Eric -
excellent analysis (as usual)...
I approve of the attempts to pull Trump off of the ballots, but that is
not to say i think succeeding at the effort is the ideal outcome. Even
though it feeds the "politically motivated" gripe, it is a good
nationwide reminder that his acts could very well be not just aligned
with insurrection but possibly legally so after full due process.
On a related matter, I am wondering about Letitia James' deliberations
right now on which properties to seize in what order. The NY properties
are already tied up by his and his children's ban from doing business in
NY, so it isn't "punitive" enough to seize those maybe, even if they are
the easiest (judicially) to grab quickly?
I think as private enterprises the actual encumbrances on those
properties is hidden from the courts as well as the public (surely the
jurisdictions where any liens are held know, but can't legally tell up
front?) I don't know if the issues with going out-of -country are
even greater but grabbing his Scotland and Panama properties have some
special sting perhaps? If she knew how deeply mortgaged/leveraged
each property was, she could grab the ones most leveraged and shake the
nickels and dimes out of them(again this is punitive) and discard the
husk. Maybe strip the gold (plated?) fixtures out?
Alternatively, the properties he has most over-valued publicly (and in
the jurisdiction) might be the right ones to grab and auction... 40
Wall-Street is Iconic and Personal even if he no longer spends any time
there (still maintains occupancy in the penthouse though?). The maxim
of real-estate is "it is worth whatever someone will pay for it"?
Would the Saudi's or some other wealthy patron-du-Trump swoop in and pay
the valuation he was claiming in the lawsuit (irony?!) or would all of
the developer enemies he's made in NYC gang up and lowball the auction
to reinforce how inflated he tried to make it? Or take the
If he really couldn't raise the 10% bond for 550m (as he implies), I'm
guessing he's close to or over upside down on many of his properties
(based on inflated value vs market value?).
In my TL;DR style I can't resist one more hallucination: Seize Mara
Lago and turn it into a white-collar federal prison for Trump to spend
his time in... give himan ankle monitor and build in a fake SCIF which
is full of empty classification folders. Trump could play golf with
his prison-mates... maybe mix in some high-profile gangsters or cartel
heads like El Chapo to keep him from calling "gimmes" and "mulligans" on
every hole and lying about his score. I'm wondering if the social
media reports by El Chapo's daughter in Scotland represent her scouting
his property there for a "hostile takeover" by the cartels?
We do live in interesting times...
I'm gonna go back to carving a bump-stock for my rubber-band gun...
- Steve
On 2/29/24 11:26 AM, David Eric Smith wrote:
I don’t suppose I want to make some strident argument about his being or not
being on the ballot, since there are good reasons a careful system of laws
might want to allow someone to run for an office even from a prison (didn’t
Lula da Silva have to do that?)
But trump needs to get his ass hauled into a proper court, and that promptly,
for two reasons that have nothing to do with hail Mary’s to keep him out of
office.
1. It has been extravagantly exhibited what many people already gripe about
both substantively and out of habit: that the notion of “rule of law” is so
strained in this country by the deferences given to the rich and the powerful
(particularly the politically powerful) as to approach bitter irony. But to
those who love nothing so much as to complain and cast judgment: things can be
worse, and gangster countries or absolute information-firewall countries make
that visceral lest we forget. In order that what is already not good, not get
much worse, at some point we have to find that there is _some_ limit to the
indulgences given. Otherwise we just let it all go and aren’t even going to
try.
2. Also “of course”, but surprisingly hard to get heard in a crowd: the letter
of law doesn’t do much good if we are in Humpty-Dumpty world where any word is
allowed to mean anything, and many words can simply be ignored on the premise
that they mean nothing at all. There is a sense of good-faith interpretation
of law, which is by nature not written into the letters of laws that the good
faith is needed to protect — although good law systems do use the letters of
the law to get as much robustness per unit of good faith as possible, by
feeding back to education, certification standards, incentives, visibility, and
so forth. It is not enough to haul his ass before judges and juries, they have
to be real judges that feel obliged to good faith and competence. And any
juries have to somehow be protected from brownshirts, at least so we don’t have
to rely on heroes to even accept the jury assignment without fleeing the
country for their own safety. Again, one could sort of sit on the sidelines,
and suppose that whatever currently happens is about all there can be, but with
SCOTUS giving near-weekly examples of the Humpty-Dumpty version, we are
reminded that among degrees of sub-optimality, some are clearly way worse than
others, so there is still something to actively work to hold onto.
To the extent that anything might bear on keeping him off the ballot, I don’t
at all mind that the 14th amendment has some detailed language tailored to some
Civil War insurrectionists that could lead to that outcome. But since this is
a federal standard, applying to a federal office, and since the question of
whether one has engaged in insurrection is not a mere matter of fact like age
or citizenship, but a matter of legal interpretation, it seems pretty simple to
require that any decisions on that matter should probably be made in a federal
court. (It is so weird that, with all the noise I have heard on this matter
from talking heads, I haven’t heard the above thing just said that way, which
seems to me the smallest and most elementary place to start. Not sure why.)
I haven’t tried to read (and don’t have the education to understand
technically) what is in Smith’s charges of trump, and even Humpty-Dumpty aside,
I don’t know how their specific language would interact in law with the
language of the 14th. But until there is some federal commitment on the
charges that are currently indicted, I don’t see how any substantive
conversation on any of that gets anywhere. If he should get convicted of some
palette of the charges, and some court should decide that those charges are
suitably close to what the constitution wants in terms like “insurrection”, and
they throw him off, that’s fine with me. Or of there is some legal argument
that you have to have actually been a general in a bona fide war to count as an
insurrectionist, that would be a shame to have to let it go so far, but I could
listen to why it is argued that way and try to decide whether there is some
protection in such leeway that I can understand. trump is not that important
in a long-term sense (though even sudden cardiac death only lasts a few
minutes, and yet has certain long-term impacts), and keeping him out by the
vote long enough that he dies of MacDonalds also doesn’t solve the problem of
the run to fascism in the U.S., which is very obviously a social phenomenon
even if it includes institutional assistance. But I guess to return to the
theme at the start: there is some notion of a worldview upheld by some minimal
set of planks of basic sanity, and if everything is just left to drift until
none of those remain, we have much less to work with than the
naturally-selected norms of wild animal populations to underpin life. To just
watch that happen and do nothing seems blame-worthy.
Eric
On Feb 29, 2024, at 10:07 AM, glen <geprope...@gmail.com> wrote:
This is exactly why Trump needs to stay on the ballot(s) and be defeated by a
"normal" election. Every cry of Martyr is more fuel for the much smarter
younger traitors waiting in the wings. Or, if he is elected again, those of us in a
position to bolster whatever Rule of Law we have left will need support.
On 2/28/24 20:11, Roger Critchlow wrote:
I went looking for depressing news in 1924, you know, lying politicians and
cancerous social movements:
April 1 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_1>
* Adolf Hitler <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler> is sentenced to 5 years in
Landsberg Prison <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landsberg_Prison> in Germany for his
participation in the 1923 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1923> Beer Hall Putsch
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Hall_Putsch> (he serves less than 9 months).
--
ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
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