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Orange stain second term results thread

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“Our founding fathers created a document, the Constitution. There’s a separation of powers for a reason,” said Habba.

“The executive branch is the ultimate authority on federal issues,” the lawyer added, ignoring that the legislative, executive and judicial branches exist to hold each other to account and ensure checks and balances.

So "separation of powers" means "the President is an absolute monarch"? Interesting theory.

On an abstract level, I wonder if there's a tendency for Presidential systems to always go this way, to revert to monarchical rule?

I would normally have assumed that the specific formal political system doesn't much matter, and that it's more a question of economics and social factors, but occasionally I wonder if it is partially a flaw in the US system of government (given the long period over which the Presidency as an institution has been accruing power)? The whole "checks and balances" thing doesn't seem to be working out. Parliamentary systems seem to do better at constraining the individual at the top, even if it involves a more political and less formal kind of constraint.
I mean, the evidence seems to be that when you get a crippled and deadlocked legislature in such a system, you just end up with stagnation and instability, but the PM doesn't become unaccountable and all-powerful as a concequence.

[Thinking aloud] Perhaps the drawback of the parliamentary system is you need someone else to be 'head of state'...either a figurehead monarch or a President distinct from the PM...and that presents a different danger, if that individual gets interventionist and pro-active...
 
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So "separation of powers" means "the President is an absolute monarch"? Interesting theory.

On an abstract level, I wonder if there's a tendency for Presidential systems to always go this way, to revert to monarchical rule?

I would normally have assumed that the specific formal political system doesn't much matter, and that it's more a question of economics and social factors, but occasionally I wonder if it is partially a flaw in the US system of government (given the long period over which the Presidency as an institution has been accruing power)? The whole "checks and balances" thing doesn't seem to be working out. Parliamentary systems seem to do better at constraining the individual at the top, even if it involves a more political and less formal kind of constraint.
I mean, the evidence seems to be that when you get a crippled and deadlocked legislature in such a system, you just end up with stagnation and instability, but the PM doesn't become unaccountable and all-powerful as a concequence.

[Thinking aloud] Perhaps the drawback of the parliamentary system is you need someone else to be 'head of state'...either a figurehead monarch or a President distinct from the PM...and that presents a different danger, if that individual gets interventionist and pro-active...
The thing is... they DO understand it. But they're all part of Project 2025, which seeks to empower the unitary executive. Look at the way the fascist makes their words dance, to spin the lies into an appealing truth (to the fascist/typical Republican voter)

The modern conservative President’s task is to limit, control, and direct the executive branch on behalf of the American people. This challenge is created and exacerbated by factors like Congress’s decades-long tendency to delegate its lawmaking power to agency bureaucracies, the pervasive notion of expert “independence” that protects so-called expert authorities from scrutiny, the presumed inability to hold career civil servants accountable for their performance, and the increasing reality that many agencies are not only too big and powerful, but also increasingly weaponized against the public and a President who is elected by the people and empowered by the Constitution to govern.
And then with no sense of irony (insert Sartre quote here)
James Madison warned that “[t]he accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”
...
The great challenge confronting a conservative President is the existential need for aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch to return power—including power currently held by the executive branch—to the American people. Success in meeting that challenge will require a rare combination of boldness and self-denial: boldness to bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will and self-denial to use the bureaucratic machine to send power away from Washington and back to America’s families, faith communities, local governments, and states.
"I alone can save you from tyranny, by instituting tyranny".

 
I’m curious to see what profit margins look like under Trump when his term is over. I suspect that they will be inflated like they were under Biden unless there is another major economic crisis.

Corporate profits
Trumps first term: 17.4%
Biden: 36%

CPI
Trumps first term: 7.8%
Biden: 19.2%
 
I’m curious to see what profit margins look like under Trump when his term is over. I suspect that they will be inflated like they were under Biden unless there is another major economic crisis.

Corporate profits
Trumps first term: 17.4%
Biden: 36%

CPI
Trumps first term: 7.8%
Biden: 19.2%

Businesses hoped for less regulation, lower interest rates, and a favorable tax package. What they are getting is the economic chaos Trump promised them he would create.
 
Businesses hoped for less regulation, lower interest rates, and a favorable tax package. What they are getting is the economic chaos Trump promised them he would create.

Yes but that economic chaos allows them to use that as an excuse to raise prices. If Trump actually cared about lowering prices he’d be breaking up businesses to allow the markets to work correctly. I’m guessing we’ll eventually see even more consolidation or just plain ‘ole collusion to artificially raise prices.
 
This admin and Rs generally acting like they have the mandate of heaven to carry out their absolute wildest fantasies perched on top of a 1.5 point PV win is eventually going to collide with the reality of what the public starts to perceive they are doing. Trump has shed 5 points of net approval in less than a month.
 
This admin and Rs generally acting like they have the mandate of heaven to carry out their absolute wildest fantasies perched on top of a 1.5 point PV win is eventually going to collide with the reality of what the public starts to perceive they are doing. Trump has shed 5 points of net approval in less than a month.

They are pushing way too hard way too fast.

This is not how you initiate a successful coup. This is how you initiate civil war.
 
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