Should a new Scotus judge be appointed before the 2020 Presidential election?

No the reason is so we have a full complement of justices in a odd number when all the lawsuits the Democrats will be filing hit the SCOTUS. The only reason the Democrats don't want that is if they are anticipating a November loss and then a tied SCOTUS would send it back to the lower court with a liberal judge that they filed in it for that purpose.

 

How about we all prefer a court with 9 justices who will interpret the Constitution as written and the laws as they are passed and not try to be super-legislators concerned about changing our laws and society to fit their ideologies?

 

Er...some of the Constitution IS ideology promoting individual freedom over individual welfare.

eg institution of an environment which allows universal freedom from economic scarcity (impossible in an entirely free market system), requires effective central government intervention, anathema to the founders concerned with liberating themselves from rule by the British king.

 

No, you're right... Trump does indeed have the right and DUTY to nominate a person to fill a vacant seat on the Supreme Court. You ask, "Does that really require a debate?"

Perhaps, not in your opinion OR in mine -- but there's a mob of radical Democrats out there who are raising holy hell about it... apparently for no logical reason that is clear to either of us. And in my experience, not for the first time....

It's intense AGONY for them to realize that they cannot sabotage this legal proceeding with their ownership of the House. The only people who can wreck the candidacy of Judge Barrett are "Republican" RINO's in the Senate.... If Democrats are successful in intimidating the RINO's enough to shoot Judge Barrett down, it really will mean the DEATH of the Republican Party.

 

Did you have a point about the SCOTUS?

 

we would have preferred that, but when Republicans cheated, that changed it all

had republican gave Obama his pick, it would be 5-4 favoring republicans, republicans would have had the majority, they got greedy

 

Since they didn't nothing changed. A Republican Senate has no obligation to confirm a Democrat Presidents nomination or vice versa or even hear it that's part of the check and balance. Remember Estrada's nomination was finally pulled after two years because the Democrats would not hold hearings or a vote.

 

yep, Republicans cheated, they denied a vote for Obama's pick, then they lowered the number of votes from 60 to 50, and now they will vote for Trump's pick when the voting for President has already begun

republicans stole the SC, so now dems will steal it back - two can play that game

 

Well...the Court interprets the Constitution; and Conservative judges interpreting a Constitution that needs to be brought into the modern era, will be ideologically incapable of performing that task.

Like asking to Pope to amend the Nicene Creed...urgently needed in our modern global village...

 

If the Constitution needs to be updated or something that is for the Congress to decide. What in the Constitution needs to be brought into the "modern era"?

 

Exercising their Constitutional authority is not "cheating". A President has the Constitutional authority to nominate, that's all and the Senate has the Constitutional authority to approve or not and Blame Harry Reid for the appointment of judges by majority vote and no filibuster. It's the Democrats trying to steal a seat from the duly elected Senate AND the President the two bodies whose decision it is.

 

Yes.

For starters: change "promote" the common welfare to "provide for" the common welfare.

..In our modern world where

1. everyone has to earn money to prospe....unlike in the frontier towns of the 18th century where survival did not require money eg you could build your own log cabin from freely available materials on 'free' land (ie stolen native land) and grow/catch your own food.

2. the highly productive capacities of modern AI and IT enhanced economies indeed allows provision of the "common welfare".

 

See my above post to Bluesguy, for an understanding of why the Left are so agitated.

 

The Constitution can, in theory, be amended to be changed in any way we see fit. It has already been amended 27 times.

I think the most confusing problem about the word "welfare" is that modern Americans can not (or will not) grasp the fact that in the time that the Constitution was written, "welfare" meant "WELL-BEING" -- and not a life-long smorgasbord of 'free stuff' from a government....

The word "welfare" in the Constitution was NEVER to be construed as meaning some kind of a "Beggars Banquet"....

...

 

Which is why we need justices and judges like Barret and not Ginsburg.

That is the Preamble not the Articles. That changes nothing. And you'd have to take out "common" into individual it that is what you are looking for and we have seen in history what happens when the government takes over all the welfare of the citizens, there goes your liberty and freedoms and the government collapses.

 

And in the Tax and Spend clause it is the "welfare" of the GOVERNMENT not the PEOPLE. It authorizes the Congress to pass taxes to fund the proper operation of the government and to pay it's debts, not provide food and housing and jobs and clothing and cell phones and medical care for the People.

 

Quote so, but now we know, or should know in our present era of AI and IT assisted economies, that "the common welfare" means above poverty participation in the economy, guaranteed for all of working age.

(Now please don't say it's not possible, thereby merely demonstrating your lack of knowledge of alternative economic systems - an error termed TINA by heterodox economists ie 'there is no alternative' - other than the US monetarist neoliberal free-market system based on classical economics going back to the era of the founding of the US Constitution (in the 18th century).

 

All refuted here:

http://www.politicalforum.com/index.php?threads/the-right-wing’s-new-election-boogeyman.578417/page-6

Post 149 and 152.

Btw Pompeo's fundamentalist religious world view will actually CAUSE Armageddon (never mind waiting for Christ's 2nd coming and the "rapture"...) UNLESS the Chinese display some 'Confucian' restraint in the face of Pompeo's rambling around the globe with his anti-Chinese rhetoric, designed to maintain US hegemony.

And now he has a stand in (Barrett) in the SC. ...

[Meanwhile China is promoting multilateralism in the UN on behalf of universal development. and the fast pace of poverty alleviation in China has cemented the acceptance of the CCP by mainland Chinese people themselves].

All refuted in the link above.

 

The Tax and Spend clause:

"The Taxing and Spending Clause (which contains provisions known as the General Welfare Clause and the Uniformity Clause), Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 of the United States Constitution, grants the federal government of the United States its power of taxation. While authorizing Congress to levy taxes, this clause permits the levying of taxes for two purposes only: to pay the debts of the United States, and to provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States. Taken together, these purposes have traditionally been held to imply and to constitute the federal government's taxing and spending power."

Gosh I hope Barrett is more capable than you of interpreting this 18th century Constitution...(though I doubt it...)

Just shows how ideology affects interpretation of text..

Re: Taxation "to ......provide for the general welfare of the US..."

Governments don't raise taxes to provide for their own welfare: OTOH, people experience a level of general (community) welfare, depending on the quality of the governance.

Fast forward to the present: I suggest you demand your government deal with this egregious problem, identified by Trump in 2016 (when he was seeking office) :

"You are living in poverty, your neighborhoods are like war zones, your schools and hospitals are broken, your young men are in prison..."

Of course you can choose to remain wedded to your uncomprehending ideology, and watch the nation descend into anarchy as white nationalist Proud Boys attack any (black) reaction against entrenched disadvantage in the ghettos identified above.

Remember: the other side is armed too (courtesy of the 2nd amendment....

China, and the world, is watching.

 

You extol the virtues of emerging, 'alternative economic systems', and postulate that, "but now we know, or should know in our present era of AI and IT assisted economies, that "the common welfare" means above poverty participation in the economy, guaranteed for all of working age."

In your theory, does "participation" necessarily involve a socialistic 'confiscation' or 'redistribution' of one person's assets for the benefit of people who do little or nothing...? Does "participation" mean getting a free ticket to the 'banquet'...?

Parenthetically, did the introduction of new tools and technologies in the Industrial Age mean that a large segment of the population should stop working and derive their incomes from the activities of those who continued to work with those new tools and technologies?

After all, however highly we think of our much-vaunted "AI" and "IT", they, too, are really nothing but further-advanced tools... and other more sophisticated and powerful methodologies are always arriving.... Will that mean that society's "proles" will expect 'free stuff', schlepping along on subsistence welfare from the government, with their lives dictated to them by Inner and Outer Party Members (as described in Orwell's masterpiece, "1984")...?

 

Yes and in the Constitution the term United States is the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. The purpose of the clause is to authorize the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT to raise taxes to pay for itself, maintain it's welfare (it's goo working order) and it's debts.

OTOH

Of course they do, else how do they maintain the proper functions and assets such as buidlings and parks and military and vehicles and pay the people who work for it. That is the purpose of the tax and spend clause to to provide welfare, subsistence to the People.

 

Lack of rebuttal noted, if you have something to say then say it.

 

The answer to both questions is NO.

Though I'm becoming increasingly aware of Keynes' warning to Mead in 1943; " Keynes, in a letter to fellow economist James Meade written in April 1943, said of Lerner, “His argument is impeccable. But heaven help anyone who tries to put it across at this stage of the evolution of our ideas”.

Keynes was referring to the indoctrination of classical economists in free markets without government intervention.

[Abba Lerner was a forerunner of MMT: Keynes was introduced to the idea only near the end of his life (d.1946)].

Note: China's "socialism with Chinese characteristics" ( ie releasing the vitality of individual enterprise (as exists in capitalism) within an environment of socialist state planning, may well prove to be the better economic system; and hence the US neocons are becoming increasingly shrill in their determination to maintain global hegemony, by accusing China of human rights violations while insisting democracy is the only acceptable system ( a look at US 'democracy' disproves that belief immediately); a nation with 4 times the population able to inexorably lift its population out of poverty (unlike the US stuck with its inner city ghettos) will sweep away that US hegemony which has existed since WW2.

No. See above.

No. See above. MMT REQUIRES that everyone contribute usefully in the community, whether in the private or public sector.

Note on 'wealth' creation; public sector research in tertiary institutions is more vital for the development of national prosperity than, for example, purely profit-driven private sector production of sugary drinks and fatty, salty junk food, an 'industry' commanding $trillions of the nation's resources (in factories, production, transport, advertising, sales etc) while directly responsible for the current obesity and diabetes epidemics with the further massive drain on resources in the (ill-)health industry.

 

The issues are complex: I gave you the link covering - in depth - the issues you raise.

Your lack of engagement is noted.