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White House plan to break up iconic U.S. climate lab moves forward

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Re: White House plan to break up iconic U.S. climate lab moves forward

#111

Post by jonfw »

otterley wrote: post #61
jonfw wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally speaking, people thought that government spending led to massive inflation, and the republicans have stronger rhetoric around cutting government spending.

> republicans have stronger rhetoric around cutting government spending All they have is rhetoric, because their record with respect to actually doing it is not strong. Government deficits increased under every Republican administration in recent memory. They talk the talk, but never walk the walk.

I totally agree that republicans are irresponsible with the deficit. But americans don't seem motivated by the deficit, they seem motivated by inflation.

Inflation and the deficit don't have a 1:1 relationship. For the same dollar of debt, you'll see more inflation from social service spending than you will from tax cuts.

Re: White House plan to break up iconic U.S. climate lab moves forward

#112

Post by gwbas1c »

jahnu wrote: post #22
mort96 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah... "I would do nothing different from Biden"[1] probably wasn't the right message at the peak of Biden's unpopularity. I wonder who came up with that, or if it was genuine. [1]: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/08/harris-biden-the-vi...

Question from a European who doesn’t deeply understand your partisan politics: what specifically should they have done differently? My probably wrong understanding was that people were still angry about the inflationary consequences of dealing with the pandemic and didn’t believe it was tapering off, didn’t believe that unemployment was low, didn’t believe that real wages were increasing. How could they have combated…

You're asking the wrong questions.

The bigger issue is that the US system of voting is set up so that:

1: Most elections predictably go to one party or another.

2: Most representatives are chosen by small minorities who vote in primaries.

The Presidential election is almost always close to 50-50, and due to peculiarities in how it works, is chosen by small regions. Basically, Google "Electoral College." Essentially, most states will always predictably elect a Republican or Democrat, so the election is chosen by states that are hard to predict. (For example, if you live in a state that always votes for the Republican candidate, trying to convince people in your state to vote Democrat won't make a difference because all of your states votes will always go to the Republican.)

Furthermore, because American news is always very critical of current leaders, if a president holds power for 8 years, people will always want change and always vote for the other party. It has little to do with the merits of the current President. People who hate Trump will hate everything he does, even when he does good things. People who hate Biden will hate everything he does, even when he does good things.

I've heard Poland has similar issues, FWIW.

Re: White House plan to break up iconic U.S. climate lab moves forward

#113

Post by arjie »

gottorf wrote: post #81
gdilla wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biden admin was leaps better than this crap we have but he didn't assuage white fragility - that's the republican brand.

Generally speaking, it's better to not assume that everyone with political views opposing yours has them out of racism, or whatever other personal defects you might imagine. In reality, the nonwhite vote share for Trump went up for almost every group in 2024 vs. 2016. "White fragility" was probably not their top concern.

Much of what people say has always been strange about politics. It doesn't seem to be rooted in fact so much as in wanting to dunk on someone.

I remember when Roe v Wade was being overthrown and people would talk about how this was how "Men try to control Women's bodies" or something like that. The reality around that time was that the gender differences were a few percentage points[0]. Since then a gender gap has widened[1] but notably among Republicans. Voters for the Democratic party barely differ on abortion attitudes based on gender.

0: http://pewresearch.org/religion/2022/05/06/americas-abortion...

1: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2026/03/12/do-abortion-...

Re: White House plan to break up iconic U.S. climate lab moves forward

#114

Post by dec0dedab0de »

hsuduebc2 wrote: post #105
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Kamala should have flipped on the second amendment then gone on all the podcasts and called trump a nerd for being sober and not liking guns. Or at the very least, try to target anyone that didn't already support her. This last election was the first time I didn't get targeted by the democratic presidential nominee at all. I did not see one positive ad for Kamala the entire election, I still don't really know…

Well. We know that some platforms promoted the gop significantly more that dems. The same companies that now enjoy protection while licking the boots. If you take that into consideration with the fact that she is just not really interesting, I'm not really surprised thet you didn't noticed her.

I did see plenty of anti-trump ads coming from her campaign, but I think that was a huge misstep. Everyone already knew who Trump was and already had an opinion on him that they weren't going to be able to change. They should have used their considerable resources to tell us about her.

Re: White House plan to break up iconic U.S. climate lab moves forward

#115

Post by triceratops »

mort96 wrote: post #58
tootie wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the classic argument of "only Democrats have agency". 99% of the problem is Republicans, but here we are wishing the Democrats did more. They ran a perfectly fine campaign. Biden passed the biggest climate bill in history. Republicans ran an utterly disgraceful and wantonly malicious campaign based purely on lies and hatred. What I wish is that people voted rationally and maintained an iota of empathy and log…

My position is: Democrats, or someone else, needs to field good enough candidates, and run good enough campaigns with strong enough messaging, to defeat Republicans. What's your stance? "We should just ask the Republicans nicely to stop"? Will that work? What happens if they just keep being evil?

Why can't there be 2 good parties? The very existence of an "evil" party is a problem.

Re: White House plan to break up iconic U.S. climate lab moves forward

#116

Post by softwaredoug »

mikeocool wrote: post #64
softwaredoug wrote: post #52

This fits a consistent trend: Unless Congress explicitly mandates something by law, they should expect an administration to unilaterally dismantle it. Congress delegated authority assuming it’s used in good faith and courts+executive have called Congress’s bluff. In this case it’s a facility created by NSF, but Congress doesn’t explicitly say this HAS to exist. Therefore it won’t exist any longer.

While true in the abstract, this administration has also dismantled numerous things that are mandated by congress.

Like what?

Re: White House plan to break up iconic U.S. climate lab moves forward

#117

Post by softwaredoug »

TOMDM wrote: post #100
softwaredoug wrote: post #52

This fits a consistent trend: Unless Congress explicitly mandates something by law, they should expect an administration to unilaterally dismantle it. Congress delegated authority assuming it’s used in good faith and courts+executive have called Congress’s bluff. In this case it’s a facility created by NSF, but Congress doesn’t explicitly say this HAS to exist. Therefore it won’t exist any longer.

It's mandated by law how tariffs may be levied and how states may police themselves and how they may independently conduct their elections. If you think law will stop this administration then you're not paying enough attention.

The law has stopped this administration on things from offshore wind farms to tariffs.

Maybe not fast enough, but it happens routinely.

The issue is that SCOTUS decides to use administration to reinterpret precedent.

Re: White House plan to break up iconic U.S. climate lab moves forward

#118

Post by linkjuice4all »

mort96 wrote: post #80
linkjuice4all wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already did that - the Democrats are/were clearly not the same as the Republicans and that should have been enough (especially after we already got a preview of Trump's Republican party the first time around). They already ran strong enough campaigns and their candidates were already good enough. Most of them actually wanted the job because they believed in the mission of government, not because they personally…

> the Democrats are/were clearly not the same as the Republicans and that should have been enough But it wasn't. > They already ran strong enough campaigns and their candidates were already good enough Clearly not. They lost. What's your solution? Shout on Hacker News that "it should have been enough"?

Unfortunately I don't have any great solutions at this point, so voting with my feet seems like the only practical method I have for reducing my exposure to this electorate. Failing that - continuing to vote for the lesser-evil and shout from the various rented/lended soapboxes I have until something different happens.

Re: White House plan to break up iconic U.S. climate lab moves forward

#119

Post by mort96 »

triceratops wrote: post #115
mort96 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My position is: Democrats, or someone else, needs to field good enough candidates, and run good enough campaigns with strong enough messaging, to defeat Republicans. What's your stance? "We should just ask the Republicans nicely to stop"? Will that work? What happens if they just keep being evil?

Why can't there be 2 good parties? The very existence of an "evil" party is a problem.

Sure but that's the reality.

Re: White House plan to break up iconic U.S. climate lab moves forward

#120

Post by threatofrain »

otterley wrote: post #61
jonfw wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally speaking, people thought that government spending led to massive inflation, and the republicans have stronger rhetoric around cutting government spending.

> republicans have stronger rhetoric around cutting government spending All they have is rhetoric, because their record with respect to actually doing it is not strong. Government deficits increased under every Republican administration in recent memory. They talk the talk, but never walk the walk.

Republicans are responsible for making their constituents happy in some way at least, directly or indirectly. Voters can say they want cutting, Republicans can cut, but when does that translate to better life? There has to also be spending.
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