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What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

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Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#841

Post by tootie »

leereeves wrote: post #728
tootie wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Trump and Musk are actively destroying the separation of powers of the branches of government. I'm afraid that's just factually wrong. What Trump and Musk are doing is called impoundment of appropriated funds[1] and it is Constitutional and consistent with the separation of powers, and was in fact considered one of the powers of the President until 1974. In 1974, Congress passed the Impoundment Control Act, making…

Click through to the Train decision. It has been firmly held that per the Article 1 separation of powers, Congress determines how money is spent. Impoundment is used (and it certainly is used routinely) only when the executive determines that a disbursement will not serve it's intended purpose. Quote from Train, "the president cannot frustrate the will of Congress by killing a program through impoundment". I have no doubt Trump is attempting to trigger a new case in an effort to overturn Train and he may well succeed, but he'll likely end up overturning Article 1 in the process.

This goes right back to his first impeachment where we got a clear lesson on this. Congress authorized money for the defense of Ukraine. It went through multiple mandatory controls with DoD and other agencies to ensure the specific disbursement was likely to reach it's intended target. Those controls could have triggered impoundment if they found any flaws, but they did not. Then it was stopped by the president expressly to extort a political favor from Ukraine. In this case, the House voted to impeach and the Senate refused to convict likely due to political loyalty. Now that he knows Congress likely won't stop him, he can abuse his authority as he pleases.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#842

Post by herodotus »

Another win for China. While the US guts its research capacity, China already dominates scientific research (according to Perplexity, 29% of the most highly cited peer reviewed articles are authored by Chinese scientists). Of course all those people who voted for this regime don't believe that there is any benefit to funding science. After all, what did science ever do for them? (OK, except for the science of pick-up trucks - I'll give you that. Oh yes, and the transistor: I think I may have one in my phone. But otherwise: name one thing, bro). Maybe those hats should replace the "A" with a "C".

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#843

Post by daveguy »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #799
rayiner wrote: post #783

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m pretty sure the coup happened in the 1930s when the government created the modern system of unaccountable executive agencies and a Supreme Court, under duress, approved it.

Yeah it’s hard to reconcile a permanent layer of unelected officials, that can’t be sacked by either the President or Congress, with many parts of the constitution. And I’ve never seen a clear explanation of how that change was constitutionally justifiable.

Congress has the power to impeach any federal official.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#844

Post by Spooky23 »

rayiner wrote: post #783
Spooky23 wrote: post #733

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JFK wrote a book called “Profiles in Courage” - no courageous people are around. The “coup” happened a long time ago. The US has demonstrated that there’s no rule of law at the federal level for some time now. Once the Chief Justice leaned back and tolerated the open sale of the court, that was basically it. We don’t have the same system of governance anymore… we’re like Italy 1936 or Argentina in 1948 now. We’ll inv…

I’m pretty sure the coup happened in the 1930s when the government created the modern system of unaccountable executive agencies and a Supreme Court, under duress, approved it.

For nearly a hundred years, the people have voted for those reforms. That’s called governance and democracy. Reactionary people have always been upset about any change.

This using an unaccountable fall guy to break the law at will, so that congress can avoid accountability is gross. Folks with your opinion like to wax on about constitutional principles, blah blah blah, as we stand by and watch the shitshow that is happening right now.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#846

Post by AlexandrB »

leptons wrote: post #514
unsnap_biceps wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the former is most likely. The people are largely unhappy with how things have been and it's unlikely to get materially worse for the majority of people in the near term, so I don't think there will be a fire lit under enough of the population to rise up. If it gets bad enough that most people are starving, rather then just struggling, we'll see action, but I doubt it'll get there anytime soon.

Deport all the people who harvest crops, and people in the US will be starving pretty quickly. It could happen within 1 year. And this is exactly the track we are on right now.

I don't really get this argument or why it's adopted by left-wing commentators. It assumes that supply and demand don't exist and the agricultural industry couldn't get workers if they paid market rates for such labor. It's basically advocating for immigration as a way to subsidize the agricultural industry by giving them a desperate workforce they can exploit.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#847

Post by myheartisinohio »

lanstin wrote: post #123
username223 wrote: post #100

As Sir Ian Jacob said, the Allies won World War II because "our German scientists were better than their German scientists." Brain drain is a real problem for fascist countries.

So should we move to Thailand or Canada or ???

Canada where we can be debanked for supporting a protest.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#849

Post by Herring »

captainclam wrote: post #805
scarab92 wrote: post #775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Oh never mind then.

Yeah sometimes you can't reason with people because they're dug in. In this case with Trump and Republicans, it's like Catholics being unable/unwilling to deal with pedophile priests, because group loyalty is so important to them. Tribalism is meant to override reason. Get them to turn on their brains first (eg by reflecting on values most important to them), and it becomes much easier.

Re: What's happening inside the NIH and NSF

#850

Post by wat10000 »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #815
3D30497420 wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you guys elected him overwhelmingly to do exactly that Most certainly not overwhelmingly: Trump: 49.80% Harris: 48.32% This is one of the more frustrating aspects of the United States. Not even 1.5% more and the result is "near total evisceration of the federal government" compared to "largely the same". The result is even worse with the Senate. 55.9m votes for Democratic Senators, 54.4m for Republican Senators, an…

Both the President and the Senate are representatives of and voted on by the States, not the people. The only representative of the people in the US Federal government is aptly named House of Representatives. When people vote for President, it is only to inform the State of how they want the State to vote, and the State has significant freedom to allocate its votes for President how it wishes e.g. some States use a p…

And? That doesn't change the fact that he was not "overwhelmingly" elected. He won by a slim margin. People acting like he has a massive mandate from the people are at best ignoring the facts, and are mostly trying to delegitimize the opposition.
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