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So free speech is not a constitutionnal right if I follow your argument? You sound quite scary right now... (and I am not even concerned, not american)
What's happening inside the NIH and NSF
541–550 of 1001 posts
Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF
#542This is a coup and we are calmly debating budgets. Debating the % of budget and how useful organization x is and if y will still get grant money, and, and, and... All of this is ignoring the big elephant in the room that there is one single person deciding everything that happens in government as if they were a king. The right thing to be debating is how we can stop this from continuing and how we can hold those resp…
Funny how democracy works, I recall an election recently not a coup. Government is not a monolith, this isn’t the action of one single person, but the result of tens of millions people voting for change (that you disagree with).
People voting for an elected official is different than that elected official breaking the law. People can't vote to break the law. They can vote to rewrite the law, sometimes, depending on how the law is written. Often in the US we vote for elected officials who write law and then the elected president who enforces the law.
So whether tens of millions of people voted for Trump doesn't mean Trump can just disregard law because people liked him and maybe even liked that he said he would disregard the law. As far as I know, that's not how the rule of law works in representative democracies.
Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF
#543Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes let's call a spade a spade, it's a coup. Trump is passing as much stuff as quickly as he can to bypass the separation of powers while they catch up.
not really a coup, its a default. US government is already using pension fund money to pay its bills since early January (aka special measures), the interest on their national debt is already more than they collect in taxes.
This is what i never understand. Okay, not enough money, soooo _tax more_. Or at least stop giving tax cuts to the richest people in the history of the planet? Like, implement a 5% tax on their wealth, and just fix all the problems. We could have services _and_ rich people, we just have to make insanely rich people contribute to our world like we all do to theirs
Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF
#544This is a coup and we are calmly debating budgets. Debating the % of budget and how useful organization x is and if y will still get grant money, and, and, and... All of this is ignoring the big elephant in the room that there is one single person deciding everything that happens in government as if they were a king. The right thing to be debating is how we can stop this from continuing and how we can hold those resp…
I had an idea in my head about what the word "coup" means and why it is bad and I'm struggling to figure out how it applies to this situation (possibly because being no-American I don't get their news).
My understanding is the USA executive is an obscenely powerful position by the standard of the rest of the Western world and they can also delegate that power to accomplish specific objectives.
Is this a coup of Musk against Trump or the executive doing things its not allowed to do or a coup of the executive against the legislature?
(Maybe tabooing (in the rationalist sense) the word "coup" might help...)
Aside: the article paints a very concerning picture about the consequences of contemptuous ignorant imposition of abrupt blanket rules on valuable complex systems. I thank the OP for posting it.
Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF
#545[deleted]
Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF
#546Earlier quoted context omitted.
As far as I can tell, Trump is doing things he openly announced he would do for at least a year. So all of this is either a result of robust public support for his policies, or, (my preferred explanation) an even more robust public repudiation of the only alternative that was put forward by the other party, a candidate famous for dropping out before Iowa in 2020 but somehow was coronated the nominee without any voter…
A simple mental exercise using analogies, might help explain why the current branch of the simulation should be backtracked asap... - Imagine if the president allowed Jeff Bezos to reprogram the Treasury’s payment system as if it were an online shopping cart. - Picture the president authorizing Sam Altman to treat the federal payment system maybe as a live AI experiment. - Envision the president allowing Larry Page t…
Exactly. Voting for someone, even if they say they will break the law, doesn't mean they're allowed to break the law. AFAIK, that's not how representative, constitutional democracies work.
Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF
#547Well, here you are, dear Americans, you all have got a chance now to show the rest of the world that you, of all nations, know how to deal right with the chutzpah in your government that has just dropped the mask of democracy, by leveraging the constitution, the law, the right for protest, peaceful or not, and whatever else that is available to a citizen in such cases.
Because you're not akin to those apathetic passive supporters of their criminals-in-power like Russians and Israelis, are you?
Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF
#548Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes let's call a spade a spade, it's a coup. Trump is passing as much stuff as quickly as he can to bypass the separation of powers while they catch up.
not really a coup, its a default. US government is already using pension fund money to pay its bills since early January (aka special measures), the interest on their national debt is already more than they collect in taxes.
In case anyone was curious, the interest being paid on the national debt is of the order of $1 trillion per year, while the amount collected in taxes (federally only) is of the order of $5.5 trillion per year.
Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF
#549This is a coup and we are calmly debating budgets. Debating the % of budget and how useful organization x is and if y will still get grant money, and, and, and... All of this is ignoring the big elephant in the room that there is one single person deciding everything that happens in government as if they were a king. The right thing to be debating is how we can stop this from continuing and how we can hold those resp…
Funny how democracy works, I recall an election recently not a coup. Government is not a monolith, this isn’t the action of one single person, but the result of tens of millions people voting for change (that you disagree with).
Nobody voted for Elon.
Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF
#550This is a coup and we are calmly debating budgets. Debating the % of budget and how useful organization x is and if y will still get grant money, and, and, and... All of this is ignoring the big elephant in the room that there is one single person deciding everything that happens in government as if they were a king. The right thing to be debating is how we can stop this from continuing and how we can hold those resp…
Funny how democracy works, I recall an election recently not a coup. Government is not a monolith, this isn’t the action of one single person, but the result of tens of millions people voting for change (that you disagree with).
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