Supreme Court takes sledgehammer to federal regulatory structure • Hacker News Board

Re: Supreme Court takes sledgehammer to federal regulatory structure

#31

Post by ncallaway » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 6:12 PM UTC

Noumenon72 wrote: post #27

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #2

Five Constitutional amendments we need: 1. Strike pardon power; 2. First sentence of Article II changed to: “The President shall execute the laws of the United States of America”; 3. Abolish the electoral college; 4. Congress may regulate money in politics; and 5. Congress may create independent agencies with charters of up to 25 years. (President still names and Senate still confirms appointments. But they can be in…

It would be better to make the Constitution unamendable than to let people like you get their hands on it. People are just not smart enough to foresee the consequences of their choices, so it's better to stick with choices that at least worked once.

The more sclerotic the Constitution becomes, the more likely it is to have the entire system overturned and replaced wholesale.

If you try to make the Constitution unamendable, you guarantee that the Republic that is founded on the Constitution will eventually fail.

I can't think of a worse idea for the long-term health of the Republic.

Re: Supreme Court takes sledgehammer to federal regulatory structure

#32

Post by superxpro12 » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 6:13 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #25

The mental gymnastics that jurists attempt to go through to justify their rulings as "principled" in some sense is just baffling to me. The right railed against "judicial activism" for years, but it is plainly obvious that is what is happening here (overturning precedent after precedent solely based on their current feelings), especially by giving credence to the "unitary executive" theory that obviously makes separa…

Just stop trying to find logic in the hypocrisy. "Every accusation is a confession" by them rings true louder and louder with each passing day.

Precedent and reason is no longer a metric for the conservative justices. Only the party's wishes. Which means they are a political body now.

Re: Supreme Court takes sledgehammer to federal regulatory structure

#33

Post by moduspol » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 6:13 PM UTC

Detrytus wrote: post #8

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #2

Five Constitutional amendments we need: 1. Strike pardon power; 2. First sentence of Article II changed to: “The President shall execute the laws of the United States of America”; 3. Abolish the electoral college; 4. Congress may regulate money in politics; and 5. Congress may create independent agencies with charters of up to 25 years. (President still names and Senate still confirms appointments. But they can be in…

> 4. Congress may regulate money in politics; This one is completely useless. Congress may regulate, but why would they? They directly benefit from more money in politics. If anything this should be more direct, and read: "Political donations may only come from individual US citizens, and cannot exceed the amount of monthly minimum wage per person, per year". Or maybe just add a field in the tax return form where any…

Campaigns already have strong limits. They get around it by giving money to PACs, which can spend money opposing other candidates or talking about issues in particular.

Should there be limits on spending on messaging opposing a certain candidate? Or supporting / opposing a specific policy? It's going to be pretty tough to draw a line there that doesn't sound a lot like solidifying and entrenching the powers that already exist. And it usually includes an ugly way of determining what speech is "political" and what is not.

Re: Supreme Court takes sledgehammer to federal regulatory structure

#34

Post by nickff » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 6:13 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #16

apparent wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No chance 3 ever passes, and a wealth tax would require an amendment unless it is "apportioned among the states" or some such thing (and it can't be because wealthy people are concentrated in a handful of states). Editing to add: It would also be a bad idea to abolish the EC because then candidates would only ever campaign in cities. They would completely ignore rural areas, which are financially and culturally diffe…

> No chance 3 ever passes It’s honestly the hardest one on there. > a wealth tax would require an amendment Genuine question, why? > It would also be a bad idea to abolish the EC because then candidates would only ever campaign in cities This doesn’t mathematically work. Most Americans live in suburbia. (We define “urban” very, very broadly for statistical purposes.) And this effect is more than compensated for by th…

>”Genuine question, why?”

A wealth tax would clearly be a ‘direct tax’, which must be apportioned among the states according to the constitution.

Re: Supreme Court takes sledgehammer to federal regulatory structure

#35

Post by ncallaway » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 6:14 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #12

bufbupa wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if we're making a wish list, I also want: - term limits for congress - voter day national holiday - if budget isn't balanced all members of congress become ineligible for election - repeal citizens united (maybe covered by op) - and change all fines/tickets to paid in human hours of community service rather than money

Most of this can be done through statute. I’d strongly argue against the community-service bit, however. That’s just job loss for those who earn income from labor and an inconvenience for those who earn it from capital.

Yea, I think a better option would be to make fines proportional to income, and then give a flat hourly rate that you can earn for fines from community service as an option

Re: Supreme Court takes sledgehammer to federal regulatory structure

#36

Post by JumpCrisscross » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 6:14 PM UTC

ncallaway wrote: post #28

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #2

Five Constitutional amendments we need: 1. Strike pardon power; 2. First sentence of Article II changed to: “The President shall execute the laws of the United States of America”; 3. Abolish the electoral college; 4. Congress may regulate money in politics; and 5. Congress may create independent agencies with charters of up to 25 years. (President still names and Senate still confirms appointments. But they can be in…

I agree with everything, other than the two caveats below: > Strike pardon power; I'd go slightly narrower. I think pardons and clemency are a good thing to have in the system. I think we can put reasonable guardrails around it - Require pardons to be published to a public register to be effective - Allow a 2/3 vote of both chambers of congress to veto a pardon within 90 days - Disallow pardons in the final year of t…

> pardons and clemency are a good thing to have in the system

Congress can do it any time. The fact that it will probably result in a statute change, too, versus a one-off benefit, is a feature of that process.

I debated this for a while, myself. Kept creating carve-outs. But at the end of the day, pardons are a shitty and ineffective check on either the judiciary or criminal statute, and they have been known to be a potential source of corruption since at least the Roman Republic, which denied this power even to their dictators.

> we should also create room for Congress to create rule-making agencies that exist within the Congressional branch

Eh, I prefer independent agencies. If the Congress wants a law it can pass it.

Re: Supreme Court takes sledgehammer to federal regulatory structure

#37

Post by jandrewrogers » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 6:15 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #16

apparent wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No chance 3 ever passes, and a wealth tax would require an amendment unless it is "apportioned among the states" or some such thing (and it can't be because wealthy people are concentrated in a handful of states). Editing to add: It would also be a bad idea to abolish the EC because then candidates would only ever campaign in cities. They would completely ignore rural areas, which are financially and culturally diffe…

> No chance 3 ever passes It’s honestly the hardest one on there. > a wealth tax would require an amendment Genuine question, why? > It would also be a bad idea to abolish the EC because then candidates would only ever campaign in cities This doesn’t mathematically work. Most Americans live in suburbia. (We define “urban” very, very broadly for statistical purposes.) And this effect is more than compensated for by th…

The 16th amendment plainly restricts taxation to income. Same reason there isn't a Federal sales tax or property tax.

Re: Supreme Court takes sledgehammer to federal regulatory structure

#38

Post by dgellow » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 6:15 PM UTC

FergusArgyll wrote: post #17

ahartmetz wrote: post #4

It is funny that these things are done by """conservatives""". To be conservative means to conserve things, keep them as they are, and to develop them further guided by traditional values. These """conservatives""" are not conserving anything, they are destroying old institutions with the motivation to build an autocracy.

They're not """conservatives""" they're """textualists"""

Aka “trust me bro, I can decipher the hidden meaning that will surprisingly match my preferred political outcomes”

Re: Supreme Court takes sledgehammer to federal regulatory structure

#39

Post by knappe » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 6:16 PM UTC

bufbupa wrote: post #11

superxpro12 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throw something in there about gerrymandering. Maybe even ranked choice voting?

if we're making a wish list, I also want: - term limits for congress - voter day national holiday - if budget isn't balanced all members of congress become ineligible for election - repeal citizens united (maybe covered by op) - and change all fines/tickets to paid in human hours of community service rather than money

- if budget isn't balanced all members of congress become ineligible for election

Ask Colorado how TABOR[0] is going. The answer is a 1.5 BILLION[1] deficit because TABOR restricts how money is collected and spent by the state.

A balanced budget isn't actually all it is cracked up to be. The deficit spending at the federal level we have now is bonkers, but a balanced budget every year is just unrealistic. Learn from Colorado and do not put yourself into an unrealistic corner. A budget will grow and shrink with the economy -- a balanced budget over X years seems much more realistic. It would mean we could have never, at a federal level, done the kind of spending necessary to cope with COVID, for example.

What I'd like to see is Congress be entirely unable to draw a paycheck while the government is shutdown. Shutdowns are a last resort, but are now so common we have normalized them. This is immensely unfair to federal workers and everything downstream that depends on a functioning government, like SNAP benefits. If the government shuts down over budget issues, make the people who made that decision pay HEAVILY for the action.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxpayer_Bill_of_Rights [1] https://coloradosun.com/2026/03/19/colorado-budget-shortfall...

Re: Supreme Court takes sledgehammer to federal regulatory structure

#40

Post by moduspol » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 6:16 PM UTC

ncallaway wrote: post #31

Noumenon72 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be better to make the Constitution unamendable than to let people like you get their hands on it. People are just not smart enough to foresee the consequences of their choices, so it's better to stick with choices that at least worked once.

The more sclerotic the Constitution becomes, the more likely it is to have the entire system overturned and replaced wholesale. If you try to make the Constitution unamendable, you guarantee that the Republic that is founded on the Constitution will eventually fail. I can't think of a worse idea for the long-term health of the Republic.

If it were easy to change, there would be no purpose to having a Constitution.