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Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

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Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#431

Post by int_19h »

jfengel wrote: post #288
CrossVR wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's how two party systems work Fixed that for you. There are democracies with proportional representation out there. Those have their own problems in forming coalitions, but the parties themselves are much closer aligned with their base.

It comes at the cost of locality, but that's far less important today than it had been in the past. Nobody knows their congressman anyway. I'd really like to give PR systems a try, if for no other reason than to do a reset on the current coalitions. I fear that they will eventually settle down into a pair of coalitions very similar to the current parties, but that leaves us no worse off.

It's not an either-or. In mixed-member proportional system, you still get a representative specifically for your district who can thus argue for its interests. But you also get some people elected on party lists so that the representation as a whole remains proportional to party vote. New Zealand is a good example of the system in practical use.

Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#432

Post by int_19h »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #395
mrguyorama wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>once the Democrats are back in control of at least one house of Congress "Are the democrats magically going to be able to have 100% control of the government despite only holding a tiny majority in the lower house? If not, I'm going to yet again blame them for a failure that is actually just the constitution working as it clearly states" The US system is not designed to give democrats any power by holding a small ma…

> Are the democrats magically going to be able to have 100% control of the government despite only holding a tiny majority in the lower house? They're not supposed to have 100% control of the government. Nobody is. They're supposed to prevent the Republicans from doing dumb stuff, just like the Republicans are supposed to prevent them from doing different dumb stuff because they have different constituencies. Only wh…

"The mistake has proceeded from not attending with due care to the mischiefs that may be occasioned by obstructing the progress of government at certain critical seasons. When the concurrence of a large number is required by the Constitution to the doing of any national act, we are apt to rest satisfied that all is safe, because nothing improper will be likely TO BE DONE, but we forget how much good may be prevented, and how much ill may be produced, by the power of hindering the doing what may be necessary, and of keeping affairs in the same unfavorable posture in which they may happen to stand at particular periods."

Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#433

Post by int_19h »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #375
fch42 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes, not to do something can be the right (morally, technically, economically, ...) thing to do. You don't always need to present the other cheek to do right. Neither do you always need to retaliate. Nord Stream finally made it clear to Germany that "convenience" isn't a durable energy market strategy. It's not correct though that Germany has done "nothing". The suspects are pursued by Germany, https://www.dw.c…

What happened was beyond reprehensible. If the winter of 2022 was not unusually warm and the gas stockpiles had emptied, not only would the entire Eurozone (350 million people) have plunged into a massive economic crisis, but people would literally die. Convenience, and cheap gas, was definitely a good strategy. Up until the point where our ally, the USA, would try to get Ukraine to NATO, provoke Russia to invade, an…

How many Ukrainians are you willing to let Russians kill in return for cheap gas?

Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#434

Post by dragonwriter »

jfengel wrote: post #288
CrossVR wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's how two party systems work Fixed that for you. There are democracies with proportional representation out there. Those have their own problems in forming coalitions, but the parties themselves are much closer aligned with their base.

It comes at the cost of locality, but that's far less important today than it had been in the past. Nobody knows their congressman anyway. I'd really like to give PR systems a try, if for no other reason than to do a reset on the current coalitions. I fear that they will eventually settle down into a pair of coalitions very similar to the current parties, but that leaves us no worse off.

> It comes at the cost of locality,

It need not; you can have more proportional representative in a district based system (and still also have vote-for-person), using multimember districts with a system like Single-Transferrable Vote.

You can also get finer grained proportionality with Mixed Member Proportional which combines a district-based system (either single-member or a multimember proportional system described above) with top-up representation from party lists.

MMP would require Constitutional change in the US; but multimember districts with STV (in states with more than one seat, as well as increasing the size of the House so more states would have more than one seat) can be done by Congress without Constitutional amendment.

Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#435

Post by dragonwriter »

GetTheFacts wrote: post #380
pjc50 wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The legislature Congress 53/45 R; House 219/215 R > creates the laws, the executive Donald Trump (R) > executes the laws, and the judiciary SCOTUS (5-4 R) > interprets the laws. So Republicans create, execute, interpret, and enforce the laws. Congratulations on discovering how the party system works. Guess you're Big Poland (PiS) now. You can watch this on the news: Fox (R-Murdoch), CBS (R-Weiss), or read about it…

>> The legislature >Congress 53/45 R; House 219/215 R It's the Senate , not "Congress". Colloquially, "Congress" usually refers to the House of Representatives. >SCOTUS (5-4 R) > interprets the laws. Actually, it's 6-3, not 5-4. I get that you're not from or live in the US. Please understand, I'm not trying to insult or demean you. But you're making statements that are not true. I believe the term is "FTFY." And you'…

> Colloquially, "Congress" usually refers to the House of Representatives.

"Congress" is the name of the whole bicameral legislature, not either one of the houses, though "Congressman" or "Congresswoman" refers to a member of the House of Representatives.

Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#436

Post by dragonwriter »

koolba wrote: post #318
Gormo wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More to the point, it's why our political system does not give unilateral control over most of this stuff to the executive branch. That's the reason why the courts are regularly ruling against the administration -- they're pretending to legal authority they don't have in the first place.

> That's the reason why the courts are regularly ruling against the administration -- they're pretending to legal authority they don't have in the first place. Lower courts. The track record of this administration at the SCOTUS is 90%.

> The track record of this administration at the SCOTUS is 90%.

Its not quite that high of cases (21 out of 25 where the administration is a party in 2025, per [0], with one additional loss since the beginning of 2026 (Tangipa v. Newsom [1] seeking an injunction barring the CA redistricting map, where the administration wasn't in the heading but was a party as a plaintiff-intervenor.) Note that all of the decided cases at issue are interim orders (orders concerning actions before the final decision on the case, where the Administration either wants an injunction or wants to not have an injunction against it, mainly), and reading the track record of the cases that actually get decided on the interim docket neglects the effect of the Administration's losses there on which cases it could appeal it chooses not to so they never reach the docket at all, as argued in [2].

[0] https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/01/looking-back-at-2025-the-...

[1] https://www.scotusblog.com/cases/case-files/tangipa-v-newsom...

[2] https://www.scotusblog.com/interim-docket-blog/#the-federal-...

Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#437

Post by dragonwriter »

randomfrogs wrote: post #381
koolba wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's the reason why the courts are regularly ruling against the administration -- they're pretending to legal authority they don't have in the first place. Lower courts. The track record of this administration at the SCOTUS is 90%.

The Republican majority on the SCOTUS announced that Trump is immune from all laws, which is insane and not supported by the Constitution in any way, but directly lead to what's happening. If you tell somebody they won't ever be held accountable for breaking laws, why follow them (except for your internal moral compass, and we've established that Trump doesn't have one).

> The Republican majority on the SCOTUS announced that Trump is immune from all laws

This is factually untrue; the Court, in Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593 (2024), held that the President has:

(1) absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for exercises of core constitutional powers, (2) presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for all official acts, (3) no immunity from criminal prosecution for unofficial acts.

This is—while still problematic—very far from the President being “immune to all laws”.

Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#438

Post by dragonwriter »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #349
array_key_first wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're interpreting the law based on how much they can contort the constitution to divert as much power to King Trump as possible while not completely thrashing their credibility.

Importantly, they're using the shadow docket so that they don't need to decide officially, as that would bind their hands with a future Democratic administration. Like, whatever happened to the Major Questions Doctrine?

> Importantly, they're using the shadow docket so that they don't need to decide officially

The Supreme Court doesn't choose which docket to “use”; the interim docket (sometimes calls the “emergency docket” or “shadow docket”) is where applications for immediate action on cases that have not reached a final decision in lower court are handled. Decisions on the interim docket are more likely to be unsigned orders, but that's as true of the ones the administration has lost as the ones it has won.

Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#439

Post by eucyclos »

int_19h wrote: post #430
eucyclos wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having seen student politics with and without parties - my student union had them, my engineering society banned them - I'm convinced that it's not bad voters that ruin democracies but political parties. Parties need to simplify their messages to get buy in, and promote a 'team first' over 'issues first' mentality in their members. They're anathema to principles of honest debate and compromise.

The problem is that the side that organizes always wins over the side that does not. And it's very difficult to ban political organization (which is ultimately what parties are) in a way that is actually enforceable. The American founding fathers were mostly of the opinion that political parties are bad and should be avoided if republic is to stand. Yet they found themselves organizing into parties before the ink was…

This is all true, but I think the issue is upstream of where you're pointing - democracy declines when the goal becomes to win rather than to serve the constituents. Parties are a way to win and they also reinforce the idea that winning is the goal.

I'm not sure as to solutions but I don't think they're impossible - something like an inoculation of the entire political class against the memeset that prioritizes winning over serving the constituents. Then if an unofficial party tries to seize power in a system that officially disallows them, the majority is already primed to respond in an organized way.

Re: Court orders restart of all US offshore wind power construction

#440

Post by 4gotunameagain »

int_19h wrote: post #433
4gotunameagain wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happened was beyond reprehensible. If the winter of 2022 was not unusually warm and the gas stockpiles had emptied, not only would the entire Eurozone (350 million people) have plunged into a massive economic crisis, but people would literally die. Convenience, and cheap gas, was definitely a good strategy. Up until the point where our ally, the USA, would try to get Ukraine to NATO, provoke Russia to invade, an…

How many Ukrainians are you willing to let Russians kill in return for cheap gas?

No Ukrainian would've died if they hadn't flirted with Nato.
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