CNN: Would Trump Be a Dictator if Relected?

CNN: Would Trump Be a Dictator if Relected?

Jun 3, 2024 | Politics

William Cooper writes an opinion piece published at CNN asking if Trump would be a dictator if relected. Some nuggets:

“…A dictator dictates the workings of government. Merriam Webster defines a dictator as “one holding complete autocratic control: a person with unlimited governmental power.” This is what Trump will want to achieve. But he won’t get anywhere near “complete autocratic control” over American government.

[…]

The presidential pardon power isn’t broad enough to preemptively immunize widespread criminal activity; political appointees must be confirmed by a majority of the Senate (which would reject Trump’s worst co-conspirators); and the majority of federal officials serve across presidential administrations in a large, powerful and entrenched bureaucracy.

The federal bureaucracy can’t simply be “purged.” Valid federal legislation authorizes and funds government agencies — and powerful unions protect their workers — so the courts won’t allow federal employees to be fired en masse absent duly enacted legislation. Republican presidents have long tried to shrink the administrative state. They’ve failed miserably.

The Department of Justice moreover, didn’t go after Trump’s enemies the last time he was president. To the contrary, the department rejected Trump’s demands to prosecute former President Barack Obama, then-former Vice President Joe Biden, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former FBI Director James Comey, former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, and others.

The Justice Department did, however, prosecute many of Trump’s friends. Roger Stone was convicted of lying to Congress and threatening a witness. Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in 2017 and asked to withdraw his guilty plea in 2020. Steve Bannon was charged with defrauding investors in his campaign to build a wall at the southern border. Paul Manafort was convicted of tax fraud. And Tom Barrack was acquitted at trial of foreign lobbying charges. Trump eventually pardoned Flynn, Bannon, Stone and Manafort. But the Department of Justice’s lawyers had zealously prosecuted these men.

To imprison his enemies, Trump would need grand juries to indict on his command, courts to rule in his favor and juries to render his chosen verdicts.

The president of the United States doesn’t have power over these things. Grand juries operate under the supervision of the federal courts, not the executive branch. Federal judges sit for life subject to impeachment from Congress. And the only authorities with the power to affect a jury verdict are the trial judge and the appellate courts.

Trump-appointed judges, all confirmed by a majority of the Senate, have shifted the federal courts sharply to the right. But they have also shown their independence and ruled against Trump repeatedly. The Supreme Court allowed a New York prosecutor to receive Trump’s tax returns, denied Trump’s effort to end DACA and rejected Trump’s bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

The Senate, furthermore, still has to confirm, by majority vote, all executive-level presidential appointments (including at the Department of Justice). Trump can’t just appoint, for example, Rudy Guliani as attorney general, Steve Bannon as secretary of defense or Michael Flynn as secretary of state. And pardons only apply to federal offenses, offer no protection under state law and may be voided in court if they are preemptive and not specific. They are hardly a license to go about committing major crimes. Just look at Bannon, who was pardoned by Trump in his border wall case and later convicted for refusing to cooperate with the January 6 committee in Congress.

Unlike a dictator, Trump wouldn’t control most government activity — at the federal, state or local level. If the Democrats take the House in 2024, would Trump control how they vote on legislation? Would he force state court judges to govern how he wants them to? Local school boards?

No way. To be a dictatorship, people have to actually do the things the dictator says. Given his historic unpopularity ratings, the resistance to a second Trump term will likely be fierce at every level of government.

The one way Trump could actually achieve a dictatorship is if he commandeered the military to use force — or its threat — throughout the country on his behalf. But there’s no reason whatsoever to think he could pull that off. Trump has long had strained relations with military leaders, including his secretaries of defense John Mattis and Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley.

As we saw with Milley — who actively opposed Trump’s attempt to reverse the 2020 presidential election results — military leaders won’t just obey Trump’s illegal initiatives. The military doesn’t “take an oath to a wannabe dictator,” Milley said in his departing speech last September. “We take an oath to the Constitution and we take an oath to the idea that is America — and we’re willing to die to protect it.”

[…]

Trump would have an ironclad grip on some things, such as international diplomacy and statehouses dominated by his loyalists. He would have some control in other areas, such as executive branch policies and initiatives. And he’d have little to no control over everything else, such as the daily workings of the state courts and Democrat-run state governments.

Full article: Opinion: Would Trump be a dictator in a second term? No, but he would be a disaster

“States Rights” Are Actually Delegated Powers

“States Rights” Are Actually Delegated Powers

Mar 28, 2024 | Politics

There is no such thing as “states rights”, the proper term to use is state powers.

States have no rights but only powers delegated to them.

Amendment X:

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

You cannot delegate individual rights as they are unalienable, as stated in the Declaration of Independence.

What governments have are powers. Observes Ayn Rand:

“[George Wallace] is not a defender of individual rights, but merely of states’ rights—which is far, far from being the same thing. When he denounces ‘Big Government,’ it is not the unlimited, arbitrary power of the state that he is denouncing, but merely its centralization—and he seeks to place the same unlimited, arbitrary power in the hands of many little governments. The break-up of a big gang into a number of warring small gangs is not a return to a constitutional system nor to individual rights nor to law and order.” [“The Presidential Candidates 1968,” The Objectivist, June 1968, 5]

I do agree, in principle, to limit the federal government to its explicitly stated powers enumerated in the U.S. constitution, as the federal government has far overreached its powers.

Decentralization (or centralization) in government is only good to the extent that it enables the protection of individual rights. What the right mix is of central vs decentralization in any given context is a practical matter.

***

What of the American civil war?

There’s no such thing as the right to fight a war for slavery, which is the “custom” that the South was fighting for in the American Civil War. Law is not an end in itself.

Objectively law does not exist in a vacuum, but has a purpose. Under Americanism, that purpose is stated in the Declaration of Independence: the protection of individual rights. So any state in the Union cannot legally fight a war that undermines the basis of law itself. Any republic which legally protects slavery is illegitimate to that extent. The civil war was the way this defect was remedied.

Prior to the 13th amendment the North was working to legally limit slavery and its expansion so that the non-slave states “free states” would eventually outnumber the slave states of the South. The South saw the writing on the wall. If the North was not gradually working against slavery, the South would have stayed in the Union.

Florida Law Banning Social Media For Minors Violates Parental Rights

Mar 28, 2024 | Politics

Florida has passed a law, signed by Governor DeSantis,  that bans anyone under 14 owning a social media account as of from January 2025. The bill states children that are 14 -15 years of age must have parental consent to create an account on sites like X, Instagram, and Facebook”

“A social media platform shall prohibit a minor who is 14 or 15 years of age from entering into a contract with a social media platform to become an account holder, unless the minor’s parent or guardian provides consent for the minor to become an account holder…”

Apparently it will use “anonymous age verification.”

This bill should be overturned as it is a naked violation of parental rights.  It is up to parents to determine what their child have or do not have access to.

The state does have a role in going after child trafficking and exploitation which some claim is an issue on Instagram, but this bill is not the way to do it.

Musk on Immigration

Musk on Immigration

Mar 27, 2024 | Politics

Here is what I found:

1. Musk did not say illegal immigrants vote. I took what he said to mean that they are likely to vote if naturalized. (He may be wrong or right on this).

2. As an immigrant himself, Musk is for greatly expanding legal immigration. He is against border anarchy.

3. Some make the argument that immigrants who enter illegally because of the Biden administration are more apt to vote for Democrats (based on interviews with them). I agree, that whether they do vote or not is an empirical matter.

4. Thanks to Biden’s executive order, illegals count toward the census which determines house seat counts in Federal elections:

“Accordingly, the executive branch has always determined the population of each State, for purposes of congressional representation, without regard to whether its residents are in lawful immigration status.”

Some estimates show that the net effect of placing them in Democratic strongholds is to give Democrats a lock on an additional 20 plus house seats.

5. Illegals in some states do end up voting in Federal elections due to the lax state ID standards for voting, etc. See this thread:

Musk may be wrong or right on some facts. I see that he is open to changing his views when presented with facts which he sees as facts. I think his errors are due to the noise out there.

Ultra-Millionaire Tax

Mar 26, 2024 | Politics

When the 16th amendment was ratified, the federal income tax was to be no more than 2%. What will be the future rate increase and who will Warren’s confiscation of wealth tax be expanded to when the principle that she can steal people’s wealth is put into law?

According to the Tax Foundation, “The top 1 percent of taxpayers paid a 25.99 percent average rate, more than eight times higher than the 3.1 percent average rate paid by the bottom half of taxpayers.”

Socialist Senator Warren lies by omission in order to confiscate the wealth of billionaires. “Fair share” for Warren and her ilk is a euphemism for legalized theft.

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