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.
৫ সেপ্টেম্বর, ২০২৫
"'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).
পোস্টগুলি
৮৪টি মন্তব্য:
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?
Lehman Bros was dangerously overleveraged, the circumstances of how they hit their liquidity,
Rahm Emanuel's idea (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 was an example.
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.
Everybody to get off street
Everybody to get from street!
During the 2008 financial crisis there was a $900 billion "one time stimulus" raising government expenditures for that year 33% or so (from 2.8 trillion to 3.7 trillion). For the next several years after that congress didn't pass a budget but used the previous budget plus 33% as their new baseline essentially empowering themselves to the tune of 1/3 more financial leverage in one fell swoop. And they did it again during covid. From 2008 till now the federal budget has gone from 2.8 trillion to 6.8 trillion. It's madness.
How dumbass do you need to be to argue that Trump is abusing "emergency" powers and then write the phrase "climate of emergency". How much money did Democrats spend in the last Administration arguing we were in a climate emergency? What did all their efforts do for anybody?
well if you are Carlos Slim's chimps, as Taranto has pointed out they don't read their own paper,
Yes it is always (D)ifferent when Obama did it...
Kakistocracy said...
Weak jobs report raises new concerns about Biden's economic policies.
Who is going to be sacked at the BLS this month?
Rich is too stupid to understand what a lagging indicator is.
Jobs numbers reflect decisions made about a year prior due to a long list of reasons. For example we are spinning up a new program where I work that will hire several thousand people. They have put together core management and have started hiring leads. It will take a year at minimum to fully staff.
But people with 90 IQ think Rich made a sharp and incisive comment.
The difference: Obama was saddled with a real crisis, thanks W; Trump needs a "crisis" matched to each policy.
His simple thralls, see above, can only understand looming threats and impending doom. Turning toward their shiny golden idol, they hear his detached monotone and take heart: surely the demonic hoard threatening our 0.99 MPC will quake in fear and fly before his might.
For Democrats committed to destabilizing the Republic things like 100,000 fentanyl deaths and rampant crime look like progress.
jim said...
The difference: Obama was saddled with a real crisis, thanks W; Trump needs a "crisis" matched to each policy.
His simple thralls, see above, can only understand looming threats and impending doom. Turning toward their shiny golden idol, they hear his detached monotone and take heart: surely the demonic hoard threatening our 0.99 MPC will quake in fear and fly before his might.
Obama created the 2008 mortgage crisis.
The uniparty created the sovereign debt crisis that Trump is about to face as well.
And then there is the defeat and surrender of Ukraine coming up. Biden's war.
Obama's team ensured that the Great Recession was great and that recovery was s-l-o-w. This drew attention away from his numerous agency backroom manipulations to get around actual votes, and it made the green faction happy per "put a potato in the tailpipe of the economy." It also kept the word "Hope" current for a very long time. Obama's actions precipitated Trump's emergence and victory.
https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/7501/economics/the-great-recession/
$25 trillion increase in debt in 16 years, 2 potentially global Hotspots (apologies to Uganda, DRC, Niger, etc), that climate issue, rampant drugged zombies, disunity and hatred, etc. I think we have problems.
There's a certian satisfaction in seeing Democrats hypocricially condemn what Trump does when they were all for it when Democrats did it.
"Sauce for the goose...."
Obama wasn't president during the 2008 crisis. He was a candidate. Big difference.
Obama was saddled with a real crisis
Obama wasn't saddled with shit. He was a candidate.
Jim at said...
Obama wasn't president during the 2008 crisis. He was a candidate. Big difference.
No. He was a senator and before that he was a lawyer that sued banks and actively pursued the policies where banks had to give loans to minorities even if they probably couldn't pay them back.
Achilles’ problem is that he worships a weirdo-in-chief with orange makeup.
The US economy added 2.2 million new jobs last year, so adding only a half-million jobs in 7 months under Trump is a very weak performance, and not something to brag about.
The Trump administration’s "pro-growth agenda" is a masterclass in misdirection. While the White House boasts of half a million jobs, the stagehands are quietly dismantling the American factory floor. It's less economic policy, more a shell game.
The numbers tell the real story. Just 22,000 jobs were added in August, while manufacturing has shed 42,000 jobs since the April tariffs began. These tariffs, the highest since the Great Depression, cost households $2,400 a year. When the data got too ugly last month, the admin simply fired the BLS Commissioner.
Blaming the Fed is the final tell. The house isn't losing because of the dealer; it's losing because the owner set the table on fire.
kak’s MAIN problem is that he’s an a**hole.
The crisis is most likely in yer Underoos, jimmy.
Cappy said...
"liberals opened up the window to declaring everything a crisis."
I really do think that is true. When I first started paying attention to politics in the 80s, before my political leanings were well-formed, I thought it was very odd that the Democrats seemed to have a knee-jerk reaction to call everything a crisis...jobs crisis, homelessness crisis, insurance crisis, etc. Meanwhile, they didn't seem to care about doing much to solve them. It was one of the things that pushed me toward the conservative side of the equation.
We’re doing this to ourselves. Nice way to attract foreign investment in the US.
US agents raid Hyundai-LG site as Trump migrant crackdown escalates ~ FT
‘South Korea protests after more than 300 Korean company workers are detained’
"Among those detained were South Korean employees on business travel....
"The raid could raise concerns for South Korean companies that are sending personnel to the US and hiring locally."
It comes weeks after Hyundai pledged $26 billion in US investments.“
I can't even begin to describe the idiocy of this move. What foreign company is going to risk having key employees detained due to our current obsession with making it look like "we're doing something" on immigration.
In all seriousness, this plant was a boon for the state of Georgia and the Feds seem to be countering that.
Kakistocracy said...
Achilles’ problem is that he worships a weirdo-in-chief with orange makeup.
The US economy added 2.2 million new jobs last year, so adding only a half-million jobs in 7 months under Trump is a very weak performance, and not something to brag about.
It is like rich cant even read. He is just so stupid it hurts.
L A G G I N G I N D I C A T O R.
Anyone with more than a 90 IQ knows what those 2 words mean.
Also Trump has managed to add jobs high paying jobs while both shrinking the Federal Workforce and removing around 800,000 illegals from the workforce.
But it would take a 95 IQ to figure out why that is a good thing so that is way out of reach for Rich.
Don’t forget upward revisions🤡
White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett on CNBC called Friday’s new jobs report number “a little bit disappointing,” but added, “I expect it’s going to revise up.”
That made me laugh out loud. I wonder what makes him think the figure will be revised up (after first being called 'fake' or 'rigged' by his boss). Hilarious.
Kevin Hassett is who they want to run the Fed. Absolute circus.
Don't worry Rich.
Wage growth and full time employment are exploding.
All of the capital that is being invested now in the US because regulations were cut and tariffs balanced the tax burden will result in job growth and wage growth. It takes about a year for that to show up.
You will look stupid again just like the other predictions you have made.
jim said...
The difference: Obama was saddled with a real crisis, thanks W
Jeez, when Democrats aren't demonstrating they think History Started Yesterday, they are trying to gaslight the people that actually lived through it.
The 2008 mortgage crisis was largely the product of the Community Reinvestment Act rules pushed forward by Clinton that commanded banks make risky home loans to unqualified buyers, largely minorities. That might have been survivable if the buyers of mortgage backed securities had realized they were being handed bombs that were going to go off if (when) interest rates started rising due to an overheated economy.
TARP was gifted by W to the incoming administration, even if McMaverik was such as grandstander he suspended his campaign and let the DNC-adjacent press paint the GOP in general as the primary obstacle to getting it done. Obama did zilch to resolve the crisis, even admitting later (i.e. when safely out of office) that the grandfather of the Biden's IRA, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, was a flop because there was no such thing as 'shovel ready' projects that were unfunded. His (mal)administration then went on a orgy of issuing debt in the form of multiple rounds of 'quantitative easing'.
Trump 2016 finally had the economy back on something like an even keel prior to COVID but Biden put paid to that with the IRA, among other money-chucking exercises.
Achilles -- kind of like closing one eye and arguing you see the world with greater clarity than everyone else.
The basis-point difference between the 10 year UST bond yield-to-maturity and the 2 year UST note yield-to-maturity continues to increase, a signal of the increasing value of money borrowed for investment decisions, and likely evidence of a harbinger for manufacturing employment.
https://ycharts.com/indicators/10_2_year_treasury_yield_spread
Not surprised. The first few months of Trump's presidency the responses to his economic policies, in particular the import tariffs, where minor. Reason: Economic agents implemented measures like stock piling imported goods. Now the effects are starting to show. Most likely, it will get worse due to so many ill-advised and irrational policies.
In addition we have the effects of single events like the ICE raid on the Hyundai factory in Georgia today, which will augment uncertainty and further will reduce foreign companies' willingness to invest in the US.
In economics, things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then they happen faster than you thought they could.
No. He was a senator ...
So Obama wasn't the Democrat's nominee for President during the 2008 financial crisis? And why any comparisons the author makes to Trump don't apply? Because I think he was.
Sometimes you argue just for the sake of being argumentative. That gets boring.
So none of our brilliant leftists figured it out: the experts estimated we would net +75,000 jobs last month (seasonal adjustment included) but what they didn’t account for was the LOSS of 97,000 government workers over the last two months as court challenges were resolved. That we absorbed the public sector separations and still netted a positive result in August is pretty impressive in the real world.
Then there are the leading indicators like strongest inventory growth in several years, surprisingly strong capital investment especially in durable goods for manufacturing, which means more jobs going forward. Let’s not overlook Trump’s push to dominate AI development, which is estimated to increase net employment and productivity over the next five years not destroy jobs wholesale like the luddites worry.
At least the current optics put conventional pressure on the Fed to do the conventional thing and lower rates dramatically. That will help kickstart the sluggish housing market and send positive ripples throughout the economy. More winning ahead.
Has kak the economist ever made a correct call here? He (?) makes a LOT of predictions. Has even ONE been correct in 2025?
The difference is... it impacted their entrenched interests. See also, January 6.
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