Earlier quoted context omitted.
sic semper tyrannis
Hopefully we never get there. But America should suffer no kings.
This executive order just brought us there.
"Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order
691–700 of 1001 posts
Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order
#692In general, people are going to interpret this EO with their own lens. Unsurprisingly, reasonable people may disagree on the merits of the EO as a whole. However this part of the EO is pretty concerning > 'The President and the Attorney General, subject to the President’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch' and later > 'No employee of the executive bra…
> setting up the president as the sole power center is an inherently unstable system. Autocracies can be very stable... for a while depending on how much people are able to protest (or not). You could argue that N Korea has been "stable" (from the standpoint of the ruling family) for over 60 years. > There is a very good reason why the founding fathers built in an elaborate system of checks and balances. Sure that's…
All of the checks and balances are kind of predicated on the idea that each arm of government who actually bother to protect their own powers, and use those powers to rein in misbehaviour of the other branches.
But both congress and the supreme courts seem to have decided that personal ideological principles are more important than the maintenance of the U.S. democratic foundations. The Supreme Court has basically ruled that the president is above the law, and congress has refused to use its powers of impeachment to prevent the president from running roughshod over congresses laws.
Nixon wasn’t shamed into doing anything, he was threatened with very credible impeachment, and decided that getting out fast on his own two feet, was better than being taken out slow by the ankles via impeachment. But the modern Republicans have demonstrated time and time again, that as long as they’re “winning”, they don’t give two hoots how much damage they do to US democracy.
Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order
#693In general, people are going to interpret this EO with their own lens. Unsurprisingly, reasonable people may disagree on the merits of the EO as a whole. However this part of the EO is pretty concerning > 'The President and the Attorney General, subject to the President’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch' and later > 'No employee of the executive bra…
Ostensibly, this EO is meant to remove power from bureaucratically controlled agencies in the government. The right have been complaining that real power has been usurped from the institutions mentioned in the constitution, and centered in a professional managerial class, that works below the surface, and has no culpability or exposure to voters.
That's all massively up for debate obviously, but this EO seems to be aimed square at that "problem".
Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order
#694Earlier quoted context omitted.
I took it to mean that agencies no longer have the final say in interpretations of law when it comes to exercising executive power. So for instance if ATF says a banana is a machine gun and the president says "yes", then barring an act of Congress clarifying, it is. I don't see how you go from there to the end of judicial review?
Naive interpretations like this one, of bad faith actions is how we get there. This same assumption of good faith was wholly present in peoples' responses to project 2025 prior to the election. They are not acting in good faith. Try restating the problem: Why is this EO being issued? What problem, other than judicial review, does it solve for the executive branch? EDIT: For those who do not think this contributes any…
> What problem, other than judicial review, does it solve for the executive branch?
It’s fairly obvious on its face the concern of the EO is not judicial review but about agencies that nominally are past of the branch the President heads determining interpretations of law contrary to what the head of the executive desires.
And, it does genuinely seem weird to have an executive branch where the head of that branch doesn’t actually control things.
The negative reaction is entirely because of the current executive head, but no one would bat an eye if this were Barack Obama reigning in some executive agency interpreting, say, immigration law in opposition to DACA.
Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order
#695In general, people are going to interpret this EO with their own lens. Unsurprisingly, reasonable people may disagree on the merits of the EO as a whole. However this part of the EO is pretty concerning > 'The President and the Attorney General, subject to the President’s supervision and control, shall provide authoritative interpretations of law for the executive branch' and later > 'No employee of the executive bra…
Even with a highly sympathetic Supreme Court it is hard to imagine this EO standing. It goes against the foundation of not only US law, but couple of hundred years of international democratic tradition in which allegiance is not to a person, but to the nation itself. US civil servants and military alike swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution not the president or their commander. Illegal orders are not o…
> It goes against the foundation of not only US law, but couple of hundred years of international democratic tradition in which allegiance is not to a person, but to the nation itself.
Yes. It does.
But there is an older Big Man tradition where loyalty to the nation is indistinguishable from loyalty to the person, the Big Man).
I naively thought that that was a stage that democracies passed through (we see it a lot in the South Pacific - the Big Man.
So sad. So terribly sad. We all like to tease Americans for being this and that, but now it feels like punching down.
Good luck to you all - Dog bless.
Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order
#696Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know this sounds corny, but people are the recourse. We are part of the checks and balances. Whether it is as overt as a soldier refusing to follow an illegal order knowing they are risking court marshal, or as clandestine as mid-level bureaucrat slow-walking damaging policies, or people actually voting in local-to-national elections. Democracy is not a passive form of government.
> I know this sounds corny, but people are the recourse. We are part of the checks and balances. By "we" here, it seems you mean bureaucrats. But what if your opinions, as an individual, unelected bureaucrat are bad? I don't care what a mid-level bureaucrat's opinions on what policies are damaging is. He could be a neo-nazi for all I know. Constitutionally, we should go with the opinions of the people who won an elec…
I read that as an all-inclusive "we" and not so narrow as "bureaucrats". The examples given are not exhaustive, if you have an imsgination.
There are many ways to fight for what you believe in. Look up mutual aid, participatory democracy, and the histories of women's suffrage and the fight in the USA for equal rights for Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (that fight is nowhere near over).
Start with loving yourself, extent that to others, and if you feel like you're teetering, lean on others and find your balance again.
If I'm the guy guarding the door (and I have been), I damn well make my own decisions to the best of my ability, to where I would be willing to explain the what and why of my actions.
Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order
#697Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If power stays in the same hands, the system can be very stable - and not in a good way. I don't think it actually can be that stable. I think I see what people are getting at when they say this, but it seems to me that authoritarian governments are generally quite unstable, because power never stays in the same hands. Power always changes hands, because we are mortal. Non-authoritarian systems are built to handle…
Look at Venezuela. Chavez was kind of a thug, but he was also immensely popular with the commons. The people supported him, in a lot of his goals, and he was able to have a light touch, on a lot of the authoritarian stuff. When he stepped aside, and Maduro took over, Chavez had established what was basically a dictatorship, and Maduro took the reins. However, Maduro does not have the base support that Chavez had, and…
> it's highly likely that a successor will use the power badly.
You will not need to wait long, but you do not really need to wait at all.
Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order
#698Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even with a highly sympathetic Supreme Court it is hard to imagine this EO standing. It goes against the foundation of not only US law, but couple of hundred years of international democratic tradition in which allegiance is not to a person, but to the nation itself. US civil servants and military alike swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution not the president or their commander. Illegal orders are not o…
> It goes against the foundation of not only US law, but couple of hundred years of international democratic tradition in which allegiance is not to a person, but to the nation itself. Yes. It does. But there is an older Big Man tradition where loyalty to the nation is indistinguishable from loyalty to the person, the Big Man). I naively thought that that was a stage that democracies passed through (we see it a lot i…
fellow Blindboy listener, and/or is "dog bless" common elsewhere, too?
And yeah, it's about time we (I'm from the USA) got off our high horse and accepted we're a collection of humans with cultures, traditions, languages, habits, and messy traumatic history like everywhere else.
Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order
#699Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even with a highly sympathetic Supreme Court it is hard to imagine this EO standing. It goes against the foundation of not only US law, but couple of hundred years of international democratic tradition in which allegiance is not to a person, but to the nation itself. US civil servants and military alike swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution not the president or their commander. Illegal orders are not o…
This EO eliminates the concept of an illegal order since the law would be whatever the executive interprets it to be. How do you come to that to conclusion, especially in the context of the EO? This EO doesn't change the Constitution's requirement that the President "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed". I'm not a lawyer but I would interpret this EO to say "it is the job of the President to execute the la…
> "these subordinates must still execute based on the President's interpretation, not their own".
Yes, this is a problem, because it would mean that if the President (for simplicity, the order also specified the AG, but it doesn't really change the issue) had an opinion on the law, and the courts issued an order to an executive officer such as a department head in a lawsuit contrary to that interpretation, the department head would remain bound by the Presidential interpretation until the President relented, since the meaning and effect of a court order is no less a matter of interpreting the law than the meaning and effect of a regulation, statute, or Constitutional provision.
Sec. 7 is so ridiculous on its face that, while I am sure the Administration seriously does want to impose as much of this control as it can get away with, I think it was largely included as a lightning rod to distract from the rest of the order moving control of all independent agencies internal spending allocations into OMB and the Executive Office of the President and otherwise purporting to transfer effective control of the functions assigned by law to the independent agencies to be exercised by their boards into the White House.
Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order
#700Earlier quoted context omitted.
Putting aside every instinct I have to join the choir voicing every issue I have with blaming the victim and cozying up to the agitator, or to challenge your charitable view of Trump's motivations... I'm genuinely interested to hear your take on the likely and potential repercussions of rewarding Russia/Putin for their aggression. What makes you confident that they won't reasonably perceive this outcome as tacit perm…
>What makes you confident that they won't reasonably perceive this outcome as tacit permission to start coming for other territory? Putin has approximately zero interest in territories and annexations. The entire war with Ukraine is exclusively a reaction to the Maidan in 2014, an attempt to prevent something similar in Russia. Talks about "rewarding Russia" - is literally Putin's propaganda to hide his complete fail…
> Putin has approximately zero interest in territories and annexations.
Frankly, that's just horseshit.
He annexed Ukraine. He's taken territory in South Ossetia. His actions in Ukraine are a response to the lack of international community stopping him in his prior expansionist plays, and he will continue to push the boundary until he is stopped. Accepting Putin's claims about his motivations at face value is the height of naivety.