White House plan to break up iconic U.S. climate lab moves forward • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by Kapura » Fri, Mar 13, 2026, 2:08 PM UTC

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…

The biggest international incident, on the tip of all democratic voters' tongues, was Israel's continued genocide in Gaza. For that specific issue, there was virtually no daylight between the Republican and Democratic line.

I would argue that the Democrats could have created a separation between themselves and the other side by saying they would stop selling arms to genocidiers, and thereby secure the crucial anti-genocide vote; anecdotally, many of these folks sat out the election, or wrote in another candidate instead of voting for one of two sides who would let massacres of civilians continue.

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

#192

Post by deafpolygon » Fri, Mar 13, 2026, 2:40 PM UTC

gottorf wrote: post #99

deafpolygon wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy won’t be restored until we increase the number of political parties in this country and fix how our officials are elected. I wish I had the answer on how to solve this, but alas… I’ll defer to people who are smarter than me.

> Democracy won’t be restored until we increase the number of political parties in this country Parliamentary systems with many parties run into a different kind of dysfunction. Belgium didn't have a government for like two years relatively recently because they couldn't form a big enough coalition. In a democracy, there is no magic bullet that does not involve the quality of the demos. What is your idea of democracy…

More power to voters; make their votes count. Encourage run-off voting, etc. We don’t need to turn the US into a parliamentary government. Those are different matters. Things like ranked-choice voting, proportional representation, multi-member districts, electoral college reforms. We don’t necessarily need a large number of parties…

At this point, the political parties are incentivized to suppress votes and/or redistrict things to make voting favorable for their party. Negative partisanship becomes a too-effective political strategy. There are other issues such as focusing on swing state politics (rather than representing their constitutents) and primary capture of ideologically committed voters (reinforcing and/or encouraging extremism).

I agree, there is no magic bullet... but a two-party system has a tendency to devolve into a winner-takes-all mentality. It also increases polarity in every country where a two-party system has ever existed (primarily US, UK, Canada).

What happens when the two party no longer represents the majority of Americans and American interests?

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

#193

Post by myvoiceismypass » Fri, Mar 13, 2026, 3:17 PM UTC

overfeed wrote: post #133

julienchastang wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I deeply wish the democrats had run a better campaign in 2024. The problem is that there was no primary. That really (really) hurt Democrats not only for that election cycle, but for future ones too, where candidates could have made their names known even if they did not end up getting the nomination.

> The problem is that there was no primary. I think a primary would have led to worse results for the Dems: candidates snipping at each on the eve of an elections is a gift to the opposing candidate; who can add a final 5-seconds stinger to the end of the many intra-party attack ads against the nominee to say "I am _, and I approve of this message".

The 2020 primary did not devolve into into what you are describing.

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

#194

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Mar 13, 2026, 3:19 PM UTC

gdilla wrote: post #69

jahnu wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

[deleted]

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

#195

Post by rayiner » Fri, Mar 13, 2026, 3:23 PM UTC

gdilla wrote: post #69

jahnu wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

Trump lost white vote share from 2020 to 2024. His entire change in margin came from non-whites: https://data.blueroseresearch.org/hubfs/2024%20Blue%20Rose%2.... See page 4.

That’s frankly remarkable given that people say things like “white fragility” openly. I can’t fathom why white people would want to belong to a party that normalizes that.

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

#196

Post by rjrjrjrj » Fri, Mar 13, 2026, 3:31 PM UTC

deafpolygon wrote: post #192

gottorf wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Democracy won’t be restored until we increase the number of political parties in this country Parliamentary systems with many parties run into a different kind of dysfunction. Belgium didn't have a government for like two years relatively recently because they couldn't form a big enough coalition. In a democracy, there is no magic bullet that does not involve the quality of the demos. What is your idea of democracy…

More power to voters; make their votes count. Encourage run-off voting, etc. We don’t need to turn the US into a parliamentary government. Those are different matters. Things like ranked-choice voting, proportional representation, multi-member districts, electoral college reforms. We don’t necessarily need a large number of parties… At this point, the political parties are incentivized to suppress votes and/or redist…

Canada doesn't have a two party system.

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

#197

Post by JKCalhoun » Fri, Mar 13, 2026, 3:44 PM UTC

Kapura wrote: post #6

I grew up in Colorado, and a visit to NCAR was part of my elementary school education. I think it is so critically important to not only employ working scientists, but also share that science with the public. The republican machine vehemently disagrees, I guess. I deeply wish the democrats had run a better campaign in 2024.

"I deeply wish the democrats had run a better campaign in 2024."

Ha ha, reminds me of Murcs Law [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murc%27s_law

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

#198

Post by Yizahi » Fri, Mar 13, 2026, 3:53 PM UTC

julienchastang wrote: post #126

Kapura wrote: post #6

I grew up in Colorado, and a visit to NCAR was part of my elementary school education. I think it is so critically important to not only employ working scientists, but also share that science with the public. The republican machine vehemently disagrees, I guess. I deeply wish the democrats had run a better campaign in 2024.

> I deeply wish the democrats had run a better campaign in 2024. The problem is that there was no primary. That really (really) hurt Democrats not only for that election cycle, but for future ones too, where candidates could have made their names known even if they did not end up getting the nomination.

"Primary" is fundamentally anti-democratic concept. It basically says that we, oligarchs, will pick whoever we want and you, plebes, will vote for him. Just like the first past the post system, where two oligarch's candidates are having a nice little internal contest, is anti-democratic. Until that is fixed, no amount of pleading and rationalizations will help "fix oligarchy".

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

#199

Post by Yizahi » Fri, Mar 13, 2026, 4:00 PM UTC

overfeed wrote: post #185

mmooss wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think a primary would have led to worse results for the Dems: candidates snipping at each on the eve of an elections is a gift to the opposing candidate Ironically, that is an anti-democracy talking point. Primaries and the included competition weed out candidates who can't handle attacks. Democracy works far better than governments that aren't chosen openly by their people. It's an extraordinary strength, not a…

> Ironically, that is an anti-democracy talking point. There's always a cost/friction between internal democratic competition and external adversarial competition. This is why the US didn't (and doesn't) have direct voting on war declaration - hell, a handful of recent presidents decided that even Congress is too slow for them. You could argue that the lack of a referendum before declaring war is an "anti-democracy t…

This is a loaded explanation. Yes, war does require quick response, which is hard to achieve in a decentralized state. The small nuance is that war or similar events are comprising a tiny fraction of what a government does (not by impact, but by total amount of things to do). And guess what, direct voting is just fine and fast enough for such thinks as any and all taxes, industry wide restrictions or permissions, economic focus, foreign policy, immigration, healthcare, education, social security and so on.

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

#200

Post by Tadpole9181 » Fri, Mar 13, 2026, 4:15 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #30

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall Humpty Dumpty had a great fall All the king's horses and all the king's men Couldn't put Humpty together again -- It's going to take a lot of glue to try to put the United States together again. Breaking things is easy, and the Trump administration absolutely excels at it. The White House, some buildings (some occupied) in Iran, the economy, the cohesion in so far as there still was any le…

I'm not convinced Humpty will come together again at all. The US population doesn't seem to care nearly enough to effectuate change while the regime talks about brown shirts at polling stations, delayed elections, Fed oversight of ballots, and preventing married women from voting.

Our relationships have crumbled and there's no reason to trust us: friend or foe. We're ramping up debt harder than ever, we've made tourists scared, we killed our academic imports, and we've made it impossible to start a business while letting private equity gobble up entire markets to play financial games with loans - setting up a time bomb for catastrophe. Now we're shutting down food inspection systems, disabling ecological oversight, firing every qualified person we can and installing sycophants in their place. Some with for-life positions! The economy is only desperately clinging on pretending everything is fine and they can weather the store - but the King has no clothes and has taken full control of economic levers with no oversight.

And beyond requiring regime change, the US can no longer solve such issues without constitutional amendments. Our government has proven to be fundamentally broken. Which simply will not happen because it is broken.

The US seems to be on an unrecoverable path to third world theocratic state status. We will lose our democracy and we will lose our economy. And I see no path out of it anymore.