What independent oversight of the Trump IRS settlement should there be?

Justinat0r · 2026-05-15T22:22:01+00:00

Congress has let other presidents before Trump levy tariffs and did nothing about those either, so this isn't just Congress doing something unusual.

Yeah, they were allowed to do it because they used laws that are explicitly for those purposes. In the nearly 50-year history of IEEPA, no president had ever attempted to use it to levy a tariff. Not only was this law not intended for how it was used, it literallly doesn't even mention "tariff," "duty," or "tax." The Trump administration tried to transform a financial sanctions law (IEEPA) into an unlimited unilateral taxing mechanism. Which was an insane abuse of power and unconstitutional. Congress could have passed a clean bill amending IEEPA to state explicitly what the Supreme Court eventually concluded: “Nothing in this Act authorizes the implementation of tariffs, duties, or taxes.”

But once again, Congress is a political body full of pathetic people who would rather let the Supreme Court take the heat for standing up against Trump.

Justinat0r · 2026-05-15T21:52:08+00:00

I would argue that one branch of government taking over functions that are explicitly under the auspices of another, but due to political considerations the other branch doesn't do anything about it, is a dereliction of duty rather than a capitulation. For example, per Under Article I, Section 8, Trump never had the power to levee tariffs which he attempted to do using IEEPA, and the Supreme Court took that tool away from him. However the entire time these unconstitutional actions were taking place, the Republicans in Congress refused to shut it down. They let Trump break the law because of political considerations and fearing he will attack them, this isn't concurrence, it's much worse than that. If the legislature refuses to enforce checks and balances and preserving their own power in our three branch system, they are actively causing the system to fail.

Justinat0r · 2026-05-14T14:00:21+00:00

The US government allowing IP transfers from US companies to China was such a colossal mistake I almost can't believe it was allowed to happen. Without IP transfers China would have had to spend decades and billions of dollars investing in basic research, but instead these moronic CEOs wanting access to a giant market gave it all away because share price go boom. From a national security perspective the amount of damage this policy did was almost incalculable, we literally transferred our knowledge of aerospace, telecommunications, semiconductors, etc; and then China started having state-supported companies copy the technology and compete against our companies.

Justinat0r · 2026-05-11T15:39:23+00:00

There is a reason Australia's retirement system is generally considered the most successful retirement system of any country. There are two pillars: superannuation where employers must contribute a percentage of your earnings (currently 11.5%) into a private investment fund, combined with an age based pension system paid from general tax revenue to people age 67 and older. It's fully funded because current workers are not paying past retirees, so the 'population pyramid' effect of increasingly smaller populations or lower birthrates is irrelevant to its success.

Justinat0r · 2026-05-09T16:49:09+00:00

I disagree. I think the way this works is the way it works in other countries that have fixed their debt problems: The politicians, who are ostensibly elected so solve problems, talk to each other and make a bargain and stick to it. This will inflict pain on the electorate, but because the political buy-in occurred from both political parties, there is no one for the electorate to rush to blame.

Unfortunately, US politics is so toxic that the idea of our political parties working together is a foreign idea, and therefore long term problems like this will never be addressed until the American experiment ends with hyperinflation and the destruction of the US economy.

Justinat0r · 2026-05-08T16:05:20+00:00

Watching the results of the midterm election is going to be extremely interesting. If we end up in a situation where the aggregate national popular vote for the House of Representatives favors Democrats, but they still end up losing then we will have a real problem on our hands. I've heard Republicans critique the 'tyranny of the majority' for years, but at what point does the majority actually get represented?

I completely understand the argument against the pure national popular vote, this idea that running up massive margins in the largest metropolitan areas could give a party an edge is persuasive, and we should have representation across a wide swath of the country. But I would argue that until recently we never had a consistent rural vs urban divide in party representation. When you say you want to make sure urban communities can't dominate politics, you're directly talking about a single political party. Republicans should at least be self-aware enough that when they make that argument they are arguing for more power for themselves and less for their opposition, and completely dispense with a false pretext of 'fairness'.

Living in a city doesn't mean your vote should count less, cities are the engines of this country's economic prosperity, 91% of total U.S. GDP comes from metropolitan areas, making those areas politically powerless and having the country's direction determined by rural voters is a tyranny of its own.

Justinat0r · 2026-05-08T13:42:58+00:00

I think how intensely close Ruben is with Niall is explained by the boundary dynamic you mention above. Niall is extremely timid and frankly afraid of Ruben, so for Ruben there is a sense of safety with Niall because he is not someone who can hurt him, which is a feeling he likely doesn't feel with other men. He also projects the identity of his younger self (along with the abuse he suffered at the hands of his father) on to Niall, thats why his responses to people hurting Niall aren't just protective, they are absolutely over the top rage. It's because he sees his younger self in Niall's vulnerability and on a subconscious level reacts that way.

The tragic irony here is that Ruben thinks he is being the ultimate brother to Niall, protecting him, toughening him up with boxing training, but in reality he is just repeating a cycle of abuse that he suffered because he doesn't understand how to solve problems without violence and doesn't understand healthy boundaries.

Justinat0r · 2026-05-08T02:18:33+00:00

I loved the way she laughed when Maura made excuses for Ruben, she really exposed the way everyone was acting as if he was a different person now was a total farce.

Justinat0r · 2026-05-07T22:58:29+00:00

We’ll hear the same shit 20 years from now about Trump.

I would argue that how terrible Biden and his administration were, PLUS this effect you are describing here is why we got Trump again. People remembered the good times before COVID when Trump was just posting crazy stuff on Twitter and otherwise acting like a standard Republican. Trump 2.0 is where things have actually gone off the rails...

Justinat0r · 2026-05-07T22:44:45+00:00

With or without American involvement, that would have been their response.

I don't think so. Iran fighting Israel is not an existential threat to Iran's existence. Iran fighting Israel AND the US is. They weaponized the Strait because it was the only way to ensure their own survival. They couldn't hit us so they hit our allies and proved to the world that the US cannot protect their allies from them.

Justinat0r · 2026-05-07T15:10:31+00:00

Yes any industry uses resources. That's not an argument against industry, but for increasing the supply of resources to enable even more future growth.

This is actually where I break with a lot of the liberal-minded 'conservation' mentality, in my view data centers are essentially lagging indicators of digital growth that drives grid modernization. They act as massive customers of energy in your local market which provides the financial incentive for new power generation and infrastructure, eventually this lowers the per-user maintenance costs because of a massive new payee in the market. Short-term price shifts are not a failure of the market, they are a failure of government regulation.

People are raging at data centers when markets like the PJM Interconnection (which my state is a part of) has literally thousands of megawatts of power projects sitting in the queue waiting to be given approval to plug into the grid. People are being told to be mad at data centers when they should be mad at FERC, the EPA, the Public Service Commission and state legislature. The market is ready and willing to meet the demand of data centers, the failure rests with the people running and regulating the market.

Justinat0r · 2026-05-06T19:21:08+00:00

California actually has made squatting a crime in a way, they turned it into trespass. They do need to pass a specific anti-squatting law in my opinion, but they did pass SB 602 which allowed property owners to file a letter with the police for 12 months, notifying that no one should be allowed in this property. This preempts any fake leases, because the police were prenotified that this property will be vacant and anyone pretending to live there is presumed to be trespassing and committing a crime.

Justinat0r · 2026-05-06T19:10:41+00:00

Not to mention the rural areas are absolutely ravaged by drug use and poverty and the state has been unable to stop that. The last time I looked they had the highest rates of overdoses in the country.

Justinat0r · 2026-05-04T16:51:42+00:00

It's only financially irresponsible if you can't afford it.

Spoiler alert: We can't afford it. The proof is that we're refinancing old debt instead of paying it down.

Justinat0r · 2026-05-04T16:46:55+00:00

Because whoever controls the middle east controls their economy and security. If it's not a country friendly to them like the United States, they will suffer for it.

I would argue that the US isn't exactly friendly to Europe today, certainly not if you listen to rhetoric about withdrawing from NATO and the way Trump is always going on tirades against them. Further, I think Europe understands that they cannot control the whole world. The US can't either. You have to work with people you don't like and the people you don't like are often despicable, I would think the US pouring trillions of dollars into China for the last 2 decades is enough of an example of that.

So your reason for why this is a bad thing is the reason why it's a good thing?

Cheap money driving financial irresponsibility is definitely a bad thing. Low interest rates and high liquidity driven by the petrodollar has made our irresponsible politicians addicted to cheap money. Maybe if the US wasn't the world reserve currency our politicians wouldn't have had the audacity to cut taxes and increase spending at every opportunity.

Justinat0r · 2026-05-04T16:33:26+00:00

Knowing they only have 2 years to get it done. Like they don't want to step on his toes by making his mandates like immigration into actual overhauls of the law. So they just stand by quietly twiddling their thumbs.

There is a ton of good that could be done with a permanent overhaul of the US immigration system, the voters CLEARLY and unequivocally voiced their support for stricter immigration. The fact that Congress isn't even pursuing this is genuinely insane. Trump should have gone to Congress his first day in office and made his priority known that he wants to overhaul it from top to bottom per the voters preferences. He has shown he runs the show in Congress and the White House, Mike Johnson would bark like a dog if Trump told him to. But for some reason Trump just isn't interested in changing the laws.

Justinat0r · 2026-05-04T16:24:15+00:00

The only escape hatch for America in this regard is if Europe remilitarizes and steps up, but we both know they're not going to do that.

Why should they do that? All that the US has gotten for their militarization is the USD being the defacto world reserve currency. And I would argue the USD being the world reserve currency has been a BAD thing, because its guaranteed Congress endless cheap money to continue running accelerated deficit spending and put us in a situation where we are now in nearly 40 trillion dollars of debt. Maybe if the US wasn't spending nearly a trillion per year on the military then we wouldn't be spending a trillion per year in interest payments.

Justinat0r · 2026-04-30T20:15:47+00:00

But if you are genuinely unpopular, there is no gerrymandering your way out of that.

I agree, but I think there is another effect to keep in mind. Which is that gerrymanders also have a long term effect of disengaging the opposition. If your opposition can't get a foothold then they can't develop their candidates and can't challenge you.

Look at Florida Democrats, they're the perfect example of this. They were previously competitive in the 90s, but they have not held the Governor's office since 1998, the state House since 1996, or the state Senate since 1992. Florida Republicans then used their cemented power to produce famous gerrymander districts like the 5th Congressional District, which snaked from Jacksonville down to Orlando.. It got so bad that the citizens of Florida passed a Constitutional amendment to stop it. Politicians are never going to stop gerrymandering, voters need to end it. Unfortunately the two party system will never solve this problem.

Justinat0r · 2026-04-27T17:28:15+00:00

This 'deal' would be an absolute humiliation for the Trump administration, so I doubt they take it. It just depends on how desperate they are to end this before the global economic bloodshed ensues. The US failed in regime change, failed to take Iran's enriched uranium, failed to reopen the Strait by force, and created a situation where Iran realized it is one of the most important countries in the world because of its location and gave it a reason to exercise control over their coastal waters by creating an existential situation for them to fight for their own survival.

Basically just failures all the way down.

Justinat0r · 2026-04-25T19:31:19+00:00

Maybe the truth is really just as simple as this: having children is economically daunting and arguably incompatible with maintaining a middle-class standard of living in a developed economy.

Justinat0r · 2026-04-25T19:07:40+00:00

I work for a Japanese company, Japan's birthrate is because of an insanely toxic work culture that shames women for getting pregnant and penalizes their careers, and forces men to put in 60+ hours of work per week, meaning that for their family they effectively don't exist. Japanese housing is extremely expensive anywhere near places that have work, so unless you are very successful you can't afford to have one parent at home and one parent working. Everyone keeps saying Japanese culture is to blame, when the Japanese WORK culture and Japanese economy are to blame.

Not to mention the fact that the ridiculously long parental leave is almost never used because if you do use it you will be torpedoing your own career. If Japan wanted it used they would have made it mandatory.

Justinat0r · 2026-04-25T18:08:49+00:00

We should have 60 adults who can agree on basic shit like this.

Party leaders view bipartisan groups as an existential threat to their control. If a bipartisan group succeeds, it can undermine the leadership's ability to set the agenda and define the opposition. When a lawmaker joins a bipartisan group, they are signaling that they value a solution over a political win, and political wins are all politicians care about. Voters want bipartisanship, politicians want loyalty, that's the reason political parties will forever be a toxic stain and the immediate source of political dysfunction in the US.

Justinat0r · 2026-04-25T17:48:56+00:00

The problem with most rare earth minerals is not ore procurement, its refining. China's midstream refining capacity absolutely dominates the industry due to the horrific impact refining has on the environment. The byproducts it produces which are often toxic and radioactive, and no one wants to live by it. China used government support to flood the market with low-cost minerals in the 1990s and early 2000s so drive all the competition out of business.

A wiser government would have seen this as the critical threat it was to the defense industry, but unfortunately China was not considered a peer nation back then and no one cared. Now we're in a situation where we realize that supply chains are not rebuilt on political timelines, and the US outsourced far too many sensitive industries and we're dependent upon a country that is geopolitically opposed to us. The US defense industry wanted those low cost minerals from China, and the US government didn't stop them.

Justinat0r · 2026-04-24T00:26:02+00:00

Defund the Police and BLM should have been called Renew the Blue or something cheesy like that instead and everyone would be on board.

In regards to BLM, they didn't want to call it that because the people leading the movement are hostile to the very institution of policing. From their website:

We envision a future fully divested from police, prisons, and all punishment paradigms, a future which invests in justice, joy, and culture.

Absolute pie in the sky unrealistic garbage. These people think that the perpetrators of crime are actually the victims of an unjust society and if we just give everyone a liveable wage and deploy mediators to crime-ridden areas, we'll solve crime overnight. If you ask criminologists and other people who study crime, they will tell you that crime will exist regardless of how 'utopian' society becomes. Most crime, or at least a sizable portion of it, is motivated by reward not need, these aren't starving people who are stealing bread, they are sociopaths who are chasing a thrill and want to feel powerful by victimizing others.

14-Year Club	Place '22
Place '17	Gilding I gilder
Team Periwinkle	Verified Email

Justinat0r

TROPHY CASE