Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Trump fires NSF's oversight board

science.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 383 posts

Re: Trump fires NSF's oversight board

#271

Post by BLKNSLVR »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #266
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree and disagree. The US has been on a downward spiral towards 'this' for a long time, but Trump literally self-selected to be the face of the intentional rapid acceleration of it. Calling Trump a scapegoat is incredibly kind to his intentional destruction and, to still put it far too kindly, "vindictive nastiness in attempt to profit" (which, I think, also depressingly describes what has become of the US tech sect…

If the status quo system was doing their job(s) there would be no DJT in the WH. Full stop. Not once. Certainly not twice. But rather than own their failure, they work - hard - the “OMG it’s all his fault” narrative (read: deflection and distraction) and it works. So well, they keep doing it. But repetition of a lie doesn’t make it true. Concession to buy into a lie, also doesn’t make it true. No doubt DJT has his fl…

That's a good point. Thanks for making it clearly.

Essentially the US cannot improve it's current direction unless it can have an honest discussion about how it got so bad in the first place, with all administrations under the spotlight for failing to address the decline.

Ironically, it's accelerating away from honesty.

Re: Trump fires NSF's oversight board

#272

Post by juniperus »

epistasis wrote: post #250
trinsic2 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im not getting how trump can fire anyone? Does he have the authority to do that?

The US government is not currently in a state of following the law or constitution. People get fired, and if authority was not there, a lawsuit 9-18 months later might rectify it, and in the meantime the fired employee has moved on. DOGE cuts were extreme, capricious, and the only rhyme or reason was to try to hyperpoliticize the science to meet what people were guessing that Trump would want. On the grant side, they…

I'm in academia, so NSF cuts are very misguided in my view, and hopefully will be reversed in the next administration. But the first two sentences of your post immediately contradict one another. You say America is in a state of lawlessness, and then immediately describe the American legal system. So that's exactly what following the law in America has always meant. America is a common law country, not a civil law country... Litigation and court precedent is how laws are tested and affirmed in common law countries, unlike civil law countries. So that legal system isn't lawlessness, its the way law works in common law countries, which America is one of the few not using the Napoleonic code.

Re: Trump fires NSF's oversight board

#273

Post by chiefalchemist »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #271
chiefalchemist wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the status quo system was doing their job(s) there would be no DJT in the WH. Full stop. Not once. Certainly not twice. But rather than own their failure, they work - hard - the “OMG it’s all his fault” narrative (read: deflection and distraction) and it works. So well, they keep doing it. But repetition of a lie doesn’t make it true. Concession to buy into a lie, also doesn’t make it true. No doubt DJT has his fl…

That's a good point. Thanks for making it clearly. Essentially the US cannot improve it's current direction unless it can have an honest discussion about how it got so bad in the first place, with all administrations under the spotlight for failing to address the decline. Ironically, it's accelerating away from honesty.

Yes. In short, Trump didn’t just happen. Plenty of incompetence and negligence preceded him. The red carpet was rolled out. The engine was primed. If it wasn’t Trump it would have been someone else. That’s not his fault.

Re: Trump fires NSF's oversight board

#274

Post by juniperus »

selectodude wrote: post #145
rectang wrote: post #78

Trying to find a silver lining and think positively... Will a future administration have an opportunity to build something new and better from scratch which would not have been possible due to institutional resistance before it was all burnt down?

That’s the best case scenario - requires a lot of people currently involved in this to be jailed or executed before we can even begin to move on though. I’m not super optimistic.

Describing the political machinations of institutional academia as a category where summary executions are applicable is the type of thing that led to the Soviet Union instituting Lysenkoism for decades and other profoundly anti-intellectual absurdities since all the academics were just randomly killed for a generation. We don't need that. That's hysterical emotional overreaction which is the opposite of rational academic behavior. The NSF will just get funding in the next administration, this isn't the end of the world. If they just hasten the grant awarding pipeline in 2028, it'll be a blip in the scheme of things lol, these grants can be like 5 years long. You're talking about a field of very smart people, everyone is just being more frugal and putting off big purchases and doing research that isn't expensive and things aren't blowing up lol.

Re: Trump fires NSF's oversight board

#275

Post by nneonneo »

tomlockwood wrote: post #175
BidenSniffer wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The communist small business funding scheme.... Interesting.

There's some troll making a dozen accounts on here to spew alt-right/MAGA nonsense, then deleting their comments (editing them to ".") once their account is burned.

Don't reply, don't feed, just flag and move on.

Re: Trump fires NSF's oversight board

#276

Post by juniperus »

SomaticPirate wrote: post #71

Every American here has allowed the quickest decline of a superpower in history. The damage to our country is irreparable and going to result in a worse life for generations to come

The superpower built on the US dollar fiat monopoly that was enforced by military lead? The one that Trump is trying to reassert in a misguided attempt at preventing a decline in US quality of life down to a more realistic level? You seem to think Trump is the cause of this, and not the world gaining the ability to dictate their own affairs and not be the victim of CIA global chess games and other neocolonialist machinations. Trump is just a symptom of the backlash among the American public unable to adapt to the increasingly clear reality of the loss of purchasing power that is downstream of the rise in non-American economies and their productivity. But yeah, I guess if you view things simply, all of this started in 2016, and hasn't been brewing for decades and decades since the post-ww2 order was obviously not the end of history as once believed lol.

Re: Trump fires NSF's oversight board

#277

Post by juniperus »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #264
andsoitis wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NSB members are executive officers, the statute is silent on removal, and Article II makes presidential removal power the default. Silence means he can fire them.

Article II says no such thing. Humphrey's Executor established a useful compromise between "the Constitution is silent on removal" and "come on, is it really impossible to fire a postmaster?", but Trump has chosen to defect from that compromise so I no longer feel bound to accept it. Until he reinstates all independent agency heads he's purported to fire, I don't accept any removals he performs without explicit autho…

if a court overturns or reinterprets that, then it is the law. America is a common law country, not a civil law country. The process of litigation and court precedent is how laws work in a common law country, so I don't see how your framing of the situation is really all that valid.

Re: Trump fires NSF's oversight board

#279

Post by gorbachev »

rectang wrote: post #78

Trying to find a silver lining and think positively... Will a future administration have an opportunity to build something new and better from scratch which would not have been possible due to institutional resistance before it was all burnt down?

Even if so, it doesn't matter, because 4 - 8 years later it'll be reversed again. And because it takes longer to rebuild than dismantle, it will never be the same.

This is the cycle now. 180 degree turns in policy every 4 or 8 years. There's no long term planning.

China and Russia must be enjoying this.

Re: Trump fires NSF's oversight board

#280

Post by xethos »

juniperus wrote: post #272
epistasis wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US government is not currently in a state of following the law or constitution. People get fired, and if authority was not there, a lawsuit 9-18 months later might rectify it, and in the meantime the fired employee has moved on. DOGE cuts were extreme, capricious, and the only rhyme or reason was to try to hyperpoliticize the science to meet what people were guessing that Trump would want. On the grant side, they…

I'm in academia, so NSF cuts are very misguided in my view, and hopefully will be reversed in the next administration. But the first two sentences of your post immediately contradict one another. You say America is in a state of lawlessness, and then immediately describe the American legal system. So that's exactly what following the law in America has always meant. America is a common law country, not a civil law co…

War can only legally be declared by Congress. America is currently at war with Iran. Is the current war legal?

I would say no. That doesn't mean it's not happening, just that the law was ignored.

Post reply on HN