Politics: 2016 Lame Duck and 2017 New Administration

[the captain]

On Russia, I don't know what to think, either with these specific new sanctions or in general. I was mildly surprised at Russia not retaliating by kicking out our diplomats, etc., as Lavrov reportedly recommended. But maybe the message was presented that they'd been caught pants-down with the hacking and that if there were any retaliation to the "punishment," things would be made even worse for them? Meanwhile, they're the key driver of the latest and greatest purported Syrian cease-fire, which (of course) doesn't include ISIS or other Russian-defined terrorists, a definition which may well then be expanded to include most rebels, whom Syria and Russia more or less called terrorists and jihadists all along. (Russia is always happy to describe dissidents as terrorists.)

By the way, is there any doubt Putin will run again in '18, thus keeping him in power until '24?

On Israel, it's amazing that sticking to the long-standing policy of this country, not to mention terms more or less agreed to by both Israel and the Palestinians, can be seen as betrayal, a stab in the back, anti-Semitism, etc. From what I see, Netanyahu has been an absolute tragedy. Yet we keep giving them billions.

[Rocky Raccoon]

Netanyahu is a disgrace.  His attitude has only put Israel and Jews in more danger.

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

Definitely agreed

[the captain]

Legacy-building is something every outgoing president, regardless of party, does--or at least has done throughout my conscious lifetime. But I'm wondering people's feelings about when that effort isn't just relegated to P.R., which I think everyone can understand and more or less ignore--the final press conference, the final interviews with major outlets, the assorted speeches--and veers into building obstacle courses for the next administration, in such cases when that administration will obviously oppose the outgoing president's objectives. As the NYT said today:

[Obama] is using every power at his disposal to cement his legacy and establish his priorities as the law of the land.

He has banned oil drilling off the Atlantic coast, established new environmental monuments, protected funding for Planned Parenthood clinics, ordered the transfer of detainees from Guantánamo Bay, criticized Israeli settlements and punished Russia for interfering in the recent elections through cyberattacks.

The next president may be able to roll back some, or even most, of those actions, a point that Mr. Obama’s top aides concede. But every step the current president takes requires Mr. Trump to overcome one more legislative or procedural hurdle as he seeks to change direction in Washington.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/31/us/politics/obama-last-days-trump-transition.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

Do you think this is the right way to exit office? The smart way (in the short term? long term?)? After all, there will come a time in four, eight, or however many years when a Republican administration will leave office to be replaced by a Democratic one (or, gods willing, some other, less rancid party).

[Emily]

I don't, no. I think some of it is to force Trump's actions out into the open - when he undoes some of Obama's executive orders, there won't be a process, so they can be done in a day with a handy tweet about something else dominating the news cycle, while undoing some of this will require a longer process, thus will make it more likely to get attention. Some, I think, is Obama saying "sh*t, all that trying to move incrementally and massage opinion meant that I didn't get as much done as I wanted and there's no way my successor is going to keep nudging things along in this direction so I'm going to just push it as much as I can while I have the chance", some is intentional stumbling blocks and some is pointed payback because Trump has crossed the line in doing things people usually wait until after their inauguration to do. But the things both are doing break processes that aren't codified but are a traditional part of the transfer of power. We've had similarly nasty transitions  before, but not since the post-civil war era.
This has been a nasty year.

[Emily]

I notice there's been thread title censorship. 

[the captain]

I notice there's been thread title censorship. 

I did that in the hopes that nobody would have to see the word that makes them feel all bad inside and then to inappropriately post about politics in the Beach Boys forum, after which the only logical conclusion would be to ban talk of politics in the politics thread of the Sandbox. I mean, obviously.

[Emily]

Good thinking

[Emily]

Trump's team has at least two prominent links to CEI - its primary funded is Exxon and his science-skeptic EPA transition lead is a director. Here's their legislative agenda:
https://cei.org/agendaforcongress-2017
This is about 50% of what the greater of two evils looks like.

[the captain]

What I most find interesting/amusing are the adjectives or purported outcomes (to vaguely / generic proposed actions) used in this sort of thing.

Strengthen Disclosure with a “Regulatory Report Card” - this doesn't strengthen disclosure, it gives a convenient way to know the scoring as developed by this entity. It says "we (dis)like them/it," not "this is what happened."

Restrain the Runaway Administrative State by Reining in Chevron Deference - I admit I have no idea what "Chevron deference" is, but even NOT knowing, we're presupposing a "runaway administrative state" in need of restraint.

Bring Accountability to the Unaccountable Consumer Financial Protection Bureau - presupposes the CFPB has no accountability, while the CFPB director is appointed by the president and approved by the senate (i.e., more or less as accountable as most high-level appointments)--and to a 5-year term, no less, meaning that terms are likely to cross administrations, and thus serve both parties--must testify before congress twice a year, is subject to GAO audits, etc.

Remove Bogus Climate Planning from Federal Land Policy - Bogus? As determined by...? Especially comical, considering "Require all Agencies to Meet Rigorous Scientific Standards."

Protect Internet Freedom against Burdensome Net Neutrality Mandates - Orwellian.

Protect Consumer Freedom by Ensuring Access to Genetically Engineered Foods - Orwellian.

Actually the entirety of the Food, Drugs, and Consumer Freedom section is pretty entertaining in that way.

[Emily]

Yeah. The FDA-related parts seemed the most special to me, too.

[the captain]

Yeah. The FDA-related parts seemed the most special to me, too.

What? Sorry, didn't catch that, just trying to promote peace and order by giving neighborhood kids loaded automatic rifles and to enable good health by poisoning the water.

[SMiLE Brian]

Captain for prez!

[Emily]

I'm interested in hearing what you agreed with.

To be honest, I'll have to go back and peruse to find specific examples, but I can generally answer by saying I have a certain respect for and identification with classical liberalism. Not wholly, by any means, but somewhat. While I realize a few of us here are lumped together to be of a single mind, the reality is my personal political beliefs are quite a jumble that blends aspects of (at least) classical liberalism and social democracy, maybe even with a shake of conservatism here and there.

There are also some arguments about what the federal government has jurisdiction over under the constitution, and I have to admit that (barring constitutional amendments, which as someone who gives the constitution no particular scriptural standing, I am fine with, though it's a burdensome process) I have to hear out. Now to be clear on that last point, I'm no lawyer and haven't spent all that much time investigating the justification for federal intervention in these supposedly states' issues. I just say that if there are legitimate questions about them, that's fair, even if I don't like the outcomes. The end doesn't justify the means.

So in the end, I am always in a state of unease about where to draw the line between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome, especially considering it seems to me that outcomes are the most obvious and maybe only way to measure opportunities on a broad scale (while admitting that through individual cases it's obvious why there would be inequalities of outcome regardless of opportunity). I hope you'll grant me leeway as someone whose political ideology doesn't exist yet; it's morphing pretty consistently as I read, learn, converse, and think about it.

I think further discussion on this ought to be in the politics thread lest anyone post about Trump in the Beach Boys forum.

I'd gathered that you are more classically liberal than I. You are more a questioner than opinionizer - so to what degree is fuzzy.
I don't see how people can even imagine there's anything approaching equality of opportunity when some kids are hungry and some are not and when schools are so vastly different in quality, among other starting-point differences. If people were serious about equality of opportunity, they'd do more to even-out kid's experiences. Really, I could be all-in conservative (well, not really, but I could consider it a workable philosophy) if things were socialized for children, people with disabilities, and the elderly or infirm.
One area in which I agree with conservatives is that I prefer more local government. Something expensive like healthcare or the military gains a lot from economies of scale, though even so, I'd probably prefer region-based rather than national plans for both. States are really too small for usefulness for the most part. Obviously, Texas and California would be exceptions.
 The glaring problem with states' rights, of course, is that some states have really wanted to exercise those rights in ways that infringe on civil or voting rights.
Looking back at the book, I'm startled at how warlike it is. I'd forgotten that. That always seems like a disconnected part of conservative philosophy. It doesn't fit, to me. The best part of conservative philosophy is the "live and let live" part, but they don't seem to extend that to a nation-to-nation level.

[the captain]

Re the warlike aspect, absolutely. Truly terrifying to think that there was presumably some large segment of the population thinking that way, including people of some power.

Re the equality of opportunity/outcome, I agree. As I said, it's something I'm always uneasy about, but not something I think has tipped too far, necessarily. I'm someone who has happily argued for something like 100% estate taxes, actually.

[SMiLE Brian]

Trump's tax returns are the link to Rex Tillerson and Putin!

[Emily]

While the first part of this WSJ piece on Trump's responses to the hacking intelligence is wrong - there was not a consensus on WMD and the evidence provided to the Bush administration was explicitly noncommittal; the Bush admin. lied about that - and while I don't support the Obama admin. response, it lays out pretty well my concerns  about the issue.
His China/North Korea tweets are also concerning. We'll see if he can bully/flatter his way through international relations the way he could bully/flatter his way through a US campaign, but the target populations are very different.

https:/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/what-does-trump-know-about-russia-1483398736?

[the captain]

House GOP voted, apparently against the advice of Spkr Ryan, to put the independent Office of Congressional Ethics under the control of the partisan (surprise! Run by GOP at the moment) House Ethics Committee. OCE was established after the Abramoff scandal (Rep Net, R-Ohio) Duke Cunningham, R-Ca, and Rep Jefferson, D-La.

One-party rule, no foresight.

[Emily]

That kind of negates the purpose.

[the captain]

Don't worry, I'm sure if there's a sufficiently explosive scandal in the future, whoever has the House at that point will redo something similar after the fact. Because while NOBODY could predict such abuses of power or ethical lapses, the House is always doing its best for the people...

[the captain]

While calling OCE unfair, Trump spoke (ER, tweeted) against the GOP House's proposed rules change re ethics. Good for him.

[the captain]

While calling OCE unfair, Trump spoke (ER, tweeted) against the GOP House's proposed rules change re ethics. Good for him.

and the GOP House reverses course. Embarrassing for them, I assume and hope: it should be.

[Emily]

It's an interesting dynamic. The first open demonstration of what will be an ongoing back and forth on how differences between the Executive branch and Legislative Republicans will be handled.

[the captain]

I agree. Despite some of those cabinet nominations, I think it's important to keep in mind Trump isn't a conservative or even a loyal Republican: he's going to say and do whatever he thinks makes him look best to whoever's love he craves at any given time. Sometimes it'll lead him in awful directions but sometimes it'll mean he's going to stand up to the party. Occasionally the results will be better than a liberal may expect, whatever the reasoning behind it may be.

[the captain]

Our next AG, folks (because you know senators love their own), lying to bolster what is otherwise (as previously discussed here) his record AGAINST civil rights. Good for those who publicly shamed him on it. Too bad it won't matter.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/jeff-sessions-says-he-handled-these-civil-rights-cases-he-barely-touched-them/2017/01/03/4ddfffa6-d0fa-11e6-a783-cd3fa950f2fd_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-c%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.6f2e1ef6f8d9