Writes Adam B. Kushner, in "For Donald Trump, Everything Is an Emergency/He’s exploiting a diabolical problem in our legal system to expand presidential power" (NYT)(free-access link).
"The difference is..." I can think of another difference.
September 5, 2025
"'You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,' President Barack Obama’s chief of staff said during the 2008 financial crash. 'It provides the opportunity to do things that were inconceivable before.'"
"The difference is that the mortgage crisis was a once-in-a-generation economic catastrophe. By describing so many things as an emergency today, Trump signals that he must take abnormal action to cope with an abnormal time. In a climate of emergency, it seems, anything is possible."
Writes Adam B. Kushner, in "For Donald Trump, Everything Is an Emergency/He’s exploiting a diabolical problem in our legal system to expand presidential power" (NYT)(free-access link).
Writes Adam B. Kushner, in "For Donald Trump, Everything Is an Emergency/He’s exploiting a diabolical problem in our legal system to expand presidential power" (NYT)(free-access link).
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50 comments:
Obama was an anointed light bringer Democrat.
the crisis, they helped create,
with decriminalization, deinstintutionalization, and defunding the police,
Are we NOT in a fiscal emergency, when service on our national debt is projected to exceed GDP in the next ten years? Why is climate change an "emergency" but not our fiscal health, without which we cannot address* climate change?
* And by "address" I mean... well, I don't really mean anything, since it's not actually an "emergency." But universally the global left is willing to treat it as such.
I can think of a LOT of differences that are more powerful than his example.
Democrat policy brings on the problem/s.
Then Democrats proposes "solutions" to fix the problems they created which always involve creating more government "jobs filled by Democrat lackeys. Those solutions cause further problems. And we're off to the races.
Jamie, hell yes I'm pretty sure I've heard many politicians calling the looming debt an "emergency" over the years. None of them ever treated it as an emergency of course. But Trump's ability to take something to which the Left and Uniparty pay lip service and turn it into concrete results is a unique feature of his brand. It's like one a week of these since inauguration day.
The difference being that the Democrats are rat bastards.
I just noticed the "diabolical." Nice. Could've said "dangerous"; could've said "problematic." There are dozens of words that would have described his feeling that this "loophole" is bad. But he went with "from the devil."
For the Democrats, Trump is the crisis and there is nothing they can do to stop him that is an abuse of power.
MJB, the debt crisis is only an emergency when a Democrat wants to (pretend to) run against profligacy.
Once in office, they become adherents of MMT and fire up the printing presses, rather than try to boost productivity, find other revenue sources, or actually control spending. Oh, and of course get the "rich" to pay "their fair share" - they'll do that too, for some definitions of "rich."
"Obama was an anointed light bringer Democrat."
Lucifer.
The Left wouldn't complain if a Dem was President.
And not everything is an emergency with Trump. People getting murdered daily in DC and Chicago is an emergency. Our federal debt is an emergency.
Rahm Emmanual.
Say his jewish name, annie cohen?
What a croc... Politicians have labeled things crises for as long as there have been politicians. The War on Poverty, The War on Drugs, The Climate Crisis, Constitutional Crisis, The Debt Crisis, and on and on and on.
Everybody to get off street
you can only 'fundamentally transform' one way,
the bailout plan, was cooked up by liz 'red queen' warren, to solve the subprime problem, that the CRA revisions had expanded, it allowed governmental takeover of key financial and industrial nodes, which spread the blm antifa virus,
For the Democrats, Trump is the crisis and there is nothing they can do to stop him that is an abuse of power.
This isn't even mild hyperbole. And I am still, after almost ten years now, at a loss as to why they see him as SO terrible that any and every totalitarian impulse they've ever had must be indulged in order to stop him.
If they'd just gotten on with life after 2016, he would've ended up being a "colorful" but not especially noteworthy addition to the annals of the presidency, and have been out of office by now if not four years ago, given the economic effects of COVID on any presidency.
Welp, liberals opened up the window to declaring everything a crisis. And Donald is using it for defenestration.
Good and hard!
Years ago I did some work on the book "Reinventing Government." Osborne and Gaebler, 1992. The background was that state governments faced fiscal challenges. For one thing, Reagan actually succeeded in cutting transfers to states--perhaps the only line item spending he cut at all. At any rate, states scrambled to find sources of revenue. Some, more or less called "blue" today, could resort to income tax and high property tax. For others, called "red" today, those would not really be options. User pay, including for motor vehicle and driver paperwork? Possibly, but again there are populist backlashes. So: anything new? Lotteries? "Indian" gambling sort of had its own history, but states were able to get a cut of the action.
The authors urged people at various levels of government to see all this as an interesting challenge, not an impossible problem. "Reinvent": given a basic service like garbage collection (an oft-cited example), see if it can be outsourced, so you don't have municipal employees with full benefits, and then work on maintaining performance standards. Private companies will want to pick up big bins at apartment buildings, maybe some commercial pickups. Door to door, little bits of garbage: harder to pick up for profit. So: put a lot of it out to bid, but never for just the profitable part. Ensure that if you want the profitable part, you have to do the unprofitable part.
I don't remember much else: maybe they were open to charter schools. Virtually every level of government has something to do with health care, which only gets more expensive. The sheer bureaucracy, of which the Pentagon may be the biggest. Are consultants a good way of getting some big picture work done, apart from the daily grind, including some far-seeing possibilities? Or do consultants just want to make money from spit-balling?
Anyway, the authors became famous or notorious for saying: sometimes you have to create a crisis in order to build the public momentum for change.
“You never want…” implies the possibility of reoccurrence, or worse — “You never want drug overdoses to become so common that they are not even considered a crisis.”
That’s true and really is how it all shakes out, gspencer @8AM. I also believe that the Rs in Congress - for the most part - don’t want power, they are fine with being second string, talking a big game and doing nothing but bitching/moaning and lining their pockets. Just less insane than the ‘rats.
Anyone else tired of all this theater?
"Wolves! Wolves!"
"What'd he say?"
"Nothing. Ignore him."
From where I sit is isn’t Donald Trump turning everything into an emergency. He inherited a mess from the previous administration, whoever that was. Now he’s cleaning it up…
And I am still, after almost ten years now, at a loss as to why they see him as SO terrible that any and every totalitarian impulse they've ever had must be indulged in order to stop him.
The closest analogy is Islam or another type of cult. Trump was a Hollywood star and NYC celeb and counted snugly among the rich and connected Left as revealed by his past invites to various Clinton weddings, Hampton get-togethers, Palm Beach soirees etc. Once he turned and donned the Red hat (so symbolic!) he became an apostate in their eyes, and there's nothing a cult hates more than an apostate (see Lea Remini et al). And because he WAS an insider and donor he knows what money-grubbing phonies they all were and they retaliated by having Obama roast him to his face on live TV (signaling to the unthinking heard like Mark to now switch from admiration to hatred for Trump) and mock him as someone who "would never be president."
So you have their deity, Obama, proclaiming Trump a non-person and elected democrats treat him exactly like a non-person to this day. Trump has coopted every classic moderate Democrat position on most topics, save abortion. They used to LOVE tariffs. FDR was the tariff king! So their hatred only intensifies as Trump continues to win on "their" old issues while they cling to runt end of every single key cultural clash of our age.
btw it was Dems who created the environment for the housing crisis. Barney Frank the point leader, but so with Clinton. Also the Fed was…accommodating. ‘Experts’ concluded the way to wealth for the masses was buying their own homes..and any other ones they wanted.
Oy vey!Obama used the financial crisis to bail out the banks, let the rich get super-rich, and let 5 million families loss their homes. Sitting in his Martha's Vineyard mansion, he can look back and say to himself, "Yep, sure didn't let that crisis go to waste."
"Mommy, Donnie J is hitting us back!"
one thinks if the CHUD were appearing on main street, the Times would take issue with the CHUD hunters,
The real crisis is that is was supposed to be Romney or Jeb not Trump. Then when they managed the democrats policies into the inevitable crisis it could all be blamed on Republicans.
And if you thought there was a crisis before just wait until the Sovereign Debt Crisis. That will almost certainly be triggered before the 2026 or 2028 election.
The 2008 was triggered and blamed on Bush. But that was caused by Fannie and Freddie buying bad mortgages because of racism.
They will run the same play here.
well the Boston Fed study, on 'redlining' that was the pretext, it earned the author a Board seat, but yeah,
So in other words, Trump is like all of our previous Presidents
So in other words, Trump is like all of our previous Presidents
The (Surprisingly Honest) Leftist: "It is so exhausting pretending he IS a huge threat but we can't help ourselves! We're addicted to dialing it up to eleven!"
These young whippersnappers...
"the mortgage crisis was a once-in-a-generation economic catastrophe."
with 20-20 hide sight.. does ANY ONE really think that the
"the mortgage crisis" was EVEN a crisis? Let alone a catastrophe?
What happened? What could have happened?
It seems to me, looking back; that it was as manufactured as "COVID crisis"
Seriously, was it worth the TRILLIONS we spent to "fix" it?
The use of 'War footing' as the excuse to exercise dictatorial powers goes back to Woodrow Wilson and the Progressives during WWI. That was the model invoked, and supercharged, by FDR in the Depression including the fact his 'solutions' likely made things worse and started a vicious cycle of repeated intervention. It then became the standard operating model for our government during the decades that followed. But once again History starts Yesterday for Democrats.
Jamie said...
Are we NOT in a fiscal emergency, when service on our national debt is projected to exceed GDP in the next ten years?
to ME, THIS is the ONLY emergency..
climate change, russia, china, sex changes, illegal immigration..
NONE of those matter, if America goes bankrupt.. which it IS
Soros DAs installed all over the nation is the corrupt democratic left's investment in high crime on our streets.
the debt is the fiscal crisis model James O'Connor posited in the 70s,
The left built a crisis - and they wanted to solve it... eventually - well never.
High crime works well for them. Democrats are criminals, crooks and lairs too!
As Mike MJB says..
"there's nothing a cult hates more than an apostate"
Infidels can be converted, or ignored..
apostates MUST BE eliminated..
They Know where the bodies are buried.
Weak jobs report raises new concerns about Biden's economic policies.
Who is going to be sacked at the BLS this month?
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...
“But Trump's ability to take something to which the Left and Uniparty pay lip service and turn it into concrete results is a unique feature of his brand. It's like one a week of these since inauguration day.”
And that’s a big party of the reason why I voted for him in 2020 and 2024 after voting 3rd party for the previous 3+ decades.
many banks were overleveraged with subprime, we exported some of it to the EU nations like Greece, which exacerbated their debt situation,
Democrats work non-stop at tanking and ruining everything they can. The left reside in perpetual sociopathic tantrum and revenge - even if it hurts people they like.
Covid, take a bow.
Well the Fed wanted a weak jobs report and they get what they want usually. It takes away the final fig leak Powell was using to keep rates high though. Too bad they waited so long.
Jobs are a lagging indicator of economic change, you know. If you DON'T know then use the bolded text and ask your AI to splain it.
Maybe interest rates can drop now, Kaka, since that was the goal of the high interest rates, wasn't it?
Rahm Emanuel's (is he the secret theme of the day?) was that you could use a crisis to pile on all kinds of other changes on top of efforts to deal with a crisis. Biden's "Inflation Reduction Act" that did nothing to fix inflation, but delivered what had been on the Democrats' wish list for years.
Trump is trying to deal with a wide variety of issues, but he's more or less going after them head-on, not packing a lot of incidentals into legislation designed to deal with a different "emergency." For one thing, there isn't that much legislation going on now. But for another, is Trump really talking about "emergencies"? Kushner and other hostile or nervous people may hear that, but to me Trump's just looking at things and saying what needs to be or could be dealt with and fixed.
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