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Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?

economist.com

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Re: Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?

#301

Post by rayiner »

oa335 wrote: post #272
rayiner wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What other laws are there that might limit his conduct? I’m of the understanding that where we are now is the only potential check on Presidents going forward is impeachment and removal from office. It’s a blunt instrument, but apparently there are no other applicable mechanisms. The primary check on the President is elections, not “the law.” Secondarily, there’s impeachment, and Congress’s power of the purse. Thos…

> You won’t find anywhere in those primary sources where the founders envisioned some “rule of law” where private litigants use the court to micromanage executive policy. Marbury vs Madison established the judiciaries authority to review actions of the executive. That was in 1803. Regarding rule of law, in that opinion: > When the heads of the departments of the Government are the political or confidential officers o…

Marbury versus Madison:

1) Isn’t part of the founding sources I mentioned. It was quite controversial at the time.

2) Stands for exactly the opposite of what you’re arguing. Marbury goes to great lengths to disclaim any authority over executive policymaking and discretion, and limit courts to compelling executive officers to act only when the duties are specifically assigned by law and ministerial:

> This is not a proceeding which may be varied if the judgment of the Executive shall suggest one more eligible, but is a precise course accurately marked out by law, and is to be strictly pursued. It is the duty of the Secretary of State to conform to the law, and in this he is an officer of the United States, bound to obey the laws. He acts, in this respect, as has been very properly stated at the bar, under the authority of law, and not by the instructions of the President. It is a ministerial act which the law enjoins on a particular officer for a particular purpose.

And even after determining that delivery of the already executed commission is a ministerial act, the Court went out of its way to invoke a jurisdictional escape hatch to avoid actually enjoining an executive officer. A fair application of Marbury would preclude the sweeping powers courts have asserted to micromanage executive action in response to private litigation.

In Marbury, the court ruled that Marbury had already been appointed when the previous president signed his commission, and the only thing that remained was the purely ministerial act of the secretary of state delivering the signed letter that was sitting in the president’s desk. But even then, the Court found a way to avoid compelling the secretary of state to actually deliver the commission! How would the Marbury court view the prospect of a district court ordering the president to turn around military planes being used to deport an admitted El Salvadoran citizen? Or district courts ordering the President to reach out to a foreign country’s president to demand the return of that foreign country’s citizen! The Marbury court wouldn’t have dreamed of it!

What Marbury stands for is that the judicial branch can declare the legality of laws and executive actions, but should bend over backwards to avoid actually compelling the executive to perform any action.

Re: Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?

#302

Post by SR2Z »

gamblor956 wrote: post #279
rayiner wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So if it decides to spend $X on something specific, it has to be spent on whatever that something is. The President doesn't have discretion in that case. But the Congress never did that. You won't find an appropriations bill where Congress allocated $X to Harvard and $Y to Princeton, etc. In fact, it did the opposite. Under Title VI, it empowered the executive branch to withhold money based on civil rights violatio…

Right, under Title VI. Trump is not using Title VI to justify withholding federal funding. He's just withholding federal funding and his minions are coming up with the justification after the fact. And even then, it's insufficient, because Title VI requires an investigation and a fair amount of procedure.

This is one of the stupider things this administration does. They have the legal power to do lots of the things they're doing, but they are too incompetent to dot their is and cross their ts.

Who knew that driving off everyone who was good at their job would make the administration less competent?

Re: Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?

#303

Post by SR2Z »

SoftTalker wrote: post #170
ok_dad wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact, when Congress passes a budget, it’s actually a law that must be executed by the executive. There are actually other laws against impoundment and against the executive changing the budget. Trump is literally breaking the law but no one really cares to discuss that anymore since the gish gallop has be so quick this term.

AIUI Congress has not passed a budget in a long time. They pass "continuing resolutions" and they fund broad categories of spending and leave the details up to the funded entities (which then falls under the executive branch). If Congress wants to fund something specific, they need to pass a law or budget that names that specific thing and how much they are appropriating. They aren't doing that.

There are many situations where Congress has actually specified in detail where the money should go. These are also being ignored.

Re: Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?

#304

Post by DrillShopper »

rayiner wrote: post #298
DrillShopper wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If President didn’t have immunity for official acts, Trump could easily have relied on that broad statute to prosecute him for opening the border and thus “impairing” the function of ICE Trump still wants to do this and the court will let him because you have to be incredibly naive or willingly ignorant to think that that this Supreme Court will apply the laws equally without regard to political party. > t would’ve…

> Oh no, the President would have to follow the same laws as everyone else, how horrible “Laws” aren’t magic. If you could just have “laws” and trust prosecutors to enforce them fairly and neutrally, then the entire constitutional structure, with three branches and checks and balances, is pointless. You would just have prosecutors as basically the government’s “microkernel” and then the other three branches on top. T…

Prosecutors enforce the laws by prosecuting. That's the function of the executive branch. It's in the name - EXECUTIVE branch.

The check on prosecutorial power lies both with the Judicial branch and, in cases of a jury trial, the People. Prosecutors are not judge, jury, and executioner.

The Legislative branch gets a say by writing, passing, repealing, or amending laws.

So the three branches check each other, no need to "just trust me, bro" with prosecutors.

If the President cannot faithfully execute the laws without BREAKING them then that either means the Judicial branch should strike down the laws that are preventing that or the Legislative branch should pass laws that contain a carve out for the President. The President is not above the law, so the half-measure of the Supreme Court deciding that they are in official acts is both ahistoric and enabling despotism.

Re: Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?

#305

Post by gamblor956 »

rayiner wrote: post #293
gamblor956 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not wrong. If the President does not follow a federal law, he is not performing an official act, and he is not immune from criminal liability. If he chooses to continue to ignore the law, the solution isn't the courts. It's the Second Amendment, which was added to the Bill of Rights as a check on exactly this (though the Founders intended for it to be exercised through the States' militias, not the citizens di…

So we should’ve used the 2A because Biden ignored immigration law?

Biden didn't ignore immigration law. He executed it. He arrested more immigrants than Trump did during his first term. Republicans simply disagreed about how he was executing the laws because they wanted political talking points (and notably at Trump's urging, shot down a number of proposed immigration reforms that would have reduced illegal immigration, cut down on the asylum loophole, and make it easier to deport immigrants with criminal records...Laken Riley was killed by an illegal immigrant who was still in the country because Republicans blocked the laws that would have deported him.).

Trump isn't following the laws at all. He's simply issuing "executive orders" without regard to the powers or limitations of the executive as stated by the Constitution or the U.S. Code. Almost every single one of his executive orders during his second term violates a Constitutional prohibition in some way, and now that the initial shock to the system is over you're seeing judges overturn almost all of his orders...Even judges appointed by Trump during his first term are starting to overturn his executive orders.

So Trump's response was to call for the arrest of these judges. And to hint that violence would be appropriate way of removing them from.

What's good for the goose is good for the gander. If Trump gets killed by a mob this term, it's going to be because he kept suggesting that violence was the way to deal with his opponents.

Re: Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?

#306

Post by rayiner »

DrillShopper wrote: post #304
rayiner wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh no, the President would have to follow the same laws as everyone else, how horrible “Laws” aren’t magic. If you could just have “laws” and trust prosecutors to enforce them fairly and neutrally, then the entire constitutional structure, with three branches and checks and balances, is pointless. You would just have prosecutors as basically the government’s “microkernel” and then the other three branches on top. T…

Prosecutors enforce the laws by prosecuting. That's the function of the executive branch. It's in the name - EXECUTIVE branch. The check on prosecutorial power lies both with the Judicial branch and, in cases of a jury trial, the People. Prosecutors are not judge, jury, and executioner. The Legislative branch gets a say by writing, passing, repealing, or amending laws. So the three branches check each other, no need…

> Prosecutors are not judge, jury, and executioner.

In practice they are. Criminal laws are written extremely broadly. And as they say, prosecutors can indict a ham sandwich. Then all it takes is putting the case in front of a favorable jury: trying a republican in new york city or a democrat in rural iowa. In that way, a handful of people can undo the will of the electorate.

The framers would have easily understood this. At the time, the states were trying to kill the federal government. You think they envisioned say a Virginia prosecutor trying the federal president before a Virginia judge and jury?

> The President is not above the law.

But not every legal wrong has a legal remedy!

Re: Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?

#307

Post by DrillShopper »

prasadjoglekar wrote: post #166
DrillShopper wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At some level, someone needs to have discretion on which grants to award and not award Then that person should not be a politician or political appointee who judges on the merits and not on the votes it will bring.

If the funds are disbursed from the public Treasury, it is very much a political decision. You can put some intermediary bureaucrats to create a face of objectivity, but it's a political decision at it's core.

Funds duly allocated by the Legislature, which means they must be spent in service of what the Legislature allocated them for. Presidents cannot impound funds since the Impoundment Control Act, so either they need to spend them or convince Congress to change that allocation.

We can argue about the basis for terminating the grants until the cows come home, but this administration through DOGE has made it clear that they're not otherwise going to be spending this money, which is something the president cannot do.

Clawing back and terminating grants without due process is what dictators do; it's the opposite of what supporting and defending the Constitution is.

Re: Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?

#308

Post by mattlutze »

treis wrote: post #131
mattlutze wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too many people think these are funds to just run the universities. By and large, what is being withheld are funds for research. Federally-funded academic science often looks like: 1. The university + government fund/run a project 2. Project creates new knowledge (cool!) 3. The government gets a pretty awesome license to use that knowledge 4. The government more often than not gives that knowledge away (or offers gre…

This is somewhat disingenuous. Something like half of the grant is handed over to the University as overhead. Much of that is legit to cover things like labs but a lot of it goes to a cover a massive amount of administrative bloat. Also, nobody really objects to the research that leads directly to stuff private industry can use. That's not what people want to cut.

>Also, nobody really objects to the research that leads directly to stuff private industry can use. That's not what people want to cut.

That's what they're cutting.

Re: Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?

#309

Post by ok_dad »

SoftTalker wrote: post #170
ok_dad wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact, when Congress passes a budget, it’s actually a law that must be executed by the executive. There are actually other laws against impoundment and against the executive changing the budget. Trump is literally breaking the law but no one really cares to discuss that anymore since the gish gallop has be so quick this term.

AIUI Congress has not passed a budget in a long time. They pass "continuing resolutions" and they fund broad categories of spending and leave the details up to the funded entities (which then falls under the executive branch). If Congress wants to fund something specific, they need to pass a law or budget that names that specific thing and how much they are appropriating. They aren't doing that.

It really does seem like Congress has wanted a dictatorial executive for a while doesn’t it? I wasn’t aware they had shirked their duty for so long.

Re: Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?

#310

Post by daft_pink »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #169
daft_pink wrote: post #48

I feel things like Universities and Hospitals are some of the most questionable non-profits in existence. They operate and appear as for profits businesses to most people.

There are no owners (shareholders) getting dividends, is the major difference.

i just am not sure that the lack of shareholders is a reasonable reason why hosptitals and universities should have non-profit status

they appear to be operating as a large business that try to bring in more revenue than expenses and don’t seem focused on the public good and seem to have other motivations.

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