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Is Trump seeking to enter Gödel’s loophole? – politicalbetting.com
Is Trump seeking to enter Gödel’s loophole? – politicalbetting.com
A philosopher, an economist and a physicist walked into a courtroom. They could have left behind an amusing punchline; instead, the legacy of their visit was an uncertainty – which seems appropriate in the circumstances.
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Did you mean to reply to someone else's comment? I didn't mention Twitter once.
I also think he's making a false elision. Musk is in business - particularly in startups. The trick in business (and Alanbrooke should know this given what he's said about his CV) is to spend money in the right places to grow the business. He's done that. I've done that. So have you, of course.
But government requires a very different mindset and skill set. It requires knowing where to spend money to keep systems functioning in a stable way. And the very clear evidence of Twitter is that Musk doesn't know how to do that.
This often also applies to established businesses, of course, which is why bankers tend to make lousy entrepreneurs.
(There are lots of ways governments spend money badly. That's a different problem. But again, Musk's actions at Twitter suggest he's not too good at identifying necessary spending as against unnecessary spending.)
Trump could also of course try to call a constitutional convention under Article V.
More likely though the Supreme Court just wave through whatever he says given how dodgy they've proved.
Such a mechanism no longer works here, abolished in 1981 by Mrs Thatcher, a year or so after Kemi was born.
In this case the constitution would be kept in place an honored for irrelevant stuff and real power embedded in other new institutions that are beyond the reach of the constitution. Enough time passes and people become meh about the constitution... boiling frog theory of revolution.
If the umpires are your lackeys, the rules are whatever you say they are.
A bit like Fermat's Last Theorem: the odds are that Fermat had not actually 'proved' his conjecture, and had been mistaken. Which is why he never published anything about it over the next few decades.
The Scottish organiser for Reform UK has been dismissed after his links to loyalist paramilitaries came to light.
Craig Campbell was a senior figure in Nigel Farage’s party north of the border until an investigation revealed that his father and his uncle had been among nine people who were jailed for pub bombings in Glasgow in the 1970s.
William Campbell has been named in news reports as the commander in Glasgow of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), a paramilitary organisation that was active during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
It was also revealed that Craig Campbell’s cousin, Jason, was jailed for life for the sectarian murder of a 16-year-old Celtic supporter in Glasgow in 1995.
A spokesman for Reform UK Scotland said: “Craig Campbell is no longer a Reform UK Scotland organiser or member. Reform UK Scotland will not tolerate discrimination of anyone in any form.”
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/reform-organiser-in-scotland-sacked-over-links-to-paramilitaries-d57lfqp73
Hope Wiles doesn't read it.
It is understood that Salmond, who led the SNP until 2014 and died aged 69 in October, spoke to Operation Branchform officers more than a year ago, after a request. Salmond, who was by then leader of the Alba Party, did not give a formal statement to police but is understood to have answered questions and shared insights.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/salmond-spoke-to-police-investigating-snp-embezzlement-of-funds-wsrmgft99
He's only planning to leave the WH to meet his maker.
If that murky world is not something you know about then you are hardly likely to know. Infamous or not.
Hence the need to do due diligence. This is where Reform are amateurs at the moment and need to sharpen up.
One of the best headers I've read on this board
Even if we take Kant and Descartes as extreme examples, we still have the Churchlands and their eliminative materialism.
Due to my elementary education I normally shy away from long headers but thanks to the work of Janet and John I got through to the end and it was worth it for every sentence read.
Other platforms will be coming, but will take time.
On-topic: interesting header, Mr. Herdson. Which is fitting, given we live in 'interesting' times.
@DPJHodges
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4m
I agree Musk should not be buying his way into the UK political system. But if you change the law now, you're basically saying "it was OK when Labour and the Tories wanted to do it, but it's not OK now Reform want to do it". Cementing their "establishment stitch-up" narrative
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Which is worse - allowing $100m (for starters) into our system or adding to the Farage narrative that this is all an elite stitch up and they should all be swept away?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel,_Escher,_Bach
Why two copies of the book? Mrs J loves it, and when we first went out together, had lost her copy. So she bought me one. Then, a while later, she bought herself a copy.
I find it turgid and almost unreadable.
Last month, they were only £5.1B higher than forecast.
In other news, UK borrowing rates hit another year high immediately this morning, crashing through the 4.6% barrier for 10 year gilts. A few weeks before the budget they were in the 3.7% range.
Forget the Truss budget, this budget is real and has long lasting effects and is significantly worse.
I'm sure the likes of Abonjizza and has band of merry deniers will pretend there is nothing to see. As usual, they will be wrong.
Looking more likely that fiscal rules will be broken and Starmer and Reeves will be back for more.
What a disastrous first six months this has been.
No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.
There is reference to the United States as a whole (& Congress) which does not appear in the 14th amendment.
As with our own holier than thou "right to family life" of course courts do not make laws and constitutions, but they might just interpret them.
That's a quarter of a Black Hole in a month that the previous Government spent 14 years constructing. Apparently.
Say what you like about this Chancellor, she's certainly turbo-charged things...
History is FULL on scenarios where an extreme has gained power by the ballot box. They have then sought to destroy the democracy that elected them immediately it got in to power.
Usually they gained power because sane sensible people believed and convinced themselves and others that "they can't do that" it'll be alright.
(God forbid there is a UK political leader who spent his life milking a huge salary and expenses from an institution he was hell bent of destroying)
No one can argue that the USA , for all the corrupt and crazy system of governance , is the Globes biggest and greatest democracy.
If a nutcase, or a puppet of a nutcase can gain power by the ballot box, then the very core and foundations of that democracy can very quickly be dismantled and destroyed.
The lazy response is to say "they can't do that"......
THEY CAN DO THAT
THEY WILL DO THAT
They WILL do it before your very eyes unless they are stopped NOW!
To step aside is to take sides!
t seems to me likely that Trump, who has given himself no small set of tasks, will use the simplest routes - and those routes don't involve changing the constitution.
The simplest routes, all of which of course are open to legal challenge, are executive order and legislative change as to the rights inherent in being a USA citizen in particular cases - such as if the facts are that your birth in the US followed unlawful residence in the US by a parent(s).
Of course Trump may decide he has other priorities, and also that there may be enough people to deport for a start without going down the citizenship track.
The USA has also a long track record of plainly misunderstanding its own consitution; the 'right to bear arms' stuff being an egregious example.
I trust Red Bull have sharpened their obsidian knife for the sacrificial altar.
https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/breaking-lawson-confirmed-as-verstappens-red-bull-team-mate-for-2025.4umEL3YzqWIv9JEV7qI2Gn
Sadly for you, it is newsworthy and worth discussion. Trust you will be doing this for everyone who is not on entirely on topic, or do you just try and shut down specific conversations?
As and when particular court interpretations conflict with parliament's preferences those law makers have absolute power to change and amend the law. Since Brexit that power has no known fetter.
Don't blame the courts for doing their job.
In an America so beloved of guns, you have to idly muse how long before it is a crackshot rather than a crackpot that has a go at him.
Despite winning the election, it is hard to see Trump having the mental faculties to contest another election. So rather than three-term Trump, I think you are instead looking at perpetuity Trump, where he stays on as a figurehead, utterly doolally but as cover, probably for those behind Project 2025 in the Heritage Foundation. That means finding a mechanism to abolish elections - which is probably a limiting factor in what Gödel purported to have discovered.
That’s the CV of a lot of their top chaps (and chapesses)
On the upside that would leave us with the UUP, DUP, SDLP and Alliance.
On the downside we would get The Troubles back.
Personally, I would go down that route. I am against the Good Friday Agreement, and the hypocrisy of The Men Of Violence.
Carville said: I used to think if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or a .400 baseball hitter. But now I want to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.
There was a view that raising taxes would lead to the markets thinking that the government was serious about paying back its debts. The problem is that if raising taxes destroys the tax base you get the opposite effect. That seems to be where we are heading. The impact of the higher rates will be more and more high profile defaults as highly leveraged businesses fail to refinance. My guess is Thames Water will be the first to go.
It is a strange day when my little 70 staff tech company can raise debt money cheaper than the UK government but then I am not dependent on UK money to pay back my debts.
All the 14th did, in respect of citizenship, was to confer the right to slaves, and their descendants, who had previously been excluded.
The 'unenumerated rights' in the original Consitution included those pertaining under English Common Law at the time.
Those included birthright citizenship 'jus soli'.
What otherwise would have been the point of the Dred Scott decision removing citizenship rights from the children of slaves (non citizens) who were born in the US ?
The courage of that woman is something else. The men who did this to her are scum.
This is where I think academics and lawyers have a tendency to go wrong: they treat laws - including the supreme law of the constitution - as monuments in rock to be interpreted impartially and so give weight to their own opinions. What really matters is what the opinions of those using and interpreting the laws will be, and those people may not be acting impartially or without intent. Indeed, in the specific example here, we can reasonably assume that they wouldn't be.
It is not a question of what the constitution allows; it is a matter of can be done with the constitution. The difference is subtle but important and revolves around who has the impetus for action.
And, of course, Fermat was right, even if his proof probably wasn't, which for purposes of comparison here is what matters. Ultimately, the question of what Gödel’s Loophole is specifically is secondary to whether it exists at all. That's clearly true as a matter of logic but also as a matter of practical politics.
If you ban political party spending, then you get PACs and dark money and he rest of the comedy
Their defence that they believed she had consented was disgusting, but there was a slim chance they might have got away with it.
He is also guilty of taking indecent images of his daughter and two daughters in law and drugging and raping another man's 63 year old wife.
No words available to express my utter disgust at what these men did.
The bar on more than two (or strictly, more than two-and-a-half) terms only applies on election to the office, not on service in it.
Granted, that point has never been tested in court but as argued above, having the right people judge your case doesn't half help. But I think it's true on its own merits anyway, simply based on the 12th and 22nd Amendments as written.
There is only one other party to exclude.
The major problem with the US constitution as it is in many systems is Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
There is a naive assumption amongst many that a powerful judiciary is a defence against totalitarianism, but corrupted a powerful judiciary acting at the authoritarians whims is it's most powerful tool.
See eg Iran where those critical of the regime can be barred from even running for election.
If the Supreme Court is corrupted, and there's a reasonable argument it already at least partially is and has been for a long time with the partisan nature, then "justice" or "the constitution" is no longer in charge.
If SCOTUS can rule however it pleases because, reasons, then not only could a wannabe dictator get what they want through the Court but their critics are potentially handicapped from fighting them by the Courts too.
BTW many legal cases are potentially multi jurisdictional. The English courts are the preferred forum for huge numbers of them. It's worth asking why.
1. The US President can issue executive orders
2. These have legal standing unless or until they are challenged
3. The Supreme Court can expedite cases so that it hears them quickly
4. It only takes five Supreme Court justices to change the meaning of the US constitution
5. Trump has a majority on the Supreme Court
I am not sure anything else matters here.
I think that if the US does fall into a dictatorship it will not be because somebody exploits a logical loophole, but because too many people went along with them or didn't stand in the way, and it will be more gradual than sudden.
Dictators don't give a damn about legal precedent, nor do their lackeys. This is not an academic/theoretical exercise but an application of practical power, in which the law is not a neutral collection of dusty papers but a tool to be wielded by aggressive actors.
Something that is believed to exist, and has been ruled on as existing, despite not being written down anywhere can be over-ridden in a moment by a judge's opinion, or a politician's action subsequently challenged and upheld.
You prove that point yourself citing Dred Scott.
It becomes a lot harder to do that if the right is embedded in the constitution - though obviously not impossible given, for example, the coexistence of the 15th Amendment and the effect of Southern apartheid.
In the end came the emperors, with the fig leaf of pretending to preserve the constitution
I told my American relatives, years ago, that if you make the Supreme Court the ultimate legislative chamber, then it was only time until it was bought and sold, like the rest. Bring lawyers (mostly) they didn't listen.
An interesting point was made by a French friend, commenting on the case of the Imam who got sent back to Morocco, against an ECHR….
Her argument was that by acting illegally, the French state was preserving the wider system of law. That if such actions were blocked by unamendable laws of rights, that the people would turn against the law as a whole. A interesting philosophical idea - break the law to save the law.
That would fit with some his life's works.
It’s all about interpretation. The RCLs are going with 200 years of legal precedents built into a tower. But, as you say, what is that tower? It has no power in law, other than judges *liking* precedent.
Of course there's always room for differences of interpretation of constitutions and amendments which does make in effect any Supreme Court the most powerful force in the land (In normal times) unless
A Supreme Court can be made or unmade by either the legislature - the power exists (Though I doubt it will ever be used) in the UK to unmake SCOTUK (& indeed the Lords).
One other protection the US has is their 4 year terms to the dot embedded in the constitution. Our septennial, amended to triennial then every 5 years maximum (Since 1911 & again 2019 ?) could be changed to a thousand years if Starmer fancied it.
Imagine that, a thousand years of Starmer and his heirs and successors !
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp3zqen209go
"A Labour minister has been named in an investigation into claims her family embezzled up to £3.9bn (Tk 590 billion) from infrastructure projects in Bangladesh."
It is the hypocrisy of the very large number of people prepared to support them.
Also EC has been utterly toothless at regulating breaches.
Potential scenario, a Musk-funded Reform Party flagrantly breaches spending rules, gets majority of MPs and forms the Govt. Several weeks/months later EC politely sends a reminder that complete (and correct) accounts are submitted, then a bit later rules that Reform has breached spending limits.
Does anyone think that Reform would put their hands up, say terribly sorry and call another GE or that the EC could disqualify their newly elected MPs?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/c4g39jge8gmo
Anyway great article.
In practice, that might not matter - the Lords does tend to back down when challenged - but on the other hand, it might.
FWIW, the king also has a veto, in extremis - though is highly unlikely to use it. If there were such a constitutional crisis, where an unpopular government sought to extend its life by postponing the election, the better route for the monarch would be to simply dissolve parliament anyway on the basis that the legislation should be put to the people for endorsement first.
The Gödel stuff is something of an irrelevance, as no constitution is a watertight logical system anyway.
But legal principles do matter. The GOP, in thrall as it is to Trump, isn't entirely monolithic - and his majorities in both House and Senate are pretty slim.
Will every GOP member of Congress go along with him ? Possible, but unlikely .
And the likelihood is that Trump only has two years with control of both houses of Congress.
The checks and balances in the Constitution very much rely on a distribution of power - and as you note, the most worrying point is the combination of executive power and an enabling supermajority on the Supreme Court.
But would the country accept his ruling as a dictator ?