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"Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

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Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

#211
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your understanding is that these agencies are part of the legislative branch and the senate/house would have the power to do this? If it’s that clear will it be easy to take this to the Supreme Court?

They don't have to be part of any branch. The usual branches are descriptive concepts. (Or they can be part of the executive branch yet still not be part of the "unitary executive" part. The law allows for any kind of exemptions and special-casing.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory

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Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inflation is an extreme handout to the wealthy. Money is by definition zero sum, otherwise the word "inflation" would have no meaning. There are good questions around what an over leveraged loan is, but fundamentally, the supply of money is to some degree fixed at any given moment. The wealthy and powerful keep their money in tax benefited, inflation tracking assets. Many of those assets are stocks, and a major busin…

> Inflation is an extreme handout to the wealthy. Debatable. But the opposite, deflation, hits the poor much harder. It was deflation, the gold standard, and the insistence of balanced budgets that caused revolutions all over the world: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austerity:_The_History_of_a_Da... It was dropping prices that caused ferment in the US: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_of_Gold_speech It was FDR…

> Inflation is an extreme handout to the wealthy.

> Debatable

Wait how is this debatable. We saw wealth inequality explode in ‘20 ‘21 ‘22 and ‘23 as the wealthiest Americans navigated rapid inflation and then rate cuts by strategically buying everything they could and then turning into activist investors and forcing RTO and mass layoffs despite record profits.

Wealthy people can take advantage of economic turmoil by selling high and buying low, the greatest example being Buffets mass sell off and subsequent repurchasing.

What am I missing?

Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

#213

The only rebuttal I see in the media is that congress set these up to be “independent”. But our government doesn’t have independent branches. In fact that sounds a lot like “unelected and unaccountable”. So which branches are these agencies under? Is it in the judicial, legislative, or executive - and if it’s in the executive why can’t the chief executive manage business? On the other hand, one of the issues brought…

They aren't 'independent' they are 'a mix between executive and legislative'. The Supreme Court decisions are Meyers v US and Hunters Executor v US. And I'm not a constitutional scholar but my reading of it is that the protections in question come from the legislative delegating some of their power to the executive, think legislative actions (researching laws, etc) but retaining their constitutional prerogative to protect them from executive control.

This is something that has existed for a very long time but has been changing lately and will almost certainly show up in the Supreme Court again.

Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

#214

This is obviously alarming, and if used to disregard the Judiciary's interpretation of law, unconstitutional. But I'm puzzled by the exemption of the Federal Reserve and FOMC. He's previously beefed with them, and would presumably find the additional leverage useful. Why explicitly exclude them?

It seems to me that the operative line:

> The President and the Attorney General, subject to the President’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch.

conveys respect to the judiciary branch, and states that this only applies to situations where the executive branch is interpreting laws in isolation during their enforcement of them (which happens quite often).

However, following that line:

> No employee of the executive branch acting in their official capacity may advance an interpretation of the law as the position of the United States that contravenes the President or the Attorney General’s opinion on a matter of law, including but not limited to the issuance of regulations, guidance, and positions advanced in litigation, unless authorized to do so by the President or in writing by the Attorney General.

Feels weirder, because it implies that when executive branch employees find themselves between a rock and a hard place on when a law is interpreted differently between the President and Judicial branches they must follow the Presidential interpretation; or they'll presumably be fired.

The way I see it: This isn't a broad departure from the behavior of the system two weeks ago. The office of the President, especially under Trump, has regularly taken the action of replacing employees who are unaligned with the President's agenda. When the rubber hits the road and we get to a material matter that the President and the Judicial branch disagree on, what it might come down to is: the Judicial branch can bring a suit against the employees to follow their interpretation, but the President could fire them if they do, and the President could pardon them if they instead follow the Presidential way. That's, essentially, the same situation the American system has been in for hundreds of years; the only difference right now is that we have a President who might actually do that.

Which draws back to something I've said a few times: Presidents from both parties, over the past 50 years, but especially Bush and Obama, have been relentless in interpreting the law in a direction which centralizes power into the Executive. The "normalcy" of the office until Trump was never enforced through legality; it was only decorum. It was only a matter of time before someone rejected this decorum, born out of congressional deadlock and the dire state of many Americans' wellbeing, to make the government and executive branch actually do something about it.

This isn't the first time America has had to face this question; not even close. Trump isn't exposing new weaknesses in our system; the weaknesses have always been there. Worcester v. Georgia (1832) is a great example. It ended with the President saying F.U. to the Supreme Court, refusing to enforce one of their interpretations, and, well, the Trail of Tears happened.

"Weakness", however, is an interesting term to deploy for this; it implies that the default state of the American system is that you need supermajority alignment for the government to accomplish anything, and if actors in the system find a legal way around that requirement, its a "weakness". Phrased more simply: Strength is inaction, Weakness is action. Of course, many Americans would disagree with any assertion that this is desirable, especially in the unstable geopolitical and economic situation we're in. Trump was elected, by majority electoral and popular vote, to take action; most Americans would not call the cracks he is cleaving open to accomplish his agenda a "weakness" of the system.

Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

#215
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual answer here is to exercise actual power. Oligarchs are always greatly outnumbered. The only thing that is genuinely effective is mass movement. A coalition of labor unions could shut down all of Elon and Trumps businesses in hours. Block the entrances to the factories. General strikes, boycotts, that kind of thing. It’s not actually that complicated. Instead the modern Democratic Party is in love with appe…

What the modern Democratic Party knows, but understandably doesn’t go around trumpeting, is that they cannot organize mass collective action because there’s not enough people on their side. You talk about “a coalition of labor unions”, but even union members barely lean Democratic these days. There’s very few groups outside of the Democratic Party infrastructure which are polarized enough to take a side.

There are absolutely enough people on "their side" in the sense that there are plenty of people on the side of working people, way more than enough.

The problem is the actual leadership of the Democratic Party isn't on the side of working people at all, and is actually actively hostile to those in favor of classic labor policies.

Don't get me wrong the other side is absolutely not on the side of working people either, that's more than apparent.

The entire dynamic we're seeing right now is a battle between two competing groups of elites. More on that concept here: https://www.compactmag.com/article/doge-as-class-war/

But with those caveats out of the way, a bona-fide labor movement could make short work of all this bullshit. Unfortunately the purpose of the modern Democratic Party appears to be to occupy the place in our system where a labor party is supposed to reside.

Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

#216

The only rebuttal I see in the media is that congress set these up to be “independent”. But our government doesn’t have independent branches. In fact that sounds a lot like “unelected and unaccountable”. So which branches are these agencies under? Is it in the judicial, legislative, or executive - and if it’s in the executive why can’t the chief executive manage business? On the other hand, one of the issues brought…

It’s a false narrative that Obama was soft on immigration and even earned the nickname “deporter in chief”.

In some ways he was even harder than Bush during the post 9/11 response.

www.migrationpolicy.org/article/obama-record-deportations-deporter-chief-or-not

It’s astounding the regularity over the last 100 years that conservatives have used immigration narratives to fire up their base regardless of what statistical data shows.

Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

#217
If you're wondering why the President can essentially write his own laws when that's not how our system is supposed to work, it's because the President gets extra powers whenever we're in a state of national emergency.

We've been in a state of national emergency since 1979.

Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your question is whether the “independent” agencies are Constitutional, the answer is yes. Congress makes the laws and the laws can constrain the behavior of the President. If the law says the President cannot fire someone, or interfere in an agency’s work, then the President cannot. So who are such agencies accountable to? Congress. Just like the president is accountable to Congress.

So your understanding is that these agencies are part of the legislative branch and the senate/house would have the power to do this? If it’s that clear will it be easy to take this to the Supreme Court?

They are part of the executive branch, but the law governs and constrains the behavior of the executive in managing them.

You can’t even say that Congress is solely the source of those constraints since the laws creating and governing these agencies were signed by… the president!

Most of these agencies have already been challenged in court and the Constitutionality of their structure and governance affirmed.

Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

#219
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of people that are freaking out are missing that this applies to the executive branch, over whom the President has already perfectly well established. Literally the first statement of article 2 of the US Constitution (which lays out the power/rules for the executive branch) is "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America." The main point of this executive order is…

> It required the judicial to completely defer to the executive branch in cases where the laws around executive departments (generally relating to the the limits of their regulatory power/authority) were ambiguous. Why doesn’t congress do its job and write laws that do things?

It'll take some time, but I would highly recommend reading the oral argument transcript for the Chevron decision. You'll see some good history and opinions on why Congress now does what it does.

It wasn't always so. In 1979, when Chrysler wanted federal loan guarantees, Congress passed a specific act to do so. Contrast that with what's now a blanket check to agencies thru an Omnibus

https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcr...

Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

#220
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon Musk’s entire net worth is tied up in stocks. If Tesla crashed, so would Elon’s power.

I know it sucks, but ELon also has SpaceX, Twitter, xAI and oddballs like neurolink and boring company that would still keep him outrageously wealthy if Tesla collapses. Also Tesla won't collapse because it's investors are the most brain damaged investors, and frankly their self-fulfilling prophecy has kept them repeatedly buying any dip back up. It's been extremely profitable to be a mindless Tesla investor.

I'd really expect that he is actually at a loss on all of those except for SpaceX which has a clear path towards being cash flow positive if it isn't already
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