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Can We Have An Honest Discussion About Administrations?

Mycroft said:
sigh...

Congress didn't select Mueller. In fact, they had absolutely no input or decision making power to say yes or no to Mueller. It was entirely Rosenstein's decision. One man. And if Rosenstein made his decision base on any kind of partisanship...he needs to go to jail.
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Who appointed Rosenstein?
 
SonOfDaedalus said:
Who appointed Rosenstein?
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That's beside the point I'm making...which is, there was no bipartisan decision to have an investigation. There was no bipartisan decision to have Mueller conduct the investigation. There was no decision made by any group at all. It was all made by one person. And, as I said, if that one person let any personal partisanship influence his decision...he needs to go to jail.
 
SonOfDaedalus said:
I agree they should quit. They should tell everyone Trump is a moron and quit. That's what Tillerson, Mattis, Kelly and Sessions should have done. These are all people Trump appointed. They supported Trump. Then they saw for themselves that he is, as Tillerson put it, a moron.

I agree with you. They should come out, denounce the moron and quit.
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shrug...

They can say whatever they like, but they should do the whole country a favor and quit.

But they won't. That's why they are considered "Deep State".
 
Virgil Jones said:
Allowing Hillary and the Obama Administration to get away with this attempted coup would certainly be a crime. All of those guilty need to be prosecuted.
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You have to tell lies just to deflect from your gawd Trumps illegal dealings. It is the same tactic he uses, and you, being the mindless sheep you are, just have to follow in his ****.
 
Jredbaron96 said:
Our system is not perfect, but no system is.



I think a far bigger issue is that congressional district boundaries are determined by Congress and not an independent body.
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So, you're fine with a special counsel handing over the results of an investigation into the president to a presidentially appointed pick of the president?
 
PIPEWRENCH said:
Our leaders have abused their power almost continuously since I have been alive. Look at how the IRS was used against the Tea Party. Then the shouting day and night collusion by our media for 2 straight years to rig the last election results. the Democrats would never have taken the house without the great collusion lie and the misuse of our justice system and the media. Trust me both parties do it and get away with it because we are not smart enough to put a stop to it.
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That's why I was hoping this thread would discuss different ways to handle conflicts of interest, to the benefit of the American people. Obama's deep state shouldn't have been handling the investigation into Hillary and Trump's deep state shouldn't have been handling the investigation into Trump, with both of these investigations handling the results over to the president's appointed DOJ. I'm thinking that if we stop this process then maybe the witch hunt investigations might decrease as well. The House has now come to a whole new definition of the word "oversight". It was never meant to include witch hunt political investigations for purely partisan political reasons.
 
Moderate Right said:
So, you're fine with a special counsel handing over the results of an investigation into the president to a presidentially appointed pick of the president?
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I would prefer it to be made public.
 
Mycroft said:
I don't think you really understand what "deep state" means. It is not "Obama's people in his administration" or "Trump's people in his administration". It is people in an administration who are actively working AGAINST that administration. To my knowledge, there was no deep state in the Obama administration, while there certainly is a deep state in Trump's administration. Heck, where do you think all those leaks came from...people in Trump's administration working against Trump. That's the deep state.

You raise the question about an agency investigating their own people. That is, indeed, a concern. That's why there was a Special Counsel assigned to the Trump/Russia thing. That's why there should be a Special Counsel to investigate the corrupt Obama pukes. That's why there should not have been a DOJ/FBI investigation into Hillary and her email mess.

btw, Barr and Rosenstein both looked at Mueller's evidence and both decided that there was no obstruction of justice...and they told everyone why. You should look at their reasoning and come to your own conclusion.

Now...let's get to your suggestion that "these agencies"...I'm assuming you are talking about the DOJ and the FBI...should have no ties to the President. How would that work? Would you make them part of the Judicial Branch? Would you task the Chief Justice with the job of appointing the leaders of those agencies? Would Congress have oversight? Would the Senate confirm? Or, would you make those agencies independent of the other three Branches? If so, who would control them? Who would have the checks and balances to prevent corruption?

No...I would have to say that I don't like your idea. Besides, it would require a major rewrite of our Constitution. That, alone, would be a nearly impossible notion.
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I stand my definition. If the president appoints their own people into administration positions and they appoint their own people to work under them, then we have moles in place in case the other party should come to power. At that time the deep state that is already in place works against the new administration. Obama put his deep state in place which came to Hillary's rescue and was also in place when Trump unexpectedly won the election. Lisa Page called it an insurance policy. I call it the Obama deep state. Now Trump is putting his people in place and they are appointing their own people in place and we can start the whole thing all over again in reverse if let's say, Bernie wins in 2020. Then the Trump deep state will already be in place to make Bernie's life miserable.
 
Deuce said:
You seem extremely ok with this right now.

The answer is no. The executive needs to be more accountable to Congress.
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Did you feel that way during the Hillary email investigations where Lynch supposedly recused herself but was pulling the strings on the whole thing, including telling Comey what terminology to use and meeting with Bill Clinton on the tarmac? The way you worded your post seems to imply that you are ok with endless Congressional investigations to investigate the other side for political purposes. The can of worms has been opened. Just as Harry Reid showed us how the nuclear option works, so has the new Democratic house shown us that whenever we get a president from the other side, all the opposing House and Senate has to do is investigate them to death for political purposes.
 
Deuce said:
The IRS wasn't used in a partisan fashion. They flagged keywords that had a history of being fake tax-exempt organizations. "Occupy" was on the same list.
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LOL. So that's why Lois Lerner pleaded the fifth and resigned?
 
SonOfDaedalus said:
If you're saying we need an independent judiciary then I agree.

It makes no sense for Obama or Trump to be the head of their own investigations. But moreover, Congress should have more power over investigations. They can subpoena but without the DOJ to enforce those subpoenas that power is useless.

Keep in mind that Mueller was a bipartisan selection. This investigation was agreed upon by both parties. We just wanted to get to the bottom of what happened.
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But Mueller handed his results over to the Trump appointed DOJ and the FBI investigation into Hillary's emails handed their results over to the Obama DOJ. We've had far too many investigations for purely partisan politics, we don't need Congress having more power over investigations, that will just increase the problem. Maybe a law could make it that Congress has to appoint X numbers of members from both parties to an investigation committee and if 2/3's or 3/4's of those members decide to investigate then they investigate. If they don't reach that magic number then the investigation doesn't happen. This would only apply to investigations that could be deemed as possibly being political in nature.
 
I don't think the Deep State exists on the conspiratorial level that some would like it to be. And I don't believe that the Dems are blaming "Deep State" as much as they are the typical partisan politics and appointments that they too engage in when given the chance. The Republocrat power structure is well entrenched and while both sides will point fingers when they need to rile up their base, they'll both also use the same tactics to embolden their own agendas when necessary.

I do think that, partly, the President has accumulated too much power over the decades and that Congress has stopped doing its job and acting as the proper check and balance on Presidential power. While it would be impossible to scrap the system all together at this point, we can try to restore some of the natural barriers that were to be in place to prevent any single branch from dominating. Also an issue is the lack of proper political competition. It's all Republocrats all the time and they system is well rigged in their favor. Without proper competition, the constraint of the People loosens and the parties are free to act as they want free of supervision from The People. We see that now. It's not so much a "Deep State", but an unchecked aristocracy running entrenched bureaucracy.
 
SonOfDaedalus said:
What about Clinton who came into office after 12 years of Republican administrations? Did he have to deal with a Deep State? What about Obama who came after Bush where 20 out of the past 28 years were Republican administrations? How is it that Obama didn't have any Deep State after 20 out of 28 years of Republicans?

Your conspiracy theory needs to at least make sense.

But there is in a sense of Deep State if the administration is idiotic. If you're a doctor who doesn't know what he's doing, the nurses and pharmacists won't follow your orders. If you're an incompetent captain the crew won't follow your orders.
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The thing is, it is fairly accepted common knowledge that partisan politics and gridlock has been getting worse and worse. So, you can't really compare an administration such as Bill Clinton to what has grown exponentially since Obama took office and the problem will continue getting worse and worse.
 
Old Trapper said:
You have to tell lies just to deflect from your gawd Trumps illegal dealings. It is the same tactic he uses, and you, being the mindless sheep you are, just have to follow in his ****.
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What illegal dealings? Don't you remember, Mueller investigated Trump and found no illegal dealings.
 
Ikari said:
I don't think the Deep State exists on the conspiratorial level that some would like it to be. And I don't believe that the Dems are blaming "Deep State" as much as they are the typical partisan politics and appointments that they too engage in when given the chance. The Republocrat power structure is well entrenched and while both sides will point fingers when they need to rile up their base, they'll both also use the same tactics to embolden their own agendas when necessary.

I do think that, partly, the President has accumulated too much power over the decades and that Congress has stopped doing its job and acting as the proper check and balance on Presidential power. While it would be impossible to scrap the system all together at this point, we can try to restore some of the natural barriers that were to be in place to prevent any single branch from dominating. Also an issue is the lack of proper political competition. It's all Republocrats all the time and they system is well rigged in their favor. Without proper competition, the constraint of the People loosens and the parties are free to act as they want free of supervision from The People. We see that now. It's not so much a "Deep State", but an unchecked aristocracy running entrenched bureaucracy.
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The left are fools if they think Bernie represents the opposite of unchecked aristocracy running entrenched bureaucracy. He's just a slick talking aristocrat himself.
 
Moderate Right said:
He's just a slick talking aristocrat himself.
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Most politicians are, this includes Trump as well. The branches of the Republocrats try to pretend to be different, but in the end they march towards the same ends.
 
Mach said:
I tried to respond a few times but stopped because it got too long.
It's a complicated question, sadly above our pay grade.

Deep State is today, largely a Republican messaging tool, it's both an excuse and a pinata rolled into one. As phony as most such messages.

Democrats from what I can tell are not blaming "Deep State" in the same way/frequency (if at all?). Barr is not deep state, he's a Republican who served under Republicans who was picked because his view on obstruction was that obstruction by way of exercising presidential power, is impossible. That's shallow partisan, not deep state.

As to your better overall question, how do we get to a more just/reasonable government...well, that's the question the founding fathers tried to answer based on deep philosophical reading and thinking a long time ago. So long ago, that our understanding of things has progressed well beyond the early days of the Republic, but change is not so easy to come by once established, and once powers get entrenched.
I suspect one could look around the world at governments that came later, sort of using lessons learned from the U.S. case, and who might have some better aspects of government. I have no doubt a lot of our political woes are a result of a poorly designed system.

On the other hand, to some degree, entrenched powers will *always* seek loopholes and engage in corruption, so that maybe no system is foolproof, because if they have power, they can use that power to get more power.

Somewhat less seriously, I think its beyond our ability to perfect and administer, as flawed humans. We can envision it, and maybe get a good plan enacted momentarily, but it will always be corrupted.
AI is the only way to do it in a near ideal manner, IMO. Laws can better be described in some systematic/logical fashion, that better models loopholes, balance of power, corruption resistance, etc., we just have to get there. I don't really think we will get there in th next 40 years. Maybe not even 100.
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Interesting take.

I agree, since humans are flawed, there will always be some level of corruption. Someone always finds a way to manipulate a rule, to gain something....

That being said, our current system is corrupt, as for the last 100 years, it has slowly became a pay to play system, where pols pick their voters, and the wealthy and corporations heavily influence who the pols are, and how they legislate once elected.

It can be made much better with laws, and/or constitutional amendments. We just need the political will to do it.
 
Cramer said:
Ok...please define "deep state".
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Deep state is when you put your own people in place in your administration and then they appoint more people like them to work under them. Then, when the Obama appointed FBI investigates the annointed one (Hillary) and sends the findings to the Obama appointed DOJ, guess what the result is? And then after eight years these people are firmly in place in their positions and someone from the other side (Trump) wins the election you've got your own deep state in place to subvert the new president and leak like crazy for purely partisan political reasons.


Now Trump is in power and he appoints his own deep state to receive Mueller's investigation results. If Trump is president for eight years then he will have eight years of appointments to government positions and those people will have appointed their own people to work under them. So, let's say that in 2024 a Democrat wins the presidential election and we've got eight years of the Trump deep state firmly entrenched. Don't you think that the Trump deep state will try to thwart the incoming president's policies and be leaking things madly to the media, etc.?
 
Moderate Right said:
The right accused Obama, Hillary, & Co of having a deep state and, even though the left hasn't really used that terminology, they basically now accuse Trump and the Republicans of having a deep state. Is there an inherent flaw in how our country is run? I mean the Obama deep state (politicians, the cabinet, the FBI & the DOJ) are appointed by the president, same with the Trump deep state. Do we really want people appointed by an administration being in charge of investigating and making decisions regarding their own people? I mean we had Obama's FBI, DOJ, State Dept, etc making decisions regarding the Hillary email investigation, culminating with no charges (after several immunity deals and people taking the fifth) against Hillary and Loretta Lynch meeting Bill Clinton on the airport tarmac just before the investigation was completed and now we've got Mueller having to hand over his report to Barr and leaving it up to Barr and the DOJ to decide as to whether there was obstruction of justice or not, of which they decided no, there wasn't.

Shouldn't these agencies have no ties and not be appointed by the president? Let's assume that there was no wrongdoing by either the Obama deep state or the Trump deep state. Isn't it possible that in the future we could actually have a crooked president and administration and they would basically either be in charge or make the final decision regarding their very own fates? Can we talk about this without being partisan?
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What is happening with the Trump administration, versus Obama's or any other President's administration is just plain wrong and more political than ever before. Read this unbiased article, which will begin to give you an answer to your question:

Empirical SCOTUS: Differences between “Obama” and “Trump” judges, while sometimes subtle, can’t be denied
Justices of the Supreme Court rarely give public comments on words or actions of members of the elected branches of the federal government. This made the recent spat between Chief Justice John Roberts and President Donald Trump over the role of partisanship in the federal judiciary all the more surprising and powerful. Although phrased in terse sentences (Trump’s were via Twitter), their words left much to unpack. What began as Trump decrying the decision of an “Obama judge” (a judge appointed by President Barack Obama), Judge Jon Tigar from the Northern District of California, who ruled against the administration’s policy of attempting to keep migrants at the border from applying for asylum, turned into a clash of sorts, with the chief justice directly responding to the president’s remarks for the first time.
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Before any changes for the better occur, the Trump administration has to go.
 
Cramer said:
It can be made much better with laws, and/or constitutional amendments. We just need the political will to do it.
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HR1 is a corruption bill aimed at starting that. Mitch won't take it up for a vote...so despite Moderate Right's desire to discuss it in a non-partisan way, the actions he desires are necessarily going to result from bi-partisan efforts, rather than the Trumpian scandal of the day.
 
Moderate Right said:
I asked if we could have an honest discussion of how appointments are made in administrations and who makes them and if somehow the country is doing this wrong. Did the right really want the Obama appointed DOJ to receive Comey's report? Did the left really want Barr receiving Mueller's report?
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If the system is corrupt, (and it is), it makes it more difficult to have honorable, statesperson to get elected.

We also have a media, that treats politics like March Madness, yet it is 24/7 every day. They create controversy daily, to pump up ratings, which equate to ad revenue.

Pols play up to that, and use the media to create division, to better their chance of getting re-elected.

There was a time......post WW2 til about the early 90's, where the news media pretty much reported the news. With cable News, Blogs, Social Media...it has exploded.

It actually resembles more of what the media was like from around the time of the US being created...til the early 1900's.
 
Moderate Right said:
Deep state is when you put your own people in place in your administration and then they appoint more people like them to work under them. Then, when the Obama appointed FBI investigates the annointed one (Hillary) and sends the findings to the Obama appointed DOJ, guess what the result is? And then after eight years these people are firmly in place in their positions and someone from the other side (Trump) wins the election you've got your own deep state in place to subvert the new president and leak like crazy for purely partisan political reasons.


Now Trump is in power and he appoints his own deep state to receive Mueller's investigation results. If Trump is president for eight years then he will have eight years of appointments to government positions and those people will have appointed their own people to work under them. So, let's say that in 2024 a Democrat wins the presidential election and we've got eight years of the Trump deep state firmly entrenched. Don't you think that the Trump deep state will try to thwart the incoming president's policies and be leaking things madly to the media, etc.?
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I think you are confusing Political appointees, and the deep state.

The system has checks and balances. Your comparison of the Email issue, and the Mueller report is not accurate. We pretty much saw everything in the email investigation. It wa made public. As of now, no one, except a few have read the Mueller investigation. Let's get to that point, and then maybe, we can compare the 2 situations.
 
Luckyone said:
What is happening with the Trump administration, versus Obama's or any other President's administration is just plain wrong and more political than ever before. Read this unbiased article, which will begin to give you an answer to your question:



Before any changes for the better occur, the Trump administration has to go.
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The point is, they are all corrupt, including Obama. And if Bernie were to give Trump the heave ho, nothing would really change. We just replace one deep state with a different deep state. First, we have to decide how to fix the problem then we implement the fix, all of which I realize are nothing but fantasies. This thread wasn't really technically about the judiciary. While we have problems all over, including that, I don't think we need administration appointments being in charge of politically charged investigations with both Obama and now Trump. And, we don't need Democrats redefining the term "oversight" to mean endless investigations of the other side to thwart their political agenda.
 
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