Trump Investigations Thread

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Skallagrim

Skallagrim

Well-known member
Bigking321 said:
Don't lump all Americans in that group. 😉

Quite a lot of us want the federal government knocked down a few hundred pegs or so.
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Oh, to be sure! And in the same way, many a European realises that the Euro-typical "social democracy" is a crutch that weakens us. Yet in both cases, regrettably, reason does not yet prevail in the face of entrenched interests.
 
Bacle

Bacle

When the effort is no longer profitable...
Founder
Cherico said:
Ok your taking offense from Skall where none is meant or intended.

And old Jewish saying is do not create evil where none exists, and in this case no harm was meant. What he was saying was if a far less organized europe can work this out so can we. You have far too much faith in government insitutions and their capabilities and how much they bring to the table.
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And you and he have far, far too much faith that local authorities and/or private entities can always do things better than a central government.

For somethings, scale matters, and the Federal gov can handle things at scales individual states cannot.

Like, do you want to force every state to have their own Dept of Energy level group, instead of leaving that, and it's budget requirements, to the Feds?
Skallagrim said:
Ehr... Bacle's argument was that "States will no longer need to match up to the syne wave of the national grid" if states run their own grids and you don't have a central authority commanding them, whereas my response is that it's insane for states not do what's practical and work together even if they are not all centralised under one authority.

My point isn't "you shouldn't co-operate", my point is "co-operation among different parties is better than lumping it all together under one central authority". My point is about avoiding single points of failure.

You both fail to grasp that, and are both way too busy obsessing over a false dichotomy ("centralism" OR "total chaos") to see that this is not actually the point that is being made. Just to clarify, again: I'm not against agreements between states (or other entities) to keep things running smoothly; I'm against centralising power structures, because centralised systems are inherently too vulnerable to all-encompassing failure. Compartmentalising is an essential feature when it comes to preventing real disasters.

(P.S. The mechanism by which the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany work together to allow interaction between their power grids is a treaty separate from the EU, which predates the Maastricht Treaty. In fact, it was originally a treaty involving the country of West Germany. In other words: no, you don't need a centralised political authority to do such things. Nice try though!)


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You're by-passing my actual point. In fact, I think you're "falling into the American trap" of having had a large union for so long that you fail to see that countries much smaller than most US states can run things competently, by their lonesome, without such a union. This fact proves that US states do not inherently need the Federal government to do all sorts of stuff for them.

Literally. Reality itself demonstrates that I'm right about this. The dangers you imagine are really just that: imagined.

By your logic, Britain has doomed itself to nuclear holocaust by voting for Brexit, because they now lack the EU to ensure that their nuclear reactors are safe. Except, wait... the EU had very little to say about that anyway! European countries handle this themselves. British, Dutch, German, Belgian, and French standards are all handled nationally. Yet they all have nuclear power (well, Germany had it, effectively). And all handle it safely. In fact, I stress again... the only big nuclear disaster in Europe was caused by the highly centralised USSR.

Europe has many problems, compared to America. But at least in Europe, many people realise what a dumb idea the EU's wish for centralisation really is. In America, you've lived with this Federal crutch for so long, many of you no longer grasp that you can walk without it.

Again: stop imagining disasters. If the Dutch and the English can run nuclear power stations without having Brussels handle it all for them, then the good people of Virginia and Texas can surely manage the same without Washington breathing down their necks. You don't need those centralist busy-bodies. They just made you believe that you do. The dependency is entirely imagined.
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Again, you mistake the issues of nations for the issues of states, and think that each US state has the effective capacity to act as it's own nation, when that just isn't the case.

And if you truly think every US state can run effectively on it's own, like a nation can, then you know very little about how dysfunctional a lot of state governments are or the US's logistics and commercial operations.

And again, 1865 and Appomattox Court House would like to remind you the issue of 'centralization of power' in the US is already a settled matter.
 
Skallagrim

Skallagrim

Well-known member
Bacle said:
Again, you mistake the issues of nations for the issues of states, and think that each US state has the effective capacity to act as it's own nation, when that just isn't the case.
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You're the one mistaken about this matter; and this is precisely what I meant by that mental crutch that you lean on for some reason. You can't even imagine a US state standing on its own feet. You genuinely harbour the illusion that Virginia cannot manage what tiny Luxemburg can.

Nations, by the way, means peoples. I'm comparing states to states. [*] In casu: the constituent states of the EU and the constituent states of the USA. Both are equally capable of standing on their own feet, should the central government of their union suddenly vanish. Indeed, several US states would easily outperform most EU states if that happened.

You vastly under-estimate the states of your own union, and strangely over-estimate the central government of same.


[*] I'm willing to entertain the notion that the USA is home to one nation, divided across multiple states, although that idea is of course also disputed (see, for instance, Albion's Seed, or The Nine Nations of North America). But that hardly matters: the Dutch and Flemish are to the same degree one nation divided by a border, as are the Germans and Austrians. Nation and state are not synonyms, is what I'm saying. In that sense, "nation-state" is almost always a lie. At best, a shoddy approximation.

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Bacle said:
And again, 1865 and Appomattox Court House would like to remind you the issue of 'centralization of power' in the US is already a settled matter.
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And here I thought that war was fought to preserve the union, not to impose centralist tyranny. Are you telling me the South was right, and it really was the War of Northern Aggression? If not, then by law, it remains a federal union of states, not one big super-state with mere provinces it can push around.
 
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Bacle

Bacle

When the effort is no longer profitable...
Founder
Skallagrim said:
You're the one mistaken about this matter; and this is precisely what I meant by that mental crutch that you lean on for some reason. You can't even imagine a US state standing on its own feet. You genuinely harbour the illusion that Virginia cannot manage what tiny Luxemburg can.

Nations, by the way, means peoples. I'm comparing states to states. [*] In casu: the constituent states of the EU and the constituent states of the USA. Both are equally capable of standing on their own feet, should the central government of their union suddenly vanish. Indeed, several US states would easily outperform most EU states if that happened.

You vastly under-estimate the states of your own union, and strangely over-estimate the central government of same.


[*] I'm willing to entertain the notion that the USA is home to one nation, divided across multiple states, although that idea is of course also disputed (see, for instance, Albion's Seed, or The Nine Nations of North America). But that hardly matters: the Dutch and Flemish are to the same degree one nation divided by a border, as are the Germans and Austrians. Nation and state are not synonyms, is what I'm saying. In that sense, "nation-state" is almost always a lie. At best, a shoddy approximation.

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What's that old saying "200 miles is a long way for European, 200 years is a long time for an American".

I understand that you have this mental image of the US states as akin to EU member nations because of relative size, but it is not accurate in the least. No US state is actually in a position to be self-sufficient as a sovereign nation, even if Cali and Texas at times like to imagine it is true.

The USA and EU are not the same thing, so please do not operate on arguments that act like they are. All of your arguments have hinged on this idea, treating US states the same as European nations, when that simply isn't the case and never has been.

Most existing European nations have roots going back 1000s of years in roughly the same location; the US states were never independent entities to begin with, aside from technically Texas.
Skallagrim said:
And here I thought that war was fought to preserve the union, not to impose centralist tyranny. Are you telling me the South was right, and it really was the War of Northern Aggression? If not, then by law, it remains a federal union of states, not one big super-state with mere provinces it can push around.
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It was fought because some in the Confederacy had the same view of the US as a bunch of separate nations that you have.

The Confederates wanted to keep pushing slavery onto 'new' 'nations' in the American West, and had been at it for years via 'grey zone methods' before Ft. Sumpter (Bleeding Kansas ring a bell), and had things like the Fugitive Slave Law which was abused to abduct free blacks from the non-slave states, not just get back 'escape slaves'.

All though I guess the idea of each US state as a separate nation, to make the US seem like the EU, makes Euro's feel better about their pint-sized pieces of real estate and the clusterfuck of a Forth Reich the British were smart enough to leave before the French and German's could completely destroy their nation.

The only redeemable fact about the EU is that it's not Russia or the USSR; don't pretend to be the US, the EU isn't and never will be.
 
strunkenwhite

strunkenwhite

Well-known member
Skallagrim said:
Hard disagree. They weren't perfect, but some pretty skewed historiography (the same school that also vilified the second amendment, by the way) has deliberately painted them in an overly negative light. Surprisingly much got done under those Articles. They did need reform. The wishes of the centralists were way over-blown, though, which is why the Bill of Rights even exists: to prevent centralist over-reach that would otherwise certainly ensue.

The tenth amendment seems particularly relevent to this whole discussion, since it's essentially a formulation of the principle I'm defending here. As many powers as possible should be reserved to the lower levels. Only a limited number of tasks should be granted to any central authority.

Clearly that principle didn't somehow inform only the Articles, only to then be discarded. It remained relevant. So your framing here is misplaced.
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It took only a decade for the founders to throw the Articles in the trash. They could have done the same to the Constitution if it was comparably bad, but it wasn't. But I fear this is wandering into the weeds: let me try again.
Skallagrim said:
the United States were founded -- quite explicitly -- as a union of states. A league. A compact. Not a superstate.
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The AoC's Congress was made up of states, basically. They sent delegations, but the delegation had one collective vote per state. Every law needed the support of a supermajority of states to pass it. Under the Constitution, each representative has their own vote, and mathematically you could pass a law (that trumps state laws) with only one state's delegations having majorities in favor.

With the powers of the Constitution as broad as they are (despite the limitations you mentioned, and even prior to the Civil War) I don't think "superstate" is an unreasonable term to describe the United States vis a vis its component states. Unless, of course, you're imagining a unitary state instead of a federal one.
Bacle said:
It was fought because some in the Confederacy had the same view of the US as a bunch of separate nations that you have.
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Naw, that was just the cope. It didn't take long for the CSA to be in many ways more centralized than the USA. And don't forget that states were explicitly prohibited from changing their minds about slavery by the CSA's constitution.
 
Bacle

Bacle

When the effort is no longer profitable...
Founder
strunkenwhite said:
Naw, that was just the cope. It didn't take long for the CSA to be in many ways more centralized than the USA. And don't forget that states were explicitly prohibited from changing their minds about slavery by the CSA's constitution.
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Yes, the CSA did become more centralized and dictatorial than the US did, but that was because they were hypocrites of the highest order who just wanted to be able to continue to own other humans and because they hated Lincoln.
 
A

ATP

Well-known member
Skallagrim said:
So? In Europe, we have EU psychopaths in Brussels who use this kind of 'logic' to centralise power in their hands. It's nonsense. Germany and Poland should be able to decide on their own policy. In addition to ensuring a free trade block (which is always the main thing), any kind of greater union really has only two major policy areas that should be run centrally: foreign affairs, and the military. (Hilariously, those are the two things the EU doesn't manage to centralise properly...)

And for the exact same reason, California and Montana should each handle their own affairs, too. Whatever the lunatics have turned it into, the United States were founded -- quite explicitly -- as a union of states. A league. A compact. Not a superstate. If states handle things differently, that's good. That's healthy competition. That's a battle of different ideas, each trying to demonstrate their worth, and being tested by reality.

Uniformity is stagnation and decline. You want variation. You want competition.

And yes, that can lead to errors. But at least to some degree, and usually to a great degree, those errors will be of limited scale. If you centralise things and a critical error is made... centrally... then the scale is not limited. Then everyone is screwed. That's what you want to avoid. This is why many ships and submarines need those watertight doors you can lock, so that if one compartment floods, you can still save the vessel, still prevent the water from getting everywhere.

You imagine centralism, in this context, as a safeguard against local mistakes. I urge you to see if from the other side: decentralism is a safeguard against central mistakes. And that's infinitely more important. It saves the ship from sinking, even if a critical mistake is made.
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Only free trade.
Common Foreign affairs and military? Germany would gave us to soviets in heartbeat,if we do not have our own army.
 
Flintsteel

Flintsteel

Sleeping Bolo
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Bacle said:
And you and he have far, far too much faith that local authorities and/or private entities can always do things better than a central government.

For somethings, scale matters, and the Federal gov can handle things at scales individual states cannot.

Like, do you want to force every state to have their own Dept of Energy level group, instead of leaving that, and it's budget requirements, to the Feds?
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...this is already a thing. Most Federal agencies have State-level counterparts. Sometimes with different names, sometimes combined with other duties, but very rarely is there a Federal agency that doesn't have some kind of State counterpart.

Oh, and the average person mostly interacts with the State one, not the Federal.


And to top it all off, the DoE doesn't do nuclear safety. Reactor safety and related things is handled by the completely separate Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which is not a cabinet-level agency.
 
Bacle

Bacle

When the effort is no longer profitable...
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