mollygram [(x3): will someone explain, petition for new election, will someone explain]
[digested @ nettime -- mod (tb)] Molly Hankwitz Re: will someone explain petition for new election Re: will someone explain - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - From: Molly Hankwitz Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2017 19:25:11 -0800 Subject: Re: will someone explain Dear David, I will hop in to put in my understanding to your excellent and timely question: Ben is correct about the expansion of the Executive branch after 9/11 and Obama saw that he could push things through quickly through EOs. Trump has borrowed that idea, probably with his muse, Bannon script writing, it has been said. But, I will add that Johnson in 1965 signed off on something called The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 also called The HartCeller Act of 1965 which "marked a radical break from the immigration policies of the past. Previous laws restricted immigration from Asia and Africa, and gave preference to northern and western Europeans over southern and eastern Europeans. In the 1960s, the United States faced both foreign and domestic pressures to change its nation-based formula, which was regarded as a system that discriminated based on an individuals place of birth.The act did away with a quota-based system and had relatively few restrictions on migrants." Kim points out that we could end up with Pence, who although a Christian right-winger, would be far more diplomatic with the international set. It is also a great point to mention that lots of organizations and opinions and peoples not formerly aligned are now quite aligned - women, lbgtq, blacks, immigrants - protests are mixed old and young, all classes - income levels. The sense is that the entire country as we have known it, through decades, is in peril of becoming a right-wing dictatorship through and through with the rise of American fascism at the helm and privatization of nearly ever possible sector from schools to prisons, to churches being written into law. As far as the constitutionality of these measures - they are all generally considered pretty much unconstitutional - not for the form, but for the content - so, for instance, they may be working on a a law from 1952, but they have ignored the law from 1965 I mention above. Despite being executive orders, they can have Congress go against them by introducing bills against them. Then that all has to be argued. Trouble is much of Congress thinks its all great, with one or two or a handful of doubting moderates. The Democrats are listening to the people, but they are sell outs, most of them so there is growing disgust with the Dem establish Almost every example has major legal flaws and can be objected to on those grounds. As far as the so-called "Muslim ban" - its constitutionality has already been challenged by states and cities. Just today, in fact LA and Massachusetts sued the Administration over the order. And, court orders or not, there was abuse, and disregard; Homeland Security was asked to follow the Prez and they did. Finally, however, is the methodology which has been in the form of what Naomi Klein calls a "shock" campaign, what you aptly call blitzkrieg. The EO for the ban was supposed to have gone to a few departments first, bu they just ordered it without any comment. This tactic raised chaos as everyone knows, while Trump said it was all great. It is my opinion that this tactic of willful ordering will continue whenever DT feels he wants to do something and is fed up with regulation - one of the going ideological premises of the regime - that companies are beleagured, as are the citizens, by rules, and so de-regulate the economy. Molly On Thu, Feb 2, 2017 at 3:31 PM, KMV <[1]cuuixsil...@gmail.com> wrote: Ben is on target. Additionally, while it seems there are constitutional grounds to challenge quite a few things Trump is doing, it requires not only the political will from the other branches to mount the challenge, but the further will to force the matter if Trump and others alied with the Executive branch refuse to comply with the law. Bottom line, who will the army/national guard side with if it turns out that the Whitehouse ignores court orders. <...> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - From: Molly Hankwitz Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2017 14:22:05 -0800 Subject: petition for new election *i like the direction of this appeal, although perhaps a bit late.* 32 Thoughts about the Petition for a New Election Perry Hoberman NY, NY FEB 3, 2017 It's been a week since I posted this petition, and so far it has not caught fire, to put it mildly (we're currently at 139 signatures and counting). While I've had countless discussions with colleagues, friends and family, I don't pretend to understand all the excuses that peopl
Re: will someone explain
On 02/04/2017 04:47 AM, Scot Mcphee wrote: (after the death of Nero) Thus it variously motivated minds, not only in the city amongst the fathers, the people and the urban soldiers, but it roused all the legions and their leaders: for the secret of the empire was divulged - it was possible to create a prince somewhere other than Rome. Kinda sums up a lot of the history thereafter. This is definitely the danger post Trump, to a less extent *with* Trump. Personally I think that Trump won't make it to dictator. He's far too divisive. His travel ban has been contested in court, and the Department of Homeland Security is no longer upholding it. The president may write as many executive orders as he like, but the executive branch is not ready to simply disregard the courts yet. This means that building the wall, banning Muslims, etc., will need a lot of legislative work which Trump and his government may have a hard time getting through even a Republican-owned Congress. There is the danger that he might start a war against Iran or China, just as he might start a trade war against Mexico - but Trump is not a man to lead the country to war. He may have his supporters, but he doesn't have the popular support and credibility even of George W. Bush - he's so polarizing that the country seems likely to become ungovernable if he does something like that. So unless Trump has got some serious - well - trumps up his sleeve, it seems he's going to be huffing and puffing a lot rather than actually achieving anything - other than destroying the reputation, credibility and economy of the United States, of course. Best Carsten -- http://www.modspil.dk http://tecnoxamanismo.wordpress.com # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: will someone explain
On 03/Feb/17 20:47, Scot Mcphee wrote: Tacitus seems to understand it pretty well: *ita varios motus animorum non modo in urbe apud patres aut populum aut urbanum militem, sed omnis legiones ducesque conciverat, evulgato imperii arcano posse principem alibi quam Romae fieri. *(Tac. Hist. 1.4) Hi Scott -- I've invoked Tacitus' Annals on nettime a number of times going back twenty years. Highly recommended as a substitute for the NYTimes. There is much wisdom in his observations of and charting the shifting of central power structures within the wider Roman system -- the fraught transition from Republic to Imperium being the most notable. Stressors on a (techno-social) system precipitate shifts in the power nexus' within that system. For example, the relationship between Nile River valley grain harvests and Roman stability -- that grain production was directly related to the extent of spring flooding Nile River. Climate had a direct effect on the balance of power in that grain was used as proxy pay to veterans of the Roman legions and to distribute to the civilian population as a way to quell dissent. (The very limited) arable land in the Italian peninsula was also distributed to veterans. Whenever that distribution process came under stress, it caused various shifts in the governing power structure. The hungry/angry man thing... And to comment to David -- probably the first thing to remind you of is that the US is nothing more than another imperial nation-state / social structure, and said document is 'just another' human production in a long historical line of 'states', 'empires', and, ultimately, 'failed states'. Invoking parts of the protocol discussion -- the 'balance' function of the US Constitution relies deeply on civil interactions -- when those civil communication protocols break down, there is a loss of interaction that is crucial to the 'balancing' act. You can't collectively govern if you can't have a civil discussion with 'the opposition'. Edicts (Executive Orders) are not conversations. Unfortunately Pres. Obama was forced to strengthen-through-use the EO process because of the lack of conversations with the Congressional branch. <<>> is taking full advantage of this legacy. That said, the power, as any other 'shared' power is constantly shifting between the three branches of gov't (with the military mixed in there as a fourth power nexus -- see, for example, the do-not-cross-the-Rubicon "Posse Comitatus" Act). The wobble between the inscribed Constitutional power centers has been, so far, limited by the stability of the overall social structure. (That stability last tested significantly in the Civil War. And the reasons for that stability, well, perhaps a simple way to say it -- overall lack of want -- or abundance of resources.) But in the intervening times, there have always been tensions between those centers and other power centers (for example private sector, gov't-sanctioned resource-driven/supported oligarchs and such -- Eisenhower's recognition of the dangers of the rise of the MIC is related to this, for example). As amply demonstrated today, a document will have little effect on shifts of power initiated by certain personalities. While obviously abstract social constructs do drive people to (senselessly) sacrifice their lives for 'a higher cause', social norms are malleable. <<>> and others understand the extent of malleability which allows a re-engineering of the social system. As for the sheep-like following these despots have on a wider swath of the population: the example of the Sturmabteilung (SA, Brown Shirts) was Hitler's way of 'empowering' (for his own ends) the dispossessed unemployed of 20s & early 30s. He eventually turned his back on them (they had come to the end of their utility, except as minimally-trained cannon fodder for the WWII Wehrmacht). I wouldn't be surprised if some sort of selective quasi-military system pops up (one actually initiated/sanctioned by the Presidency). Strengthening the ICE and other non-Dept-of-Defense systems is one means for this. Make Rome Great Again! Cheers, JOhn -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD hanging on to the Laramide Orogeny twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: will someone explain
On 4 February 2017 at 07:32, Keith Hart wrote: > Why ask Americans to explain? Would you expect Romans to understand > the Empire, better to ask a Greek slave. Tacitus seems to understand it pretty well: *ita varios motus animorum non modo in urbe apud patres aut populum aut urbanum militem, sed omnis legiones ducesque conciverat, evulgato imperii arcano posse principem alibi quam Romae fieri. *(Tac. Hist. 1.4) (after the death of Nero) Thus it variously motivated minds, not only in the city amongst the fathers, the people and the urban soldiers, but it roused all the legions and their leaders: for the secret of the empire was divulged - it was possible to create a prince somewhere other than Rome. Kinda sums up a lot of the history thereafter. # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: will someone explain
Why ask Americans to explain? Would you expect Romans to understand the Empire, better to ask a Greek slave. In any case, there is no better account of what makes the Americans tick than Alexis de Tocqueville's. Incidentally the French government sent him there with a mate to study the prison system. I wonder what he would have made of the US currently holding a quarter of the world's prisoners -- with the Black eighth of Americans accounting for 37% of the total? Maybe as an index of how the early democracy became a nation-state and a world empire after WW2. So his method and conclusions may not be apprpriate today, but I would ask you to think about his division of the book into two parts. He assumed that democracy was progressive and wondered it worked in the United States half a century after independence. The two halves refer to the exterior and interior conditions of what made American democratic then, objective and subjective conditions perhaps. The first part deals with the constitution, parties, government etc and at great length the race issue (Negroes and Indians) which he considered to be the fundamental flaw subverting America as a democracy in favor of the inequality sustained by aristocracy. The second part addresses what he felt to be the real motor of the democracy, the opinions and feelings of ordinary Americans -- especially their life in associations, attitudes to women and so on. This is Kant's dialectic of form and content which are in the end inseparable except analytically. The Anglo-Saxons have only one word for law, but the Continental Europeans always two -- state-made law and civil law. That is why they they don't take their shoes off when crossing from public to private space. Being French saw how these two sides of social life were synthesized in a common law democracy. Now it is likely that the relationship between formal and informal aspects of American society have shifted since 1945 and even more since the end of the Cold War. It may be that Trump is a one-off but if so, he has understood that the formal constitution can be disregarded by a president who manipulates American culture as it now stands. This is after all the dual character of the quintessential form of modern government, the hybrid known as a nation-state -- a situation that Trump wants to celebrate as a way of superceding the uneasy compromise between federal government and global empire. Keith Thu, Feb 2, 2017 at 10:02 AM, David Garcia wrote: Will one of the American nettimers take a few moments to explain something to a constitutional ignoramous such as myself. <...> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: will someone explain
On 2017-02-02 10:02, David Garcia wrote:
> Will one of the American nettimers take a few moments to explain
> something to a constitutional ignoramous such as myself.
>
> For those of us outside of the long standing narrative put about is
> that the US constitution is so cunningly constructed with -checks and
> balences- so as to ensure that the President can never be a
> dictator/king/emperor.
>
> And yet it appears (at least froma distance) that he is able through
> this instrument called -executive orders- to do whatever he likes. Can
> someone explain this apparent contradiction. Has he (or Bannon)
> introduced in his campaign (and now in government) the political
> equivalent of Blitzkrieg in which the sheer speed and number of
> initiatives create panic and confusion in his enemies?
>
> Where, if any, are the lilekly constraints and when, if at all, will
> they be able to actually constrain?
Very short brutish answer: a constitution, or for that matter,
long-standing political tradition (e.g. parliamentary democracy), does
not help a bit, if 'everybody' get shit afraid of 'going against the
will of the people'. Look at Brexit. Look at Erdogan getting
all-powerful despite the Turkish constitution (well get yrself a new
one, and have it referendum-legitimized), but maybe more important
still, against a 'founding text' by the founding father of the Turkish
Republic, Ataturk, who explicitly asked the youth to start a revolution
if a current government was betraying his ('kemalist') principles.
http://yunus.hacettepe.edu.tr/~sadi/dizeler/hitabe2.html
Constitutions are like people: the do not govern beyond their grave.
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Re: will someone explain
Ben is on target. Additionally, while it seems there are constitutional grounds to challenge quite a few things Trump is doing, it requires not only the political will from the other branches to mount the challenge, but the further will to force the matter if Trump and others alied with the Executive branch refuse to comply with the law. Bottom line, who will the army/national guard side with if it turns out that the Whitehouse ignores court orders. However, I think (hope) it won't come to that. Just in the last couple of hours talk of impeachment has been attributed to some Republican lawmakers. Ironically, even the Koch Bros. are disenchated now because Trump is such a loose cannon, the markets have become very volatile, which they don't like. We could end up with Pence, which would suck, but at least is less likely to precipitate a multiple front war. Probably. I'm still hoping that an impeachment investigation reveals far more widespread corruption and more of the Republican leadership is caught up. And, on the positive side, there is growing cooperation between new resistance groups and older ones like Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ groups, and some people who were too privileged to realize anyone else was suffering are waking up. So we may seem some long-term gains from that. I mention these coalitions because they are finally energizing some of the democrats enough to push back, and may have a big impact in the next elections. On Thu, Feb 2, 2017 at 10:34 AM, Ben Birkinbine wrote: Hi David, I'll offer a very brief explanation, but I think it should provide some general context for your question. <...> -- Kim De Vries http://kdevries.net/blog/ # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: will someone explain
Hi David, I'll offer a very brief explanation, but I think it should provide some general context for your question. In my opinion, one of the major factors is the expansion of the powers of the Executive branch that occurred after the Sept. 11 attacks. The executive branch, led by the G.W. Bush administration dramatically expanded the power of the executive branch to act decisively in the interest of "national security." This, coupled with a gridlocked congress and senate, has led subsequent presidents to use executive privileges to pass all sorts of orders, which includes those orders that Trump supporters tend to despise (The Affordable Care Act aka "Obamacare," and the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals aka "DACA"). The current administration has also relied on older laws like the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which granted the President power to suspend or restrict the entry of "aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants" as he deems appropriate if he finds them to be "detrimental to the interests of the United States." The constitutional question in regard to the travel ban will be one of due process. As for constraints, the best officially sanctioned options we have at this point are the other branches of government (judicial and legislative). The legislative is stacked with Republicans who mostly seem willing to get in line with Trump's policies. Depending on which portion of the judicial branch we are talking about, we *may* have some constraint there, although Trump will select at least one Supreme Court judge (currently ongoing). He also fired the Attorney General for refusing to implement the travel ban. Hope this helps. Lots to say on all this... Ben On Thu, Feb 2, 2017 at 1:02 AM, David Garcia wrote: Will one of the American nettimers take a few moments to explain something to a constitutional ignoramous such as myself. <...> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
will someone explain
Will one of the American nettimers take a few moments to explain something to a constitutional ignoramous such as myself. For those of us outside of the long standing narrative put about is that the US constitution is so cunningly constructed with -checks and balences- so as to ensure that the President can never be a dictator/king/emperor. And yet it appears (at least froma distance) that he is able through this instrument called -executive orders- to do whatever he likes. Can someone explain this apparent contradiction. Has he (or Bannon) introduced in his campaign (and now in government) the political equivalent of Blitzkrieg in which the sheer speed and number of initiatives create panic and confusion in his enemies? Where, if any, are the lilekly constraints and when, if at all, will they be able to actually constrain? David Garcia # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
