What Biden needs to do, like right fucking now, is pack the courts. AOC trying with a token effort to get them impeached is cute, but will ultimately fail because Republicans won't turn on their own. The Senate is tied (if you count Bernie as one of the dems) and Harris has the tiebreaker. The house is controlled by the Republicans, but only 7 individuals need to break from their party in order to get a simple majority to save the future of America.
Biden could expand the SCOTUS from 9 seats to 13 and immediately submit 4 liberal justices for confirmation to be seated. Expanding the court doesn't require congressional approval, so Biden could do this unilaterally and as long as he is able to get butts in those seats, they're there to stay even if Trump squeaks his way back in. They could then challenge and overturn the immunity ruling, as well as all the other dogshit rulings that have come out in the last couple of years like Dobbs.
He threatened to do it before. He needs to actually pull the trigger.
This is all assuming that most of this isn't political theater, and I'm really starting to wonder how much of United States politics is actually genuine. So often the Democrats have had the opportunity to do something drastic, if less drastic then that frequently done by Republicans, to counteract the erosion of personal freedom and democracy. Yet they always seem to find a reason not to, typically with the justification that they don't want to push the envelope like the Republicans do, despite the fact the Republicans will continue to push the envelope to their benefit when back in power.
Moderation isn't in his playbook, he would never just add 4. He'd add 69+ new judges or else just appoint every single GOP congressman as a Supreme Court Judge.
The Senate is currently divided in a way that makes passing such a significant change a monumental task. Even with a Democratic majority, the margins are slim, and not all Democratic senators are on board with the idea. Senators like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have expressed reservations about court-packing, making it highly unlikely that this is something Biden could just do.
Imagine expanding the court by 4 seats, 4 months before the election and thinking that Republicans in Congress are going to let a single one squeak by before January 6, 2025.
Expanding the court doesn't require congressional approval
That is incorrect. Changing the size of the Court is understood to be a power that Congress has because of the Necessary and Proper clause, and not a power of the Executive.
For an act changing the size of the Court to pass the Senate, you first need 60 Senators to break the filibuster. This means that 10 Republican Senators need to vote for increasing the size of the Court for any such legislation to pass. That’s not going to happen.
He says that, but has no problem issuing pardons, which is about as king-like as it gets. It circumvents the legal and judicial structure of the entire nation, and he can do so on a whim. It's true that, unlike Trump, he's only pardoned people deserving of pardons, but that's not really the fuckin' point, is it?
What is to stop Biden from cancelling the upcoming election?
Being now his powers are effectively unchecked, couldn't he just call off the election as an official act. Rather than stupid shit like ordering assassination or deploying the military, just say "I'm cancelling the election until such time this ruling is overturned and a constitutional amendment is enacted that states that the president is not immune from criminal prosecution"
This protects him from prosecution but doesn't require other officials to help him break the law. States don't need the president's approval to run elections, and Congress doesn't need his approval to certify the votes of electors in the presidential election specifically.
What is to stop Biden from cancelling the upcoming election?
Uhhhh he literally can't. Not because it's a crime, but because it's not within his authority. This doesn't just give them carte blanche to do whatever they want, it just means they can't be charged with a crime.
Only in times of war. It's literally one of the checks and balances to specifically prevent a president from stopping an election. Now, if we start a full blown war with Russia...
The president can't actually make law, as far as I understand it. He, and the various offices managed by the executive branch, apply and enforce the law which Congress has written (give or take some interpretation by the courts).
Sometimes of those laws specifically give the executive broad enough authority over something that it's very similar to the president being able to write laws about it, but it's not quite the same and it cant overrule actual laws
The US government is based on the idea of separation of powers, and making the President as weak as possible while still being able to do his job. The President can't just decide he has a new authority, Congress has to sign legislation that delegates a specific authority to the President. That authority is typically organized in the from of a Cabinet office, which is filled with the advise and consent or Congress.
America was made to abolish kings, that's why this ruling is so ludicrous, so antithetical to the very Constitution the court is supposed to uphold, and why people are so up in arms about it.
He doesn't need to cancel the elections. He just needs to wait until after the conventions, when congress and the supreme court are in recess. And then he issues an executive order barring convicted felons from holding federal office.
Short term rentals would be fine if companies like Airbnb weren’t getting a cut. Like they existed on Craigslist and as actual bead-and-breakfasts way before airbnb et al existed.
I use to travel a lot before airbnb existed, and most of it was to uhh, old school bnbs.
Lovely! Amazing! But maybe that was just the areas we were going to were amazing. I wonder how well they'd work in cities and such? All my experiences were in much more rural areas, so you got a lot more room and such.
I imagine people are willing to give a cut to Airbnb because they perceive, rightly or wrongly, that Aribnb is taking care of all the details. Insurance, liability, blocking troublemakers, data and time coordination etc.
The problem isn't that AirBnB gets a cut, the problem is that they make such a process more efficient and accessible. Property is a finite resource, especially when talking about a specific area like a city. We don't want to turn cities into amusement parks that the workers have to commute an hour to get to, even if that's what is the most profitable. Housing should be affordable and available for the people who actually use and make the city run daily.
Trump's election proved that most of America's governmental system was based around a series of "gentlemen's agreements" and an expectation of fair play. America is not resilient to betrayal in any fashion. If one person stops respecting the rule of fair play the entire system crumbles.
Neo liberalism is a Boogeyman that means literally nothing thanks to everyone calling everyone else it. The real issue (with Airbnb) is that tech bros decided to create a business solution to something that in all honesty wasn't a problem and now we're here. The same can be said for Uber, and all the other "gig economy" companies.
In my country, Uber fixed a lot of problems that existed with Taxis.
Sometimes taxis wouldn't show up.
Sometimes taxis wouldn't pick up certain people because of how they look
There was no app that'd show you where the nearest taxi was and when it'd arrive. I'm not aware of any taxi company that has such an app now...yet there's an app that'll show you where the busses are (even across different transit agencies)
You wouldn't know how much your trip would cost until you arrived at your destination.
Drivers would take longer routes or otherwise drive in "favourable ways" to increase the fare meter.
In my experience, taxi drivers have been more rude than Uber drivers
Taxi drivers would occasionally not accept certain methods of payment upon trip completion (and some would even try to use this trick to scam their passengers and likely their companies or the government by not reporting fares).
These all could've been solved by a regular taxi company, but I guess there was no incentive to make the product any better to the customers.
Sometimes taxis wouldn't pick up certain people because of how they look
Unfortunately, at least in the US, Uber is just as bad. I've got a friend who's blind and has a service dog - Uber drivers legally can't decline a ride because he's got a service dog, but very frequently they'd pull up, see the dog, and cancel the ride. Taxis are more likely to know and follow the law.
Over here in Germany, they ran against a brick wall:
Taxi apps already existed. Pioneers were taxi.eu, where a consortium of local dispatchers plain and simply introduced another way to access their services, and what's now called Free Now, circumventing the old dispatchers, directly connecting clients and individual, licensed, taxi drivers. Both predate uber's founding, and definitely uber's introduction into the market here.
Regulations exist. Taxis are classed as public transport, prices are regulated, no congestion pricing, no not taking on a passenger to the outskirts because you wouldn't get a return fare, no nothing. On the flipside you need a license so that there's few enough taxis around for every driver to still be able to make a living. Uber didn't care a bit about that kind of stuff, bringing us to
Regulations are enforced. Drivers taking uber fares without both taxi and passenger transport license were looking at court orders giving slaps on the wrist, but also threatening 1000 Euro fines for every subsequent passenger transported without proper licensing.
Oh:
Public transport is a thing. Most trips are covered by buses, metros, etc, more rural areas by collect taxis. Needing to hail an individual one is very rare, I think most of their fares are from people with too much money on hand. Also if you need to hail that taxi chances are your health insurance is going to cover the cost they prefer you hauling your broken leg to the doctor with a taxi, transport ambulances are more expensive and it's not like you need medical supervision on the trip, or the thing would need to accommodate a wheelchair or such.
At this rate American Presidents will be immune from prosecution on humanitarian grounds, same reason 80+ year old prisoners are often released to die free.
That's even more reason for Biden to do something but sadly Democrats have learned helplessness.
World News
Hot
This magazine is not receiving updates (last activity 0 day(s) ago).