miras_chinotto
certified low iq
No bio...
User ID: 348
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
4d ago
Not quite so clear cut. These independent agencies are created and overseen by Congress with execution left to the President. It seems to me it's just another way to set up a SCOTUS showdown over unitary executive theory which has generally been the entire theme of Trump term two. It would in fact be another expansion of executive power if unopposed.
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
19d ago
Giving spoils to some random ethnic minority doesn't benefit me (or the Trump/right coalition) in any way. It's not even a real tit for tat because it doesn't cost the left anything. This is much more a case of doubling down on idpol and spoils and creates a new enemy to any movement trying to remove these kinds of gibs.
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
19d ago
Awful. Race (or whatever)-based spoils is bad. Expanding it to include more groups just make such policies even more permanent and further punishes people who aren't on the minority-subsidies list. I'm not sure how this happens in post-1964-CRA America but the last time I looked it up, the courts more or less punted on the issue in the 90s.
Bizarrely the only "just" solution is one state encompassing the Palestinian territories and modern Israel with full rights for Palestinians and Israelis and the only way something like that could happen would be total domination, monopolization of force, and annexation/rule by the US.
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
29d ago
You said that Trump sending e-mails being illegal is not initially crazy
Ah I see what you're getting at. Initially I was simply stating that I wouldn't be surprised if there were some probably dumb process requirements that would make that illegal as OP alluded to. I don't know what those processes necessarily are or would be but I do know that certain kinds of email guidance from the president requires physical copies, signatures, numbering and archiving much like an actual executive order. Not having that or the general process requirements in the APA would be more like Obama/Bush/Trump/Biden just post on Twitter/send a text/shoot an email and suddenly it has force of law - a diktat not subject to judicial or legislative restraint the way EOs are.
You're missing the point. Why was it 5-4, if the standard was so objective, and it's violation was so obvious?
Because our institutions, the people that fill them, and the people that do the filling have all sorts of priorities that only sometimes seem to match good faith action and then only partially.
That doesn't mean they'd actually do it.
Yeah but we could have tested that easily enough but just redoing the announcement this time with Nielsen's rationale.
My problem is the insistence on analyzing it from a structural perspective. I consider it mostly a red herring.
Can you expand on this? If it's not a structural thing then how are you supposed to ever fix it or work around it?
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
29d ago
I don't think power lies in rulings and laws, power is the ability to make things happen or stop them from happening.
Then what's your complaint exactly? There isn't a structural thing giving these people power as you've defined it.
it's not evidence that these bureaucrats would have come to a different decision if the administration happened to follow the procedure outlined int that particular ruling
How not? They explicitly say that they would have. One of the major issues of contention was that at the district Court level, they did actually put together a rationale and justification document for rescinding DACA however, it couldn't be used to defend the previous order which had to be argued against on its own compliance. At the time, the legal speculation was that Trump could have just given up on that particular court case and announcement and then immediately do it again using the revised version or as a similar new EO and it would have actually stuck. If you read the ruling, it seems a lot more reasonable than the 5-4 would seem.
Then I have no idea what you argument is that Trump is not following process here, or ruling by diktat whereas other presidents have not.
Huh? Formal instruction from the president whether it's an EO or an email or whatever is subject to law surrounding the procedure. I'm arguing that's probably a good thing or it would otherwise be diktat.
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
29d ago
They have the power to pretend they're totally following orders, but drag their feet until the next guy is elected.
That's not a "power" though. There isn't some law or legal ruling giving them this check on the president and is a risk in quite literally any organization. It's on the new admin to identify and replace people who aren't doing their duties.
These are all just words that bureaucrats said, not an objective fact. What evidence is there that it failed any such test, and that they'd totally allow it if it didn't?
SCOTUS has a majority opinion you can find from 30 seconds of googling on the topic. They start the opinion from the get-go acknowledging Trump's authority to do so but that the procedure was not compliant to law.
Why did you skip the later part of my sentemce
Letters, emails? What's the difference? If they are providing orders to the administration they are all vaguely the same thing as an executive order though with different levels of formality and purpose. Sending an email with guidance on how to enforce some presidential policy isn't verboten or just one weird trick to avoid process.
You haven't really given much of an argument for that
Explain, please. The bureaucracy simply doesn't have powers that supercede the executive. Claiming otherwise is throwing your hands up and calling it impossible at the first signs of resistance. Consider the example of DACA where SCOTUS decided the Trump admin full and well had the authority to rescind the program but because the announcement was just Sessions loudly pooing (rightfully) on Obama, it didn't meet the relatively low bar required by the APA to show that the action actually had a reasoning behind it rather than failing the "arbitrary and capricious" test. That isn't the bureaucracy being so powerful the president can't do anything, that's the president relying on people who don't know what they're doing to execute his agenda.
As far as I remember Bush and Obama did both rule by diktat
Yes, ruling by executive order has been a thing for a long time. My point is that the process requirements are guardrails established by Congress that allow judicial review of some of the most arbitrary ones.
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
29d ago
Your concern about them replacing one biased regime for another is fair, just so long as you can openly admit that the one being ousted was also biased.
If it helps, I'm very conservative, have voted for Trump three times now, and am deeply disgusted with the state of our country and our government. I have an intense and burning disdain for Biden and the Dems in general and a vague positive feeling toward Trump.
Coming from this position, though, my chief priority is fixing systems where possible, not punishing the other tribe or trying to enforce my values from on high. The reality about wokeness and the decline of conservative values as such is that these things didn't happen because Obama decreed they must and hired a bunch of libs into the bureaucracy. These values, ones I deeply dislike, won so to speak in the market in that they both captured institutions which allow them to propagate and more importantly spread organically through the early internet and ground level organizations. The libertarians put up a fight but the conservatives silod themselves and ceded the battleground in many ways.
I doubt the goal is to weed anything out in a surgical manner. In fact, I think the idea is to not get into the weeds, but simply cut right through them
If the goal is to cut costs or remove ideology from government spending, this is counterproductive. If the goal is spectacle, then I suppose this is a win (but is it a flattering or damaging spectacle?). If the goal is to punish blue tribe, then I'm not sure how much collateral damage red tribe is willing to take. I've heard from veteran coworkers (very red) that their benefits and loans applications were being possibly being impacted or at least paused until the details are worked out. It will take time for the trickle down to work through, but the effects on infrastructure projects on every level are going to disproportionately impact the red tribe who dominates construction and engineering. If the goal is to win Vance-types (red tribers trying to escape bad situations) scaring everyone about impacting FAFSA is counterproductive.
I think the immigration crack down is being handled much better. The focus on criminal illegals first has many benefits - much lower cost in political capital and headlines about rapists being deported are an easy win, early success is a foot in the door to broaden scope later without freaking the public out, it can be used to force though mandatory everify by linking it to punishing criminal illegals etc. This is a much more deliberate and thoughtful approach to illegal immigration than we are seeing on other issues.
And then, 4 years later, the problem is solved by the election of a different President.
I think you misunderstood me. The problem is solved by changing the rules to ones you can work with or by using the established procedures to accomplish what you're trying to do. This is basic institutional competence and I would hope that given effectively a do-over, Trump would be hiring people who can navigate these types of obstacles since he himself isn't expected to do so.
The power of the bureaucracy to enforce procedural rules would exceed the power of elected officials to run the executive branch.
I mean this is just a maximally uncharitable reading of the situation. No one doubts Trump's authority to do much of want he wants to do but due process obligation and the administrative procedure act are one of the great limiters of federal overreach. The failing as such falls on whatever staffers aren't capable of reading documentation or consulting with white house legal before trying to do whatever they're trying to do.
I understand that frustrates people who want to punish the other tribe or who want results today and not tomorrow, but it's probably worth considering how much worse things would be for cultural conservatives under Bush/Obama/etc if the president really was able to rule by diktat.
The results matter, and the administrative bloat has become absurd.
Is there anyone would disagree with this statement? The actually controversial part is how to cut the deadwood and I'm increasingly concerned the Trump admin are incapable of this.
Based on Elon's moves in the OPM, it seems like the priority is sinecures for their friends (including apparently a high school kid who has a work history of camp counselor and bicycle repair) (and possibly punitive measures for regulatory bodies that fine or slow down Musk companies) rather than improving the organization overall. The Twitter style RTO layoffs are another example of a sweeping move that surely makes fox news viewers happy, but systems minded folk will note changes the incentive structures to reinforce incompetent and ideologically motivated people.
The sweeping federal grant pause is again counterproductive for the stated aim of reducing spending because stopping federal projects (and state and city projects with federal funding) dramatically increases the costs of those projects if resumed and the questionnaire itself is more like a university admissions style DEI statement but in the other direction (both are bad uses of these institutions' resources). If the goal is to weed out bad grants and ideological use of federal funding, it would have made more sense to take over some level of approval for all new grants rather than increasing the cost basis of all these projects.
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
29d ago
Doesn't seem initially crazy to me. Not following established processes was frequently used to prevent Trump policies in term one. If you have a rule that something has to be done a certain way, you need to revoke that rule. If you're too brash to figure out how the system works first, you probably need to slow down and understand what you're trying to do.
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
29d ago
What percent of federal employees are making donations at all?
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
1mo ago
Twitter is so useless these days. Why lock threads behind an account?
It's my industry, so I think it's as good as it can reasonably be.
How well do you think it translates to other jobs?
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
1mo ago
The crux of such a study would be in how you're defining output or productivity. Is that lines of code and is more lines good? What is the equivalent in other fields, how is it being measured, etc.
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
1mo ago
I think it's much more likely to increase the concentration of incompetent workers. WFH or hybrid schedules are going to be worth tens of thousands of dollars a year to your typical professional type. This is effectively being told you're all taking a huge pay cut and the only people either publicly or privately who would endure such a thing are the ones who don't think they can do better in the private sector or they are in their position for non-monetary reasons like ideology.
Blanket RTO orders are great for temporarily juicing stock at a company but they are cutting labor costs by removing your most competitive workers.
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
1mo ago
Do you know if any of the new Trump EOs will affect MBEs? There are massive federal subsidies and quotas to companies that are owned by minorities and in my experience it's grift at every level - state, city, etc.
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
1mo ago
He said this after making the gesture twice did he not? I think he knew what he was doing - how could he not? He's not some everyman in his first public appearance ever, he's one of the most powerful men on the planet whose primary contribution to his affiliated companies these days seems to in fact be public and private appearances.
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
1mo ago
He claims that this is an ultimate goal for him but that doesn't mean it's something he actually values nor does it give much predictive power for his actions.
If he accomplishes it, many dumb trolling events like this can be forgiven.
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
1mo ago
I don't think accusing people of being nazis had much weight even back during the Bush years. It's been a silly insult for decades now.
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
1mo ago
You are mistaking me. I think the government does need downsizing. I don't think Elon and the like are capable of doing so effectively. They are much more likely to just fire people based on contrived criteria or, now that we've seen the RTO mandate, push out the smart ones and keep only the least competent workers.
That is probably correct, I suppose. It would match some of the justifications I've seen which go along the lines of "he's just trolling" or "the libs lied about this thing so they're obviously lying about this too". The Satanist comparison is apt - these are the people saying bad things ostensibly ironically to make red tribers angry but they are still bad things to say. Tit for tat is satisfying in the short term but self destructive in the long term.
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
1mo ago
I certainly think he did so. Probably intentionally seeking to rile people up since I don't think he has any meaningful political philosophy let alone nazism.
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
1mo ago
Good. I frankly don't trust or expect people like Elon to be able to meaningfully be able to separate wheat from chaff within the federal government.
People on vacation, people on parental or medical leave, people working overseas in remote locations on official business. The whole thing just doesn't really make sense.
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