Reblogged:Hope for Incompetence, but Row Furiously

[Gus Van Horn blog]

Via X, I got wind of an excellent piece on the Abrego Garcia case by Noah Smith, "The Authoritarian Takeover Attempt Is Here".

Although it does stand on its own in terms of getting readers up to speed on the case, it is no mere rehash.

Smith does well helping readers see the implications of the contempt for due process Trump and his cronies have exhibited, and offers his current forecast of where things are headed:

This should scare you, for a number of reasons.

First, there's the obvious: Trump is going around arresting innocent people, and sending them to foreign torture-dungeons, apparently for the rest of their lives. Bloomberg reports that about 90% of these deportees had no criminal records in the U.S., and most have not been charged with any crime...

Some were arrested simply because they had (non-gang) tattoos. Others didn't even have any tattoos, and were arrested for no apparent reason.

It's not clear why the Trump administration is doing this. Perhaps it's to scare immigrants into leaving the country by making an example of a few. Perhaps it's to simply assert power, or to test the boundaries of what they can get away with. Maybe they've really convinced themselves that all of the people they arrested are gang members. Who knows. But what's clear is that this is brutal and lawless behavior -- the kind of arbitrary arrest and punishment that's common in authoritarian regimes.

The second thing that should scare you is the lawlessness. The Trump administration insists it didn't defy the Supreme Court, arguing that simply removing any barriers to Abrego Garcia's return means that they're complying with the court order to "facilitate" that return. Trump's people have also argued that the courts have no right to interfere in the executive branch's conduct of foreign policy. And on top of that, they've declared that their deal with Bukele is classified.

In practice, the administration is arguing that as soon as they arrest someone and ship them overseas, U.S. courts have no right to order their return -- ever. That means that Trump could grab you, or me, or anyone else off the street and put us on a plane to El Salvador, and then argue that no U.S. court has the right to order us back, because once we're on foreign soil it's the domain of foreign policy. If so, it means that due process and the rule of law in America are effectively dead; the President can simply do anything to anyone, for any reason.

The third reason the Abrego Garcia case should worry you is that the Trump administration probably intends to go much further. Kilmar Abrego Garcia isn't an American citizen, but Trump has stated that he wants to start sending U.S. citizens to El Salvador too. Here are three relevant clips from his meeting with Bukele... [links omitted, bold added]

In one clip, Trump shows his hand regarding the excuse of sending foreign criminals away: "Yeah that includes [Americans], you think they're a special type of people or something."

This is how he speaks of you, whose rights and lives he swore to protect as President a few weeks ago.

Smith correctly notes that this is exactly one of things the Founders enumerated in their reasons for rebelling against England, and goes on to offer his analysis of the political situation.

He closes with his best sense of how it could play out:

Trump 2.0 is still likely to struggle to get big things done, despite having a few more years to prepare. The sad spectacle of the flailing, off-again-on-again tariff announcements seems like pretty clear evidence of incompetence. Trump is more vengeful and far less constrained this time around, but he still may fail to execute the transition to authoritarianism any more effectively than he's executing the transition to autarky. He's not benign, but he's probably not invincible either.

It is upon this thin thread that we must hang our hopes for democracy. [bold added]

The time to begin fighting back in whatever way is available is now.

-- CAV

Link to Original

[EC]

The anti-American, anti-Objectivist, anti-freedom, anti-reason, anti-reality troll Jon struck again in this thread.

[necrovore]

It's strange that this is the first we're hearing about "authoritarian takeover attempts." Apparently the lockdowns, the sorting of businesses into "essential" and "non-essential," the control of social media to stop "misinformation," de-banking, parents being arrested for complaining about curricula at school board meetings, none of that qualifies as authoritarianism. It's only when Trump does something that it's authoritarianism.

Double standards.

Trump apparently has lots of precedents he can cite. I wonder who set those precedents?

[Jon C]

10 minutes ago, EC said:

The anti-American, anti-Objectivist, anti-freedom, anti-reason, anti-reality troll Jon struck again in this thread.

Fortunately his “strikes” have been reduced to utter and pathetic  impotence. 
 

As for necrovore, “how can you attack Hitler when the Weimar Republic was also bad? Hypocrisy much? Checkmate!” 

Edited April 17 by Jon C

[stansfield123]

The US civilian court system hasn't been designed as a tool for fighting vast international cartels.

What you call "authoritarianism", and what any reasonable person would call what it is: the suspension of habeas corpus in select cases ... is the appropriate response to the cartel problem. It's also something that's been done before in the US, and has been found to be within the law. While it's important to hold the President responsible for any abuses of this legal tool at his disposal, that doesn't appear to be the case here. Mr. Garcia is indeed a gang member and a violent criminal.

As for that prison in El Salvador, that's perfectly justified as well. The elected government of El Salvador has every right to imprison whoever it determines to be a gang member, without a judicial process, until the horrific crime crisis in their country is resolved. Then, once the country returns to normalcy, the government system should too. Criminals should once again get their day in court.

Edited April 17 by stansfield123

[Jon C]

The appropriate response to the cartel problem is to legalize all drugs, thereby annihilating their entire income stream. 
 

if you can share *any evidence* that Garcia is a criminal as you claim, that would be helpful since I’ve only seen it blankly asserted by the admin and its defenders. why was he never *charged* with a crime? 
 

As for the second paragraph, I’m sure the govt will get right on re-establishing judicial processes when it seems it appropriate. There’s no way they’d claim that the crisis will continue indefinitely, no sir. 

[Jon C]

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1k4072e3nno
 

It appears that the Garcia situation is still not entirely clear. It may well be the case that he is indeed a gang member and a violent criminal, but as the above link discusses, the allegations aren’t too well-established at the moment. 

[stansfield123]

10 hours ago, Jon C said:

The appropriate response to the cartel problem is to legalize all drugs, thereby annihilating their entire income stream.

This will probably be my last reply to you. The reason for that is that there are three massive things wrong with this statement. And it's three things even a somewhat precocious child would immediately point out:

1. Drug trafficking isn't the cartels' only income stream.

2. In the United States, the President doesn't write laws. Donald Trump "legalizing all drugs" would be actual authoritarianism. It would be a massively illegal act, clearly overstepping the boundaries of the presidency. He would need to seize dictatorial power, to be able to do that.

3. In the US, there is no popular support for legalizing all drugs. No leader, not even a dictator, could achieve what you are suggesting, and remain in power. The only path to laissez-faire capitalism, including legalizing drugs, is through a cultural change that will take, at best, many generations. In the meantime, there's a massive, immediate threat to deal with.

To put it simply, you are living in a fantasy world. There's absolutely no point in interacting with someone who thinks that the way to solve a real world problem is by snapping your finger and magically making everyone adopt your philosophy.

Quote

if you can share *any evidence* that Garcia is a criminal as you claim, that would be helpful

I can't think of any goal I have, that would be furthered by me doing your research for you.

Quote

why was he never *charged* with a crime? 

Because the President has the legal power to suspend the writ of habeas corpus in order to deal with foreign enemies.

Or are you asking why he has that power? Why every nation on Earth grants such emergency powers to the Executive branch? This is a legal question, best answered through research of your own. The people who developed these rules made it a point to explain themselves at great length, in writing. Their work is publicly available.

These same people also developed the civilian, carefully restrained justice system. They allowed for the side stepping of that system precisely because they understood the limitations of their own creation. When I say "understood" I mean that their understanding developed through an incremental, trial and error process which took place over the course of thousands of years. There are many historical examples of states failing catastrophically, when they made the grave error of failing to understand the proper role, and the limits, of their usual way of doing things.

The US is 250 years old, and a superpower, precisely because its founders didn't make that mistake. The judicial bureaucracy was never granted supremacy over the executive. The executive always had the power to act in an expedited, unrestrained manner, during emergencies. That's not "authoritarianism". That executive power exists by design. And there's nothing these old, mid level judges can do about it. They think they have the ultimate authority because, in the cases they normally preside over, they do. But this isn't one of those cases. This is one of the exceptions. One of the cases where their way of doing things isn't the constitutionally and congressionally prescribed solution.

The constitutionally and congressionally prescribed solution, in the face of the savagery displayed by these Latin American cartels, is expedited executive action. The only role the courts have is to police for actual abuses: cases when innocent people are deliberately targeted. Not the case here, this man is indeed a member of MS-13.  Some random judge can throw a tantrum about it all he or she wants. Won't matter. Trump has the authority to do this.

Not just the authority: he is also right to do it. The cartel threat easily matches the Islamist threat. These cartels control entire areas of Latin America, through tactics only matched by North Korean or Iranian savagery. The things Putin is doing pale in comparison to the way these groups govern. Letting them get any further established within the US would be insane. Then have to be rooted out now, before it's too late.

These same judges, who are now condemning Trump for acting, will be begging the executive to act when the lawyer of a gang leader in their courtroom casually walks up to the Bench and tells them "We have your daughter. Here's a picture of her beaten bloody. This case is closed by tomorrow, or we're feeding her to the dogs. Alive.".

Edited April 18 by stansfield123

[Jon C]

In response to 2) I never said trump can or should unilaterally do anything, you’re shadowboxing. 

In response to 1), that depends on the cartel, but overall it’s still a fair point. I should have said “decimate” rather than “annihilate” to be precise. I don’t know how much a “precocious child” knows about international gang financing though. 

In response to 3), where do I say that the proper solution was politically viable? Do you not advocate for freedom because it’s unpopular? Would it be wrong to advocate for the immediate abolition of slavery in the 1790s in the US because it wasn’t politically viable? Ridiculous. And that’s setting aside the entire empirical question of whether sufficient numbers of Americans would prefer drugs to heavily regulated (but legal) rather than banned. Again, not information available to the simple musing of a child. 

I wasn’t able to immediately find polling about legalization, but for decriminalizaton (which would also negatively impact the cartels) support appears fairly high: https://www.newsweek.com/two-thirds-american-voters-support-decriminalizing-all-drugs-poll-1599645

As an aside, the idea that “even a dictator” couldn’t legalize drugs is silly. If they had a financial incentive to create a state-run monopoly, many a tyrant would do exactly that, and the citizens that didn’t riot over people getting disappeared would not start then. 

I asked you for evidence Garcia was a criminal because I attempted to find some and failed. I assumed you had seen something I hadn’t, hence why I asked for a reference. I’m sure you’ve got the evidence right? She just goes to another school? The idea that you have no obligation to support your factual assertions with evidence is pretty remarkable on a supposedly Oist forum. 

Do you think it’s a problem that the president can say “he’s a foreign enemy” and deport him without evidence that he is, in fact, a foreign enemy? And when the word foreign gets replaced by domestic? Trump is openly mulling sending American citizens to El Salvador too. 

As for the rest, I don’t think the Supreme Court are random judges, you still need to show evidence for your claim that Garcia is MS13, and the fearmongering tripe can be readily dismissed with reference to the well-known adage of Franklin about those who would sacrifice freedom for safety. 

[stansfield123]

6 hours ago, Jon C said:

3), where do I say that the proper solution was politically viable?

A non-viable idea isn't even a solution, let alone a "proper" one. It's just a random non-sequitur which serves to derail a conversation.

The topic at hand is the cartel problem. If anyone has a viable idea that mitigates or solves the problem, as an alternative to the solution the government of the United States is pursuing, I'm happy to discuss it. But I'm not interested in non-viable ones. Those are a waste of time.

Please also keep in mind that this is not a new problem, it's been around for decades, and many governments, and many heroic lawmen, politicians and judges attempted to solve it, or at least take a stand against it. The only person I know of who achieved significant positive results, so far, is Mr. Bukele, the democratically elected leader of El Salvador. The one slandered as a "dictator" in the leftist media. Aside from that, attempts to fight back, or appease, or any mix of the two, have only exacerbated the problem and lead to horrific tragedy.

That's why I support the US plan to take at least a partially extra-judicial path. It's the only one that can work, because the transparency and meticulousness of a judicial system works against it, when faced with a powerful and ruthless foe which has no regard for any civilized institution, or for life (their or anyone else's). A foe that buries its problems, and sometimes even just harmless innocents it perceives as problems,  in mass graves scattered across every region it operates in.

Quote

I don’t know how much a “precocious child” knows about international gang financing though. 

A lot. International gangs are one of the most important and interesting topics of our time, and amply covered online, in documentaries, books, movies, etc. They're amply covered everywhere, really, except in the leftists legacy media.

All you have to do is look. Unlike most adults, precocious children look. They don't bury their heads in the sand, pretending that all is well in the world.

It's a shame this horror exists, for children to look at. But, so long as it does exists, it is proper for everyone, including children, to learn about it. Because children are certainly the victims of it often enough. While you're absent mindedly fantasizing about legalizing drugs as your "non-viable, proper solution" to this, children are being raped and trafficked into slavery all across the world. Including in the city you live in, whatever it is.

Edited April 18 by stansfield123

[Doug Morris]

One serious problem with Trump's actions is that he had people rushed into a foreign country and then claimed that this put the matter both out of his control and out of the courts' jurisdiction.  He should have at lest kept them in the USA where his responsibility would still be clear and due process could still be applied.

 

[Jon C]

2 hours ago, stansfield123 said:

A non-viable idea isn't even a solution, let alone a "proper" one. It's just a random non-sequitur which serves to derail a conversation.

The topic at hand is the cartel problem. If anyone has a viable idea that mitigates or solves the problem, as an alternative to the solution the government of the United States is pursuing, I'm happy to discuss it. But I'm not interested in non-viable ones. Those are a waste of time.

Please also keep in mind that this is not a new problem, it's been around for decades, and many governments, and many heroic lawmen, politicians and judges attempted to solve it, or at least take a stand against it. The only person I know of who achieved significant positive results, so far, is Mr. Bukele, the democratically elected leader of El Salvador. The one slandered as a "dictator" in the leftist media. Aside from that, attempts to fight back, or appease, or any mix of the two, have only exacerbated the problem and lead to horrific tragedy.

“Freeing the slaves isn't even a solution, let alone a "proper" one. It's just a random non-sequitur which serves to derail a conversation.” - some anti-abolitionist ancestor of yours, I guess. 
 

so to be clear, if the vast majority of US citizens decided that trumps approach was wrong, to the extent that he was impeached an removed from office, then you would not advocate for that approach on “principled” grounds? You’d just accept it? I don’t believe you. 
 

most of the rest was bald assertion or appeals to emotion, so I won’t bother since the Franklin quote is still enough to ignore it all, but a quick question because you’re defending E.S. What do you think of Duterte in the Philippines and his actions “against drug dealers” as he would put it? 

[Jon C]

52 minutes ago, Doug Morris said:

One serious problem with Trump's actions is that he had people rushed into a foreign country and then claimed that this put the matter both out of his control and out of the courts' jurisdiction.  He should have at lest kept them in the USA where his responsibility would still be clear and due process could still be applied.

 

No see, he might have been a drug dealer and might have been MS13 and those things are really really bad like they’ll kill you and your children bad so it’s actually fine to send him away and ignore the Supreme Court ordering us to get him back, just to be safe, because having rights isn’t what keeps us safe and having coequal branches of govt isn’t what keeps us safe, it’s big daddy Trump and only him. 

[tadmjones]

They’re painting that poor guy worse than an insurrectionist.

[Jon C]

The insurrectionists that beat up cops and then all got pardoned? Garcia should just wear a maga hat and he’d be back within the day. 

[tadmjones]

Are you sure the aggression started with the crowd, the police didn’t fire explosive canister and non lethal munitions just to let them know they better not escalate, or maybe they beat that first cop to death with that fire extinguisher first?

Edited April 18 by tadmjones

[Jon C]

I’m not interested in whatever Q-level dipshit conspiracies you’ve inhaled about the poor innocent insurrectionists. 

[stansfield123]

2 hours ago, Doug Morris said:

One serious problem with Trump's actions is that he had people rushed into a foreign country and then claimed that this put the matter both out of his control and out of the courts' jurisdiction.  He should have at lest kept them in the USA where his responsibility would still be clear and due process could still be applied.

 

You don't understand what it means to suspend the writ of habeas corpus: it means that law enforcement can detain and remove individuals without what you call "due process". Habeas corpus IS the due process. Trump just suspended it. He just told every cartel member in the known universe: You do not have a right to due process in the US. You will not face a judge, you will not get access to your lawyer, and so on. You are a terrorist, and will be treated as such if you enter the US.

And he has the authority to do this. It's been done many times before to Islamic terrorists, enemy agents, even Americans in the Civil War.

There are checks on this authority, but they don't involve any of the judges handing out these stupid "orders". The checks lie with Congress and SCOTUS. Everyone else has been shut out of it. They're welcome to be upset about it, but they don't have the power to stop it. These threats of "holding administration officials in contempt of the Court" for example are nonsense. Government officials and US law enforcement can ignore Court orders involving cartel members, under presidential authority. What they're doing is perfectly legal, with lots of precedent for it.

And it will work like a charm. This changes the whole game. All of a sudden, it's not longer in the cartels' best interest to take over the US at the retail level. They will still sell their merchandise in the US, of course, but they will sell it wholesale to US based gangs and dealers. Sane, regular criminals, who can be policed through regular methods. No mass graves and industrial scale murder, just the occasional drive by and drug deal gone bad, in which everybody shoots each other in a dingy apartment or in the middle of the desert. The good old days, when the cops and the criminals were fairly evenly matched, and everyone knew what the limits are. When you could watch a nice gangster flick and not think "What the hell am I watching? This is worse than The Pianist".

 

Edited April 18 by stansfield123

[Jon C]

It’s funny that you brought up scotus since they told trump to get Garcia back and trump told them to eff off. But I’m sure you have some cute rationalization, that’s what fascist bootlickers do. 

While you don’t care about reality, for those reading who do: when trump suspends rights, the message he sends to every single person in the country is “You do not have a right to due process in the US. You will not facea judge, you will not get access to your lawyer, and so on. You are a terrorist, and will be treated as such.”

 

Edited April 18 by Jon C

[tadmjones]

Any President can already do that , that’s how Trump is doing it , what part don’t you get about that.

Did you see in this particular case the guy was not deported , three times already. Once after being found guilty of a crime in Texas and his immigration status , non citizen, was recognized. He wasn’t deported due to not being returned to ES because of the threat of possible gang violence directed at him, rival gang violence meaning the court recognized him as being in a gang. And then twice more after domestic violence charges were filed against him. So Trump is only doing what could have, should have , happened thrice prior to it happening now, according to US immigration statutes.

It sure looks like the Executive branch is operating within their constitutional prerogatives and limitations. 

[necrovore]

Trump is not asking regular Americans to sacrifice their due process rights. He's aiming for certain specific people.

However, the Left is telling regular Americans that they have to sacrifice their right to be safe from MS-13 gang members on the altar of "due process." Or that Americans have no such right to be safe.

(I sort of suspect that the amount of "process" that is "due" is whatever amount is necessary to ensure that the Left wins.)

This Garcia guy is no stranger to the legal system, so he is not exactly an innocent person in all this. Just like George Floyd wasn't exactly innocent and contributed a great deal to his own death.

We aren't sacrificing these people to ourselves, because we aren't gaining anything. We only seek to keep what we already have.

"A holdup man seeks to gain wealth by killing me. I gain nothing from killing a holdup man."

[Doug Morris]

3 hours ago, stansfield123 said:

You don't understand what it means to suspend the writ of habeas corpus:

Suspending habeas corpus is one thing.  Rushing someone off to a foreign country and then saying that is irreversible is something else.

And Trump has talked about doing this to citizens too.

[tadmjones]

Yes but that doesn’t sound constitutional, so one for checks and balances.

[Doug Morris]

1 hour ago, necrovore said:

He's aiming for certain specific people.

His aim is like aiming a shotgun with an unsteady hand.

1 hour ago, necrovore said:

the Left is telling regular Americans that they have to sacrifice their right to be safe from MS-13 gang members

Anyone who commits a crime or is caught preparing one can be arrested and held without violating due process.

Due process also allows putting people under surveillance if there are sufficient grounds.

3 hours ago, stansfield123 said:

mass graves and industrial scale murder

Where is the evidence that we are in any danger of that?

 

[Jon C]

59 minutes ago, Doug Morris said:

Where is the evidence that we are in any danger of that?

 

He’s going to tell you that they do that in Latin America so if we let them get too powerful within the US then they’ll do it here too.