ever heard of the Reform Party ? It was founded by Ross Perot , who got 18.6% of the popular vote for President in 1992, and 8.1% of the popular vote in 1996. It tried to be a centrist alternative to the two other parties, and it may have cost George H. W. Bush re-election (who, it should be noted, committed political malpractice of the highest order by promising no new taxes, and then passing new taxes, thereby making a lot of his voters angry). You may have heard of some of their more famous Presidential candidates: Pat Buchanan and Donald Trump . Those two guys are Republicans now, and at the same time, what the Republican Party is about changed quite a bit, and is still in the process of changing. The Reform Party was in favor of reducing immigration; before Donald Trump, many Republican politicians wanted to increase legal immigration through comprehensive immigration reform. The Reform Party was opposed to this thing called the North American Free Trade Agreement; before Trump, many Republican politicians were in favor of free trade agreements as part of a commitment to free market economics. The GOP saw in 1992 that there was 18.6% of the voters in the country who wanted an alternative to the other parties that they could pick up, so they expanded their tent to try to pick them up; 24 years later all of those voters who still think that way are Republican voters for Donald Trump. This is just one worked example; other historical examples are the Progressive Party at the turn of the century, and anything that could have become a successful US Communist party. Why didn't this happen with the Libertarian Party or the Green Party or any of those other parties you mentioned? Simple; they are not very popular, in part because most of the people who might find them ideologically pleasing are probably already voting for Republicans or Democrats just to get their achievable policy goals accomplished. So, they continue as vanity projects for rich donors and that stubborn guy who just can't let anyone be wrong on the Internet. Also, not "identifying with" a party doesn't mean people will not vote for it Just because most people don't want to identify themselves as Republicans or Democrats, doesn't mean that they actually aren't willing to vote for them. It is a well known social science phenomena that most people who call themselves independents are actually moderate partisans. That is, they may say they're independent, but that doesn't mean they're as ready to jump ship for a center third party. | {
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43,271 | In Canada, having fluency in English and French is mandatory (In some important government jobs like prime minister). This is considering that the group of French people in Canada is just about 20% of the population and a report says that- In the 2011 Census, 5.8 million people nationwide reported being able to conduct a conversation in both English and French, which corresponds to a bilingualism rate of 17.5%. And the majority of bilingual people are from the single French-speaking province, Quebec, where 42% of the population is bilingual. And part of the aforementioned report is that- Between 2001 and 2011, the lack of growth in bilingualism outside Quebec occurred as the non‑Francophone immigrant population was growing and the proportion of students in French-as-a-second-language (FSL) programs was shrinking. From both these excerpts it is said that 17.5% or only (roughly) one in five Canadians are eligible for being prime minister or governor-general and the rest 82.5% of the populace is getting more disinterested in learning a secondary French or English language. Also to mention is the immigrants who come from France and other Francophone nations from Asia (like some parts of Vietnam and India) or Africa also, by the most part speak English. But for immigrants coming from, say India, then they would have to be burdened by learning French to attain those (important and high-profile) government jobs (considering that Indians are also fluent in their native language and English). | Canada is an officially bilingual country, and federal government business can be conducted in either English or French. The government wants to preserve the bilingual nature of the country, and is well aware that, if it drops the requirement for French, then English will dominate even more than it already does. It is precisely because most people speak English as a first or second language, and fewer people speak French that the government has these rules. It is because the number of people taking French as a second language is dropping that the govenment wants to push against this trend by requiring French for government positions. If you don't like this, then don't work for the Canadian federal government. The question of India is irrelevant to Canada. If Indians don't learn French, that is a matter for India. The language policies of Canada are not based on what is convenient for India. | {
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43,275 | If President Donald Trump were impeached and convicted, and Mike Pence became president, how long would his term be? Would it be for 4 years or would there still be a 2020 election? | There would still be a 2020 election If a President is impeached and removed from office, or stops being the President for any other reason, the Vice President serves the remainder of that President's term, according to the 25th Amendment to the Constitution . The 25th Amendment has been tested under Richard Nixon. Although he was not impeached, Richard Nixon resigned amid the Watergate scandal, and his Vice President Gerald Ford became the President in 1974. Gerald Ford served out the remainder of Nixon's second term, and ran for President in 1976 , losing to Jimmy Carter. | {
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43,286 | Can someone elaborate on the reason why the House of Representatives needed to pass a resolution to condemn Trump's tweets? Many people in government have criticized Trump's tweets before, but I don't recall anyone passing a resolution to condemn it. For example, when Trump attacked Elijah Cummings, Elizabeth Warren quickly condemned his tweets: It is disgusting. This president brings shame to himself and to the
White House and Kamala Harris responded by saying: I am proud our campaign headquarters is in Rep. Elijah Cummings'
district. Baltimore has become home to my team and it's disgraceful
the president has chosen to start his morning disparaging this great
American city. I found this page, but it talks about the consequences of condemning Trump's tweets, with the conclusion that: Any way it goes, the vote will make Trump and/or the Republicans look
bad. (To critics, anyway; I assume things could look good to the
target audience in the 3rd scenario.) Is there a more official reason other than to make Republicans looks bad? Is it to have it on "record" in case Trump backtracks and deletes his tweet? | why the House of Representatives needed to pass a resolution to condemn Trump's tweets? It did not need to. It wanted 1 to. Many people in government have criticized Trump's tweets before [...]. For example, [...] Elizabeth Warren quickly condemned his tweets A single representative by him/herself has no power. All of their power is to vote to get resolutions passed by the House. Besides them, their opinions may have some more weight than mine or yours (more people listening to them, the media reproducing them) but legally they do carry the same weight (none). Is there a more official reason other than to make Republicans looks bad The official reason is to condemn Trump's tweets. But it also serves some unofficial reasons: It shows the opinion of the House as a whole instead of that of individual members. It shows that the House is unhappy with Trump. Since Trump needs its support to pass legislation, it can be a sign that the House will not be collaborative unless Trump changes his ways. It forces the Republicans to take a stance. When Trump made an infamous tweet and a Democratic representative condemned it, the Republicans could just avoid commenting on it. The resolution forces Republicans to define themselves, either they support the resolution (risking alienating the more staunch Trump supporters) or they oppose it (risking alienating the Republican voters who do not support Trump). 1 To be clear, some representatives wanted to and some did not want to. But since the majority of them chose to support the measure, the end result is that the House passed the resolution. From now on, when I talk about the House I am actually meaning "the majority of the house". | {
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43,310 | As far as I could tell, the Brexit issue boils down to three core points for the UK: The UK no longer has to follow any EU regulations. The border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland remains without customs/border checks etc. There will be no kind of "customs/border-like-checks" between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. Given that the EU common market (among other things) enables forgoing border/customs checks by ensuring all members follow the same standards (and the UK does NOT want to be bound by those standards), I have a hard time imagining how those three points are supposed to achieved at once. Otherwise, if e.g. pineapples were to be made illegal in the EU but not the UK (or vice versa) trucks full of pineapples would be able to (freely) move from the UK to the EU (or back) without being detected (since there are no border checks) – and the side that made pineapples illegal probably doesn't want that. So, let's just pretend the UK would be able to convince the EU of its ideal version of the Brexit deal (excluding the EU dissolving or similar nonsense) – what would it look like? What solution did the UK provide which the EU was unwilling to accept? | The "optimal" solution for Brexiteers is:- The UK does not have to follow any EU rules. The UK gets to decide rules for imports. UK industry gets to export to the EU freely in spite of those goods not being produced to the same rules as set by the EU. The UK can stop people entering freely from the EU. People from Ireland can enter Northern Ireland freely. Goods produced in Ireland and Northern Ireland can cross the border freely. Some of this can be fudged in various ways. For example, a "frictionless border" for Northern Ireland can be faked with electronic tags and registrations, which could be relatively frictionless at the point of travel, but would add administrative and financial friction. The clear problem though is that this "optimal" solution is only optimal for the UK, and is massively biased against the EU. The UK is a small nation with no key domestic industrial, mineral, financial or military resources, which puts it in a poor negotiating position against a much larger trading bloc. Johnson's team are in the process of discovering this, and the media are in the process of preparing the country for a no-deal Brexit because Johnson's Brexiteers are unprepared to do a deal which reflects the compromises a small, less-powerful nation has to make in the face of larger competitors. | {
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43,398 | Norway is an EEA/EFTA member and is not in the EU. The first Google hit for "is Norway in the Single Market?" indicates it is in the Single Market. But I thought Norway was not in the Single Market, but in EEA/EFTA, which has its own treaty that replicates much of the Single Market legislation, delivering an effect that is much like being inside the SM, but technically is not. Is Norway in the Single Market? | Norway is in the Single Market for all practical intents . If you really want to quibble and grasp at straws, Norway is not technically in the European Single Market . It has access to and participates in the Single Market on the basis of the EEA , which basically grants reciprocal access to Norway's and the EU's respective markets. The terms for this access are, basically, to apply everything that applies in the European Single Market: the four fundamental freedoms of movement, most EU laws of importance (exceptions for the Common Agricultural Policy or the Common Fisheries Policy, as well as the Customs Union), paying contributions to the EU, yada yada. | {
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43,445 | One argument against gun control is: Gun control only hurts law-abiding citizens. A person intent on doing harm will simply just acquire it illegally. And so my question is, how good is this argument? That is to say, how easy is it to acquire guns illegally in the United States? By ease, I am thinking of several factors: Chances of getting caught? Expensiveness of the gun? The type of the gun? Can you get assault rifles? Do normal everyday people have access to the black market? Is it easy to find? Wouldn't the usual characteristics of a mass shooter (young and unlikely to be rich or particularly smart) make it harder to acquire a gun illegally? | That's a somewhat specious argument, because the ability to illegally obtain weapons is made easier by lax gun laws, and the guns that make it to the illegal market, by and large, start out as firearms that are legally sourced from the manufacturer. The patchwork of gun laws means that states with the least restrictive laws for purchasing guns become the source of weapons for crimes in states with more restrictive laws. Ironically, the less rational gun rights advocates obliquely reference this in an often-heard argument that high gun crime rates in restrictive areas is proof that gun regulation simply doesn't work, as opposed to the argument that more uniform restrictions are needed. More uniform laws that set the bar at the more restrictive level are universally opposed by politically active gun advocates. At the state level, more guns typically means more crime and more death, researchers have consistently found. So some states have enacted stricter laws to limit gun purchases and to keep firearms from falling into the wrong hands. But these efforts can be undermined by the free flow of guns across state borders, some of it legal, some of it not. Data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms underscores this point: In 2014, ATF traced the source of over 170,000 guns used in crimes in the U.S. And well over a quarter of them -- 28 percent -- were used to commit crimes in a state other than the one they were purchased in. The map below shows which states these border-crossing crime guns came from. Washington Post: Where guns used in crimes come from In addition to this initially legal purchase, but then circumvention of stricter gun laws, you also have the illegal guns that are legally purchased, and then stolen from households. Laws that try to impose restrictions and enforcement on how firearms are secured in the home are also opposed. More than half a million firearms are stolen each year in the United States and more than half of stolen firearms are handguns, many of which are subsequently sold illegally. {Philip J. Cook & James A. Leitzel, “Smart” Guns: A Technological Fix for Regulating the Secondary Market 7, Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy, Duke University, Working Paper Series SAN01-10 (July 2001)} Giffords Law Center To Prevent Gun Violence: Statistics on Gun Trafficking & Private Sales In addition to that, you have measures that have been passed that make it more difficult for police, the FBI and the ATF to enforce the laws that are on the books. The ATF is not allowed to maintain a computer database of gun transactions. They are restricted from how often they can inspect any dealer, which does not allow them to focus on problem dealers, which are involved in a hugely disproportionate number of guns winding up in the wrong hands. There are also massive, intentional loopholes in existing laws like ones that allow circumvention of background checks at gun shows for private sales. For example, under current laws the bureau is prohibited from creating a federal registry of gun transactions. So while detectives on television tap a serial number into a computer and instantly identify the buyer of a firearm, the reality could not be more different. NY Times: Legal Curbs Said to Hamper A.T.F. in Gun Inquiries And, finally, the argument that we should not have laws because only the law-abiding will comply with them is a patently absurd standard, since that is true for each and every law ever created, no matter how correct and effective, or how pointless and poor-thought. | {
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43,452 | Many people on the right who are in favor of the right to own guns do so based on reasons such as safety . For example, in the wake of pretty much any mass shooting, you will have people come out and say that the solution is to equip even more people with guns so that they can intervene and take out the shooter in such situations. Other examples include simple home security against robbers and what not. But these same people also tend to oppose gun control policies such as competency tests and strict licensing prior to the acquiral of a gun. How is the co-existence of these two sentiments justified? One would think that if the usage of guns is purely a matter of safety, then competency in using those guns would be a high priority. After all, if we want to equip people with guns to protect us from robbers or deranged shooters, we would want to ensure that they are as competent in using those guns as possible. And if a person can't pass a competency or licensing requirement, then perhaps they shouldn't own one. So, what arguments are offered by these people to justify opposing gun competency tests? Note that I am well aware that many people oppose competency tests because safety is not their primary concern. Rather, they just really like guns, and competency tests is a possible barrier that could prevent them from getting more of them, so they oppose it. My question is not about these people, I am speaking solely of people that concede that safety is their primary concern yet they still oppose competency tests. What arguments do they use to justify such a position? | In America gun ownership is a right with enshrined protections from government infringement established in the constitution. Now pause for a moment and consider how you might feel if something you consider to be a right was going to have competency requirements e.g. the vote or water. Going beyond the mindset and considering more practical matters An amount of competency required to ensure the a person could use a gun safely to protect themselves or others (and not put others in more danger) would be hard for most people to achieve. This would require discipline and skill. Thus, tests would likely be hard for most to pass meaning them losing the right. Competency requirement require someone to set out rules determining who is 'competent' and someone to assess people against those rules. In other words someone to assess if you are fit to be entitled to something that is supposed to be a right. These people have control over who can and can't own/bear arms. There has been a history of such assessors using questionable criteria to exclude particular people. Tests require administration from the state/government. The right to bear arms is partly to protect personal liberty from the government/state. Given the above it is highly possible that such requirements would pave the way for strict gun controls and even the banning of bearing/owning arms. Compulsory licencing would make this much easier to implement. The UK went down a similar path of licencing arms then removing a large amount of them. | {
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43,509 | The High Court of Australia has recently ruled in Comcare v. Banerji which was a test case that revealed the limits of the implied freedom of speech in Australia. A public servant, Michaela Banerji, lost her job for her political tweets under an anonymous alias. Public servants are not supposed to express political views. The Guardian explains the justices agreed: that the public sector gag was “reasonably necessary and adequately balanced” given the legitimate purpose of ensuring an apolitical public service. My question is about that last part. What is the legitimate purpose of ensuring an apolitical public service? Why should public servants be gagged from expressing their political views outside of their work hours? (I understand that a government might not like to be criticised, but that's hardly a legitimate purpose.) | This topic is examined at quite some length in Ontario Law Reform Commission, Report on Political Activity, Public Comment and Disclosure by Crown Employees (1986) (cited by Mcmanus v Scott-Charlton which was cited in the judgement of the original case in question, which is how I ended up on it; I mention this lest one think that a Canadian document might be completely irrelevant.) To take a brief an excerpt as possible from that 400+ page document: The components of the traditional doctrine of political neutrality are
fairly clearly established in the literature. The tenets of the
doctrine are as follows: Politics and policy are separated from administration. Thus, politicians make policy decisions; public servants execute these
decisions. Public servants are appointed and promoted on the basis of merit rather than on the basis of party affiliation. Public servants do not engage in partisan political activities. Public servants do not express publicly their personal views on government policies or administration. Public servants provide forthright and objective advice to their political masters in private and in confidence. In return, political
executives protect the anonymity of public servants by publicly
accepting responsibility for departmental decisions. Public servants execute policy decisions loyally and zealously irrespective of the philosophy and programmes of the party in power
and regardless of their personal opinions. As a result, public
servants enjoy security of tenure during good behaviour and
satisfactory performance. The report goes on to discuss the purposes and justifications of each of these at great length, if one wishes to look into it further. A specific discussion of restrictions on public comment (point #4, above) begins near the bottom of page 19 and wraps up by page 22. | {
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43,518 | As a lifelong citizen of the United States, I'm accustomed to hearing that the US is the "Land of the Free" and most patriotic celebrations seem to emphasize freedom as one of the unique qualities of life here. However, all of the American freedoms I'm aware of--freedom of speech, freedom of religion, etc.--seem to be found throughout much of Western civilization. Are there any freedoms that are unique to either the United States or the North American continent? | The Right to Bear Arms is found in only three nations: the USA, Mexico, and Guatemala. While other countries allow their citizens to own firearms, they have no constitutional backing if the governments decide they can no longer allow this. | {
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43,525 | Background The issue of discriminating who you sell to in the United States seems to be premised on the fact that businesses are public accomodations according to this article : Whether you post a sign or not, businesses never have the right to refuse or turn away customers because of their race, gender, age, nationality or religion. In addition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, several states have their own civil rights legislation designed to prevent discrimination. The Americans with Disabilities Act also prohibits discrimination in public accommodations, making it illegal to refuse service to individuals who are disabled or handicapped. Given that a Mixed Economy with a preference toward a free market is the economic system of the United States, from a free market point of view, this seems unnecessary to do. There will always be businesses and choice in the market. Businesses that discriminate will put themselves at a competitive disadvantage due to alienating a certain employer base at an extra cost to the business: Businesses that discriminate based on a host of job-irrelevant characteristics,
including race, ethnicity, gender, age, disability, and sexual orientation and gender
identity put themselves at a competitive disadvantage compared to businesses that
evaluate individuals based solely on their qualifications and capacity to contribute. According to this Free Market point of view, using government enforcement seems to create a control where there does not need to be one. Question Why does the government need to institute a legal policy to prevent selling discrimination? | TL;DR: You question rests in the supposition that, next to the business that refuses to sell to me, there will be another similar business that will be willing to sell to me. That supposition is, to put it mildly, optimistic, and you ignore historical examples of institutionalized/collective racism that disprove it. You take the POV of an individual discriminatory business owner in an overall non-discriminatory environment without taking into account other competence limiting factors. But maybe I live at a small town that is served by two pharmacies, and -since racism is often a social convention- both pharmacy owners forbid me from buying medicines. Maybe I have no car or other transport means 1 to use it to access another town with pharmacies easily enough (in the case that those pharmacies are not owned by racists, too). And of course, being it an small town and my race being a minority 2 , the market would not be big enough to support a third pharmacy 3 to compete with the already established ones. 1 Or, we go back in time enough, simply there were no cars or other ways of transportation enough that would make travelling to the big city an easy activity. 2 And probably not a rich minority. 3 And that ignores possible barriers put forward by a racist mayor/council/public... again, do not think only of individual racism but of a racist community. If my race is 5% of the population and none of the remaining 95% will shop at a pharmacy that sells to me, it would be very difficult for such pharmacy to be profitable. | {
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43,535 | Lifelong citizens of the United States report that they are accustomed to hearing that the US is the "Land of the Free" and most patriotic celebrations seem to emphasize freedom as one of the unique qualities of life there. Another question already asked about freedoms that are unique to the United States, but I am asking for the opposite: are there freedoms that another country has, that the US is missing? Clarification: Is there an activity which is not allowed in (most states of) the USA allowed in at least one other country and people in that other country really do that activity in 2019? (The last point added to ignore ancient laws that technically still hold but are not relevant anymore.) | Yes, definitely I'm limiting this answer to only freedom of something. That is, freedoms where the government or other powerful groups do not interfere, or are prohibited from interfering, with something a citizen does by themselves. I'm not dealing with from negative things, such as freedom from hunger, which is basically the same as a right to be fed. Further, this answer deals with what governments permit citizens to do; as such, said permission might allow individuals or companies to infringe upon people's freedom more broadly: for instance, if kidnapping is legal in a country, the populace has the freedom to kidnap, but the kidnappers are then able to restrict the freedom of movement of their victims unopposed. And of course, just because people are free to do something, does not mean it's a good idea. In fact, some of these freedoms are things that I think definitely should be illegal, but they're freedoms nonetheless. Drugs . In the United States, marijuana is illegal at the federal level and in most states. Drugs such as cocaine are illegal everywhere in the country except under very narrow conditions. Many countries permit drugs that the US does not. Mexico , Colombia , and Peru all permit the use and possession of small amounts of cocaine. I do not distinguish here between decriminalization and legalisation, which can be effectively indistinguishable with respect to the freedom of the end user to use and carry drugs. Until recently, small amounts of fentanyl were legal in China. Many countries have either legalized or decriminalized marijuana, such as Canada and Uruguay. Traffic laws . In the United States, every public road has a speed limit. However, in Germany, you can go as fast as you want on most portions of the Autobahn system, although it may increase your liability in case of vehicular accidents. In addition, apparently there is no speed limit on rural two-line roads on the Isle of Man, although they seem to be introduced for certain periods. Speech . Although the US has more freedom of speech than many countries, fighting words are not protected. This is an unusual doctrine, which I don't believe is present in most nations, although it may be subsumed under other restrictions in some places. In addition, several US states have criminal defamation statutes for private individuals. It does not appear that this is the case in all nations. For instance, it appears that Romania repealed its criminal defamation statutes for individuals in 2014. Prostitution . In the United States, it is illegal to exchange money for sex in all but one state. However, in a number of other countries , prostitution and other forms of sex work are legal under some or all circumstances. Gambling is illegal in most states in the United States, with various exceptions involving Native American nations, rivers, which effectively make it possible to find legal gambling in many areas. However, in some countries, such as the United Kingdom , there are apparently fewer restrictions on casinos. Abortion is restricted by many states in the United States. Case law around abortion seems to permit it to be heavily restricted after the first trimester (about 12 weeks). This constrast to some other countries: for instance, abortion in Norway is legal up to 18 weeks. Ages of consent . Ages of consent in the United State vary, being 16 minimum and 18 maximum , although there are often exemptions for couples close in age. As such, sex between a minor (under 18) and someone over the age of 18 is frequently illegal. By contrast, in Europe most countries have an age of consent between 14 and 16. Immigration and freedom of movement is an interesting case, since it doesn't always apply directly within the United States but between the United States and other countries. However, the US does not allow unrestricted immigration from even its neighboring countries, Canada and Mexico. Most people need a visa to stay indefinitely in the US. However, some countries have open borders with certain other countries. Particularly notable is the Norwegian territory of Svalbard , where foreign nationals can stay indefinitely. Discrimination is another example. In the United States businesses, including housing providers, are often prohibited from discriminating on the basis of characteristics such as race, gender, or religion. However, in some countries, such as Israel , discrimination on some of these bases is permitted. Of course, the specifics of discrimination can easily involve restrictions on freedom: for instance, refusing to rent to someone restricts their freedom of movement and freedom to live where they choose (as private property in general does, but over and above this). Similarly, refusing service to someone doesn't always just entail personally not doing anything to help them, but frequently entails invoking these same private property laws to kick them out of a business (again a restriction on freedom of movement) or to prevent one's employees from giving them service, thus restricting the employees' freedom to serve who they like. Voting . Various states in the US have voter ID laws, which prevent people without an ID from legally voting. Many other countries do not have this requirement. Further, people convicted of a felony are not permitted to vote in many US states. By contrast, in many other countries people convicted of crimes and even in prison may vote. | {
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43,620 | As a naive European, I thought that the self-defense argument for guns in the US was mostly based on the high number of guns already in the country. In other words, I thought that the argument takes into account the fact that many people have guns already, so in this context it's safer to have a gun. However I now understand that some (most?) gun advocates argue that guns make people safer in general . As far as I understand, the self-defense argument is "more guns less crime", because law-abiding citizens can use their gun to prevent the crime from happening in the first place . For example this article says that "guns save more lives than they take; prevent more injuries than they inflict". This argument implies that a society in which many citizens have guns is safer than one in which few citizens have guns, therefore should have less crime overall. Statistics seem to contradict this argument: for example the homicide rate in the EU is about one third of the rate in the US . If the argument were valid, one would expect a much higher crime rate in the EU than in the US, given the very low rate of gun ownership in the EU. Questions: Is my understanding of the "more guns less crime" argument correct? Is the argument considered valid by most mainstream gun advocates? If yes, how do gun advocates explain the case of the EU, which looks like a counter-example to this theory? Remark: the comparison against the EU seems legitimate given the roughly similar size, population, economic, democratic and education levels. In case this comparison is considered biased, I'd like to know which EU/US differences could explain why the "more guns less crime" argument is somehow not applicable to the EU. | They don't. While there are a lot of half-assed arguments (on both sides, to be fair), any serious statistical analysis that actually controls for variables comes down on the side of gun control. A good example of this is a recent meta-analysis of 130 studies from 10 countries which found: Evidence from 130 studies in 10 countries suggests that in certain nations the simultaneous implementation of laws targeting multiple firearms restrictions is associated with reductions in firearm deaths. ("What Do We Know About the Association Between Firearm Legislation and Firearm-Related Injuries?" - link in the article above) There are two big factors that skew the statistics, and any discussion of the subject that doesn't mention them is dishonest, IMHO. That means most of them, from both sides ot the issue. First, gun ownership and gun legislation differs vastly between rural and city regions. Crime is higher in cities - that is true everywhere in the world. And gun ownership is lower, because you don't need a gun to protect your cows from coyotes if you live in a flat on the 20th floor. As a result, if you don't consider this fact, you can find statistics that show higher gun ownership rates equal lower crime rates. Second, a large percentage of gun-related crime in the cities is amongst gangs. This is even more so when you look at homicides. Some police officer once said that the unspoken truth about gun violence is that it's mostly young black men killing other young black men. If you don't consider this fact, you can find statistics that show gun-related death rates rivalling some war zones in American cities. So, as with most political arguments, you can twist facts to serve your purpose. But most of the anti-gun-control rhetorics doesn't go so far. It works along a different path: by repeating things again and again, you can make them appear true. That's a simple exploitation of human psychology. Our brain is hardwired to accept things that we hear many times as true. | {
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43,672 | During the past few months I've seen a few news items about Europeans not having that much freedom of speech online, specifically in the UK. Americans, on the other hand, always pride themselves on their Freedom of Speech amendment. It got me thinking if there are no other countries that make it completely legal to say anything, even if it's offensive to someone else. Of course, I'm not considering literal calls for violence as "freedom of speech", as I believe that would be a crime, even in the US. I'm more concerned about being able to express any idea, about anyone or anything, and not being charged or punished in any way for it. | Of course no other country protects freedom of speech "as the United States do." They have their own rules which are not quite the same. Some give equivalent protections, some do not. There is a tendency to see the restrictions on freedom of speech (or other freedoms) which apply in your country as just common sense and as properly safeguarded by courts. Despite the words of the First Amendment , it is illegal to shout "fire" in a crowded theater, or to make misleading statements in a stock prospectus, or to raise funds for a terrorist group. For that matter, Americans can be fired by their employer because of their speech -- the employer is not bound by an amendment which restricts Congress from making laws and labor protections are weak. Other countries have other restrictions. An episode of Star Trek was not aired in the UK because of some off-hand remarks about Irish terrorists. (The BBC, a public broadcaster, is not a government agency but part of the state structure.) In Germany, the Nazi party and their symbols are still banned in political propaganda 74 years after the war. | {
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43,696 | Why won't the Republican National Committee (RNC) use a superdelegate system like the DNC in their nomination process? Is there a reason why they didn't push for this yet? What does the RNC think of a superdelegate system and why did the DNC opt for it while the RNC has not yet implemented such a system? | A better way to look at this question is to ask why Democrats do have such an expansive superdelegate system (Republicans kiiiiiiiiind of have superdelegates, but far less and bound to the results of state primaries ). In 1968, the Democratic Party's primary system was exposed as more or less a farce. Due to a lot of unforeseen circumstances-- such as sitting president Lyndon B. Johnson deciding not to seek reelection mid-run, and the assassination of Robert Kennedy-- Vice President Hubert Humphrey didn't receive a single vote in a state primary, but ended up winning the nomination due to a bit of wheeling and dealing behind the scenes. Particularly galling to most Democratic primary voters was that Humphrey was pro-Vietnam War, despite the fact that the vast majority of actual votes had gone to anti-war candidates like Kennedy and McCarthy. All the while you have riots and violence outside the convention, and the whole thing is a PR disaster. So following the election, the party reforms the party primary process to shift the power to actual Democratic voters. But what immediately follows is a period of Republican presidential election domination. George McGovern, at the time probably the most liberal candidate to date, gets flattened by by Nixon. Jimmy Carter (not exactly in the liberal branch of his party, but certainly a populist) manages to beat a Watergate-tainted and unelected Gerald Ford, but gets flattened by Reagan four years later. Democrats run liberal Walter Mondale four years later, and the result is the most lopsided presidential election to date with Reagan winning 49 states. So now Democrats are looking at a situation where the only successful presidential candidates in their lifetime were chosen in smoked-filled rooms, with the exception of 1976, when the Republicans were so badly hurt by Watergate that they could've run a ham sandwich. They come to the conclusion that perhaps they've gone a bit too far; perhaps there can be a system where the voters have most of the votes, but the party elites can still act as a check. The 1984 election is the first Democratic election with superdelegates, and they've stuck ever since. (Not that it helped. Again, 49 states.) So why have Republicans never followed suit? Bluntly, they've never needed to. Superdelegates first and foremost are designed to check the ideologically entrenched wing of your party. The GOP has often seen the right-wing candidate beat the more centrist candidates for the nomination: Reagan over H.W. Bush, W. Bush over McCain, Trump over a lot of people. But what do those candidates have in common? They won . That's your simple answer. Democrats had a series of serious electoral setbacks that, rightly or wrongly, they viewed as requiring stricter party control of the nomination process. Republicans never really had one. | {
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43,705 | This question is motivated by the interesting answers given in a similar question on Russia . Let's imagine the USA leaders would want to join the European Union, would they be eligible? There are two sub-questions: Is it necessary that they are part of the European continent? In 1987, Morocco applied to join, but was rejected. Is there a definite ruling on eligible countries? Would the USA fulfil the very strict standards by the European Union, both economical and political, including inflation rate, budget deficit, democracy (as the EU understands it), human and minority rights, trade, industrial and ecological standards? The goal of this question is to find potential fundamental differences between the EU and the USA. | The first requirement for joining the EU is wanting to join. A far shot for the USA, but we assume this hypothesis in the question. European Union has defined its Conditions for Membership in 1993. They are often referred to as the Copenhagen criteria . Countries wishing to join need to have: stable institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities; a functioning market economy and the capacity to cope with competition and market forces in the EU; the ability to take on and implement effectively the obligations of membership, including adherence to the aims of political, economic and monetary union. The EU also needs to be able to integrate new members. I would think that the political criteria could be met quite easily. Rule of law and human rights are well established in the USA. There would be some discussion, and possibly adaptation needed, about the situation of Native Americans, about the political rights for American citizens living in Puerto Rico, Guam and other territories that are arguably excluded from Presidential and Congress elections, about the death penalty or about racial policies (Europe doesn't recognize races and might debate if it can admit a country where Affirmative Action is a thing). But overall, I don't think these are obstacles that good faith on both sides wouldn't overcome. The economical criteria is another story: given the US important public debt, it would need to engage into serious efforts to reduce its public deficit and improve its trade balance to meet European criteria (even if they are less strict for becoming a member than for joining the Eurozone). Subsidies for homeland agriculture and industries would have to be abandoned. It would require difficult, long-term and unpopular economic reforms. About the geographic criteria : Article 49 (formerly Article O) of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) or Maastricht Treaty states that any European country that respects the principles of the EU may apply to join. Countries' classification as European is "subject to political assessment" by the Commission and more importantly—the European Council. Basically, it is up to EU to decide what country is "European" or not. The answer has been "no" for Morocco, "yes" for Cyprus and Malta, and is still subject of heated debates for Turkey. Because there is no precise definition of the borders of Europe, I would think that ultimately it would be a political decision and if Europeans were motivated to include the USA, they would make a case to allow them to join (based on history or values or whatnot). Same as they would allow Iceland to join without much geographical nitnitting. Anyway, territories likes the Azores or French Guyana are already part of the Union (considered as European Outermost Regions ) while Greenland, Bermuda, Falkland Islands or New Caledonia are Overseas Countries and Territories of the Union. | {
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43,780 | Fact A: Climate change is predominantly caused by fossil fuel usage (focusing only on what we humans control). Fact B: Many people do not believe that climate change is an important issue. Fact C: Fossil fuels are a limited resource. We will eventually run out. In the United States, I see many politicians point out fact A but struggle to get any overwhelming support for such ideas from the American public, which has instead elected as its president a person who is described in fact B . Why don't these politicians instead employ fact C which, unlike fact A , is obvious and uncontested across the political spectrum? After all, if people are told that fossil fuels are a limited ressource, the obvious response is that we must manage that ressource for the important aspects of our society. Then by managing that ressource, we accomplish the same thing that climate change prevention policies due: a limitation of our fossil fuel usage. The only difference is that now we've accomplished it without making it about the climate. Rather, we're just doing something logical and rational: we have this thing that we all really like, and we're soon going to run out, so let's not use so much of it and also try to focus on what we might be able to substitute it with (aka renewable energy). I think anybody, no matter their views on the climate, would think that's a reasonable way to go about it. So why don't US politicians talk about this aspect more? | The issue used to be popular in '70s. Not only there had been an artificial oil scarcity caused by OPEC cartel but also there had been a famous book The Limits to Growth that were based on best computer models of that era, finite amount of resources and exponential growth. The problem is, that if one took their calculation at face value, then we should have run out of most resources somewhere in '90s. (Yes, I know, right now fans of that book claim that's misinterpretation did by some evil rightwingers, nevertheless, that's exactly the conclusion that one should reach by adding number of years of resources left to book publication year). Technically claims A, B and C are correct. However there is catch - apparently we are nowhere near actual end of those resources .
The problem is that stone age haven't end because of lack of stone, neither transition from coal to oil has not been caused by scarcity of coal. The thing that people usually miss is: we discover new resources all the time, especially when price justifies prospecting efforts (known reserves of oil are not only nominally higher that they had been a few decades ago, they are even higher in years of annual consumption left) technology at exploring gets better merely price shift could change amount of resources (Canada is an oil rich country when the price is high enough to justify squeezing oil out of tar sands) You know what would be the answer for "resource scarcity argument"? If they are indeed as scarce as claimed, then soon the issue would solve itself - scarcity purely by market forces would cause long term resource price to dramatically increase. Relative price would make renewables highly competitive and with no government intervention they would be embraced by markets. Relax, assuming that scarcity is a serious issue, then anthropogenic climate change is about to stabilise. Government intervention would not help much, it would be at best taking credit for market driven process or even worse distorting market and artificially picking winners (solar vs. wind vs. biomass; storage vs. long distance transfer). Yes, I know it would be an oversimplification and some R&D government spending would make sense under such assumption, but I'm simply saying which argument could be used to counter. Setting this aside IPCC models for CO2 emission are based on assumption that we have more than enough of fossil fuels for next century. Also long term contracts (10 years) for oil show that markets also expect abundant and inexpensive oil in future. | {
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43,799 | How could China have extradited people for political reason under the extradition law it wanted to pass in Hong Kong? According to a news outlet, the extradition law had the following clause: Once the court decides that there is no political motive behind the
extradition request, and that there is sufficient prima facie evidence
that there is a possible case, it can then make an order of committal.
At this point, the suspect can appeal. https://qz.com/1635504/everything-you-need-to-know-about-hong-kongs-extradition-law/ How would the Chinese government have used the law to extradite political dissents given the cited clause? Is there a way China could have done it? | It's true there is a clause stating extradition from Hong Kong to China cannot be based on political motives. However, there are worries the Chinese government would fabricate charges just to get dissidents over to China, as they have done or tried to do before. In general, it's very problematic to determine whether the charges are truly not political. There is also no guarantee of a fair and democratic judiciary process in China. To read more, I recommend reading these articles: A proposed extradition law triggers unrest in Hong Kong Hong Kong-China extradition plans explained What is Hong Kong’s extradition bill? | {
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43,809 | What I have perceived so far over years, people can observe things like atmospheric effects or military experiments and tell them to be UFOs of alien, or at least other state's origin. Mostly it is just a news and conspiracy thing. Now I read this at a Fastcompany article: President Trump told ABC News that he had also been briefed about
UFOs. While he said he didn’t "particularly" believe in UFOs, he
thought the Navy might. Now is this a real meeting and how comes? UPDATE - a quote from USS Nimitz executive summary on Wikipedia of a 2004 US military sighting. The Anomalous Aerial Vehicle (AAV) was no known aircraft or air vehicle currently in the inventory of the United States or any
foreign nation. The AAV exhibited advanced propulsion capability by demonstrating the ability ... far greater than any known aerial vehicle with little
to no visible signature. | An UFO is an Unidentified Flying Object. Usually the name is not applied when somebody sees a light prop plane overhead and cannot recognize the specific model or registration letters, but what the name means is that the observer cannot identify it. When a Navy pilot sees something he or she cannot identify, and when air traffic control has no clue either, that is reason for concern. A Navy pilot would be expected to recognize most fast aircraft, at least generally. The idea that it is extraterrestrial is rather far-fetched. It could be Air Force, and the Navy isn't cleared for it. Admitting that to the Navy would breach security, so the charade must be maintained. It could be Russian. It could be Chinese. It could belong to some other NATO member which didn't tell the US. (A really disquieting thought for the Pentagon.) It could be Israeli, or Indian, or Japanese. Follow-Up: Some commenters thought I'm not specific enough regarding the role of the President and the news media. If somebody operates an aircraft near or over the United States that the US military cannot identify, that is obviously a major concern to the military. The President is the National Command Authority and should be informed. Briefers might have approached the President, telling what they know, what they suspect, and what they think they have disproven. They might have asked for hefty chunk of black budget to improve radars and interceptors ... Or the President might have asked the military to provide a briefing on what they know or suspect. I will not speculate about his internal motivations for doing so. Regarding the Nimitz quote, while I believe that US intelligence has extremely good information on technology worldwide, personally I'd rather believe that some Earth power has something the US doesn't know about than believe in extraterrestrials. And I'm convinced that the US has Earth-made aircraft that it really doesn't want to talk about, up to the deliberate spread of UFO theories to cover them up. | {
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43,814 | After congress passes a budget and the president signs it, how are the funds acquired and how are they spent? Let's use the example: The defense budget has line items for the Department of Defense to purchase a new war ship? I understand that the government collects taxes, sells bonds, etc. but regardless of the income portion, I'm more curious about the spending portion. Does the US Treasury simply print the money (physically or digitally)? Does the US Treasury have bank accounts/checking accounts? What role does the Federal Reserve play in this? Basically, I'm looking for the "School House Rock" portion on the spending aspect (not the revenue aspect)? | I understand that the government collects taxes, sells bonds, etc. but
regardless of the income portion, I'm more curious about the spending
portion. Does the US Treasury simply print the money (physically or digitally)? Does the US Treasury have bank accounts/checking accounts? What role does the Federal Reserve play in this? Basically, I'm looking for the "School House Rock" portion on the
spending aspect (not the revenue aspect)? The mechanics of how a payment is made are fairly easy and very similar to those of any other business. The U.S. Treasury has accounts at banks that are part of the federal reserve system and write paper checks or makes electronic transfers out of them. Theses accounts receive deposits from tax collections, proceeds of bond sales, land sales, fines in court cases, etc. Particular groups of bank accounts corresponding to line items are called " funds " and the Treasury Department moves money from one fund to another as required by law. When an agency wants to spend money that it has been authorize to spend by Congress, basically, the agency fills out a form sent to the Treasury department saying that they want to write a check for $X that is authorized by this and that legislation and contract, and if everything is in order, the Treasury Department cuts the check. The process of determining that everything is in order is the hard part and adds meat to what would otherwise be a merely mechanical banking transaction. An official in a public or private enterprise who keeps accounting controls in place to make sure that checks issued are authorized is called a "controller" or "comptroller" although the "comptroller of the currency" doesn't personally carry out this task any more than the "surgeon-general" personally conducts surgery on anyone in the course of his or her official duties. Obviously, it is all more complicated than that with a lot of expenditures like payroll operated on a high automated mass produced basis, and authority is much more delegated than this simple explanation suggests, but that's the gist of it. In practice, the Treasury Department puts money into funds with bank accounts for particular agencies or subagencies to use, based upon appropriation bills, and keeps track of who in an agency is authorized to state that it is O.K. to make a payment on a particular government contract because the government contractor has performed and the designated person, in turn, had minions who actually determine that the government contractor has performed who report to the designated person before the designated person signs off on a check. If not all of the money in a bank account for a fund is used at the end of the fiscal year, the Treasury Department decides what happens to the money (based on the relevant laws and regulations). A related much more difficult question, which was not really asked and is not fully answered here is: What is the procurement process by which they government authorizes
entering into a contract to buy something from a government contractor
pursuant to which the government is obligated to pay when the contract
is performed? This is a highly specialized area of administrative law (called government procurement law ), and is very complicated. It involves issuing "requests for proposals", getting bids on contracts and evaluating the bids to see if they meet the requirements, and then issuing long, complicated contracts and determining if they have been complied with by government contractors. It is the quintessential executive branch activity, much of which is buried in regulations rather than described in statutes. One particularly complicated issue is how fine grained the purchases should be. Do you purchase a fully outfitted warship, for example, or do you buy your missiles and fuel separately from a different contractor? Also, some procurement is authorized to be made via "no bid" contracts if it fits certain exceptions to the general rule that contracts must be bid, and price isn't the only consideration when accepting a bid. Administrative law also requires government contracts to comply with generalized requirements like paying a "prevailing wage" that makes them more expensive and supports union workers. For further reading on government procurement in the United States, see here . The complexity of government procurement in the U.S. is largely a response to the corruption that was used to benefit political allies and campaign supporters in a patronage system in the late 19th century and early 20th century in the U.S., before bid based government contracts were required, in parallel to the invention of a civil service system for hiring government employees to replace patronage hiring based upon political support for government officials who are employees. How does printing money and coins figure into this system? When the government makes coins or paper currency, money is spent from a Treasury Department bank account to buy the plant and material and labor to make the coins and paper currency. Then, the coins and currency are distributed to banks (or a tiny percentage directly to private buyers who are coin and currency collectors) at face value in exchange for payment from the bank or other buyer through the federal reserve banking system. Thus, on paper the U.S. Mint and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing makes a profit doing this which is equal to the cost of producing coins and paper currency respectively and its face value. This profit is called " seigniorage " and appears as a revenue item on the books of the United States government. Seigniorage is a tiny percentage of the revenues of the United States government, about $30 billion a year (0.2% of GDP and 1-2% of federal revenues) as of 2013, out of overall federal revenues of roughly $3,490 billion as of 2019 . How is the money supply increased? This is a tricky area of the economics of monetary policy and best asked in an economics forum for a more precise and complete answer. In a nutshell, money is created every time anyone in the economy issues debt that is assignable to third parties, and is destroyed every time that anyone in the economy pays debt that had been assignable to third parties. Basically, while we commonly think of "making money" as an exclusively governmental function, this isn't really true. Actually, almost everyone makes and/or destroys money almost every day. Every time you use your credit card, you make money. Every time you pay your credit card bill, you reduce the money supply. Government actually has a monopoly on defining what counts as money and regulating it, but economic equivalents to money are allowed, and are created and destroyed by every participant in every monetarily based economy every day. Coins and currency are basically just transferrable loans made to the government on an interest free basis, but they are worth more than an interest free IOU from me because the federal government has a better credit rating than I do. U.S. money, since 1971 when it left the gold standard (there were also periods of time when it was on a silver standard historically), is a fiat currency , and doesn't correspond to stockpiles of any physical commodity. It is also important to note that only a modest percentage of the overall money supply is in the form of coins and paper currency which is called MB by U.S economists . The vast majority of it consists of accounting entries that do not have tangible form. Broader definitions of the money supply including M2, M2 and MZM. The chart below (from here ) illustrates this fact: As of 2011, M2 was about $10 trillion. M0 which is coins and currency in circulation (rather than in government vaults) as of 2016 was about $1.5 trillion. A large share of M0 is in the form of $100 bills in circulation outside the U.S. (about a third of it, which is about $500 billion ) where it is used as a backup currency in places where the local currency is subject to hyperinflation or government devaluation risks, or the local government doesn't have a well functioning currency, or an a light, untraceable way to transfer money illicitly. Who profits from making money? Commercial banks that issue debt are a major creator of money and make lots of their profits by creating money although how this works is subtle and really takes an hour or so long lecture to really explain properly. The amount of money that a bank can create and profit from, however, is not unlimited. Primarily, it is a function of the reserve ratio (this is 10% in the U.S. to slightly oversimplify the situation), which is a banking rule imposed by the Federal Reserve, and FDIC and similar agencies (depending on the type of institution making the loans), that limits how much money a bank is allowed to lend when is has a certain amount of money deposited in an account at the Federal Reserve. Systems that operate in this way are said to be engaged in " Fractional-reserve banking ." Since the Federal Reserve banks in the United States (and almost all other banks) are owned by private shareholders, or are non-profits, rather than by the government, the profits that arise from fractional-reserve banking do not fund the U.S. government, they fund they owners of banks or the non-profits that operate them. In contrast, the U.S. government does not directly make a profit from fractional-reserve banking which is the main way that they money supply is created. The money supply has increased by about $200 billion a year over the last decade (per the link to M2 above). Other than the $30 billion or so a year of seigniorage that the federal government makes from printing coins and currency, the other $170 billion a year on average that came from making money that led to inflation and effectively taxed everyone to whom nominal dollar debts were owed like people with bank deposits (which are loans made by individuals to banks). This $170 billion a year, on average, of profits from making money was made by private parties, mostly by shareholders of commercial banks. How does this relate to inflation? Inflation is basically due to the amount of the money supply (broadly defined) chasing the amount of goods and services produced by the economy. As a first order approximation, the money supply (in a given currency unit) divided by GDP (in a non-monetized sense), governs the value of the unit of currency used. This is, of course, actually much more complicated, largely because creating money and destroying it isn't a centrally controlled process to the extent that most people think it is, and also because money supply and GDP aren't entirely independent of each other (partially for fundamental reasons, and partially because in a stable economy like the U.S., lots of obligations are defined in terms of nominal dollars rather than in terms of inflation adjusted dollars). In countries like Weimar Germany and modern Venezuela, lots of commercial banking (and hence lots of the profits from increasing the money supply and thus creating inflation) are earned by the government owned central bank rather than private shareholders. So, the central government has an incentive to raise money through making money rather than imposing taxes (even though inflation is economically equivalent to a monetary wealth tax), since taxes are unpopular. But, when production of goods and services is low, and the reliance on this means of generating government revenues is great, you get hyperinflation which utterly disrupts the economy and wrecks havoc on the monetary system. This is counterproductive, however, and often generates more unrest and dissatisfaction than raising taxes would have generated. A fractionally-backed banking system with fiat money relies on trust, reliance and confidence to work and if those are undermined the whole currency system ceases to work and people start resorting to alternative back up currencies that they do trust and can rely upon, like U.S. dollars or Euros, or commodities like grain or gold. | {
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43,825 | LONDON: Boris Johnson will tell Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron that there must be a new Brexit deal when he makes his first trip abroad as Prime Minister. Johnson will make clear to the French president and German chancellor that Britain will leave the European Union on October 31 with or without a deal.The PM, who is heading to Berlin on Wednesday and Paris on Thursday, is expected to say that Parliament will not and cannot cancel the outcome of the EU referendum. Source Given that all remaining 27 nations of the EU need to approve the withdrawal agreement , why is Boris Johnson only visiting France and Germany? Sure, they're the most powerful members of the EU, but whatever Boris Johnson negotiates with Angela Markel and Emmanuel Macron can still be vetoed by any of the remaining 25 nations of the EU. Presumably because he needs to convince all 27 countries simultaneously, it would be best to involve all of them in the same negotiations, at which point he might as well not visit at all and host a Skype conference call or something. | I'm not sure you'll get a specific sourced answer for this question, so I'll attempt to answer in generalities. France and Germany are often seen as the driving forces behind the EU project. Along with the UK and Italy, these are the Big Four European nations, contributing highly to the EU budget and EU GDP. A quick search of EU related headlines will find that the opinions of France and Germany are generally more prominent than those of other countries, and they are often highlighted as leaders of one position or another. Disagreements Agenda EU Commission Germany Specifically in relation to Brexit, a common leaver position has been that German Industry, specifically car manufacturing, will prevent a no-deal Brexit and cause the EU to blink because of the size of the UK market. Fatal Consequences Cars for Free Trade ; David Davis Post #Brexit a UK-German deal would include free access for their cars and industrial goods, in exchange for a deal on everything else. This tweet is most interesting, as it came just before
David Davis became the first Brexit Secretary, in charge of the UK/EU negotiation. France On the opposite side President Macron has been the most outspoken EU leader expressing frustration that Brexit has not yet been dealt with. Arguing for a Short Extension back in May. Ireland In addition to these two sides Mr Johnson has already reached out to the taoiseach regarding the NI/Republic of Ireland border issue, the biggest sticking point in the negotiations so far. It appears that Mr Johnson feels that if he can convince these three to agree with his position, the rest of the EU will fall into line. | {
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43,847 | As explained in this article in The Guardian, Boris Johnson has written to the EU suggesting the backstop could be
replaced by some form of commitment to prevent a hard Irish border in
his first major move to explain the UK government’s new position to
Brussels. As far as I have understood from other sources, the backstop is not the first choice of a solution to the border of Ireland, but a fall-back option to be used after no other solution has been found. In the letter sent by Boris Johnson, included in above article, the British Prime Minister writes: This Government will not put in place infrastructure, checks, or
controls at the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. We would
be happy to accept a legally binding commitment to this effect and
hope that the EU would do likewise. Since the backstop was not intended as the first solution anyway but merely as a fall back option , and since the PM in above letter promises to not to erect any border infrastructure, what is the improvement gained by replacing the backstop with a "legally binding commitment"? | Read the wording very carefully. This Government will not put in place infrastructure, checks, or controls at the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. We would be happy to accept a legally binding commitment to this effect and hope that the EU would do likewise However, that does not say that the regulatory regimes will remain the same north and south of the border! It seems that changing the applicable law for agriculture is part of the plan, presumably as part of a trade deal with the US. That is the improvement Johnson wants, to be free to negotiate a US-UK agreement in which the UK agrees to the lowered US agricultural health standard. The UK is not worried about products from the EU being smuggled into the UK. The EU is, however, worried about products from the US being smuggled into the EU through a "laundering" process where they claim to have been produced in Northern Ireland. So in order to maintain the integrity of the single market Ireland may find it necessary to put in place infrastructure at the border. This is particularly upsetting to Ireland which only gave up its formal claim to sovereignty over the whole island in 1998, deleting the old article 2 to its constitution: "The national territory consists of the whole island of Ireland, its islands and the territorial seas." as part of the Good Friday Agreement. Reinstating the border, from either side, is both impractical and likely to lead to more violence . | {
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43,855 | Recently, the Trump administration expressed interest in purchasing Greenland . How exactly would this work? I would assume voters in both countries would be on board? Who would the payment go to if the Greenland government doesn’t exist after the purchase? Are there any historical examples of this? | Rather than focus on Greenland, it may be helpful to focus on a previous case where the US purchased a significant piece of land from another country. A nice example is the Alaska Purchase . From the linked Wikipedia page: The Alaska Purchase (Russian: Продажа Аляски, tr. Prodazha Alyaski, Sale of Alaska) was the United States' acquisition of Alaska from the Russian Empire. Alaska was formally transferred to the United States on October 18, 1867, through a treaty ratified by the United States Senate and signed by President Andrew Johnson. As for the Russian side of the purchase, Wikipedia states: In November 2018 a documentary ("SRF bi de Lüt") by the Swiss television broadcast the information that the Russian Tsar in 1867 had first proposed the sale of Alaska to the Prince of Liechtenstein, and that only after the prince rejected, Alaska was offered to the United States. German newspaper Welt am Sonntag reported similar facts earlier, in 2015.[36] The information was vividly discussed in Liechtenstein, and media there first portrayed it as a rumor. However, some days afterwards prince Hans-Adam II personally intervened in the discussion by writing a letter to the media in Liechtenstein, in which he assured that the alleged Alaska purchase offer was not a rumor, and that it was repeatedly a topic of discussion within the princely family in the past. Moreover he showed himself optimistic that archive searches might bring about (so far lacking) historical documents proving that the offer was real. Based on that, it seems that Russia (the selling party) offered Alaska to the United States and the United States agreed to buy it. In the Greenland example, the situation is different because Denmark has stated Greenland is not for sale. Greenland is an autonomous country of the Kingdom of Denmark, so for a transaction like the Alaska Purchase to happen they would have to agree to the sale. | {
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43,925 | This question is as put in the title. It is general knowledge that legislators, high executive offices, and some judges are elected. But are any other elected government offices? An example could be a position in an independent agency—part of the executive but whose officials are not constitutional officers—of the federal, or of any state or local governments, that is elected. A non-example would be the chair of a yacht club, which is elected but not part of government. | Most places in the United States have independent government agencies that perform services for particular districts. These agencies normally collect "property taxes". These taxes are either proportional to the assessed value of real estate, cars, and/or personal property in the jurisdiction, and/or are a fee per housing unit or lot or square foot of particular form(s) of real estate. These agencies typically have elected boards. For example: School boards Fire districts Irrigation districts Sewer commissions [Potable] water commissions Port authorities (these often control airports, not just harbors) Some of these districts have highly restricted legislative power. For example, school boards oversee school curricula, constrained by state guidelines. (But they do not control the curricula of private schools and homeschools within their boundaries.) Some fire districts can prohibit activities or real estate development likely to cause devastating wildfires. Irrigation districts used to impose rules for receiving water that made it hard to grow certain crops. Sewer commissions can tax or prohibit new construction. | {
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43,960 | The "backstop" is a part of the Brexit agreement that EU negotiated with British Prime Minister May. It is a fallback option to be enforced only if no solution is found for the border issue between Ireland and Northern Ireland. In this article titled "Merkel Didn't Give Johnson 30 Days to Fix Brexit" the author writes The U.K. has been told time and time again that as soon as a workable
solution is found to the problem of the Irish border, the backstop
won’t be necessary. Also as far as I understand (but I could be wrong) the backstop would not keep the entire U.K. tied to many of the EU’s customs and trading rules. It could, however, keep Northern Ireland tied to those rules (maybe similar to what might happen to Gibraltar?). But according to this article , titled "Brexit: Emmanuel Macron tells Boris Johnson the EU will not tear up May deal", Boris Johnson said that “She [Mrs Merkel] said if we can do this in two years then we can do
this in 30 days and I admire that ‘can-do’ spirit that she seemed to
have and I think she is right. I think that the technical solutions
are readily available and they have been discussed at great length. “You can have trusted-trader schemes, you can have electronic
pre-clearing for goods moving across the border and I just want to
repeat one crucial thing, under no circumstances will the UK be
putting checks at the frontier. And this article , titled "U.K.’s Johnson Plays Down Hopes of Quick Brexit Deal With EU", says about Boris Johnson On Friday, the U.K. leader repeated his view that there were “lots of
ways” to achieve a frictionless border. “But to persuade our EU
friends and partners, who are very, very, very hard over against it,
will take some time,” he said. So according to Boris Johnson, it seems, there are options that don't require a border. If that is the case then the backstop would automatically be a non-issue and getting stuck on it is inconsistent with these claims. Based on these factors, why is the U.K. so keen to have the backstop removed? | The problem stems from three issues. I'll explain those, then the backstop issue will be more obvious. Brexit will create two sovereign regions, with (over time) different borders and import rules. This is the express intent of Brexit after all. Where two sovereign regions meet, there needs to be some kind of formal controls over goods and people crossing the line between them, to ensure that the rules of each are met. Obvious again. Otherwise you couldn't keep out defective goods, dangerous/illegal people, or collect required taxes or similar. There is no good place to draw that line, in the Brexit process. Putting it between Northern Ireland and the EU (Eire) breaks or imperils a major and sensitive peace agreement. Putting it between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK fragments the UK and breaks the UK's (informal?) constitution. So this is the problem. The UK wants to leave. Leaving requires a UK-EU border line. Nobody can figure how to solve the problem of creating one, without blowing up either the Irish peace agreement or UK unity. The solution was – as often in politics – to kick the issue into the future. "We will figure this out in depth later". But in case it couldn't be figured out, or "later" took a long time, the agreement reached by Theresa May and the EU says that until a good solution is found (or, if one isn't quickly found), a temporary solution will be applied that keeps Northern Ireland aligned with the EU to protect the peace agreement, and presumably, a customs border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. Or something like that. And this temporary solution will run as long as needed (years? decades?) until both the UK and EU agree a better solution has been found. That temporary solution is what the "backstop" actually is. So with that background, the answer to the question is roughly this: Britain wants the backstop removed from the agreement, because as long as the backstop exists, the UK (or part of it) is still bound to EU rules, and can't move on. That's why the UK government wants it removed. The government supports this by arguing that other ways can be found (technological?) to fully handle the customs issues, without needing a formal (hard) border to be created. If true, it would indeed mean that the backstop won't be needed. So they feel it can be ditched. The problem is that nobody else in the negotiation agrees, and no other country has made such a thing work. Ever. So naturally the EU isn't agreeing that any currently discussed alternative approaches can work as an alternative. So the EU feels that there isn't a way to avoid the issues, right now, so for the time being the backstop (or something like it) is needed to be sure their border stays protected until a permanent and actual agreed solution is found. But obviously they can't say how long that would be either. So the UK government is arguing that the backstop isn't needed, because solutions can be found, while the EU is saying that solutions haven't yet been found and agreed, and yes it's been agreed they will try to find one, but until they succeed a temporary solution (the backstop) is unavoidable. | {
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43,989 | I was looking at a list of countries and their population on Polish Wikipedia . (It provides data for multiple years which I couldn't find in English.) I noticed one quirk: between 2007 and 2008, the population of Bhutan dropped from 2,327,849 to 682,321 people. The only information I found that happened was that around that time, a king abdicated and the first parliamentary elections were held. Not much more. I suspect something must have happened. What is the reason for ~70% decline in population around this time? | The article on Bhutan in the English-language Wikipedia has this explanation: The population of Bhutan had been estimated based on the reported figure of about 1 million in the 1970s when the country had joined the United Nations and precise statistics were lacking. Thus, using the annual increase rate of 2–3%, the most population estimates were around 2 million in the year 2000. A national census was carried out in 2005 and it turned out that the population was 672,425. Consequently, United Nations Population Division reduced its estimation of the country's population in the 2006 revision for the whole period from 1950 to 2050. There was no such drastic decline in population, just inaccurate data. | {
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43,993 | Pakistan and India are both nuclear powers. And, unlike other nations, such as North Korea vs USA, Pakistan and India genuinely hate each other and have since the two countries came into existence. Furthermore, they are neighboring countries, which means that any sort of confrontation could rapidly escalate into a full-on war. Finally, since Pakistan is powerful but India's army is bigger, it is clear that Pakistan will see nuclear weapons as a necessity in a war. That is, it is not just a "backup solution" that nobody has any reason to use: if a war breaks out, Pakistan's only way to avoid being the sole loser ... is MAD: mutually assured destruction. With all this in mind, why aren't more of the leading nations of the world stepping in to help make amends between these two countries and try to actively solve the recent Kashmir issue? Recently, Trump came out and said that it's effectively something that India and Pakistan need to figure out themselves, and all other western countries seem to be mimicking that sort of behavior. Then there's Russia and China, who seem equally quiet. It just seems to me like that some basic diplomacy could be very useful here, to get both sides to calm the feck down. One course of action would be to get India to stop its human rights abuses in Kashmir, but also get Pakistan to understand that India are within their rights to adjust legislation in the regions they control. That seems straight-forward and a fair, diplomatic approach to me, but instead, nobody seems to care? I mean, isn't that literally all the diplomats in UN and NATO and whatever do? It's not like they're out there fighting actual wars. They just sit in their suits and talk. So why aren't they doing that now? What are we paying them for? | why aren't more of the leading nations of the world stepping in to help make amends between these two countries and try to actively solve the recent Kashmir issue? Many of the “leading nations of the world” have stronger incentives to either not to get involved, or encourage the conflict further. Aside from India and Pakistan, there are several “leading nations” with interests in this region, and those nations view each other as geopolitical rivals, namely: China, Russia, and the United States. China is seen as a potential threat by just about everybody in one way or another. In addition, China sees both India and Russia as potential threats as well. So they see a benefit in helping Pakistan defend itself from India, because the conflict with Pakistan keeps India distracted from potentially threatening China. India has pursued foreign policies that try to defend itself against possible Chinese aggression. During the Cold War, this included a policy of being formally non-aligned between the Western Capitalist world (e.g. US, NATO, et al) and the Soviet Union. This was advantageous to India because they were in a position to accept military aid from the Soviet Union, without actually being a communist country. This arrangement was in the Soviet (and later Russian) interest because they too saw China as a potential rival ever since the Sino-Soviet Split in the 50’s. The United States had little direct interest in the conflict with India and Pakistan (largely because India decided to be non-aligned) until 9/11. Then, it became advantageous for the United States and Pakistan to have good diplomatic relations, so that the US could wage war in Afghanistan against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. That is currently changing because, 18 years of war later, the United States has come to see Pakistan as an unreliable partner in that effort for various reasons (e.g. lots of corruption, bin Laden was hiding there, they’re warm with China, etc). With Pakistan being viewed as less important than they used to be to the United States, there is a desire for the US and India to have better relations, in part because they’re both concerned with Chinese expansion in the South China Sea. So, the US and Russia want to be friends with India to counter China, and they don’t really like Pakistan that much. Even if they don’t want a war between India and Pakistan to take place, they aren’t going to want to aggravate India by forcing them to sit down Pakistan and sort their problem out. So, they both say stuff like “India and Pakistan need to figure that stuff out for themselves” because that sort of approach implicitly favors India without actually encouraging any wars there. Meanwhile, China doesn’t really like India, so if it has anything to say, it’s something that vaguely favors Pakistan in a similar fashion. I mean, isn't that literally all the diplomats in UN and NATO and whatever do? The UN has done quite a bit here already since it was founded... Here’s a whole Wikipedia page about UN mediation of the Kashmir dispute . This has nothing to do with NATO. NATO is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It is a military alliance between the United States, Canada, and many countries in Europe to counter (originally Soviet) Russia and its allies. India and Pakistan have nothing to do with that, as it’s not in the North Atlantic. | {
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44,030 | Unless I've misunderstood the news months gone by, the UK has always requested an extension which has then been voted on by the other EU member states. However I've also read that the UK can, at any time, revoke article 50 - without requiring the agreement or cooperation of the EU, the ball is firmly in our court, the power of revelation is the UKs. With the UK able to cancel and simply reissue the article 50 notification as it sees fit, it seems needless to agree extensions. It also seems unusual that there is a default timeline given altogether (why say 2 years from submitting another article 50 notification to leaving the EU, if the leaving state can do as I've suggested). I understand that this may be a politically bad move (essentially the leaving state annoying the EU) but as negotiations continue it seems like there is little love lost anyway. | The ECJ decided Article 50 TEU must be interpreted as meaning that, where a Member State has notified the European Council, in accordance with that article, of its intention to withdraw from the European Union, that article allows that Member State — for as long as a withdrawal agreement concluded between that Member State and the European Union has not entered into force or, if no such agreement has been concluded, for as long as the two-year period laid down in Article 50(3) TEU, possibly extended in accordance with that paragraph, has not expired — to revoke that notification unilaterally, in an unequivocal and unconditional manner, by a notice addressed to the European Council in writing, after the Member State concerned has taken the revocation decision in accordance with its constitutional requirements. The purpose of that revocation is to confirm the EU membership of the Member State concerned under terms that are unchanged as regards its status as a Member State, and that revocation brings the withdrawal procedure to an end. Two interesting points here: The revocation must be unequivocal and unconditional and it must be in accordance with [its] constitutional requirements . Revoking to prolong the negotiating period would fail at least in the first regard, possibly in both points. The question is, would the EU27 call it out or would it let the trick pass? (By the way, revoking Article 50 means nobody can leave the EU any more. What you mean is revoking the Article 50 notification .) | {
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44,043 | In some countries, the head of state can pardon anyone for alleged crimes. For example, in Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler pardoned murderers of communists and Soviet prisoners of war, in those cases in which those crimes were actually prosecuted and resulting in a conviction. In the U.S.A., the President can also pardon anyone for (alleged) federal crimes. What checks and balances exist to prevent a U.S. President from pardoning anyone convicted for a federal crime when he or she thinks that shouldn't be a crime in the first place (apart from losing re-election if such pardons are impopular)? Reportedly, President Trump has said that officials who take private land in order to build a border wall will be pardoned (a White House official has reportedly said this was a joke). | Given that "an impeachable offense is whatever half of the House of Representatives considers it to be" , impeachment could be a possible remedy if a President's actions were flagrantly immoral and/or sufficiently unpopular. The Constitution says that a president can be impeached and removed if they commit "high crimes or misdemeanors", but this term is not defined elsewhere in the constitution, and was understood by (at least some of) the Founders to be a catch-all for any betrayal of the public trust. Contemporaneous comments on the scope of impeachment are persuasive as to the intention of the framers. In Federalist No. 65, Alexander Hamilton described the subject of impeachment as those offences which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself. In fact, the Founders explicitly considered impeachment to be a remedy for abuse of the pardon power. The possibility of abuse of the pardon power came up during the debates on the Constitution, with George Mason arguing that the President should not have a pardon power lest he pardon those with whom he had conspired to commit a crime. James Madison pointed out that impeachment would be a valid remedy in such cases. [Thanks to @BradC for providing this link in the comments.] | {
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44,063 | Subreddits like r/unitedkingdom, r/ukpolitics have many Remainers who loathe Brexit, and there're unquestionably more who aren't on Reddit! English cities have had protests, but why haven't there been protests in the UK against Brexit as grinding as those in HK? Does "stiff upper lip" explain the more hushed protests? I would've guessed HKers would be more hushed, because it's safer to protest in UK. The British have unequivocally less to worry when protesting. British Armed Forces subscribes to the rule of law. Zhou Qiang , Chief Justice and President of the Supreme People's Court [China's courts] must firmly resist the western idea of “ constitutional democracy ”, “ separation of powers ” and “judicial independence”. These are erroneous western notions that threaten the leadership of the ruling Communist Party and defame the Chinese socialist path on the rule of law. We have to raise our flag and show our sword to struggle against such thoughts. We must not fall into the trap of western thoughts and judicial independence. We must stay firm on the Chinese socialist path on the rule of law. [5] Front-line British police aren't armed . HK police have revolvers. Senior HK police have semi-auto pistols. England and Wales have more vigorous consumer, employment laws. Employees don't have to worry as much about getting fired for protesting. The UK's NHS and subsidized prescriptions can mean that protesters don't have to worry about injuries. The UK acceded to the EU Constitution and ECHR. HK has the Basic Law, but acceded to no international human rights. | Brexit is more popular among Britons than what is happening in Hong Kong is among Hong Kong residents There was a vote for Brexit where a majority of voters voted for Brexit , but there was absolutely no vote in Hong Kong for any of the things happening in Hong Kong. To draw a parallel between these two events as if something that was actually voted on by the people who live there to do to themselves, is equivalent to a repressive Communist dictatorship externally imposing its will on people who don’t have any say in the matter, very much trivializes what’s happening in Hong Kong and the human rights abuses in China generally. EDIT: Several commentors have decided to point out in various ways, that Brexit is not as popular now as it was before, that not that many people actually voted for it, and that the Brexit people voted for is not the Brexit that they got. Those criticisms completely miss the point , which is that there is a fundamental difference between being unhappy about how a representative legislative process is working to answer a foreign policy question in a way that not everybody liked, as opposed to having fundamental legal and human rights being taken away with no representative process of any kind whatsoever. It is expected any time there is voting, that there will be winners and losers. It is normal that some people will not like how a vote turned out, or that people will regret in retrospect how it was done. Brexit is an extreme example of this, but it should be expected. It is not expected or normal in Hong Kong or anywhere for an external army to show up to demand that you surrender your legal rights to a dictatorial process you have absolutely no say at all in of any kind. | {
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44,075 | This answer provides some insight into a way for a President to pardon someone with virtually no consequences: (..) in reality, presidents often wait until his final days/hours to
grant the most controversial pardons. And once a pardon is granted, there is no recall of the pardon. Therefore, there is really no checks to pardon power , making it the
most KING like power the presidency holds. I am wondering why do modern democracies (with rather complex check and balances in place) allow pardons to exist in the first place. In a political system having separation of powers and where persons can appeal if they think the verdict is not correct, it does not make much sense to have the president pardon someone. Question: Why do presidential pardons exist in a country having a clear separation of powers? Note: I will narrow this to US only, since there might hard to provide an answer to cover all countries that have presidential pardons. | Question: Why do presidential pardons exist in a country having a
clear separation of powers? In a word: history... The case of the US is tied to that of the UK. In the UK you have the Royal Prerogative of mercy which has been used since at least 1617. This is likely copied from across the Channel in France, where the Droit de grâce (Fr) was used by Philippe VI to pardon nobles and then got extended to the rest of the population by John II in the 14th century. The power still exists today and lies in the hands of the French President. The point in the above historical note is that the Head of State's right to pardon was likely seen as a matter of course when the US constitution was written. Article II, Section 2 almost certainly reflected this line of thought (see Federalist 69 mentioned in C'est Moi 's answer), and the POTUS right to pardon has been a thing since -- with some haggling in between with some SCOTUS cases over how it should get exercised. Interestingly, the prerogative evolved similarly on both sides of the Atlantic. Namely, on the British side of the Atlantic it seems to have been taken out of the monarch's hands in practice, and it is the PM who suggests a pardon. On the American side of the Atlantic, the Department of Justice has an Office of the Pardon Attorney to review cases. But in both cases the power still formally remains in the hands of the Head of State. In some sense, what's unusual with the current US administration is that Trump appears to be exercising the power on a whim without bothering to consult the Office of the Pardon Attorney, and in the middle of his presidency at that. By contrast, and as you note, his predecessors usually stuck to the very last days of their presidencies to issue controversial pardons. (Nixon's pardon by Ford is the only major exception that springs to mind in recent memory. That one was done in Ford's early days in office, in an effort to try to heal the nation.) | {
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44,148 | So, back in the 80s, the Prime Minister of the UK, Margaret Thatcher, negotiated the "one country, two systems" agreement with the PRC regarding the return on Hong Kong to Chinese rule, as the treaty that allowed the UK to rule Hong Kong was expiring within a couple of decades. However, the PRC was not the only legitimate successor government to the court of Imperial China, with whom the original agreement was made - there was also Taiwan, whose government was the successors of one of the losing sides of the Chinese civil war, who survived by fleeing to Taiwan from the Chinese mainland. Additionally, the Taiwanese government was much more democratic than the PRC has ever been, and who are strongly allied to the United States, who are in turn strong allies of the UK. So, why did Thatcher decide to give Hong Kong back to the PRC, rather than giving it back to Taiwan, thereby removing the need to make a "one country, two systems" agreement in the first place? Surely this would have resulted in a better outcome for the people of Hong Kong, without compromising the democratic and capitalist ideals of the United Kingdom (and Margaret Thatcher's right-wing political party). | Other than the reasons of practicality mentioned, there is also the issue of international laws and treaties, specifically on the issue of "successor states." There definitely was some debate, as the situation in China is not considered a traditional succession of states scenario. But most legal scholars at the time agreed that the current "government in Beijing" (the PRC) is to be considered the legal successor to the original "government in Beijing" (The Qing dynasty) that Britain had signed the treaty with. Although Britain never ratified The Vienna Convention on Succession of States in respect of Treaties, to go against the advice of the both their own legal scholars and against international convention norms would have weakened Britain's clout significantly. Not to mention how hypocritical it would appear as Britain was in the process of negotiating for the protection of the rule of law in Hong Kong. There is also the consideration that in the early '80s when Thatcher's negotiations were taking place, Taiwan (ROC) would not have been considered a democratic, free country. It, like many of its Asian peers, and mainland China (PRC) itself, was under one-party rule at the time. Martial law, which had been in place for almost 40 years, wasn't lifted until 1987, and there was no opposition party until 1986. Although their societies have evolved along different political paths since, when Thatcher was holding negotiations, there certainly would have been reservations and no guarantees of how the rights of Hong Kong citizens would be treated by either the China (PRC) government or Taiwan (ROC) government. | {
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44,151 | I found this article and what I read shocked me. There are an estimated 650,000 like Hong Hanh in Vietnam, suffering
from an array of baffling chronic conditions. Another 500,000 have
already died. The thread that weaves through all their case histories
is defoliants deployed by the US military during the war. Some of the
victims are veterans who were doused in these chemicals during the
war, others are farmers who lived off land that was sprayed. The
second generation are the sons and daughters of war veterans, or
children born to parents who lived on contaminated land. Now there is
a third generation, the grandchildren of the war and its victims. This is a chain of events bitterly denied by the US government.
Millions of litres of defoliants such as Agent Orange were dropped on
Vietnam , but US government scientists claimed that these chemicals
were harmless to humans and short-lived in the environment. US
strategists argue that Agent Orange was a prototype smart weapon, a
benign tactical herbicide that saved many hundreds of thousands of
American lives by denying the North Vietnamese army the jungle cover
that allowed it ruthlessly to strike and feint. New scientific
research, however, confirms what the Vietnamese have been claiming for
years. It also portrays the US government as one that has illicitly
used weapons of mass destruction, stymied all independent efforts to
assess the impact of their deployment, failed to acknowledge cold,
hard evidence of maiming and slaughter, and pursued a policy of
evasion and deception. Isn't there a legal recourse people in Vietnam can use to get compensation and can the U.S. deny them by just denying it ever happened? I would have thought there could be a sort of "international court" punishing crimes against humanity like we did to Saddam Hussein, or is the "international court" an institution that only punish the losers during a war? The use of chemical weapon is clearly illegal and could be considered a crime against humanity. If so, can a country like the U.S. prevent from being prosecuted for it by denying it happened? | Your question is slightly at odds with reality. First off, with the important exception of the US government, nobody sensible is quibbling over the mounting amount of evidence that Agent Orange had short and long lasting side effects. As you've noted already, the US government is not accepting any guilt or responsibility. So the real question is whether there's a court that could find the United States or some of its service members guilty. There are an International Court of Justice and an International Criminal Court . However: The United States withdrew from compulsory jurisdiction of the first in 1986, and began to accept the court's jurisdiction only on a discretionary basis in the aftermath of Nicaragua vs the United States . The United States not only rejects submitting to the second, but also passed the American Service-Members' Protection Act (aka "Hague Invasion Act") which requires POTUS to use "all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any U.S. or allied personnel being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court." As you may know, the US military budget is rather significant, to put it mildly. As such it's not like another country can force the US to comply with a world court order. So in practice and until the US stance chances, there isn't much that the affected Vietnamese can do to seek remedy besides exhausting court options . | {
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44,159 | The Guardian reported under the headline "Brexit: Gove refuses to rule out ignoring any law passed to stop no deal": Michael Gove has repeatedly refused to rule out the possibility that the government could ignore any law passed by parliament to stop a no-deal Brexit and Asked again whether it would be extraordinary for a government not to abide by the law, Gove said: “We will see what the legislation says when it is brought forward. Concerning extensions, all I found out is the actual article 1 reading The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period. (emphasis mine) doesn't specify how extensions are requested, in fact, it doesn't even say anything about a request, just "in agreement with the Member State". So, the final question: If the parliament were to pass legislation mandating extension and the government refuses to ask the European Council, can one of these happen: the EU just says: "Well, parliament said it, so the UK want to extend, we'll decide if we want to as well" parliament (possibly through some representative e.g. speaker) decides to ask themselves Please don't question if practically the Council could agree internally at short notice, just assume it could happen. If you want, I'd be happy to see information on whether such an extension without government involvement would practically work, although that is not the primary question. 1 link doesn't go to the treaty, but European Parliament research (including article 50 on page 2) because it provides context and further reading in case anyone is interested. | Probably not. Article 10 of the Treaty of the European Union states that: Member States are represented in the European Council by their Heads of State or Government It follows, therefore, that any notification made to the European Council must come from either the relevant country's Head of State or Head of Government. In the case of the United Kingdom, it would have to come from either Boris Johnson (as head of government) or HM The Queen (as head of state). | {
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44,187 | According to a speech given by Boris Johnson on 2nd September 2019, there are plans for "an extra 34 billion going into the NHS". What does "going into" mean in this context? Given that the annual funding for the NHS is somewhere around 130 billion, adding 34 billion to that would be a surprisingly enormous change (and thus, maybe not what he meant). All I could find was previous statements about increasing annual funding by the much smaller amount of 1.8 billion. | The statement is quite nebulous (hey, its coming from a politician), but Boris Johnson isn't the first government politician to float the figure: Because we value the NHS so much, the new £20.5 billion funding settlement announced by the Prime Minister in June provides the NHS with funding growth of 3.4% a year in real terms over the next five years. This means the NHS’s budget will increase in cash terms by £33.9 billion , rising from £115 billion this year to £121 billion next year, £127 billion in 2020-21, £133 billion in 2021-22, £140 billion in 2022-23 and £148 billion in 2023-24. (emphasis mine) Baroness Manzoor - 7th January 2019 The £1.8 billion funding is in addition to the extra £33.9 billion, in cash terms, the NHS is set to receive every year by 2023/24 through the Long Term Plan agreed last year. Over £1 billion of this will be spent this year, meaning an annual increase in the NHS’s capital budget of 30%. Published 5 August 2019 - gov.uk (This would have been under Boris Johnson as PM, but I am leaving it here to indicate that the recent speech was not his governments first use of the amount). In essence, its a cumulative increase in spending over the period, with the increases year on year adding up to the £33.9Billion figure. | {
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44,217 | I find myself confused by the events of the day. The BBC reports them as thus Tory rebels and opposition MPs have defeated the government in the first stage of their attempt to pass a law designed to prevent a no-deal Brexit. The Commons voted 328 to 301 to take control of the agenda, meaning they can bring forward a bill seeking to delay the UK's exit date. In response, Boris Johnson said he would bring forward a motion for an early general election. Doesn't this effectively end Johnson's short stint as Prime Minister? Or did he have no other option? | Doesn't this effectively end Johnson's short stint as Prime Minister? Only if he loses, which is not a foregone conclusion. And even then, he doesn't leave office until a replacement is ready to enter: if it's a hung parliament, he would keep the office during coalition negotiations unless he chose to resign it. Note that until recently (the Fixed Term Parliaments Act 2011 took the timing out of the PM's hands) it was considered normal for a Prime Minister who enters the office mid-term to hold elections fairly promptly: failure to do so was a sign of weakness. Or did he have no other option? He's been making a lot of threats to try to get MPs in line. Failure to carry out those threats would completely undermine him. Carrying them the threat to withdraw the whip from 21 Tory rebels has left him a long way short of a majority, so he couldn't realistically hope to accomplish much without elections. He would almost certainly lose the motion on the Queen's Speech when Parliament resumes after the prorogation, which would be a major embarrassment. | {
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44,281 | When reading the results of the recent call for a general election the numbers were 298 for, 56 against. The motion failed to pass due to not reaching the 2/3 majority. It took a little digging to realise that although 298 is much greater than 2/3 of 354 (298+56) the MPs that didn't vote are also counted. This doesn't make sense to me. I can understand why abstaining from a vote is a allowed - if an MP doesn't feel like they have enough information or has no feeling one way or another on a subject - but why does an MP not voting essentially go in the against column? Is there a underlying rationale behind this (not specifically for a general election vote, but any vote that requires calculation in this way). | Because the Fixed Term Parliaments Act law says so: if the motion is passed on a division, the number of members who vote in favour of the motion is a number equal to or greater than two thirds of the number of seats in the House (including vacant seats) . It's not about who votes and who doesn't, it's a legal requirement that there is a minimum threshold of the entire House which needs to be met. In this case, it was not met. | {
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44,338 | I'm trying to understand why Labour and other parties do not want an election. The bill blocking the no-deal exit on the 31st of October will almost certainly pass today. That means that the no-deal option is off, at least for now. What's the motivation for the opposition to delay the inevitable election instead of simply accepting that option right now? | There's a constellation of reasons: Johnson lost his majority (which makes him toothless and unable to get anything done), is getting humiliated day after day, and is putting his inadequacy on display more often than not. The longer this drags on, the more damage to his credibility as a viable PM. The optics of a PM calling for a vote of no confidence, with his party voting against his government and the opposition voting for it, would be bleak for Johnson. The optics of Johnson resigning and inviting the Queen to get the opposition to form a new government are no better. The last thing the opposition wants is to be at the helm on Brexit Day should such a day arrive -- particularly if it's a No Deal Brexit. The opposition is widely pro-Remain outside of a few fringe sections of the Labour party. If Brexit there is, especially if it's a very soft one engineered under pressure by the current opposition, the more radical Brexiters will be out in the wild screaming Brino ("Brexit in name only"). You want the blame and the discredit firmly tacked onto the Tories and the Brexit Party. Alternatively you'd want a People's Vote to confirm the Brexit outcome. There's a significant risk for Labour that Johnson will paint an election before Oct 31 as: it's Brexit or Corbyn. The latter is loathed (or at least used to be loathed) by large swaths of the country -- including by some centrists within his own party. This may very well skew the results enough that they'd end up losing (as polls appear to suggest) on the basis that some voters would rather a no deal Brexit than Corbyn at the helm. By contrast, if opposition stalls until the next extension gets granted, this gets "vote for me and you'll get Brexit by the end of the month" out of the way. Its odds of electoral success are then stronger. Johnson will have been neutered by breaking his key promise to leave on Oct 31 do or die. Unless Farage gives him a break and allies with him, there will be two parties fighting for Brexiter votes, and both will lose because of the UK's FPTP system. If the opposition plays it right, or at least if its activists do, they'll be able to form a coalition government with a majority for Remain. If you'd like most of the above points argued in more detail, The Guardian's Politics Weekly had a good podcast episode on this yesterday. Edit: It's also emerging from private polls that the Tories might actually win the snap election on the one hand, and that it might do every bit as bad as May's snap election on the other (i.e. very tough election ahead). So file that as an additional reason. Were Johnson to win, he could then get the bill that requires him to ask for an extension repealed -- which would make no deal almost certain. Delaying the snap election removes the possibility of him doing that. | {
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44,390 | The UK government right now is nowhere close to having the majority of seats. They really need new elections, which at the moment IMO are not in the interest of the opposition. If the government really wants new elections, and the opposition doesn't, for how long could the opposition with a 20 seat majority prevent elections from happening? | Under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, the next election is due on 5 May 2022. If the opposition has a strong enough desire to do so, it can delay any election until that date. | {
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44,438 | Every member of the EU has to agree any extension to article 50 . Does this mean the UK PM could (technically) use his vote in the European Council to veto his own request for an extension? | No, by paragraph 4 of article 50 (citing 2 and 3 as well because 4 refers back to those): A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its
intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall
negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its
withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That
agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the
Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the
Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament. The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of
the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in
paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned,
unanimously decides to extend this period. For the purposes of paragraphs 2 and 3, the member of the European Council or of the
Council representing the withdrawing Member State shall not participate in the discussions of
the European Council or Council or in decisions concerning it. So specifically, the last part excludes the UK from participating in discussions of extension as well as negotiating and concluding an agreement on behalf of the EU Council. Or as the author of Article 50, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, puts it in an interview with Politico (regarding paragraph four): "It’s very important that Britain is not a third country throughout the whole process of the Article 50 negotiation. Up to the moment when we leave, we are a full member. Therefore you have to have sub-paragraph four, saying that when they’re talking about the divorce, the Brits won’t be in the room and if they are in the room, they won’t be voting." | {
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44,459 | Why can’t the US president drive, officially? Or is it not official? What steps could be taken to allow this action. | Legally, nothing prevents the U.S. president from performing ordinary activities. In practice, U.S. presidents try to avoid doing things (like driving) that make it harder for the Secret Service to protect the president. But if a president insists on doing something (such as riding a horse on a remote ranch , or cutting brush with a chainsaw on a large ranch), the Secret Service will accommodate him. Where possible, arrangements will be made so that the president can perform his hobby (such as jogging) in a securable location (such as a custom-built White House jogging track , or a university athletic field). The Secret Service will even arrange for its agents to be trained in a hobby (such as horse-back riding) to be able to provide the best possible support for the president. Also, there are benefits to a president from letting someone else drive. He can read through notes, make telephone calls, or sit back and relax. The driver will be a professional who knows how to handle a variety of emergency situations . Also, the driver can handle any worries about making the route unpredictable. | {
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45,467 | What jurisdiction do the Scottish courts have to declare the suspension of the Westminster parliament is illegal? Since the Scots and English legal systems are different, and nobody has suspended the Scottish Parliament, why wasn't the matter taken through the English courts? | The United Kingdom has 3 legal jurisdictions : England and Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. Citizens are entitled to bring cases in their own jurisdiction, or any other by mutual agreement (particularly for civil cases). In fact, independent cases are being heard in all 3 jurisdictions. There is a single UK-wide Supreme Court which acts as the final court of appeal for all jurisdictions (save that which affects EU law). The UK government is bound by Scots law for its actions in Scotland and has a legal advisor for that purpose, the Advocate General for Scotland . These cases are after all to challenge the actions of the executive. | {
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45,475 | According to Channel 4 : The DUP, the party supporting the Conservatives in Parliament, believes a bridge [between Scotland and Northern Ireland] could break the Brexit impasse by removing the need for a border in the Irish Sea. Is there an explanation of how building such a bridge would remove any need for a border in the Irish sea? Bemused footnote: I want to know the chain of logical reasoning that the alleged authors of this statement advance in support of it. This is regardless of how stupid or repellent (or otherwise) you or I may think it or them to be. The question is not whether in someone's opinion or professional assessment, there are engineering, financial, political or other obstacles that throw doubt on whether a bridge can actually be built, should be built or will be built. That might be an interesting discussion but it isn't what I am looking for. In my opinion, heated political discussion or aspersion-slinging (justified or not) is not what stackexchange websites are good at or intended for. I might agree that party X or party Y are poor, base, rascally, cheating lack-linen mates but reading people throwing epithets abouts is not something I find especially clarifying. I come seeking enlightenment (what do they mean), not heat (are they idiots). | I'm not sure the DUP has actually said something like that. Channel4 may have misinterpreted the following not-so-recent statement of Paul Girvan, MP for South Antrim and DUP transport spokesperson: As we leave the European Union, the DUP has been clear that there should be no border erected down the Irish Sea. Instead of placing barriers between parts of the United Kingdom we should be building bridges. According to the same source, the DUP did have a feasibility study for the bridge across the North Channel in its 2015 general election manifesto. (Which Boris Johnson is now fulfilling, in that respect.) I read that as the DUP doesn't want an Irish Sea border and they want a bridge (to Scotland), i.e. the bridge is the cherry on the cake, not a mitigating/consolation thingy. Likewise, Arlene Foster was quoted by the BBC saying "Whilst some foolishly attempt to use Brexit to build a border between Scotland and Northern Ireland, we are more progressive, we want to build a bridge", she said. Now, it is possible that Boris Johnson may have obtained some concessions from the DUP in return for his support for the feasibility study for the bridge... but I haven't been able to find any confirmation or details on that. Conceivably, such concessions could be related to Brexit terms, but they could also relate to reopening Stormont, which Johnson is trying to do in order to avoid direct rule in case of a no-deal Brexit. Since I wrote the above, there have been more contradictory news regarding the DUP [not really] making concessions recently; news of today : A front page article in Friday’s Times newspaper said the DUP has agreed to shift its red lines on Brexit, saying it could accept Northern Ireland abiding by some European Union rules post-Brexit as part of a new deal to replace the Irish backstop. The paper claimed the DUP, the biggest party in Northern Ireland, had also privately said it would drop its objection to regulatory checks in the Irish Sea, something it had previously said was unacceptable since it would separate Northern Ireland politically and economically from the mainland. The Times, citing unidentified sources, wrote that, in return for such concessions, Brussels would abandon its insistence on Northern Ireland remaining in a customs union with the EU. However, DUP leader Arlene Foster insisted that, as previously indicated, any moves which did make Northern Ireland different from the rest of the UK would be unacceptable to the party. “UK must leave as one nation. We are keen to see a sensible deal but not one that divides the internal market of the UK,” Mrs Foster tweeted [today]. “We will not support any arrangements that create a barrier to East West trade.” She added: “Anonymous sources lead to nonsense stories.” The DUP’s Brexit spokesman, Sammy Wilson, also rejected reports that the party was softening its stance, but said he had detected a different tone in talks between London and Dublin. | {
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