TVTropes Now available in the app store!
Open

Follow TV Tropes

Following

The General US Politics Thread

Go To

Nov 2023 Mod notice:


There may be other, more specific, threads about some aspects of US politics, but this one tends to act as a hub for all sorts of related news and information, so it's usually one of the busiest OTC threads.

If you're new to OTC, it's worth reading the Introduction to On-Topic Conversations and the On-Topic Conversations debate guidelines before posting here.

Rumor-based, fear-mongering and/or inflammatory statements that damage the quality of the thread will be thumped. Off-topic posts will also be thumped. Repeat offenders may be suspended.

If time spent moderating this thread remains a distraction from moderation of the wiki itself, the thread will need to be locked. We want to avoid that, so please follow the forum rules when posting here.


In line with the general forum rules, 'gravedancing' is prohibited here. If you're celebrating someone's death or hoping that they die, your post will get thumped. This rule applies regardless of what the person you're discussing has said or done.

Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM

Zendervai Since: Oct, 2009
#135676: Aug 18th 2016 at 11:05:12 AM

A couple of the problems with privatizing prisons is ballooning costs and declining quality. (Say what you will about punishment vs rehabilitation, you generally want the prisoners to survive their terms without dying to being disfigured.) Government owned and run prisons generally don't need to make a profit, instead running at cost, and as such, they don't feel the need to cut corners everywhere to maximize profit. When the public prisons prove to be cheaper and better run (which will probably be the case, because they were before privatization became a thing), there will be pressure on State levels to stop privatizing.

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#135677: Aug 18th 2016 at 11:06:33 AM

That's only one problem with private prisons. The most critical problem, and the source of all the others, is that, since their revenue is based on the number of inmates, they have a perverse incentive to try to get as many of them as possible and keep them as long as possible, whether it serves society or not. Lobbying organizations bankrolled by the private prison industry are behind much of the push for harsher sentencing guidelines on minor drug offenses.

It's also the case that quality of treatment tends to be significantly lower at private prisons, but that's an effect, not a cause.

Edit: Related to those is the parole system, which can also get remanded to private companies and used as a revenue stream for them, by trapping people with onerous fees and jailing them again when they are unable to pay.

edited 18th Aug '16 11:32:32 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
(•̀⤙•́)
#135678: Aug 18th 2016 at 11:55:12 AM

My hope is that elimination of the prison-industrial complex means less pressure on lawmakers to create, retain, and enforce certain vice laws that exist primarily to ensure a steady stream of inmates.

But given that it's one of my pet issues, it's probably no surprise to anyone that my immediate thought was, "How will this affect vice laws?" tongue

edited 18th Aug '16 11:55:59 AM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
Elle Since: Jan, 2001
#135679: Aug 18th 2016 at 12:19:42 PM

The other shoe we were promised against Manafort has dropped He's being accused of orchestrating a 2006 anti-NATO protest that put the safety of US Marines at risk and forcing a joint exercise with Ukraine to be scrubbed.

TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
(•̀⤙•́)
#135680: Aug 18th 2016 at 12:30:25 PM

That's not the other shoe. That's just more information about what Manafort is accused of.

It will only be the other shoe dropping when Manafort is legally indicted for it.

My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
JackOLantern1337 Shameful Display from The Most Miserable Province in the Russian Empir Since: Aug, 2014 Relationship Status: 700 wives and 300 concubines
Shameful Display
#135681: Aug 18th 2016 at 12:35:52 PM

[up][up] LOCK HIM UP!!! LOCK HIM UP!!!

I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.
TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
(•̀⤙•́)
#135682: Aug 18th 2016 at 12:37:33 PM

So, if I understand correctly, Manafort incited civil unrest in Ukraine in order to compromise American interests in the region and prevent Ukraine from joining NATO?

We had this discussion when Trump asked Russia to hack Hillary, and now we need to have it again. People who know better than I do: does this count as treason?

My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
Elle Since: Jan, 2001
#135683: Aug 18th 2016 at 12:38:01 PM

I've honestly no idea how or with what he would be charged; the only thing sure that the US has jurisdiction over is whether he should have registered with the State Department as a foreign operative. It remains to be seen how or if Ukraine will act, whether they'll try to bring corruption charges against him and whether the US will extradite.

Is it treason? It was 2006 and he was working in Ukraine so out of US jurisdiction. But I guess he's still an American citizen.

I think the hairy point is the diplomatic question of whether Russia is/isn't an 'enemy'. Declaring them to be so has serious global implications and I'm not sure our administration is prepared to do so. It would effectively be the start of Cold War 2.0.

edited 18th Aug '16 12:44:49 PM by Elle

Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#135684: Aug 18th 2016 at 1:36:04 PM

Its not treason because he wasn't working for a declared enemy of the US.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
LeGarcon Blowout soon fellow Stalker from Skadovsk Since: Aug, 2013 Relationship Status: Gay for Big Boss
Blowout soon fellow Stalker
#135685: Aug 18th 2016 at 1:40:39 PM

To make the revived Cold War with the Russians official would be a pretty big undertaking and I can't imagine a worse possible time for us to do it given that we've got Nazis at the gate here at home.

Oh really when?
Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#135686: Aug 18th 2016 at 1:42:17 PM

Might fall afoul of sedition laws but I'm not familiar with the details of American loyalty laws.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
Elle Since: Jan, 2001
#135687: Aug 18th 2016 at 1:52:52 PM

Well let's see what Wikipedia has to say.

"Seditious conspiracy (18 U.S.C. § 2384) is a crime under United States law. It is stated as follows: “ If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both."

That seems to imply it has to have taken place on US soil. Since the end of the Cold War it has only been used twice to procecute Islamic terrorist groups. It was used once in the 80s against a group of white supremacists.

The last time we had any more comprehensive anti-sedition laws was during both World Wars and they were either repealed after the crisis was over or failed the constitutional test. The last one, the Smith Act technicaly remains on the books but has not been invoked since the 60s after it lost a Supreme Court case.

edited 18th Aug '16 1:56:00 PM by Elle

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#135688: Aug 18th 2016 at 2:22:49 PM

All of those laws seem aimed at wartime sedition for people within the country. It seems odd that there are no statutes specifically addressing working against U.S. national interests while abroad, especially taking money to do so.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
FFShinra Since: Jan, 2001
#135689: Aug 18th 2016 at 2:36:31 PM

So Eric Bolling, one of the more deluded and detestable people on Fox, actually tried to say polls dont matter because Trump gets crowds that are bigger than the sample size. Dana Perino and Greg Gutfeld of all people had to facepalm at him for that "logic".

Elle Since: Jan, 2001
#135690: Aug 18th 2016 at 2:47:48 PM

[up][up]Codifying that kind of thing into law is dicey given our history of doing some morally questionable things in other countries (Central/South America, Hawaii before it was a territory) in the name of national interest. I don't know if you could write a law that would distinguish between what Manafort was supposedly doing and, for example, someone working with a rebel orginization in a country with a US-backed dictator.

Conspiring with a foreign power to sway an election needs a serious Obvious Rule Patch though. As far as I know, there's no precedent for it in this country.

edited 18th Aug '16 2:49:19 PM by Elle

AngelusNox Warder of the damned from The guard of the gates of oblivion Since: Dec, 2014 Relationship Status: Married to the job
Warder of the damned
#135691: Aug 18th 2016 at 3:16:49 PM

Der Fuhrer speaks.

The Economist: Trump’s foreign policy speech offers more insights into the man than the plan

A HEAVILY trailed speech by Donald Trump on counter-terrorism, delivered in Ohio on August 15th, included little that made sense as a plan for keeping America safe, but offered some fresh insights into the self-obsessed, fact-scorning temperament of the businessman who wants to hold the world’s most powerful job.

As his poll numbers slide and the murmuring from his allies grows in volume, Mr Trump increasingly sounds like someone with a political version of Tourette’s Syndrome. Much of the speech could have been given by any of the 16 Republicans that the businessman defeated for the party’s presidential nomination, amounting to a committee-drafted recital of conventional conservative talking points. A subdued Mr Trump, reading from a teleprompter, dutifully accused Barack Obama of staging a blame-America “global apology tour” after taking office in 2009, and—together with his first secretary of state, Hillary Clinton—of destabilising the world by coddling tryants and snubbing allies, while refusing to take seriously the threat from Islamic terrorism.

But every now and then Mr Trump sensed an opportunity to boast about how prescient he had been in his assessment of foreign affairs, even as a private businessman with no seat in the councils of state, and began shouting about some of his favourite ideas, and how clever they were. Rather often this required brutalising the historical record. In his Ohio speech Mr Trump claimed, falsely, to have opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq from the very start, then called Mr Obama “incompetent” for withdrawing troops too fast from Iraq. He scolded the “Obama-Clinton group” for toppling the Qaddafi regime in Libya (though he actually praised that overthrow at the time). Mr Trump simultaneously grumbled that the Obama administration had both betrayed Reaganite ideas about freedom, and naively thought that democracy could ever be brought to such countries as Iraq.

The foreign policy speech had been billed as a chance for Mr Trump to show that he has sober, workable ideas for fighting the Islamic State (IS) terror network. The property developer ploughed through some proposals that ranged from policies already in place, such as drone strikes on terrorist leaders, to ideas that seemed to bore him as he read them out, such as a presidential commission on radical Islam, including moderate Muslims, which would craft new protocols on tackling extremism for use by local police departments. Bowing to off-stage pressure from Republican bigwigs, he backed away from his earlier, unconstitutional talk of banning Muslims from entry to America. Instead, he offered a plan for what he called “extreme, extreme vetting” of immigrants, reviving ideological screening tests last seen during the Cold War, under which consular officials and immigration officers would somehow identify those with “hostile attitudes” towards America and its values; anyone who believes that Sharia law should “supplant American law”; or any arrivals who do not “believe in the constitution or who support bigotry and hatred”; and ensure that visas only go to those “who we expect to flourish in our country.” To that end, once elected president he would ask the State Department and Department of Homeland Security to draw up a list of regions where “adequate screening” is not possible, and he would suspend immigration from dangerous regions with a “history of exporting terrorism.”

He sounded much more excited when his text gave him the chance to engage in personal abuse, accusing Mrs Clinton of wanting to be “America’s Angela Merkel”, claiming that the German chancellor has allowed “massive immigration” bringing “catastrophe” to her country. Mr Trump sounded even happier when peddling conspiracy theories, as when he flatly declared that Mrs Clinton “lacks the mental and physical stamina” to take on IS “and every other challenge we face.” He sounded happiest of all when he congratulated himself for his idea that America should have seized Iraqi oilfields (while shunning all other forms of nation-building in Iraq), leaving behind American troops to guard this war booty. “I said: ‘keep the oil, keep the oil, keep the oil, don’t let somebody else get it’,” Mr Trump said, adding: “In the old days, when we won a war, to the victor belonged the spoils.”

The audience in Ohio liked some bits of Mr Trump’s speech, as when he promised to dismantle terror networks in America “viciously if necessary”. His supporters were quiet through one of the few passages that amounted to a foreign-policy strategy that Mr Trump could realistically deliver as president, possibly because it was a fresh statement of his desire to forge closer links with the authoritarian government of Russia led by President Vladimir Putin, and “find common ground” in the fight against IS and in Syria policy.

A short while before Mr Trump’s speech, Hillary Clinton, campaigning in the scrappy, blue-collar city of Scranton, Pennsylvania, preemptively mocked her rival for taking so long to reveal his counter-terror plans, saying that his secret is that “he has no plan”. Mrs Clinton was joined in Scranton by the vice-president, Joe Biden, who condemned Mr Trump’s praise for authoritarian leaders, saying that the businessman “would have loved Stalin”, and joked that Mrs Clinton had forgotten more than Mr Trump and his entire foreign policy staff ever knew about geopolitics.

Real Cold War veterans may be forgiven for finding the 2016 election a little odd. The party of Eisenhower and Reagan has nominated a man who calls looting of foreign assets the highest priority for America in war, and who sucks up to Russia. The Democrats are running on their candidate’s national-security credentials. Meanwhile Mr Trump—judged simply as a man standing on a stage—sounds angrier and unhappier every day. This election is not about to grow more inspiring.

Inter arma enim silent leges
Deadbeatloser22 from Disappeared by Space Magic (Great Old One) Relationship Status: Tsundere'ing
#135692: Aug 18th 2016 at 3:21:19 PM

So now Trump thinks he should have all the credit for Brexit.

Also do we have a drinking game for the debates prepped yet?

edited 18th Aug '16 3:28:49 PM by Deadbeatloser22

"Yup. That tasted purple."
thatguythere47 Since: Jul, 2010
#135693: Aug 18th 2016 at 3:38:38 PM

"Conspiring with a foreign power to sway an election needs a serious Obvious Rule Patch though. As far as I know, there's no precedent for it in this country."

Not really. There's no way you could write that law that isn't super totalitarian. Manafart's super scheevy but lets not revive sedition laws.

Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?
AmbarSonofDeshar Since: Jan, 2010
#135694: Aug 18th 2016 at 3:50:36 PM

Evan Macmullin on Trump. Posting mostly because watching him talk about Trump is a small man is fun.

Elle Since: Jan, 2001
#135695: Aug 18th 2016 at 3:51:15 PM

[up][up]Is it? It's already against the law to accept campaign donations from foreign countries (something Trump's campaign has already been accused of seeking though not of accepting.)

edited 18th Aug '16 3:51:43 PM by Elle

pwiegle Cape Malleum Majorem from Nowhere Special Since: Sep, 2015 Relationship Status: Singularity
Cape Malleum Majorem
#135696: Aug 18th 2016 at 3:58:43 PM

do we have a drinking game for the debates prepped yet?

My advice: just get drunk before they even start. It's the only way you'll get through them with your sanity intact.

This Space Intentionally Left Blank.
thatguythere47 Since: Jul, 2010
#135698: Aug 18th 2016 at 4:39:55 PM

you were talking about a US citizen influencing elections which, I mean, there are several NGO's whose whole thang is influencing elections. Influencing them to be fair and free but they'd be caught up in the dragnet. Or US dual citizens protesting dictators in their secondary country could also fall into such laws.

Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?
LeGarcon Blowout soon fellow Stalker from Skadovsk Since: Aug, 2013 Relationship Status: Gay for Big Boss
Blowout soon fellow Stalker
#135699: Aug 18th 2016 at 4:44:10 PM

Unless we can prove that Trump is acting explicitly on the orders of the Russian government and isn't just some loony worshiping the ground Putin walks on we can't do anything about it from a legal perspective.

I still say we need to push this connection hard though. I hope Clinton puts him on the spot during a debate over it.

Oh really when?
Balmung Since: Oct, 2011
#135700: Aug 18th 2016 at 4:52:37 PM

My advice for a drinking game for the debate: just drink heavily throughout the entire debate. Or at least whenever Trump is talking. Maybe it will help you get past the insanity he's going to spout.

edited 18th Aug '16 4:54:27 PM by Balmung


Total posts: 417,856
Top