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Open Thread December 29 2023 “Demand will Decide”

Angry Bear | December 29, 2023 4:00 pm

US/Global Economics

“At the end of the day, remember, it is the demand that will decide and dictate what sort of energy source will help meet the growing global energy requirements.”

To end fossil fuels, “remember, it is the demand that will decide,” Carbon Upfront.

Open Thread December 23 2023 Nippon Steel Purchasing U.S. Steel, Angry Bear

6 Comments

Fred C. Dobbs says:

December 29, 2023 at 11:43 pm

How the Supreme Court May Rule on Trump’s Presidential Run

NY Times – Dec 29 – about 8 hours ago

The legal issues are novel and tangled, experts said, and the justices may be wary of knocking a leading presidential candidate off the ballot.

The Supreme Court, battered by ethics scandals, a dip in public confidence and questions about its legitimacy, may soon have to confront a case as consequential and bruising as Bush v. Gore, the 2000 decision that handed the presidency to George W. Bush.

Until 10 days ago, the justices had settled into a relatively routine term. Then the Colorado Supreme Court declared that former President Donald J. Trump was ineligible to hold office because he had engaged in an insurrection. On Thursday, relying on that court’s reasoning, an election official in Maine followed suit.

An appeal of the Colorado ruling has already reached the justices, and they will probably feel compelled to weigh in. But they will act in the shadow of two competing political realities.

They will be reluctant to wrest from voters the power to assess Mr. Trump’s conduct, particularly given the certain backlash that would bring. Yet they will also be wary of giving Mr. Trump the electoral boost of an unqualified victory in the nation’s highest court. …
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  December 30, 2023 at 8:46 am
  
  … “This is a fraught political issue,” said Derek Muller, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame. “I think there will be an effort for the court to coalesce around a consensus position for a narrow, unanimous opinion. That probably means coalescing around a position where Trump stays on the ballot.”
  
  If there is a consensus among legal experts, it is that the Supreme Court must act. …
  
  … “For Trump to win, he only needs to win on one issue,” Professor Muller said. “There are many options at the court’s disposal.”
  
  On the other hand, leading conservative law professors who have examined the original meaning of Section 3, which was adopted after the Civil War, have recently concluded that it plainly applies to Mr. Trump and bars him from another term. Such originalist arguments generally resonate with the court’s most conservative members.
  
  But other considerations may prevail.
  
  “As much as the court may want to evade politics in its decisions, it’s unavoidable,” Professor Muller said. “The best it can do right now is try to achieve consensus to avoid the appearance of partisanship.” …
- Eric377 says:
  
  December 30, 2023 at 10:32 am
  
  I don’t see any mechanism for the Court to give Trump an electoral boost here, apart from leaving him on primary ballots and eventually the November one if he is nominated. Why the NYT seems to think they should be wary of that is a mystery. It almost feels like an appeal to one or more justice to make it 8-1 or 7-2 so that Colorado, and now Maine, doesn’t look lose 9-0 (which is how Slate recently assessed this case). Honestly, if they want to not touch this, just send the case to district court with an injunction keeping Trump on the ballots until final appeals are over. Hard to argue that keeping him off ballots is not an immediate and irrecoverable loss to people who want to vote for him, which is what these injunctions try to head off. So maybe the 10th districts says the Colorado SC decision was an error and then nobody appeals it. Now there are some cases that only the Supreme Court handles like states suing other states. Is this maybe one of those?
Fred C. Dobbs says:

December 30, 2023 at 8:36 am

How to Stand Up to Trump

NY Times – Debbie Dingell – Dec 30

Representative Debbie Dingell, Democrat of Michigan, has been a repeated target of former President Donald J. Trump’s attacks on social media.

“Rot in hell.”

Those words were part of Donald Trump’s Christmas Day message, spewed at his political enemies. The next day, when I was asked during a CNN interview about the increased violence in this country, I responded honestly that I thought the former president’s message was wrong and divisive. I’m not afraid to say what I think, even when that means there may be unpleasant repercussions and threats from the former president and his supporters. A lot of us may face this type of conflict in the year ahead. I am particularly familiar with this, as Mr. Trump has targeted me in the past in ways that have been very difficult.

I was married to a great and wise man with whom I shared an incredible love for decades. I miss John every day. On the day that he died, in 2019, he dictated an op-ed to me that would be titled “My Last Words for America.” He observed, “In our modern political age, the presidential bully pulpit seems dedicated to sowing division and denigrating, often in the most irrelevant and infantile personal terms, the political opposition.” Months after his death, when I voted for the first articles of impeachment against President Trump, he launched into a brutal attack saying that John was “looking up” at me (implying he was in hell). That’s the Trump way — the cruelty is the point, yet that awareness doesn’t make it any less painful. We’re human. He knows that, and he thrives on it.

I am not seeking a fight with Mr. Trump. It’s not easy to tangle with him, especially after that experience involving John. But I do know that hateful rhetoric cannot be ignored or become normalized. We have to stand up to bullies in this country, and we have to call out indignities. My bluntness about “rot in hell” being unacceptable was my unfiltered reaction and I stand by it. …
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  December 30, 2023 at 8:39 am
  
  Trump Assails Congresswoman in His Latest Escalation on Social Media
  
  NY Times – Dec 27
  
  The former president, who has stepped up his incendiary language on Truth Social, attacked Representative Debbie Dingell, the widow of John D. Dingell Jr.
  
  Former President Donald J. Trump on Tuesday fired off a new attack against Representative Debbie Dingell, the widow of John D. Dingell Jr., the longest-serving member of Congress in American history, calling her a “loser” and suggesting that she had not been grateful for funeral honors granted by Mr. Trump for her husband.
  
  The salvo from Mr. Trump, the Republican front-runner in the 2024 presidential race, followed an appearance by Ms. Dingell, a Democrat from Michigan, on CNN earlier on Tuesday in which she criticized Mr. Trump’s increasingly incendiary language on social media. …
Fred C. Dobbs says:

January 1, 2024 at 8:36 am

Trump’s Most Ambitious Argument in His Bid for ‘Absolute Immunity’

NY Times – January 1

The former president says his acquittal by the Senate in his second impeachment trial, for inciting insurrection, bars any prosecution on similar grounds.

There is almost nothing in the words of the Constitution that even begins to support former President Donald J. Trump’s boldest defense against charges that he plotted to overturn the 2020 election: that he is absolutely immune from prosecution for actions he took while in office.

A federal appeals court will hear arguments on the question next week, and the panel will consider factors including history, precedent and the separation of powers. But, as the Supreme Court has acknowledged, the Constitution itself does not explicitly address the existence or scope of presidential immunity.

In his appellate brief, Mr. Trump said there was one constitutional provision that figured in the analysis, though his argument is a legal long shot. The provision, the impeachment judgment clause, says that officials impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate are still subject to criminal prosecution.

The provision says: “Judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States: But the party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment, according to law.” …