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Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

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Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#301

Post by dashundchen »

rayiner wrote: post #282
consumer451 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> DOGE revealed that USAID was funding political unrest in my home country (where activists recently overthrew the government) Let's just focus on this part for a moment. Could you please share this evidence?

For context, you should read about how USAID historically has acted to interfere in the politics of other counties: https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/04/03/cuban-twitter-and-other... ; https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/04/15/when-is-for... ; https://www.jstor.org/stable/4017728 As to Bangladesh specifically: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/south-asia/usaid-b... ; https://www.tbsnews.net/bangladesh/29m…

Neither of your articles have any proof or evidence the $20 million funds to Bangladesh are real. It's just what Trump claimed off the cuff.

Trump is a known liar. It's why his supporters are always telling other people not take him literally

They lied about $50 million for condoms in Gaza, just like he lied about Haitian immigrants eating pets and the dozens of other lies he spews out daily.

DOGE has posted a ton of lies about what they saved and cut, including contracts that were already canceled or completed, and including amounts orders of magnitude off.

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#302

Post by rayiner »

dylan604 wrote: post #291
rayiner wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) The fact that the President embodies the executive branch is just what Article II says: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” The same people who say that’s “just a theory” also think that “emanations from penumbras” is constitutional law. They’re not serious people. 2) Trump hasn’t seized the spending power. Congress was the one that delegated spending power to the…

1) While Article II says....it also depends on a checks and balance system with the other two branches of government. We've already seen where the congressional branch is laying down for the executive, and we've also seen where the judicial branch has granted immunity essentially giving carte blanche to the executive. Without equal branches providing checks and balances, you've just ceded power the Constitution requi…

The system has specific, well-defined checks and balances. For example, Congress can limit the executive’s control over spending by enacting specific appropriations bills with concrete line items. But it hasn’t done so for decades. It has done things like appropriate single $1.7 billion line items for USAID, leaving it to the executive’s discretion how to spend it with only the vaguest guidelines. Congress having done that, it’s not for say the courts to “check” that by insisting that the executive can’t exercise all the discretion Congress provided it.

And your point about immunity is misinformed. The Supreme Court held that the President has immunity for official acts. This is a no-brainer. You can’t sue Congressmen for their official acts either, or judges.

If the President didn’t have immunity, Georgia prosecutors would be able to indict and convict Joe Biden in some red county in connection with the murder of Laken Riley, on the theory that Biden recklessly or negligently opened the border leading to her death.

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#303

Post by rayiner »

archagon wrote: post #297
rayiner wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Folks on the left would do well to remember that the same unelected bureaucracy that declared “resistance” to Trump would destroy an AOC or Sanders presidency too. Ultimately, it’s a good thing if electing the President can effectuate drastic changes in the executive branch, because that’s the only real lever voters have for affecting the largest and these days most powerful branch of government.

In a modern nation, it’s not tenable to flush the federal government down the toilet every four years.

To the contrary, in a modern, diverse country, it’s not tenable for the same people to keep running the government in the same way regardless of who wins elections. That was okay when we had a more homogenous, slower-changing country with widely shared values. That’s untenable today.

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#304

Post by throw939449 »

trhway wrote: post #104
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We may be looking at a lost decade. We're looking at the US wilfully letting go of the possibiility of remaining the most powerful nation in the world. Reduced health, reduced education, reduced funding for research, reduced international aid programs (which both garner goodwill whilst also creating a bulwark against those who profit from misery), reduced oversight / regulation of the power of capital, alienation o…

>We're looking at the US wilfully letting go of the possibiility of remaining the most powerful nation in the world. many here see it way (me too, though i'm well aware that many times whenever i was critical of Musk, he happened to be right, and in this case - Musk is naturally not anti-science guy, so i'd guess there must be some other reason for him doing that which i'm just not able to see). I wonder whether some…

> opposing side can provide a reasonable logical explanation for the Musk/Trump actions

Maybe it is like with Mozilla. You send money to Firefox development, but it pays for Marxist get-away conference in Africa.

Once academia gets rid of bloat, there will be far more money for science and engineering!

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#305

Post by jltsiren »

rayiner wrote: post #262
jltsiren wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is based on a too literal interpretation of democracy. Democracy had a bad reputation in the ancient world, because unconstrained majority decisions often led to terrible outcomes. In the modern world, democracy usually means liberal democracy, which includes things like the rule of law and constitutional protections. As a rough approximation, a constitution exists to prevent the government from doing what the v…

This is Orwellian double-speak. You’re defining “democracy” to mean “not democracy.” Nor does the “constitution” support your view. Article II says: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” What you’re calling “democracy” and the “constitution” is neither. It’s Wilsonianism, an idea invented by a eugenicist who hated the constitution as well as democracy: https://fedsoc.or…

I don't see how your reply is related to my comment.

I was not defining democracy. I was describing the common real-world usage of the term, which has a more specific meaning than simple majority rule. It is commonly used as a shorthand for "liberal democracy". Some Americans use "republic" for the same concept, but that's misleading in other ways. Partly because some countries that are commonly understood to be liberal democracies are constitutional monarchies. And partly because some actual republics (such as North Korea or the member states of the former USSR) do not match the concept particularly well.

I was also not talking about any specific constitution, but constitutions in general. They all come with implicit and explicit assumptions that must hold, or the system will not work as intended. If some entities are supposed to function as checks and balances to each other, they are expected to remain independent. If they choose to collude instead, nobody is capable of stopping them if they decide to twist the constitution beyond recognition or outright break it.

I said that a constitution on its own is worthless. That means a constitution cannot enforce itself. There must be some people who are capable and willing to enforce it. But if they are capable of enforcing the constitution, they are also capable of breaking it. Which means there must be other people capable and willing to act as checks and balances. And so on. The system may work as long as those people act within the expectations, complying with both the spirit and the letter of the constitution. But if they reject the expectations and start looking for loopholes to take advantage of, they may find some. If that becomes too common, the constitution becomes worthless, because the people who are supposed to enforce it no longer believe in it.

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#306

Post by hedora »

rights_reminder wrote: post #243

I know these cuts make almost no difference to the massive federal spending, but they are putting a spotlight on our nation's dire financial situation. Most young people have no hope of owning a home or having kids and our federal government is "borrowing" money to pay for all of these things. Last year it added 1830 billion dollars to the national debt while paying 1126 billion in interest. Take a look at the dollar…

The NSF funding last year was $9B. Cutting it will stop the US from continuing to have a growing economy in ten years. That’s stealing trillions from our children.

Look at the republican budget. They’re adding $85B a year for better border security; half of which is to deploy the US military inside the US. The other half goes to the national guard and customs and border patrol. So, for every dollar they cut from the NSF, they’re spending $10 to deploy troops against American civilians.

For every one of those dollars, they’re handing $10 out in tax cuts for the ultra wealthy.

This is being paid for by cutting medicare, which we will all rely on, assuming we somehow manage to live through the inevitable pandemics, natural disasters, economic collapse and wars this jackass is going to start.

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#307

Post by zmgsabst »

cyberax wrote: post #276
malcolmgreaves wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that the states have no power because an unchecked executive branch can just claim that it had authority and the states have no recourse to resist. The US has an incredibly weak form of government.

Don't get so depressed. The Executive branch in the US does not have a lot of power when it comes to influencing the states. For example, Trump can't actually force states to change their school athlete programs. It doesn't have any power over individual states (or schools). All his DoE can do, is to threaten to withhold funding. And even that is being contested because the Congress has not authorized it. However, if…

Congress has authorized it: civil rights laws make schools ineligible when violated, and Trump is claiming various programs violate those.

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#308

Post by rayiner »

mindslight wrote: post #299
rayiner wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For another example, take the frequent neofascist argument that the federal agencies are "unaccountable" without being under the direct command of the President It’s not “neofascist” lol, it’s just what the constitution says. The first sentence of article II: “ The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” It’s not Congress’s job to hold executive branch employees accountable…

The executive power, as being laid out in the Constitution. Not all executive power. This is plainly clear by appointments requiring approval of the Senate. If the "executive branch" were meant to be a singular top-down command structure, then such approval (or ability to impeach) would not be required. This push for an authoritarian command structure is one pillar of what makes the term "fascist" appropriate. I was…

“The executive power” means “all the executive power,” in the same way “the judicial power” in Article III means “all the judicial power.” Or do you think the other branches can properly exercise some judicial power? Advice-and-consent isn’t an exercise of executive power, it’s a check on executive power, just like impeachment.

Sure, Congress can change or clarify the mandate of an agency, and the President must go along with that. But what we’re talking about with Trump is accountability for individual employees and the discretionary conduct of executive branch employees.

For example, Congress has appropriated $1.7 billion for USAID operations, “for purposes of the carrying out the 1961 foreign development act” (paraphrasing). I agree the executive must ultimately spend that money within the broad mandate of the appropriation. But do you spend that money on DEI in Serbia or pro-natalism in South Korea? Clearly the President should be able to decide that.

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#309

Post by dylan604 »

rayiner wrote: post #302
dylan604 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) While Article II says....it also depends on a checks and balance system with the other two branches of government. We've already seen where the congressional branch is laying down for the executive, and we've also seen where the judicial branch has granted immunity essentially giving carte blanche to the executive. Without equal branches providing checks and balances, you've just ceded power the Constitution requi…

The system has specific, well-defined checks and balances. For example, Congress can limit the executive’s control over spending by enacting specific appropriations bills with concrete line items. But it hasn’t done so for decades. It has done things like appropriate single $1.7 billion line items for USAID, leaving it to the executive’s discretion how to spend it with only the vaguest guidelines. Congress having don…

> And your point about immunity is misinformed. The Supreme Court held that the President has immunity for official acts.

We'll have to agree to disagree here. You'll never convince me that a phone call from a candidate trying to convince someone to "find" extra votes is an official act of office. Nor is assembling a league of fake electors because the official ones will not bend the knee

Re: Everyone at NSF overseeing the Platforms for Wireless Experimentation is gone

#310

Post by hedora »

epistasis wrote: post #13
apsec112 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of federal spending goes to the military (including Veterans Affairs), Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and debt interest. Everything else doesn't matter much. This is especially true given that Republicans will probably increase the deficit; any money saved will go to tax cuts for the rich, and then some.

For example: > The Senate on Friday forged ahead with plans to give the military an additional $150 billion in spending even as the Pentagon seeks to make sweeping changes and reductions in its budget. Senators voted 52-48 in favor of a budget resolution that will unlock $340 billion in spending for U.S.-Mexico border security, energy independence, Coast Guard modernization and military investments while mandating cu…

Note that Clinton balanced the budget while also funding stuff like the NSF. His term ended with the dot com boom, which was clearly a long term win for the US economy.
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