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"Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

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

#851

Post by etc-hosts »

api wrote: post #460

My high level take on this saga is: welcome to the Chinese century. It's very common for companies that are failing to adopt uncreative reactive strategies that hasten their collapse. Look at the history of Kodak for some good examples. MAGA is that for the United States -- respond to the challenges of the new century by going back to the 1950s. MAGA (and Project 2025) is going to turbocharge American decline. The pa…

At least we'll start publicly funding religious evangelical Christian schools.

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

#852

Post by lmm »

kelnos wrote: post #842
lmm wrote: post #747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Without agreeing or disagreeing with you, that's irrelevant. The law is the law. If it specifies that a particular agency must exist, and how it should function, then that's what the executive is required to implement. In theory, at least. If Trump and his minions decide to do something else, there isn't really anyone with the power to stop him, absent impeachment.

I was replying to someone who said "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."

Legal questions aside, I think that's an overly simplistic take; a certain amount of stability is desirable, but it's possible to be too stable as well as too unstable.

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

#853

Post by tptacek »

DannyBee wrote: post #843
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…

Lawyer here. So i think this is all insane, and a power grab, to start out. But not because of these parts of this EO I think people are trying to assume this says "the president gets to ignore the courts and congress", but it, uh, doesn't actually say that anywhere. I would very conservatively guesstimate at least 50% of people assume trump will go that route, and so they assume this is the method by which he will d…

Did you see Walter Olson's Cato bit? I had the same take you have (I have associates that worked at FTC until recently, were familiar with the process, and pointed out basically the same thing --- that the independent agencies have so many DOJ touchpoints that the administration already has effective control). But Olson says the prospect of all the independent agencies needing to run their rulemaking processes through OIRA would be a big deal.

https://www.cato.org/blog/white-house-independent-agencies-m...

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

#854

Post by kelnos »

globnomulous wrote: post #496
fjjjrjj wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they are equally bad. GOP are rotten to the core. I don't understand why a new party has not formed to leave the batshit crazies behind.

I see. They're two sides of the same coin in the sense that they're both part of the two party system. My original comment is overstatement and maybe melodramatic. Sorry for that, and for the accusation, and thanks for the civil, thoughtful response. The other comments do a good job of explaining why an alternative party hasn't emerged, better than I probably can, so I'll skip that part. To some extent I do wish (and…

> They're two sides of the same coin in the sense that they're both part of the two party system. My original comment is overstatement and maybe melodramatic.

I wouldn't apologize for this; GP was using "two sides of the same coin" in a way that is not mainstream. That phrase is usually used to say "even though these two things seem different, they're really the same thing".

(I like GP's use of that phrase better, to be honest, but that's not what it means.)

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

#855

Post by userbinator »

blased wrote: post #135
thiht wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not hyperbolic. In one month Trump has taken full unchecked power on almost anything. In 4 years, you won’t vote, that’s a given.

So when 4 years pass and we’re still voting, are you going to admit you are hyperbolic and divorced from reality?

I'm saving a link to your comment along with a reminder to check back in 2028.

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

#856

Post by etc-hosts »

scarab92 wrote: post #121
piva00 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your personal threshold for gatekeeping when people are supposed to call it fascist? Have you done your nerd research on how Nazis dismantled the democratic state? If so, at what step would you have gatekept calling it fascist? Blanket calling worried people as "juvenile" as a dismissal is in itself pretty fucking juvenile, hope you can see that.

Progressives are using words like Nazi and fascist, purely as a slur against a political rival, without really understanding what those words mean nor the attrocities they represent. What the Nazi's did was horrifici, and it's incredibly insensitive, inappropriate, and, yes, juvenile, to water that down by using it for political point scoring.

I don't call Trump's recent actions as strictly Nazi, but they are definitely Fascist.

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

#857

Post by j2kun »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #507
dkobia wrote: post #128

This new administration lays bare what we've known all along - the legislative gridlock and dysfunction in the house of representatives and senate has made them completely incapable of governing -- the least productive in a generation. This is opened up an opportunity for a well funded strongman, and the checks and balances that were intended to protect our democracy are now mere suggestions.

Mistaking a well-funded, highly coordinated project that started over 15 years ago[1] for 'those clowns in Congress are at it again!' is a huge part of what has prevented us from digging out of this crisis. [1] e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REDMAP

This is the key point. This dysfunction was _by design_. The Republican party has been working on this since Nixon was impeached. Through redistricting, Fox News, and changing politics to "warfare" by Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh and their ilk, through McConnell stonewalling Congress and refusing to hear judicial nominations.

The Democrats are complicit by trying too hard to play by the rules and take the high road, but it's not a fair comparison of culpability in the slightest.

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

#858

Post by tsimionescu »

refurb wrote: post #729
dragonwriter wrote: post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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…

> the department head would remain bound by the Presidential interpretation until the President relented I don't know what you mean by "bound"? The President, EOs and the exective branch are not immune from court decisions. If a court rules again an EO, the President would need to abide by that court decision. As per this EO, the department head would do what the President wanted (align to the court order), and would…

> It's not like this EO really changes the situation? Before this EO a department head would have the same choices and face the same risk of being fired.

No, this is completely false. The President doesn't have the authority to fire a department head for following a court order, and if they tried they would get sued and clearly lose, and be forced to reinstate the fired person, and other employees would follow this pattern.

With this EO, the President does get this exact authority, and the courts would be forced to side with the president in the matter of the firing, if the EO is allowed to stand by the SC.

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

#859

Post by nostrebored »

stickfigure wrote: post #743
losvedir wrote: post #736

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Huge swathes of the country do not want to be involved in Ukraine. Positioning this as “sucking up to Putin” seems intentionally inflammatory.

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

#860

Post by dang »

neom wrote: post #306
dang wrote: post #298

There's a bit of background at https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5152723-donald-t... . If there are better third-party reports, let me know and I'll add to this list. The above is just the first one bestowed by Google.

[flagged]

Here's a recent answer about this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43092856.

and here's one of many answers I've been posting in recent weeks to users who have the opposite perception, that the political stories are being unfairly suppressed:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978389

Between those two coconut halves I hope there's a fairly complete coconut, but if you (or anyone) still have a question, let me know!

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