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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   30013 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024

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The only way I can see something like that working is if congress repealed the Administrative Procedure Act, putting Trump and his immediate appointees in direct control of federal regulations.

Curtis Yarvin talks a lot about how no president has been truly in charge of the government since FDR. The reason for this is the Administrative Procedure Act.

Yarvin is wrong. The APA was in response to a growing administrative state and was an attempt to put safe guards on it. The biggest problem has been incredible deference to the administrative state ignoring the APA.

Loper Bright (and to a lesser extent Kisor) reduces some of that deference. The major questions doctrine reduces yet more. And the continued vitality of forcing administrative agencies to respond with real thoughts to comments shows the courts are finally taking the APA seriously.

Curtis Yarvin talks a lot about how no president has been truly in charge of the government since FDR. The reason for this is the Administrative Procedure Act.

Which is silly, because the APA is a way of regularising the use of the broad powers delegated by Congress to the executive during the New Deal era. Pre-FDR Presidents had less control over the government, not more - both because the federal government had less control over "the government" viz-a-viz the states, and because the executive had less control over the federal government viz-a-viz Congress.

That the federal government was small enough for one man to control in 1890 and not in 1930 seems entirely plausible. But Yarvin defines the government as "that which is sovereign" - which in 1890 still meant the system of shared sovereignty between the feds and the states.

I’m afraid the ship had sailed by 1881 at the absolute latest.

I agree with you that the Pendleton Act is the point at which the US Executive Branch stops being a one-man show.

But the bigger change over the 20th century is the shift in power from Congress to the Executive.

Even now, the US government is more of a one-man show than it was when an effective House Speaker could have more power over domestic policy than the President did.

Curtis Yarvin talks about a lot of things. Most of them don't hold up if one doesn't share his beliefs about philosopher-kings.

The President hasn't controlled the government since John Adams.

Especially with Loper Bright overruling Chevron deference, the president has even less authority to regulate than they used to.

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