From betraying Ukraine and dispatching masked agents who killed Americans to deporting US citizens and pulling out of accords controlling climate change and Iranian nuclear weapons, the list of Donald Trumpās abuses is long and growing still longer, seemingly by the day.
Looking back decades from now, historians will see that at the top of this shameful list is Trumpās utter abuse of his pardon power. It started on the first day of his second term, when he pardoned more than 1,500 insurrectionists who, on 6 January 2021, had stormed the US Capitol.
More recently, as documented in astonishing accounts by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and 60 Minutes, Trump has overseen a robust pardons market in which friends or relatives of criminals offer to pay millions for presidential clemency.
ā¦
The constitution worked pretty well for some time, but that time is over.
Weāve been overdue for a constitutional convention for a rewrite suitable today (not 1776) for decades, but now that ādollars are free speechā and ācorporations are peopleā, that wonāt be a legal option.
- Corporations donāt want a constitutional convention.
- Our politicians require ādonationsā to get reelected.
- To get those ādonationsā they do what their ādonorsā want.
- Their ādonorsā want them to cut taxes and wages.
- The voters by and large therefore have low wages, and canāt ādonateā enough to influence.
- So the ādonorsā control all policy, and will until it collapses in on itself
- Pardons are the least of our worries
- Good luck getting them to throw out their āget out of jail freeā card
Iād love to be wrong, please let me be wrong
Yeah, the ānew Constitutionā would be a feeding frenzy and we may as well get called āFree Corporations of Americaā or something, which is what we really revolted from England: the oligarchs in mainland England had sway over the King and it ignored the colonies until we were overtaxed and hardly represented.
You had rich white dudes who didnāt want to pay taxes. Ohā¦
The solution is to make America decline in power enough that its politicians arenāt worth buying.
Narrator: He wasnāt wrong.
The Constitution assumed that the Congress wouldnāt abdicate all of its power. A unitary executive wouldnāt be possible if Congress stood their ground and said āNopeā.
The Senate is supposed to impeach him but GOP Senators are playing team sports instead of common sense.
The Senate is supposed to impeach him
The House Impeaches.
The Senate convicts.
But you need a supermajority in the Senate, which even the Radical Republicans of the 1870s failed to muster, despite having the half the country under Marshall Law at the time.
Back then, politicians were assumed to be honorable Gentlemen. This ended a long time ago, but Trump goes the extra mile to prove he is anything but.
Well yes, but also the concept of honour back then was dictated largely by rich slave owners. Soā¦
Iād trust the honor of a slaveowner over the proud cruelty we have now. Itās not like the fascists are less racist.
Iād trust the honor of a slaveowner
The whole context is 22 words bud, I know you can read that much. I like Community but even as a joke reference itās a reach.
That may be, but itās dangerous to guess at a distance. And time is a distance all its own
Fascist is bad enough, but even Hitler would cringe at the idea of a goddamn pedophile being in charge (assuming he wasnāt one himself).
The Nazi Party was flush with pedophiles
I donāt doubt it, itās just more depressing.
āassuming he wasnāt one himselfā look up Geli Raubal and the allegiations of abusive sexual relationship between her (as a minor) and Hitler. Moreover, they were relatives. Just like Ivanka and Donnie Daughterfucker.
I did not know, but itās not fucking surprising.
Back then, politicians were assumed to be honorable Gentlemen.
https://www.americanheritage.com/verdicts-history-iv-scandalous-malicious-and-seditious-libel
In 1803 the infant American Republic was running a high political fever. The ferocity of the verbal warfare raging between the Federalists, the party created by Alexander Hamilton, and the Democratic-Republicans, led by President Jefferson, has rarely been matched in American politics, even by the diatribes of todayās New Left and Ultra Right.
The first fusillades had been fired during Washingtonās Presidency. The Jeffersonians, with not a little help from the Sage of Monticello himself, had set up journalists such as Philip Freneau and Benjamin Franklin Bache with one mission, to deflate and discredit an administration that was, in Jeffersonās view, āgalloping fast into monarchy.ā They soon had the Father of His Country in a state of near apoplexy. āThat rascal Freneau,ā as Washington called him, insisted on sending his scurrilous National Gazette, published in Philadelphia, to the Presidentās house even after he had cancelled his subscription. Freneau spent most of his abuse on Hamilton. Baclic preferred Washington as a target, calling him ātreacherous,ā āmischievous,ā āinefficient,ā and sneering at his āfarce of disinterestednessā and his āstately joumeyings through the American continent in search of personal incense.ā
These verbal guerrillas soon had imitators. Among the more savage was William Duane, Bacheās successor as editor of the Philadelphia Aurora. Washington, he wrote, had ādischarged the loathings of a sick mind.ā Even this was topped by an English newcomer, James T. Callender. In the Richmond Examiner he declared that āMr. Washington has been twice a traitor.ā
They made a lot of grave errors. Yāall should scrap the constitution and write a new one
One of my greatest personal fears is that a Constitutional Convention will be used to shove Christianity down our throats. That said, failure to regulate churches has resulted in a group of conservative churches that preach pretty much the opposite of what Jesus said. The document was a series of compromises, far from perfect. The compromise over keeping the government out of religion was to keep the peace and avoid sectarian warfare. Weāre seeing some hints of that as a result of the Talarico vs Paxton race in Texas.
I mean itnisnt a holy document like Americans think it is. Itnis old and at least needs to be updatedeted.
It needs clarified in some places, yes. But I do not want to give Republicans a blank check to rewrite the Constitution. I guarantee they will establish a religion and criminalize abortion at the very, very least.
Theyāre allowed ātax freeā status as a result of separation of church and state. Theyāre not adhering to their part of the bargin, so tax them
Thomas Jefferson proposed exactly that, but other founders did not heed his advice.
I donāt want these fuckers anywhere near the Constitution. I guarantee they will establish a religion and probably eliminate presidential term limits.
agreed, President also should have nothing to do with DOJ / appointing the AG. Big mistake.
Perhaps the pardon should be a 2/3 vote of congress instead, just to preserve the check on the judiciary
I think part of the problem with pardon power is that it can be freely done.
I think a president should nominate someone for pardoning, then congress critters have to give a 51% vote in favor of pardoning for it to ultimately take effect. 30 days have to pass during the nomination period for them to review the pardon, the pardon to be public knowledge, and congress critters having their name attached to their vote. Particular crimes should be noted for the pardoning, and a pardon doesnāt void new infractions of the same kind of crime.
A second 30 day direct voting period then takes place to confirm the pardon. The general public sends in a vote, based on all voters who send in a ballot. By default in this stage, the pardon passes unless 51% of the ballots reject the pardon.
To sum up:
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1a: A president nominates a person for pardon for specific crimes at the time of the pardon.
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1b: The nominated for pardoning must be considered a flight risk, and prevented from free international travel during the review stages.
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2: After 30 days of review, 51% of congress must decide whether to approve of the pardon, attaching their name to the vote.
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3a: Following approval by the congressional voting period, direct voters from the public can send in ballots to cancel the pardon. 51% of voters who submit a ballot must agree to cancel the pardon. This window lasts 30 days.
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3b: Direct voters can choose to automatically prevent the leader from nominating pardons. 51% of the voters have to agree to remove the pardoning power. This state lasts for the current term of the leader. If this leader is elected again, a ballot is sent out to ask whether their pardoning privilege is restored for their new term.
IMO, the important part of a pardon is for national security purposes - but right now, it is too easy to pardon bad actors in the name of factional forgiveness or bribes.
Chelsea Manning wouldnāt have gotten a pardon if you all had implemented that. A lot of terrible people would still have gotten pardons. Your congress is an applause machine right now
your āto sum upā section is longer than the rest of your comment
This sounds like the Kamala Harris pardon plan. Does it include means testing and tax rebates?
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The unilateral presidential pardon and veto are both huge mistakes.
That puts far too much power in the hands of one person. Especially in a country that wanted to eliminate a king-like position ruling over them.
That wasnāt a mistake. It was absolutely intentional.
It is vital to understand the early American state as a patronage system and the president as the ultimate patrician through which power flows. If you look at early Plantation society, and the subsequent networks of power that flow from landholders to merchant brokers and from yeomen to their wealthy oligarch neighbors, all of this fits neatly together.
The problem the American Founders saw was with the upstart plebians and landless workers. Pardons and vetos check the power of popular judges and legislators, as intended.
Yep, it all flows together because the thinkers behind the Constitution and the plantation model were post-Enlightenment classicists literally basing their perfect model of society on the Roman Republic.
That is propaganda, they wanted a king, just their kind of king. His name was Washington and he would have been a billionaire adjusted for inflation if he had not died in his sixties. The US was always corrupt from the very start.
They expected people to conduct themselves as adults and not vote in a piece of shit.
They shouldāve listened to Alexander Hamilton who also factored in āhuman nature.ā So, they shouldāve imagined Idiocracy and how to navigate it amicably?
Watching US coverage of their politics, itās really amazing seeing people being interviewed in their 40ās that act like teenagers still.
America has a real maturity problem it seems to me.
I really have no idea why they did they, I agree we should get rid of presidential pardoning power. We should have gotten rid of it after Nixon.
Should have gotten rid of it after the civil war
Should have gotten rid of the traitors after the civil war.
They just kept fighting politically for a century and more and here we are. I think almost all ails we experience today can be tracked to that shit, they never went away.
And you canāt have a democratic society where some people just super want to own slaves and never ever shut the fuck up about it.
These are just fundamentally incompatible āmoralitiesā. Red vs Blue. Slave owners against abolitionists.
I think thatās the nature of the fight weāre fighting here.
Considering the US founders owned slaves, I reckon they were short sighted in many other aspects of what they āfoundedā.
I hope they will tighten up and amend any loopholes that got them into this mess in the first place.
Citizens united, first past the post, the two party state are the most important ones I think to fix.
That will need the constitution to be rewritten, or amended.
A two party democracy is like a society with bipolar disorder. Itās just a one party state with an extra flavor. Thatās why the oligarchs and AIPAC et al pay off both sides.
When you have that kind of money it doesnāt matter, youāll get your way because thereās only two parties to bribe anyway.
Theyāll have to if they expect the rest of us to trust them going forward.
This is already a pretty old poster by van Kooten en de Bie. It says: If only the Indians had had a tougher immigration policy then America wouldnāt have been such a big mess right now.Britain invaded and enslaved Indians, not USA.
/wooooosh
(insert racist dot and feather joke here) so how about that Gay of Hormuz? Is it still pretending to be Strait?
But the poster doesnāt mention who was doing the immigrating anyway? What is your counterpoint against exactly?
It was an attempt at a silly joke that didnāt land. No real counter to anything.
Really where not all the famous battles and the Indian wars done by america? Custard and all those people.
yeah, no shit.
No it was a fine part of the Constitution and Presidential power when our government was held together by gentlemenās agreements, like the one to not openly be a peice of shit and try to maintain some dignity.
Shockingly, when the men who gain power are not gentlemen or are not at least trying to maintain the faƧade of being gentlemen, they donāt abide by gentlemenās agreements.
