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US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

bbc.com

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Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#601

Post by kernal »

llamaimperative wrote: post #557
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> many in this country are It's exposing the intellectual bankruptcy of the Silicon Valley elite. Between the stupidity and kowtowing it has revealed a startling amount of groupthink and cowardice, even among people I once held as independent thinkers.

I highly recommend everyone read the Curtis Yarvin NYTimes interview [linked below] to see the full extent of the intellectual bankruptcy. This guy is apparently seen as some meaningful thinker by the Silicon Valley elite (Vance and Andreesen have quoted him), but in literally his 3rd sentence just straight up lies. Yarvin's claim: "[In] F.D.R.’s first inaugural address,... he essentially says, Hey, Congress, give me…

Why would any rational person read the rantings of a radical far left socialist on a site and newspaper known for spreading democrat propaganda? That’s like telling people to watch CNN and MSDNC to get their news.

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#602

Post by LunaSea »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #351
ben_w wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I absolutely blame his management of Twitter rather than his political alignment or questions of morality. Reason being, look at Tesla stock price: Musk's gaffes have a short term impact, but overall the price is way up since buying Twitter.

Tesla is not in advertising business, though. They are affected by the whims of public opinion, but not as much, as they're established company selling a quality product worldwide. Musk used to dabble much more in Tesla directly than he's now, I wonder whether the ups and downs of the company correlate with his involvement, especially before he started going off the rails so badly? That would be informative and help…

> Tesla is not in advertising business, though.

Tesla is absolutely in the advertisement business.

Their marketing and image is the only thing holding the company up (for now).

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#603

Post by conception »

drawkward wrote: post #579
insane_dreamer wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not Russia driven. It's driven by Trump and Musk egos. It's Nero watching Rome burn, to bring about his new greatness.

It does seem quite implicating that both Musk and Trump have had multiple reported private calls with Putin. I dont recall other ex presidents meeting with Putin so frequently. Missing dossiers of Russian Intel from Mar-a-Lago...which of course we never got to hear the full story of thanks to Judge Cannon and SCOTUS. This is so on the nose it would be rejected if someone wrote it as a novel or film.

Not to mention all the republicans who had dinner with him on July 4th of all dates. I think Stein has visited a few tomes as well.

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#605

Post by dangjc »

throw0101d wrote: post #397
someothherguyy wrote: post #201

If anything this whole DOGE scenario has illuminated is how confused and overconfident many in this country are. We are stumbling fools without systems and rules (organizations, institutions, laws, regulations, ...) to rely on. I wonder how much behavior like this stems from weak regulation in the US to begin with. It seems like it would reinforce the rise of agents that assume they can ask for forgiveness after acti…

> We are stumbling fools without systems and rules (organizations, institutions, laws, regulations, ...) to rely on. There are no organization or institutions or anything else that matters: only people matter. If people don't bother to have integrity then "institutions" (or anything based around them) are irrelevant. "There are no institutions, only people." — https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1231219728619835395…

Institutions try to make people more than the sum of their parts. The free market pits businesses against each other in a way that harnesses overall economic productivity. We’ve gotten pretty far with our federalized system and balance of branches. Something does seriously need fixing now that polarized parties lead Congress and the courts not to be doing their job checking the executive. And that presidents are chosen more for their charisma than from trust built up by people who actually work with them. A prime minister is chosen by peers, not by a general population that doesn’t know what they’re capable of.

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#606

Post by croes »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #538
enraged_camel wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brexit pales in comparison to the damage that has _already_ been done to the US federal government. The dust just hasn’t settled yet so most of it not visible right now.

Not sure about that. Brexit was irreversible. We can potentially begin to reverse this in 4 years time. But yes it could take decades.

Regain trust is hard and the US allies have lost it.

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#607

Post by nerdix »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #552
someothherguyy wrote: post #201

If anything this whole DOGE scenario has illuminated is how confused and overconfident many in this country are. We are stumbling fools without systems and rules (organizations, institutions, laws, regulations, ...) to rely on. I wonder how much behavior like this stems from weak regulation in the US to begin with. It seems like it would reinforce the rise of agents that assume they can ask for forgiveness after acti…

> stems from weak regulation in the US to begin with I don't know about that, but certainly it has exposed a significant weakness in the US democratic structure: it is based on the supposition that everyone will follow the rules (i.e., accepting the results of an election, following the laws passed by congress, etc.) A president who defies both conventions and laws is hard to stop. The only mechanism is impeachment,…

This is correct. I don't think it is possible to design a democratic system that is impervious to authoritarianism when a large enough percentage of the population is in favor of it. After the last election, it is clear that a slight majority of Americans are either in favor of outright authoritarianism or are at least not turned off by it.

I wonder how much is this is "rational" due to Congress being broken as an institution. Hyper-partisanship and an unchecked filibuster means that Congress is stuck in permanent gridlock. The only way to get anything done is through executive power. But the system wasn't designed to work that way and so the checks on executive power can seem stifling to progress. It seems that many are willing to look the other way if they feel like its the only way to get what they want done. Concern only seems to come into play when its the other side wielding power. And this seems to be true across the aisle. Many on the left were frustrated with Biden's perceived timidity when it came to exercising executive power. And I feel like he was pressured into doing things that he wasn't fully comfortable doing unilaterally (especially regarding student loan forgiveness). Of course, the difference is that Biden spent 40 years in the Senate, understands the role of Congress in government, and had no intention of "ignoring the rules". Trump isn't limited by that type of thinking since he had no experience with, no great knowledge of, or respect for American government.

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#608

Post by llamaimperative »

kernal wrote: post #601
llamaimperative wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly recommend everyone read the Curtis Yarvin NYTimes interview [linked below] to see the full extent of the intellectual bankruptcy. This guy is apparently seen as some meaningful thinker by the Silicon Valley elite (Vance and Andreesen have quoted him), but in literally his 3rd sentence just straight up lies. Yarvin's claim: "[In] F.D.R.’s first inaugural address,... he essentially says, Hey, Congress, give me…

Why would any rational person read the rantings of a radical far left socialist on a site and newspaper known for spreading democrat propaganda? That’s like telling people to watch CNN and MSDNC to get their news.

Are you referring to Yarvin as a far left socialist? He's about as far from a socialist as you can get.

Also: It's a literal interview lol. You get to read his own answers to (very light) skeptical questioning.

You can see him completely elide (or forget, or not know?) that CEOs are accountable to boards and, ultimately, to shareholders. You get to see him dismiss his own child's fears about Trump's wall by first forgetting (or deceiving, again) that Trump did indeed start building a physical, literal wall, then assure his child that his life won't change as he attends a fancy private Mandarin immersion school in San Francisco.

The hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty just cannot help but seep out of this supposedly serious thinker!

Of course the real value of his philosophy is its conclusion that the ultrawealthy should rule the world. So the ahistoricism, dishonesty, and internal incoherence hardly matter to the Silicon Valley elite.

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#609

Post by danjl »

bdangubic wrote: post #604

If I was the one fired I would ask for $10,000,000/week salary to come back and then would donate 98% of that

Or, slightly more realistically, $1M/yr, which is probably 10x what they were getting before, and seems realistic given the events.

Re: US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

#610

Post by dctoedt »

rayiner wrote: post #342
throwme0827349 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laws are being broken to make the omelet. Will the executive constrain itself to breaking only the laws you don't like, and stop when you want it to? Will the legislative branch cede it's authority and responsibilities only temporarily? It might hard to unscramble that omelet if we want the rule of law back later.

The laws were broken in the 1930s when we created the unconstitutional monstrosity that is the modern executive branch. If you want to turn that back then I’m on board. But if not then it must at least be democratically responsive. When republicans win the presidency—or a progressive or populist democrat—the 90% of the administrative state that’s comprised of Acela liberals should be asking how high to jump. Otherwis…

> The laws were broken in the 1930s when we created the unconstitutional monstrosity that is the modern executive branch

That's bibliolatry, directed to a long-obsolete interpretation of the Constitution and the role of the federal government. FDR was analogous to Copernicus and Kepler, rescuing the country from Ptolemaic interpretations of the Constitution that were based on outdated data sets. He pushed successfully for a pragmatic reinterpretation — not inconsistent with the text — that allowed effective federal government action to deal with a global crisis.

No, FDR's New Deal didn't end the Great Depression (that was done by World War II). But the New Deal did help hold off what could easily have turned into authoritarianism of the Huey Long variety.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliolatry

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