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"Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

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Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

#741

Post by deadso »

timewizard wrote: post #404
tmpz22 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a false narrative that Obama was soft on immigration and even earned the nickname “deporter in chief”. In some ways he was even harder than Bush during the post 9/11 response. www.migrationpolicy.org/article/obama-record-deportations-deporter-chief-or-not It’s astounding the regularity over the last 100 years that conservatives have used immigration narratives to fire up their base regardless of what statistical…

Obama left office more than a decade ago. Perhaps you should view this through the lens of the Biden administration. It's astounding the regularity that people bring Obama when they want to avoid discussing reality.

The comment you're responding to mentioned Obama because of the comment they were responding to brought it up.

Here's a link for some numbers that include Biden: https://www.newsweek.com/immigrant-deportations-removals-tru...

tl;dr: Biden seems to have deported more than any other president

Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

#742

Post by ncr100 »

ta8645 wrote: post #693
arunabha wrote: post #503

In 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 a…

This is not up for debate. It is settled law.

Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

#743

Post by stickfigure »

losvedir wrote: post #736
ta8645 wrote: post #693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

Right, on its face this is simply more of the "drain the swamp" rhetoric from his first term. The way the EO is written sounds "fine" to my high school civics ears: there's three branches of government, one is the executive branch, and ostensibly the president is the head of that branch. The motivation of the EO was clearly articulated all throughout the campaign that, as you say, even within the executive branch the…

My prediction was that Trump would abandon the Ukrainians and suck up to Putin, and as of today that's right on target. This calibration exercise is not reassuring at all.

Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

#744

Post by funnyAI »

Waterluvian wrote: post #709
timoth3y wrote: post #671

Earlier 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 completely agree, which is why I’m very pessimistic about the outlook. I have no faith that the American public is up to the task. It will demand too much discomfort, and sacrifice, while the alternative will ask only that they do nothing.

> I have no faith that the American public is up to the task. It will demand too much discomfort, and sacrifice

More up than many. There is no other way to prevent power grab. You can see it in post-USSR space what happens when there is no push-back from public.

Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

#745

Post by braiamp »

ta8645 wrote: post #693
arunabha wrote: post #503

In 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 a…

Those agencies were created by law and given a command by law to fulfill a role in the executive branch. The executive branch doesn't get to decide how to organize itself since that would make a mess when the next guy comes up, so laws are there to make sure the structure is kept in a _continuity of the state_, such that just because the head changes, not everything needs to change. You could argue all you want about that, but stability is a desire feature of the state. It not only helps citizens to be able to have long term planning, but also saves the resources by not needing to figure out how things work constantly.

Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

#746

Post by lmm »

dragonwriter wrote: post #699
refurb wrote: post #689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 depart…

> 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.

I don't think that's true? Court orders are orders, not laws, and the two are very different.

Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

#747

Post by lmm »

braiamp wrote: post #745
ta8645 wrote: post #693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

Those agencies were created by law and given a command by law to fulfill a role in the executive branch. The executive branch doesn't get to decide how to organize itself since that would make a mess when the next guy comes up, so laws are there to make sure the structure is kept in a _continuity of the state_, such that just because the head changes, not everything needs to change. You could argue all you want about…

Some amount of stability is desirable, but not an infinite amount. A certain amount of creative destruction is necessary to avoid regulatory/ideological/bureaucratic/oligarchic capture. A completely stable system will fall to the iron law of bureaucracy.

Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

#748

Post by sejje »

unethical_ban wrote: post #265
grandempire wrote: post #30

The only rebuttal I see in the media is that congress set these up to be “independent”. But our government doesn’t have independent branches. In fact that sounds a lot like “unelected and unaccountable”. So which branches are these agencies under? Is it in the judicial, legislative, or executive - and if it’s in the executive why can’t the chief executive manage business? On the other hand, one of the issues brought…

>But our government doesn’t have independent branches. Yes, it does, by the nature of them existing and Congress establishing them. Show me where in the Constitution that they can't do that.

How many executive functions can they seize?

Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

#749

Post by UncleOxidant »

avianlyric wrote: post #692
UncleOxidant wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ru…

> 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.

I mean, sure, that's the Schoolhouse Rock version. But I'm talking about something else: The executive branch is the branch that controls military, FBI, CIA, BATF, US Marshals - the law enforcement agencies with guns, tanks and planes. Congress and the Courts don't have any similar enforcers. In a showdown where the courts order the executive branch to do something the executive branch can just ignore the order and continue doing what they want. The fact that this hasn't generally happened much in our history is because the executive generally had some kind of respect for the constitution and the institutions that it instantiates. If you get an executive who doesn't give a damn about anything other than maintaining their own power there's really no way to get him/her to comply.

> 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.

Ok, but wasn't that at least partly due to the shame that he would incur if he had been impeached? He was afraid of history's judgement - though it was a bit too late for that. In other words, on some level he didn't want the impeachment stain - at a certain level he cared (again, he should've cared earlier, but he thought he was going to get away with it). Now we have a guy who has been impeached twice and he knows he's got enough toadies in the senate so that he won't ever be convicted. Even if the House goes to the Dems in '28 he's not afraid of the threat of impeachment that would likely entail. Nor does he feel any shame over any potential impeachment.

Re: "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

#750

Post by istjohn »

klipt wrote: post #592
steveBK123 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the problem with people being OK with executive overreach when "their team" is in power. Eventually, and in fact about 50% of the time - the OTHER team is in power.. and may just push the overreach further. We should desire that the legislative side actually legislates and each branch of the government holds the other two in check, regardless of partisan control. Further having our judicial branch become open…

What you want is a parliament with proportional representation. Parliaments don't experience gridlock nearly as often.

The oldest democracy in the world is getting rusty.
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