Dude, I was serious and this is you being an asshole. And now you’re responding to me as if I were serious, so you were lying here - you were not in good faith. So, like given your history - it’s a pretty hair trigger to “fuck off” and that’s basically what you got.
You don’t understand a lot of stuff. Got it. The rest of your post sounded like you thought you understood.
This is what I was referring to when I said your edit shows you weren’t posting in good faith. Legislate them to be ‘illegal’? If you want to try to legislate those out great, but saying ‘illegal’ is not good faith, sorry. That’s your hair trigger, not mine.
I want ICE abolished, I want CBP re-structured to help border crossings. I think TSA has way too much power as does DHS. You said you want them to be legislated as ‘illegal’.
So you’re being a nit then. Legislate them out of existence? They were legislated into existence, no? Twice you’ve said you weren’t engaging with me, but no. Well, you can stop now or not, I’m going to sleep.
Yes, I would have had a much different interpretation if you had said legislate out of existence than legislate them to be ‘illegal’. Call it a nit if you want, but that’s an important distinction to me.
I would go one step further and torture them.
I think all of that is a start, but I also think you need to strip the executive of a lot of its power and pass legislation to have ironclad oversight with no qualms. The idea that we had to rely on norms is ridiculous. Like the idea that people can just totally ignore legitimate subpoenas is ridiculous.
Make all the heads of FBI/DOJ etc elected officials whom the president has no power over. Strip the president of pardon power. Pack the courts. There are a bunch of things others whom know better can throw in there but yeah we need to basically prevent any authoritarian from ever doing any of this shit.
Edit: Saw your posts with Nun. Thing is I don’t think less police/military/surveillance will be enough to save us. I mean the left wasn’t really willing to take a stand on Trump anyways, they weren’t in the streets over that for the most part, and I don’t think it happens without the pandemic and most young people being out of work. Like I don’t expect the left to openly revolt and try to take back the country against a heavily armed 35-40%. I think we need to explore a lot of avenues and stripping the executive of a lot of power and giving actual oversight would help a lot.
I think we need to come at it from every possible angle. Strip the executive of a ton of power, legislate, take away the states ability to control us with police/military/surveillance etc.
Also not possible during my lifetime but I’d like to see them abolish the EC and do something about the insanely undemocratic senate. Maybe have CA break in 30 gerrymandered states or something if we must. The fact that eventually something like 25% of the population is going to control 60% of the senate is ridiculous.
I feel like WAY less people are going to fall for it this time. Pretty much everyone knows who Trump is now and other than Trump loyalists nobody really believes the shit coming out of their camp. Like people who switched to not voting for Trump don’t give a shit about Obamagate.
We’re already there.
The 30 least populous states have 79 million in population (24.1% of the total of the 50 states).
Yeah we need to give all the actual important shit they have control over to the house.
The Republican Party is the institutional version of that dipshit gun waving couple in St Louis. They lie cheat and steal then successfully use the very rules they weaponize to terrorize the powerless in their own defense. They need to feel pain.
Stripping power from the top is great and just the kind of thing I was talking about. The POTUS in the US has an absurd amount of power. But, when a Dem is elected of course the Dems are not going to be for reducing the power of the office.
eDems, TO THE RESCUE!!!
Also, strategically, given that:
and
It would be a strategic blunder for Democrats to remove power from the White House and shift it to Congress. It would be a better system, generally speaking, but only if they can first fix the structural problems in the Senate.
I skimmed nunn’s posts mostly, and my gripe as usual is not with the concept (passing laws to reign in misconduct in the White House), it’s with the fact that the Democratic Party is the Washington Generals and unlikely to do this or to do a good job with it. Plus, they actually have to use those laws the next time this happens. Based on their track record this time around, that’s unlikely…
Like what I’d say @nunnehi is that we always disagreed about what would be done, not what should be done. As a result, this seems like a good time to reflect on what was done, and more importantly what was not done. Use that as sort of a guideline/basis moving forward.
When Speaker AOC is a possibility, maybe we can get that stuff done. For now I’d be thrilled with HR1, Statehood for PR (DC is already in HR1), restoring the VRA, and a national ban on gerrymandering. Let’s create a somewhat fair playing field for the next decade, then let’s try to convince people to concentrate their efforts on primarying shitty Dems.
Meanwhile, we go all out in presidential elections in the mean time and we all knock doors, phone bank, text bank, etc to make sure this doesn’t happen again until we plug those holes.
Putting together a 17-point plan for the establishment Democrats to use to reign in the misconduct of the White House, then kicking our feet up on it and saying, “Well that oughta do it! I’m sure these smart folks will figure this out and take care of it,” is a sure fire way to end up looking back in 6 months to a year in horror that nothing effective was done.
As for the other stuff, I support abolishing ICE, CBP, etc… And rebuilding from the ground up with narrowly targeted agencies with good oversight. Like we need Customs, I’m okay with some amount of Border Patrol, but it should be strictly focused on drugs, not on people. Problem with that is it will be ripe for abuse as soon as the GOP has control. The real fix is to end the War on Drugs, enabling us to rethink that entire system.
Step 1 in that realm should be Abolish ICE, while making sure ICE just doesn’t shift into CBP. Then abolish detention centers. That’s a hell of an achievement in year #1 of a new administration. I doubt this one’s going to do it, but if/when we ever get a true progressive, it’ll be on the agenda.
Like in a country run by non-monsters, there’s a place for a well-run, well-regulated CBP, TSA and DHS with plenty of oversight. But DHS should be focused almost entirely on defending against terrorism and responding to natural disasters and pandemics with regard to national security to free up other agencies to respond to the humanitarian side. CBP should be focused on drugs and human trafficking. TSA should be dialed back about 80%.
The question is, what is the likelihood that those agencies stay well-all the things I mentioned for a given 10 year period? Seems like effectively 0.
Even if the Dems fix the Senate (as if that could happen) it’ll be a strategic blunder to give up power. Hardly anyone ever does that peacefully. Power will be more and more concentrated until there’s a violent revolution or we blow ourselves up or something.
You think there’s a possibility of a country run by non-monsters who support a well-run, well-regulated CBP, TSA and DHS with plenty of oversight than the Obama administration? I don’t. Not much better anyway. And while the non-monsters didn’t themselves do monstrous things, the basic pattern of rejecting people fleeing monsters and sending them back to places that we helped make and help keep dangerous wasn’t much different. The idea that we can have Obama, only a better, is fantasy. Obama is like the best we could have ever hoped for from anyone who feels these policing and military organizations are necessary and can be well regulated.
Last sentence of my post.
I mean the problem becomes the trade-off of abolishing them and accepting the increase in drug/human trafficking, terrorism risk, etc. I’d have to see studies on that to form a position. I have zero concerns about undocumented immigration. In a cuserounder administration we’re adding lanes to the legal immigration highway and expanding our capacity to process them quickly. Very few people would be coming in illegally.
I’m a very strong believer that it’s the infrastructure that matters. Rules can change in a heart beat. I would take a border patrolling system with 20% of the policing capacity and resources and rules that I don’t like over a patrolling system with 500% the policing capacity with rules that I do like. And I don’t just mean that in terms of number of personnel, but also what kind of tools you give them. And by that I mean real tools, like guns, bullet-proof vests, jails, handcuffs, batons, uniforms or whether you dress and equip them like civilians.
Yeah I think my solution would be to rely on more technology and less people, so that they have the capacity to go run down drug smugglers and human traffickers, but not to harass the good guys (immigrants).
To add capacity they’d need more funding, so Dems would only have to hold one chamber of Congress to put the brakes on that.
Why? Did we really need ICE? Were we any worse off before it was created? Burn the whole damn thing to the ground imo. Let the kids out first but then burn it all down.