California, Oregon and Washington announce western states pact • Hacker News Board

Re: California, Oregon and Washington announce western states pact

#181

Post by k-godwin » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 10:02 PM UTC

vondur wrote: post #120

mrb wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, this Western States Pact is a result of lack of leadership at the White House and federal level. They feel the US government is not doing enough, so they took the matter into their own hands.

So what are the issues with the Federal Government response? I often hear people criticize it, without any concrete examples

https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-federal-govt-fem...

https://www.denverpost.com/2020/04/04/coronavirus-colorado-p...

https://www.denverpost.com/2020/04/08/colorado-coronavirus-v...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/27/trump-ventil...

There is a concrete example of the Federal government seizing PPE, Ventilators ordered by the states. Then only giving them 20% of what they ordered.

Its basically legal theft.

Re: California, Oregon and Washington announce western states pact

#182

Post by kevingadd » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 10:02 PM UTC

bpodgursky wrote: post #52

yingw787 wrote: post #23

Well, that was quick. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22828354 Today it is pandemic resolution. I fear that tomorrow, it might be economic ties, lockstep voting at the federal level, and National Guard drills, deployments, and contingency planning, where the West Coast slowly splits away from the rest of the country, with other states teaming up and following suit. This isn't the end, and it's the only appropria…

It's not going to happen, if nothing else, because CA is going to be grasping for federal budget bailouts later this year. Lockdown is going to crush state budgets.

CA has a pretty big rainy-day fund. It'll be exhausted eventually, but I'm not sure it will be this year. The most recent sources I've found suggest the state has around $20bn in reserves, which probably is enough to buffer us through a bad year unless tax incomes completely drop to 0.

Re: California, Oregon and Washington announce western states pact

#183

Post by tom-thistime » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 10:03 PM UTC

jMyles wrote: post #127

yingw787 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude...if we're talking about secession, we're talking about civil war. In a country with the second most nuclear weapons in the world. With a federal government already looking to adversaries for cooperation. You're talking nuclear missiles or chemical weapons fired against San Francisco, Los Angeles, or Seattle from land-based silos in the Dakotas, or mutinies aboard our SSBNs, or Russian troops landing en masse in…

> Dude...if we're talking about secession, we're talking about civil war. You begin your comment with this thesis, but without explanation. I think secession, in my lifetime, is likely. I think civil war is vanishingly unlikely.

The last time we had secession, we had civil war.

Re: California, Oregon and Washington announce western states pact

#184

Post by mullen » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 10:03 PM UTC

wahern wrote: post #25

If wonder if Barr will sue, arguing that the pact violates the Interstate Compact Clause, especially considering that Trump has recently tweeted that only he gets to decide when to lift restrictions.

The Interstate Compact Clause is not handled by the President, but Congress. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_compact

When Trump threaten to "shutdown" travel between the North East States, people had to tell him that he did not have the authority to do that.

Re: California, Oregon and Washington announce western states pact

#185

Post by tmh79 » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 10:03 PM UTC

iloveyouocean wrote: post #148

Waiting for the announcement of the formation of the 'Confederacy of Southern States' (I don't believe for a moment that Trump and the Republicans would hesitate to seize the opportunity and claim that it's simply 'parity'). In these times of hyper-partisanship, in the midst of a global pandemic, on the tip of a great recession or depression with untold economic hardship; I shudder at the potential for what political…

in the current moment, the "confederacy of southern states" is the federal government. I do not expect to see them different from a federal response due to their loyalty to trump.

Re: California, Oregon and Washington announce western states pact

#186

Post by triceratops » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 10:03 PM UTC

dahdum wrote: post #85

Stay at home is doing enormous economic damage, which indirectly will cause more deaths through decimated budgets of social and health programs. Especially in CA where high progressive taxation amplifies the impact of recessions. So there's a lot of pressure to reopen but no political cover to do so. I think the entire point of this pact is to provide that cover.

> which indirectly will cause more deaths through decimated budgets of social and health programs.

Do you have any actual data for this?

Re: California, Oregon and Washington announce western states pact

#187

Post by kevingadd » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 10:04 PM UTC

shaftway wrote: post #161

wahern wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not necessarily as flexible as to encompass such sub-federal cooperation: "No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_O…

> unless actually invaded I mean, Trump is calling himself a "Wartime President"[1]. And the virus technically is on American soil.... [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/22/us/politics/coronavirus-t...

His insistence on calling it the "chinese virus" was a very intentional move to frame it as the work of a foreign power, even if he never explicitly said it was made in a chinese laboratory. Plenty of conspiracy theorists did though (some of them on national TV).

Re: California, Oregon and Washington announce western states pact

#188

Post by winter_blue » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 10:05 PM UTC

tathougies wrote: post #121

winter_blue wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, that Supreme Court decision severely limits the need to get congressional consent to form interstate compacts. It would be wonderful if all the progressive/blue/Democratic states in the country could get together, and form an interstate compact for their mutual benefit and advancement. However it's possible that a Republican-majority Supreme Court, seeing the benefit that's coming out a Democratic interstate com…

Highly unlikely. Republicans are for state's rights, and the current president and administration seems especially in favor of it. He basically told the states to get their acts together and put the feds into a mainly supportive role, which is as it should be.

Republicans might claim to support state's rights, but they certainly aren't principled consistent supporters of it.

Just take a drug legalization. Many Republicans have been vehemently opposed to it. Take a look at the Supreme Court decision Gonzalez v. Raich, where Steve Scalia no less, wrote that the feds could interfere with your growing some plants inside your own home for your own personal use.

Remember that the "states rights" movement started as a response to federal action to end segregation. In my personal opinion, Republicans are just for whatever will push their agenda forward, without regard to the moral or ethical depravity involved in doing so.

Democrats, in contrast, are a bit more principled (in my opinion), especially when it comes to protecting the human rights, civil rights, voting rights, and other rights of the non-dominant groups in this country.

Re: California, Oregon and Washington announce western states pact

#189

Post by sketchyj » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 10:05 PM UTC

iloveyouocean wrote: post #148

Waiting for the announcement of the formation of the 'Confederacy of Southern States' (I don't believe for a moment that Trump and the Republicans would hesitate to seize the opportunity and claim that it's simply 'parity'). In these times of hyper-partisanship, in the midst of a global pandemic, on the tip of a great recession or depression with untold economic hardship; I shudder at the potential for what political…

What about this inspired you to compare it to the civil war? Seems hyperbolic given states cooperate in similar ways all the time. It makes sense for bordering states to be on the same page here, especially given the erratic behavior exhibited by federal officials who will remain nameless.

Re: California, Oregon and Washington announce western states pact

#190

Post by triceratops » Mon, Apr 13, 2020, 10:05 PM UTC

oliv__ wrote: post #150

nostromo wrote: post #111

> We need to see a decline in the rate of spread of the virus before large-scale reopening, and we will be working in coordination to identify the best metrics to guide this. What's the end game here? If you slow the spread, and then reopen, it'll spread again. Nothing will have changed, you'll just have delayed it a bit.

Just let everyone get it. Problem solved.

Yes, that is the end goal. It's the timeline over which everyone gets it that matters.