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PaperclipPerfector  29d ago (text post)   35301 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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I have already said words to the effect that I am fine with dismantling the administrative state, if that is what voters want Trump and Congress to do. I am less convinced than you are that Trump couldn't have done this the "right way" with actual laws. Sure, a few Republican lawmakers defecting would scupper his plans, but if they did, that too would be an important check in our system working as intended.

Trump has the bully pulpit. Trump claims he has a mandate. Let him actually do the work of getting the laws he wants passed.

This is a better path for one big reason: If Trump accomplishes his dismantling of the administrative state via EOs, that will mean that if Democrats ever get the presidency again they can just bring the administrative state back even if it will take some doing. This is all assuming we actually have a republic where Democrats could actually get back into power again, of course.

I would argue there is a constitutional requirement for Trump to destroy the current iteration of the admin state under the take care clause. Also if he waits to do it through legislation first nothing will happen. He needs to expose in full the fraud and abuse while showing the programs do shit to give republicans cover to gut a decent chunk of it. I will be disappointed if laws ultimately don’t come down but I see this as step one; not step one of one.

I am less convinced than you are that Trump couldn't have done this the "right way" with actual laws.

Respectfully, are you an administrative lawyer? How familiar are you with the Administrative Procedures Act and the dozens of legislative and executive actions which together, in concert, have intertwined to create the tangled mess that is the current administrative state? How familiar are you with the history of the legislative veto and INS v. Chadha?

It's not reducible to schoolhouse rock-tier "you need congress to pass a law," and you shouldn't minimize the legal and bureaucratic infighting that's taking place.

Isn't it? Trump, 50 R senators, and a R majority of the House could pretty much immediately nuke the filibuster and repeal/revoke all of that. They're not going to, and that's, depending on your perspective, the checks and balances working, or the checks and balances failing, but they could.

They don't have to, and shouldn't have to just because people don't actually understand the state of the law and the left is willing to strategically misrepresent and/or lie about it when it suits their purposes (for the record the right isn't much, if at all, better). Significant powers have already been delegated to the President, or arguably unlawfully usurped from its constitutional power as commander in chief (e.g. protection from at-will removal).

I don't think this is true! All of Elon's biggest recent moves directly go against the Impoundment Control Act, an act that passed both houses by huge margins, to prevent exactly defunding parts of the government directly authorized by congress.

This is silly. If you pass a law that is misrepresented or misapplied by the courts then you absolutely should have Congress pass a law that unambiguously makes that misrepresentation impossible.

There is no such thing as "unambiguously makes that misrepresentation impossible." The Civil Rights Act of 1965 was passed with the direct, spoken intent of not permitting such things as ethnic quotas or racially-preferential hiring/"affirmative action." It got perverted into, depending on who's doing the enforcing, either outright requiring or just permitting such actions anyway.

I think you didn’t understand or I didn’t clarify the word “that” in there.

It is not possible to unambiguously make all misrepresentations impossible in advance. But once you know of a specific singular and defined misrepresentation, it is quite easy to pass a statutory fix that makes just that specific one no longer possible.

As I said, it’s an iterative game. Except one side loses interest after a few rounds

This is silly. If you pass a law that is misrepresented or misapplied by the courts then you absolutely should have Congress pass a law that unambiguously makes that misrepresentation impossible.

Their power to misinterpret is greater than your power to wordsmith; you cannot write something that cannot be misrepresented by a sufficiently hostile actor.

It’s an iterative game! You win because you always have the right of immediate response whereas the opponent has to go back to the district court and start over.

Meanwhile each misrepresentation because more and more fantastical along the way.

This is literally Congress’ primary job!

No, it takes longer to pass a law than to get an injunction.

We're not talking about legal machinations, this is misinterpretation by the agencies. That takes an entire APA cycle. They move at about the speed of molasses.

I feel like the administrative state is like Planet Fitness. It's easy to sign up for but impossible to cancel.

We should make it just as easy to get rid of as it was to implement in the first place. We voted for the Department of Education so that children would have better outcomes. But this hasn't happened. In fact, since the DOE was founded, our international rankings have tumbled.

Congress never voted for "Let's hire a bunch of workers with no accountability whatsoever and, once they are hired, they can never be fired for any reason whatsoever".

The President is in charge of the executive branch. He is empowered to enforce the laws passed by congress which clearly means firing workers for incompetence and dereliction of duty.

I think the president has a constitutional duty to ensure the laws are being properly enforced by the admin state and therefore any law that limits his ability to provide oversight infringes on a core constitutional power of the president. I have wholly bought into the Scalia dissent in Morrison.

No one ever voted for "and once they are hired, they can never be fired for any reason whatsoever".

The original Civil Service Reform Act was passed by enormous margins

Passed the Senate on December 27, 1882 (39-5) Passed the House on January 4, 1883 (155-46)

The most recent one passed by even larger margins

Passed the Senate on August 24, 1978 (87-1) House on October 6, 1978 (365-8)

While on one hand today's GOP can only dream of such majorities in wiping it away, they really don't need much more than 50% + 1. Given that remove employees fixes the deficit, they can even use reconciliation to skip the filibuster.

Thanks. This is kinda nuts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Service_Reform_Act_of_1978

In March, President Jimmy Carter sent a proposal to Congress to bring about civil service reform in order to “bring efficiency and accountability to the Federal Government.”

The act also created processes for firing employees found to be incompetent and provided protection for "whistleblowers".

Chalk one up for mistake theory I suppose. This act was supposed to do the very opposite of what it did.

Passed the Senate on August 24, 1978 (87-1) House on October 6, 1978 (365-8)

It's mindboggling going back 50 years and seeing what a high-trust society really looks like. Back then Carter could propose a law that said "oh sure we're going to make the government accountable and efficient" and everyone just assumed that it would happen. Because, um, that's what the law says.

No one understood "who, whom" back then. They all just thought "We're all on the same team guys. I'm sure the government workers won't just rob us blind. After all, they love their country too."

Like many awful things, this was there to solve a different awful problem, and now that the original problem is gone we don't even realize it.

Prior to 1892, administrations routinely gave out the vast majority of federal commissions as graft. It was a giant crony network robbing the country blind. Hiring by merit and removing firing except for-cause was, believe it or not, a step forwards at the time.

Of course, in the end you can't destroy a power you can only shift it around the plate. And so instead of being robbed by nepotistic machine politicians, we empowered the civil service. And then the civil service turned around and robbed us blind.

You can only destroy a monster by summoning another monster.

You can only destroy a monster by summoning another monster.

If Final Fantasy X has taught me anything, you can destroy a monster without doing that. But you do have to kill God to do it.

But you do have to kill God to do it.

But we did that 140 years ago. Nothing else should stand in our way.

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