Wednesday, September 25, 2019

Why is the New York Times Invoking the Imperial Presidency?


The problem of the Imperial Presidency pre-dates our current administration.  Arthur M. Schlesinger's (2004) The Imperial Presidency charted the centralization of power in the executive branch generally, and presidency specifically, over the 20th century.


In yesterday's New York Times, John Woo, one of the legal authors of the "torture memos" defended the imperial presidency in the name of "national security" in an op-ed:
Yoo, John (2019, September 24). Beware of Impeaching Trump. It Could Hurt the Presidency. The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/24/opinion/ukraine-trump.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_190925?campaign_id=2&instance_id=12571&segment_id=17305&user_id=96df00a4a9c822b03be11b8b3c7df254&regi_id=329620000925

We must avoid doing long-term harm to the president’s ability to conduct foreign policy and protect our nation.

But we should beware that rushing into an impeachment may do long-term harm to the presidency and our national security.


There may be legal arguments against impeachment procedures, but national security is not valid among them.

National security has become the ultimate pass for power, as illustrated in past US administrations' approach to a 1 percent doctrine that legitimized US military sovereignty across the globe.

In 2006, Vice President Dick Cheney promoted his “1% Doctrine,” which in the name of national security legitimized pre-emptive action against foreign nations or peoples if there were even a 1% chance terrorists could attain “weapons of mass destruction” (“America’s Longest,” 2006, p. 22).

Precautionary risk governance entails tendencies toward drastic prevention. Whole populations become suspect leading to limitless surveillance and consolidated power.

Framed in this fashion, Woo's appeal to national security is not simply valorization of the imperial presidency but also an imperial US.

US military imperialism has produced an empire of disorder, as described by Alain Joxe, with a president who represents what happens when the empire's effects are experienced domestically as disenfranchizement.

The US Presidency has become a sign of its own incongruity.


15 comments:

  1. This country is a joke. This insane, rediculous administration is treating nuclear reactors like Jack-in-the-boxes. All nuclear reactors came into being because of the military establishment and the federal government. They cannot stay opened, without the federal government feeding the pig. The operators and their corporate CEOs could care less if they explode, like TEPCO and Fukushima and they will dodege any responsibility.
    When nuclear safety professionals say things are to the point of catastrophic, it is time to take notice. Antinuclear people know how much waste they are generating, the damage they have done and are doing and how financially unsustainable they are. They know its is time to shut down the old damaged death machines.
    When UCS and others say things are out of control people should take notice.
    If people really knew how this abomination and its corruptioon is ruining and jeoprodizing peoples lives and futures it woul have little support.
    No president has been this irresponsible and insane.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. NYTimes beat the drums for iraq through Judith Miller and others. What else would you expect?

      Delete
    2. Trump Orders Massive 5-Year Flu Vaccine Task Force

      Hints at Mandatory Forced Vaccination

      ***

      Hints of Possible “Vaccine Cloud” Sprayed over population

      September 24, 2019 — With an Executive Order (EO) Donald Trump ordered a 5-year Flu Vaccine Task Force to “to promote the use of more agile and scalable vaccine manufacturing technologies and to accelerate development of vaccines that protect against many or all influenza viruses.”

      REPORT THIS AD

      The Task Force is looking to “increase influenza vaccine use through enhanced communication and by removing barriers to vaccination.” (emphasis added) Just what “barriers” are Trump & his team looking to remove? Sounds ominous to me, and indicates more mandates and limits on our Health Freedoms.

      There is also a section that states they are looking for “alternative delivery systems” in case of a pandemic.

      “(E)stimate the cost of developing, evaluating, and implementing delivery systems to augment limited supplies of needles and syringes and to enable the rapid and large-scale administration of pandemic influenza vaccines.” (emphasis added)

      When you add that with the fact they want the delivery system to be “more scalable” I believe it could include aerial aerosol vaccination via crop-dusters and/or helicopters. The Pentagon has researched and war gamed such scenarios for at least the past 20 years. A deeper explanation of that will be provided at the end of this report.

      REPORT THIS AD

      Read the entire Executive Order here.

      Trump’s EO immediately creates a Task Force that will write a report within the next 120 days that has many stated goals. One of those goals is to recommend how more people can be vaccinated. That report will give, “recommendations for increasing influenza vaccination among the populations recommended by the CDC and for improving public understanding of influenza risk and informed influenza vaccine decision-making.” (emphasis added)

      The plan will also lay out what new vaccine technologies will be utilized, and how the private sector will be guaranteed to profit in case of a pandemic outbreak of the flu. So a pandemic will be good for business (as is usual for the biotech sector).

      The report will explore the possibility of using, “innovative, faster, and more scalable technologies, including cell-based and recombinant vaccine manufacturing, through cost-sharing agreements with the private sector, which shall include an agreed-upon pricing strategy

      Delete

    3. https://greenpowerwellnessshow.podbean.com/e/solartopia-green-power-and-wellness-hour-impeached - and-nukemafia-insanity-in-ohio-092619/

      From fake petitions to anti-Chinese hate ads to assault and battery to outright mass deceit, you will not believe your ears. It’s Donald Trump on radioactive steroids. Don’t miss this show.


      KEVIN KAMPS of Beyond Nuclear on the absolutely astonishing mobster strong-arming being used in Ohio to keep off the ballot a referendum meant to reverse the billion-dollar bailout FirstEnergy wants to scam from Ohio ratepayers.


      Solartopia Green Power & Wellness Hour
      Harvey Wasserman
      September 26, 2019
      i
      Solartopia Green Power and Wellness Hour - IMPEACHED!!! AND NUKE/MAFIA INSANITY IN OHIO - 09.26.19

      IMPEACHED!!! AND NUKE/MAFIA INSANITY IN OHIO

      Now that Nancy Pelosi has dropped the Impeachment shoe on the mobster-in-chief, we talk with the great Attorney/Political Scientist BOB FITRAKIS about the deep background of Trump’s Ukraine connections. It’s even worse than you think.




      Delete
    4. https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2019/09/29/the-worst-nuclear-disaster-youve-never-heard-of/amp/

      The worst nuclear disaster you’ve never heard of

      beyondnuclearinternational
      6 hours ago

      A radioactive explosion in 1957 in the Ural Mountains was the true original

      By Charles Digges

      In the history of nuclear disasters, it’s easy to forget that a radioactive explosion back in 1957 near an obscure village with an unpronounceable name in the Ural Mountains was the true original.

      And while engineering heroics have finally been brought to bear on the smoldering sarcophagus at Chernobyl, and robots troll the wreckage of Fukushima, this catastrophe by many accounts continues to churn radioactivity into the environment and to sicken a hostage population.

      None of us were ever supposed to know anything about it, and if not for a series of untimely revelations, we probably still wouldn’t.

      It’s called the Kyshtym disaster and before the mid 1980s the town’s official location wasn’t even designated on a map. Only the diseased winds blowing north in the aftermath gave any indication it was there.

      Delete
    5. newrepublic.com/amp/article/153465/its-not-just-pork-trump-also-letting-nuclear-plants-regulate-safety

      It’s Not Just Pork: Trump Is Also Letting Nuclear Plants Regulate Their Own Safety
      The administration's deregulation obsession is endangering Americans' health and safety.

      By EMILY ATKIN
      April 5, 2019

      "The day before the Post’s story on pork inspections broke, the Senate Environment and Public Works committee held an oversight hearing for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The hearing was called, in part, to discuss a new safety regulation designed to protect American nuclear reactors from earthquake and flooding events, like the one that caused the 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan. Though the health impact of that disaster so far appears to be minimal, the plant is still not secured—large swaths of land and water remain contaminated, and surrounding villages are still uninhabited.

      The draft version of the rule, released by the NRC in 2016, required all nuclear plant owners to do two things: reassess all flood and earthquake risks, then implement new safety measures taking the reassessment into account. But in January 2019, with Trump appointees making up a majority of the commission, it approved a final version of the rule making the safety measures voluntary. Nuclear power plants, in other words, will still have to do new risk assessments—but now they can choose whether they want to prepare for those risks or not.


      The nuclear industry is also pushing the NRC to cut down on safety inspections and rely instead on plants to police themselves. The NRC “is listening” to this advice, the Associated Press reported last month. “Annie Caputo, a former nuclear-energy lobbyist now serving as one of four board members appointed or reappointed by President Donald Trump, told an industry meeting this week that she was ‘open to self-assessments’ by nuclear plant operators, who are proposing that self-reporting by operators take the place of some NRC inspections.”

      Delete
    6. https://www.ewg.org/energy/release/22837/try-try-again-trump-mulling-taxpayer-bailout-nuclear-industry

      “The Trump administration is once again looking to prop up the dying and dangerous nuclear energy industry and squandering taxpayer dollars to do it,” said EWG President Ken Cook. “Nuclear power is a relic of the last century, too risky, too expensive and completely rejected by Wall Street investors. Instead of backing another energy loser, the administration should push to make America’s wind and solar power great again, by helping U.S. makers of turbines and solar panels recover from years of standing by while foreign competitors dominate.”

      Data from the Energy Information Administration shows that since 2009, solar power capacity has grown by more than a factor of 89, and wind power capacity has increased sixfold. But production of solar panels and wind turbines is dominated by companies from China and Europe.

      Reuters reported that the White House working group is expected to make its recommendations for bailing out domestic uranium mining and the nuclear power industry by Oct. 10.

      Much of the U.S.’ uranium deposits are in the desert Southwest, including along the rim of the Grand Canyon. In 2012, then-Interior Secretary Ken Salazar placed a 20-year moratorium on uranium mining on more than 1 million acres of land along the canyon rim.

      Delete
    7. This Recactor license is extended by Trumps NRC and business interests though its structural ingerity is failing and it is old

      Cracks form in foundation of NH nuclear power plant
      The Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant in New Hampshire.
      Jim Richmond via Wikimedia Commons | BDN
      The Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant in New Hampshire.
      The Associated Press
      September 25, 2019 11:32 am

      SEABROOK, New Hampshire — Neighbors of the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant have told a federal panel that they want more transparent, independent monitoring of cracks that have formed in the plant’s concrete foundation.

      New Hampshire Public Radio reports they spoke Monday before a panel of administrative judges for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. They are weighing whether Seabrook’s owner, NextEra, adequately studied the cracks.


      The hearing was granted to a watchdog group C-10, which cites an independent expert in contending that NextEra didn’t properly study the cracks in order to write their monitoring plan.

      NextEra based its monitoring plan for Seabrook’s concrete on a study, and regulators approved that plan.

      Regulators extended Seabrook’s operating license through 2050 earlier this year, despite calls to delay that decision until after the hearing.

      Delete
  2. If this country is a joke,then what is Communist China or North Korea or Venezuela.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You two or more trolls are cute but also nasty. Perhaps washing your mouths out with Ivory Soap would help.

      Delete
  3. Presently it is the House that is displaying behavior of a very negative sort. The fact that they are constantly stretching the truth in hopes of finding something to impeach the President for belies their continuous claims that the President is committing all sort of crimes.

    Years ago the Congress fell into a deep period of sloth and started moving their jobs to the White House.

    What has the Congress done constructively this year. I agree, nothing.

    P.S. To two of our trolls, you are not even faintly funny. You are betraying a poor upbringing in some hole like Baltimore. Latch key kids probably. No father. Bad education. Envious.

    ReplyDelete
  4. The NYT has a long history of misleading its readers. Perhaps the worst instances were in the early 1930's when literally millions were being starved to death in Ukraine! [Holodomor] Their reporter lied about this and said it was not true. He told so many lies that the Soviet Union awarded him their highest prize, the Lenin Medal. So in answer to your question of why they are bringing up the Imperial Presidency it is probably not to benefit the nation. Any one who reads the NYT regularly is running the risk of having a distorted view of the world, unless he or she is studying the pathology of journalists.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Poll DISASTER for DEMS: Trust in Mainstream Media COLLAPSES!!!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxC1cKWlGfM

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This is what Trump hass done. A replay of 2008 or worse. The corruption, chaos, and incompetence is spiraling out of control.
      RT is a more trustworthy site than the cable networks that hide things and triangulate.
      Watch "Banking crisis 'getting worse' as Fed loses control (Full show)" on YouTube
      https://youtu.be/mHIiD6jPUaE

      Delete
  6. Hiding The Hottest Month On Record

    this is some fascinating history
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxQjOasRvGE

    but you will need to keep it to yourself!

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.