美國選舉人團(electoral college)制度規定在美國聯邦憲法本文Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 :
"Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of 'ELECTORS' (大寫字為我特意強調), equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector."
此外,美國憲法第十四號修正案還特別規定什麼人不得擔任選舉人:
"Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or 'ELECTOR' (大寫字為我特意強調) of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability."
選舉人會在12月第二個週三後的週一,在各州首府集會並完成憲法上的投票義務。
歷史上出現過許多次選舉人跑票現象,稱之為faithless electors,美國33州與哥倫比亞特區有立法針對選舉人跑票處罰,但也有州並無相關罰則。最近一次就是上屆2016年選舉,有十個選舉人跑票,例如夏威夷的選舉人應該把票投給Clinton卻投給Sanders;德州的選舉人應該把票投給Trump卻投給John Kasich。
想知道美國選舉制度,自己看法律原文文字最保險;如果英文太糟看不懂,就請自己多保重。
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- 關於the united states constitution article 在 元毓 Facebook 的最佳解答
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the united states constitution article 在 黃之鋒 Joshua Wong Facebook 的精選貼文
泰晤士報人物專訪【Joshua Wong interview: Xi won’t win this battle, says Hong Kong activist】
Beijing believes punitive prison sentences will put an end to pro-democracy protests. It couldn’t be more wrong, the 23-year-old says.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/joshua-wong-interview-xi-wont-win-this-battle-says-hong-kong-activist-p52wlmd0t
For Joshua Wong, activism began early and in his Hong Kong school canteen. The 13-year-old was so appalled by the bland, oily meals served for lunch at the United Christian College that he organised a petition to lobby for better fare. His precocious behaviour earned him and his parents a summons to the headmaster’s office. His mother played peacemaker, but the episode delivered a valuable message to the teenage rebel.
“It was an important lesson in political activism,” Wong concluded. “You can try as hard as you want, but until you force them to pay attention, those in power won’t listen to you.”
It was also the first stage in a remarkable journey that has transformed the bespectacled, geeky child into the globally recognised face of Hong Kong’s struggle for democracy. Wong is the most prominent international advocate for the protests that have convulsed the former British colony since last summer.
At 23, few people would have the material for a memoir. But that is certainly not a problem for Wong, whose book, #UnfreeSpeech, will be published in Britain this week.
We meet in a cafe in the Admiralty district, amid the skyscrapers of Hong Kong’s waterfront, close to the site of the most famous scenes in his decade of protest. Wong explains that he remains optimistic about his home city’s prospects in its showdown with the might of communist China under President Xi Jinping.
“It’s not enough just to be dissidents or youth activists. We really need to enter politics and make some change inside the institution,” says Wong, hinting at his own ambitions to pursue elected office.
He has been jailed twice for his activism. He could face a third stint as a result of a case now going through the courts, a possibility he treats with equanimity. “Others have been given much longer sentences,” he says. Indeed, 7,000 people have been arrested since the protests broke out some seven months ago; 1,000 of them have been charged, with many facing a sentence of as much as 10 years.
There is a widespread belief that Beijing hopes such sentences will dampen support for future protests. Wong brushes off that argument. “It’s gone too far. Who would imagine that Generation Z and the millennials would be confronting rubber bullets and teargas, and be fully engaged in politics, instead of Instagram or Snapchat? The Hong Kong government may claim the worst is over, but Hong Kong will never be peaceful as long as police violence persists.”
In Unfree Speech, Wong argues that China is not only Hong Kong’s problem (the book’s subtitle is: The Threat to Global Democracy and Why We Must Act, Now). “It is an urgent message that people need to defend their rights, against China and other authoritarians, wherever they live,” he says.
At the heart of the book are Wong’s prison writings from a summer spent behind bars in 2017. Each evening in his cell, “I sat on my hard bed and put pen to paper under dim light” to tell his story.
Wong was born in October 1996, nine months before Britain ceded control of Hong Kong to Beijing. That makes him a fire rat, the same sign of the Chinese zodiac that was celebrated on the first day of the lunar new year yesterday. Fire rats are held to be adventurous, rebellious and garrulous. Wong is a Christian and does not believe in astrology, but those personality traits seem close to the mark.
His parents are Christians — his father quit his job in IT to become a pastor, while his mother works at a community centre that provides counselling — and named their son after the prophet who led the Israelites to the promised land.
Like many young people in Hong Kong, whose housing market has been ranked as the world’s most unaffordable, he still lives at home, in South Horizons, a commuter community on the south side of the main island.
Wong was a dyslexic but talkative child, telling jokes in church groups and bombarding his elders with questions about their faith. “By speaking confidently, I was able to make up for my weaknesses,” he writes. “The microphone loved me and I loved it even more.”
In 2011, he and a group of friends, some of whom are his fellow activists today, launched Scholarism, a student activist group, to oppose the introduction of “moral and national education” to their school curriculum — code for communist brainwashing, critics believed. “I lived the life of Peter Parker,” he says. “Like Spider-Man’s alter-ego, I went to class during the day and rushed out to fight evil after school.”
The next year, the authorities issued a teaching manual that hailed the Chinese Communist Party as an “advanced and selfless regime”. For Wong, “it confirmed all our suspicions and fears about communist propaganda”.
In August 2012, members of Scholarism launched an occupation protest outside the Hong Kong government’s headquarters. Wong told a crowd of 120,000 students and parents: “Tonight we have one message and one message only: withdraw the brainwashing curriculum. We’ve had enough of this government. Hong Kongers will prevail.”
Remarkably, the kids won. Leung Chun-ying, the territory’s chief executive at the time, backed down. Buoyed by their success, the youngsters of Scholarism joined forces with other civil rights groups to protest about the lack of progress towards electing the next chief executive by universal suffrage — laid out as a goal in the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s constitution. Their protests culminated in the “umbrella movement” occupation of central Hong Kong for 79 days in 2014.
Two years later, Wong and other leaders set up a political group, Demosisto. He has always been at pains to emphasise he is not calling for independence — a complete red line for Beijing. Demosisto has even dropped the words “self-determination” from its stated goals — perhaps to ease prospects for its candidates in elections to Legco, the territory’s legislative council, in September.
Wong won’t say whether he will stand himself, but he is emphatically political, making a plea for change from within — not simply for anger on the streets — and for stepping up international pressure: “I am one of the facilitators to let the voices of Hong Kong people be heard in the international community, especially since 2016.”
There are tensions between moderates and radicals. Some of the hardliners on the streets last year considered Wong already to be part of the Establishment, a backer of the failed protests of the past.
So why bother? What’s the point of a city of seven million taking on one of the world’s nastiest authoritarian states, with a population of about 1.4 billion? And in any case, won’t it all be over in 2047, the end of the “one country, two systems” deal agreed between China and Britain, which was supposed to guarantee a high degree of autonomy for another 50 years? Does he fear tanks and a repetition of the Tiananmen Square killings?
Wong acknowledges there are gloomy scenarios but remains a robust optimist. “Freedom and democracy can prevail in the same way that they did in eastern Europe, even though before the Berlin Wall fell, few people believed it would happen.”
He is tired of the predictions of think-tank pundits, journalists and the like. Three decades ago, with the implosion of communism in the Soviet bloc, many were confidently saying that the demise of the people’s republic was only a matter of time. Jump forward 20 years, amid the enthusiasm after the Beijing Olympics, and they were predicting market reforms and a growing middle class would presage liberalisation.
Neither scenario has unfolded, Wong notes. “They are pretending to hold the crystal ball to predict the future, but look at their record and it is clear no one knows what will happen by 2047. Will the Communist Party even still exist?”
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/111/1119445/unfree-speech
the united states constitution article 在 元毓 Facebook 的最佳解答
貿易戰檢驗-\-\ G20中美大和解?
我應該是少數在9月份就預測「中美貿易戰不會擴大,反而會轉為小打小鬧持久戰局面」。
-\-\-\-\「經濟水晶球(2018/09/19)」
https://tinyurl.com/y9nokpj3
同時在10月初美國副總統彭斯發表偏激演說之後,我也是當時少數敢預測:「中美不會有冷戰,彭斯只是出來扮黑臉的角色,貿易戰依然會是小打小鬧局面。」而被某些網友唾棄認為我低估風險哩。
-\-\-\-\「關於美國彭斯副總統的演講」
https://tinyurl.com/yd6qab2n
果然G20就上演中美大和解戲碼!
"The U.S. and China said they would launch negotiations to ease trade tensions, with the U.S. postponing plans to increase tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods."
我知道整個中美貿易戰我的價格理論打臉了胡阿萍與某些總體經濟學專家多次,但我不介意再多給一巴掌:
10月份中美貿易逆差又持續擴大到$77.2 billion USD!我又多對了一個月呢。
怎麼解讀現在中美大和解呢?我的看法:「暫時休兵,轉身再繼續小打小鬧~」別忘了,川普還想連任呢。
還有一個侷限條件我過去一直沒談,趁這個機會也說一下。再來很忙,寫文章時間恐怕不多了。
不知道讀者們有沒有感覺到一件奇怪的事情:美國憲法明明將「課稅(taxing)」權力專屬劃給國會:
"The Constitution, Article I, Section8 -\-\
The Congress shall have the Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States."
怎麼此次貿易戰關稅怎麼加,好像川普都無需國會同意,自己想怎麼搞就怎麼搞?
其實美國從立國之初,就一直有總統希望把課稅(尤其是關稅)權力從國會移到總統身上,而雙方利益糾葛、賽局鬥爭百多年,後來陸續因為各種事件而誕生許多法案,如:
Trading With the Enemy Act of 1917, 賦與總統戰時課關稅的權力。
The Trade Act of 1974,賦與總統可用「國家安全」為理由課徵15%關稅150天;屆期如欲繼續課徵,須得國會同意。
International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, 國家有緊急危難時可開征關稅。
而川普此次貿易戰卻是引用Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, 此法案賦與商務部長(其實等於是總統)可以針對進口商品有礙「國家安全」者開徵關稅。
然而此次貿易戰打下來,不但國家安全理由站不住腳(如先前WSJ曾經報導美國餐廳進口食材與廚具竟然被開徵關稅,食材廚具與國家安全何干?)整個美國經濟也越打越不妙,美國農民破產人數增加,房地產漲幅停滯。甚至出現產業公會尋租現象,相信美國人民自己也不樂見這種大喇喇的「買通關」行為。
換言之,當風向大轉,尤其在川普不得近半數美國人人心的條件下,美國國會收回部分課稅權,也只是合理合憲的安排。這意味著,貿易戰課稅不是美國總統隨心所欲可以為之。弄爛國家經濟,不但政治上下台,連未來總統課稅權都可以被收回。
所以,局面還是如我9/19「經濟水晶球」一文預測:
====================================
quote:"
1. 美國對中國課稅從原本川普夸夸其談的25%懲罰性關稅降至10%,這個舉措已經彰顯貿易戰不僅僅對人民的經濟成本、交易費用提高,對美國政客的政治成本也逐漸浮現。
因此明年一月會不會真的提高到25%,還端視11月大選結果。若貿易戰在政治上獲利不如預期,則小打小鬧會是接下來10年局面;若政治上獲利豐厚,會轉為雷大雨小。
2. 中國方面將會因小鬧的貿易戰而被迫生產產品往高素質方向走,也就是說中國生產高端化、高品質化會是接下來必然出現的結果,某方面來說「中國製造2025」會以此形式達標。
10~20年內,「中國製造」將成為高品質代名詞。
若美國還佐以緊縮的移民政策,將更有利於中國製造加速升級。"
====================================
結論:
中美貿易戰不會這麼快結束,因為雙方都有打貿易戰的需求。但也不可能擴大,因為浮現的經濟與政治成本,以及內部政治鬥爭,都侷限了貿易戰的規模。
只要時間夠久,規模不大,中國製造升級肯定會完成,但低租值企業也肯定難以在中國生存了。
補充:
網友梁正宜: 想問這次川普是政治上獲利豐富嗎?他說這次Tremendous success tonight. Thank you to all!,不太了解兩院重要程度
我的回答:
他這次其實算輸,因為眾議院被民主黨拿走了。
兩院權責簡單看是:
眾議院 -\-\ 提出財政議案、提出罷免官員(包括總統)、以及在選舉人票打和時,投票選出總統
參議院 -\-\ 修改財政議案、審判罷免官員(包括總統)、批准總統簽訂國際條約、否決美國總統人事之權、聯邦法院大法官、聯邦上訴法院法官的同意權、彈劾總統的終審權、拖延法案。
一般法案都需要兩院通過,總統簽署才生效。
因此兩隻腳有一隻可能不聽指揮下,川普必然不能如原來那樣隨心所欲(話說本來也沒有多呼風喚雨就是了)。
我自己看法,deregulation and tax-cutting二項已經耗掉大半川普初上任時的新官三把火;本來想打閃電戰結果變壕溝戰的中美貿易紛爭,以及通俄門、退出伊朗協議等等更是磨掉剩下一點火苗。川普對國會掌控力應該是遠不如初上任時了。
https://www.wsj.com/…/meeting-between-trump-and-xi-went-ver…
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