701–710 of 1001 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Making it easier for states to ban abortion is good for individual liberty?
It's about giving power back to the states, and in turn the people. So a state and its people would have the power to decide on something like abortion rather than a single centralized leviathan-authority.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If congress disagreed with this interpretation, they could pass a law explicitly ruling it out. The power of the supreme court in this regard relies on the fact that congress has great difficulty passing any law at all, and thus whatever interpretation given by the supreme court is likely to persist. >If you look at the conservative majority opinions, you’ll find that indeed, it’s about the relevant legal issues, ie.…
> If congress disagreed with this interpretation, they could pass a law explicitly ruling it out. But that would be backwards and wrong (like a default-allow firewall rule).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So the EPA is kneecapped since they have to go through the most ineffective and hyper partisan congress since the founding of the country.
Well there was once a Congress that passed the Missouri Compromise which institutionalized hyper-partisanship and another that was so ineffective its successor Congress literally fell apart when several States seceded from the Union and those States then went to War with the Union. So, cut the hyperbole. Partisanship has always been a political reality. The EPA is capped to the powers that Congress gave it, and does…
Emphasis mine: > The case against the EPA was brought by West Virginia on behalf of 18 other mostly Republican-led states and some of the nation's largest coal companies. > > They were challenging whether the agency has the power to regulate planet-warming emissions for state-wide power sectors or just individual power plants. > > These 19 states were worried their power sectors would be regulated and they would be f…
if that's your goal, then we should be investing in nuclear energy and putting more pressure on countries like China and India
India's greenhouse gas emissions are 50% of those of the US. Per capita they are at 12% of the US.
BTW, per capita is the correct comparison because the atmosphere does not care about arbitrary boundaries. To illustrate imaging a world with just 2 countries, one emitting X per year and one emitting 2X per year. The population of first county is P and the population of the second country is 2P. In this example we'll assume little trade between the two countries.
That world needs to get down to a total of 2X per year. If we do thing per country that means each country gets to emit X per year. So the first country is fine where they are and the second country needs to cut emissions in half.
To the people of the first country they just continue their normal lifestyle, which generates X/P emissions per capita. The second country has to go from X/P per capita to 1/2 X/P. They will need to make big changes that will likely greatly reduce their standard of living.
But then separatist parties, upset with such a big blow to the standard of living, come to power in the second country, and it splits into 9 separate countries, each with population 2P/9.
In this new 10 country world, each country's share of the global 2X emission budget is 2/10 X. To meet this the first country has to cut per capita emissions to 20% of what they were before, requiring drastic changes in their economy and lifestyles.
The 9 new countries on the other hand only have to each cut per capita emissions to 90% of what they were before. Their standards of living don't have to change much.
...and now there are strong incentives in the first country to split!
This only ends when you reach a configuration where every country has the same per capita allowance.
Trade complicates it, because now emissions in one country might be going toward doing things for the other country and so should be counted toward the other country's emission budget. That can be dealt with by something like a cap and trade system so countries can trade some of their emissions budget to cover emissions done for them in other countries.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>I really don't like having this unelected councils of wizards who get wield god-like "authority" but you are OK with the 'unelected council of wizards' at the EPA wielding their god-like authority instead?
Congress delegated their authority to the EPA. Congress is empowered to retain that authority and they're empowered to overrule any EPA regulation they disagree with. Congress retains all the power. When it comes to the Supreme Court - that's it. Congress can't do anything about Supreme Court rulings. Your comparison of the EPA to the Supreme Court is misguided.
Headlines about Supreme Court cases are almost uniformly misleading, because they suggest the Court is making decisions on policy issues rather than legal issues. The very first words of the opinion, on p. 2, make clear that the legal issue before the Court is very different: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-1530_n758.pdf The Clean Air Act does not purport to give the EPA blanket regulatory authority ov…
But it's not a major new problem. The Congress that established the EPA granted the "stretching" along with it, otherwise it would take an act of Congress to determine the color of the Post-its.
The new rulings are farcical zealotry. Apparently, the only people capable of making decisions died 100 years ago and anything we've learned after the Civil War doesn't matter.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Making it easier for states to ban abortion is good for individual liberty?
It also makes it easier for states to expand access to abortion, including expanding it up through the 3rd trimester. Just today, CA put a Constitutional amendment on the ballot in November to allow up to the final minute abortions. That ruling gave power back to the people and state legislatures. It benefit blue states as much as red.
Everyone stating this is a good thing because it's not the Supreme Court's job to do xyz are conveniently ignoring the fact these decisions are being made due to tribalism, not out of some concern for rule of law.
Headlines about Supreme Court cases are almost uniformly misleading, because they suggest the Court is making decisions on policy issues rather than legal issues. The very first words of the opinion, on p. 2, make clear that the legal issue before the Court is very different: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-1530_n758.pdf The Clean Air Act does not purport to give the EPA blanket regulatory authority ov…
The headlines aren’t entirely wrong. If you look at the conservative majority opinions, you’ll find that indeed, it’s about the relevant legal issues, ie. what the law actually says. On the other hand, if you read liberal dissents, they’re mostly about what they think appropriate policy should be. In this particular case, the majority opinion starts off by quoting the relevant statute and analyzing its meaning, where…
This doesn't accurately represent the present situation on this or really any topic. It makes is sound like members of Congress simply don't care. Unless the filibuster is removed or reformed, a party wishing to legislate on any controversial issue needs a super majority in the Senate to pass the legislation just in that chamber of Congress. They also need control of the House and the presidency. There is plenty of political will in the Democratic caucus to pass this legislation, but due to gerrymandering in the House and the inherently unrepresentative nature of the Senate they cannot get enough votes to pass legislation, however much they may wish to, on the rare occasions the stars align and they have control over both the executive and legislative branches. The Republicans need control over only one of these three choke points to stop legislation. And now that they have a generation of control over the Supreme Court, and the Court has demonstrated that they regard legal argument as post facto justification for political decisions, the Democrats are well and truly screwed. There may be some Republicans who secretly would like to do something about any one of the major catastrophes facing the nation and the world, and some may claim this in public, but because their co-partisans are making total political war on non-conservatives at the moment they can't actually do anything or they face the mob.
Basically, "political will" isn't the issue. It's our crappily designed "democracy" mixed with total political war, strident propaganda, and millennialists who are happy to let the world go to hell because they think they're going to heaven.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, this is a win for republican democracy, and a loss for "governance by experts."
> Yes, this is a win for republican democracy […] It is a win for the anti-government minority: * https://www.vox.com/2018/9/12/17850980/democracy-tyranny-min... * https://harpers.org/archive/2017/03/tyranny-of-the-minority/ * https://www.orlandosentinel.com/opinion/guest-commentary/os-... * https://www.politico.com/story/2009/03/the-tyranny-of-the-mi...