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Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by efitz on Monday February 03, 2025 @05:13PM (#42924008)
Our legislative branch is unable to even minimally fulfill its Constitutional duties.

We haven't declared war since WWII, but we've waged a number of them.

The Congressional budget process is fundamentally broken and increasingly nondemocratic - the leadership of both parties get "continuing resolutions" passed while they draft a mountainous "omnibus" bill that includes all their pork and graft, then they whip the members of the majority party to pass it without reading it.

The Congressional oversight committees are usually captured by the industries and/or agencies they oversee.

Congressional hearings are not used to inform Congress or the people; they're nakedly partisan acting gigs for committee members.

Congress has unconstitutionally delegated much of its authority to a bureaucracy run by the executive branch, intending to have it operate independently of the president. Now we have a president who is choosing to exercise his authority over the executive branch.

Of course, it is illegal and unconstitutional for the president to eliminate programs that are established by law. But remember the executive branch bureaucracy ONLY exists to allow the president to implement the laws passed by Congress. If the laws aren't explicit or delegate to an executive branch agency HOW they law/program will be implemented, then the president has enormous authority over how to implement it, and there is nothing Constitutionally wrong with that. So if the president says "we don't need 10000 people to implement CFR 1.2.3 section 4, we only need 10", and he can implement the law/program as passed by Congress with 10 people, then he's allowed to do that.

The big problem is that Congress MUST depend on the executive branch to, er, execute. Whatever is required to implement the law, that isn't specified in the law, is up to the executive branch, and the President is the head of that branch.

And all this BS about "classification" again only exists to enable the president to do his job. If the president says someone can have access to something, that is non-negotiable, as two USAID folks found out over the weekend. The bureaucracy has for decades used classification to make a currency out of secrets and to try to avoid oversight. Looks like that ride has ended.

Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by tmountain on Monday February 03, 2025 @05:34PM (#42924269)
So, America has been dovetailing towards being a monarchy because Congress won’t do their jobs, and it was inevitable that a President would eventually arrive who would wield that power? If nobody is willing to enforce the law, and the majority willingly hand the keys to the democracy to a single individual with dubious intentions, is it best to just accept this as the “natural order of things”? The institutions that my generation was raised to respect as the foundations of the democracy seem to hold no weight or value, so it seems like the only thing left to do is just stand by to see what happens. I preemptively left the country last year and won’t be back anytime soon, so as sad as I am to see this day, I’m also strategically working to insulate myself from as much of the fallout as I can.
Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by chairmansteve on Monday February 03, 2025 @08:16PM (#42926096)
"I preemptively left the country last year".

Where did you go? I am in a position to leave, but not sure where to go.

Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by jart on Monday February 03, 2025 @08:28PM (#42926222)
The best safe space after the US is Switzerland.

If you move anywhere else, you risk making it worse for yourself.

One option is Taiwan which gives gold cards to people with impressive GitHubs.

Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by UncleOxidant on Monday February 03, 2025 @09:45PM (#42927052)
> One option is Taiwan

Ummm... yeah, I think that could easily end up in the category of "making it worse for yourself" given the geopolitical risk.

Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by throwaway657656 on Monday February 03, 2025 @09:25PM (#42926874)
Go where you have friends, family, or some clear reason to be. The fact that you are open to suggestions implies this is an aimless/distracting way to waste years of your life. Perhaps you have the type of trouble you can't run away from ? I am speaking from experience and hoping you don't give up on the US assuming your roots are here. Take a long vacation abroad as an alternative.
Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by Aeolun on Monday February 03, 2025 @06:13PM (#42924722)
There’s tried and true solutions to these things. You can ask any Frenchman, they made a whole thing out of it during the last olympics.
Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by captainbland on Monday February 03, 2025 @07:45PM (#42925746)
Really depends on the allegiances of the police and armed forces I guess.
Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by UncleOxidant on Monday February 03, 2025 @09:42PM (#42927028)
Yep. When push comes to shove, I suspect more of them will side with the authoritarian since that's kind of the personality type that tends to get involved in these kinds of occupations.
Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by whoisthemachine on Monday February 03, 2025 @05:53PM (#42924509)
The electoral college was created to prevent a majority from doing such things, but having the electoral college override the will of the people creates all sorts of problems (and possible tit-for-tat in future elections).
Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by tmountain on Monday February 03, 2025 @06:09PM (#42924681)
Well, it would have been pretty damn nice to see it “activate” when a candidate with 34 felonies and two impeachments won the election, but that didn’t happen, so any supposed utility is immaterial now. I disagree with the entire concept in principle and do believe that the democratic vote should choose the candidate (even now). I just don’t think most folks actually know what they bargained for.
Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by bonzini on Monday February 03, 2025 @06:23PM (#42924836)
I think a bunch of states actually make it illegal for electors to be faithless.
Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by arcastroe on Monday February 03, 2025 @06:55PM (#42925155)
What does it mean for it to be illegal? If they cast faithless votes, would those votes stand, but then they open themselves up for prosecution? or would the votes not stand at all.
Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by Terr_ on Monday February 03, 2025 @07:53PM (#42925839)
Yeah, the one useful feature I ever thought it might have would be as a check against a crazy-unqualified demagogue, and since then I have seen it fail spectacularly, twice.
Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by IgorPartola on Monday February 03, 2025 @09:22PM (#42926835)
That was the original intent. It’s like a half way to a parliamentary system where the legislature elects a PM except here it is a separate one time use assembly.
Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by Terr_ on Monday February 03, 2025 @09:53PM (#42927139)
In fairness to the framers, it was originally supposed to increase in size along with the growth of the House of Representatives.
Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by DebtDeflation on Monday February 03, 2025 @09:27PM (#42926889)
The electoral college was created in the time before the Internet, computers, television, radio, telephone, telegraph, electricity, the automobile, the airplane, and the train. It was logistically impossible to have a national popular vote at the time. Even the gap between the election and inauguration was based on the time it would take a man on horseback to reach DC from the farthest point out in the country.
Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by coldtea on Monday February 03, 2025 @06:25PM (#42924850)
>The institutions that my generation was raised to respect as the foundations of the democracy seem to hold no weight or value, so it seems like the only thing left to do is just stand by to see what happens

What generation was raised to respect those institutions? Because the boomers were against them and their policies, and Gen X was cynical about them...

Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by alexissantos on Monday February 03, 2025 @09:13PM (#42926731)
Millennials, I'd argue. During the 90s, culture at large painted a picture of stability and progress, all made possible by democracy. See Francis Fukuyama's The End of History for the kind of tone that permeated the time.

As we Millenials have gotten older, we too have seen through the veil and realized the system isn't perfect. More importantly, perhaps, we've seen the wide range of ways people react to this imperfect system. Some have chosen to undermine its very foundations to get their way, leaving many to wonder what we're left with if -- to loosely quote Whose Line Is It Anyway -- the rules are made up and the points don't matter.

Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by UncleOxidant on Monday February 03, 2025 @09:49PM (#42927102)
The late 70s through the 90s were kind of our last stable period (the 60s & early 70s were tumultuous with Viet Nam and Watergate, and the 30s & 40s were dominated by Depression and World War). That all starts to unravel with 9/11 and the response to it (starting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that cost us $Trillions and didn't really help stabilize the region and ironically began the destabilization of the US).

Much as we like to kvetch about Clinton (and I've certainly done my share of it, and certainly much of the criticism has merit), if there was a "golden age" of America in recent memory, the Clinton era was it.

Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by dinkumthinkum on Monday February 03, 2025 @09:17PM (#42926768)
America is not moving toward a monarchy. The idea that no one is willing to enforce the law is not true. There have been many criminals that have just been removed from the country and many more are in the process of being removed. I'm not sure what "handing the keys to democracy" means, if this is about the United States then that country is a constitutional republic. I'm not sure what leaving the country served, if it makes you happy great, but there is so much hyperbole on the left. The funny thing is that people at the highest levels of the left that pushed insane hyperbole, clearly don't even believe their own nonsense about Trump and the administration, with their sheepish smiles.

As far as the article, Musk is a mixed bag. On the one hand, I think it is a good idea to have an entity concern itself with improving the efficiency and reducing the bloat of the bureaucracy of the federal government and Musk is not a dummy, he is the richest person in the world and runs some quite high-profile companies. On the other hand, it is hard to deny Musk is a little bit of a buffoon: fighting with Asmongold on X over his clear lies about video games is sort of unbelievable, telling Americans to "F [themselves] in the FACE" if they don't want all high-skilled jobs in this country to go to H-1Bs, and various other sort of juvenile things. Having these kids that Musk has hired to run-around the federal government is probably not the best thing but I think this doomsday stuff is completely silly.

Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by ipython on Monday February 03, 2025 @10:08PM (#42927292)
Technically one of those criminals would have been musk himself, who was in violation of immigration law by violating the terms of his student visa when he first started working in SV: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/10/26/elon-musk...

He also just pardoned a bunch of criminals who physically assaulted police, desecrated Congress, because… they were on his side? That’s simply unprecedented. I don’t need a “party leader” to tell me that’s wrong.

Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by Hikikomori on Tuesday February 04, 2025 @07:04AM (#42931295)
It's silly but some of it is true. Curtis Yarvin is a monarchist and believes countries should be run as a company with a tech CEO as king, ska dark enlightenment. Peter Thiel believe in his ideas, he funded JD Vances career. Musk seems to be onboard, if not just to enrich himself and achieve his Mars goals. Other tech billionaires are as well.

Their goal seems to be to dismantle the federal government and buy up assets and land. Then form micro countries like above with themselves as king/CEO.

https://youtu.be/5RpPTRcz1no

Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by ckemere on Monday February 03, 2025 @07:24PM (#42925502)
This concept (Congress failing) gets repeatedly stated in many contexts without sufficient pushback. It should be considered whether perhaps for organization so large its functioning quite reasonably. Much of the current outrage has been manufactured via a long game of propaganda since at least the Reagan era but probably longer.
Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by chairmansteve on Monday February 03, 2025 @08:18PM (#42926124)
Yes. The country was doing very well until a couple of weeks ago. Now it's being dismantled.
Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by Aloisius on Monday February 03, 2025 @06:47PM (#42925070)
> We haven't declared war since WWII, but we've waged a number of them

Which Congress authorized and funded.

Congress, historically, has made formal declarations of war only at the request of the President. No President has asked for one in decades nor are they required to make war.

Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by ethbr1 on Monday February 03, 2025 @08:51PM (#42926485)
Several presidents have asked for Congression authorizations (Southeast Asia, Iraq, etc.) which are tantamount to the same thing.

Furthemore, the Constitution's Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 specifically enumerates declaring war as a power of Congress:

>> [The Congress shall have Power] To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water; https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-8...

Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by Aloisius on Monday February 03, 2025 @10:20PM (#42927402)
They aren't the same thing at all. We've had Presidents ask for authorization without asking for a declaration since the 18th century - the Quasi War was the first I believe.

The precedent is well understood. The President may ask for authorization for any extended war and for a formal declaration, if desired. Then, and only then, will Congress act. Congress will not issue a declaration absent being asked by Commander of the military, for obvious reasons.

This idea that Congress is somehow not doing its job because it's not issuing a formal declaration that were not requested nor required, is simply nonsense.

Frankly, if requesting authorization was the same thing as requesting a declaration, then one could just as easily argue Congressional approval of funding for a war is a declaration.

Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by ethbr1 on Monday February 03, 2025 @11:40PM (#42928047)
A declaration of war or an authorization of force are both Congressional approvals for use of military force against an enemy of the state. I get that's inconvenient for your argument, but they're the same.

And the president doesn't have the authority to declare war on his or her own accord, full stop, because the constitution explicitly gives that right to Congress (and no other branch).

Any convoluted timelines around requests are immaterial to those facts.

If the president uses the military to attack an enemy of the state, without Congressional approval, that's outside of his or her authority.

Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by selimthegrim on Tuesday February 04, 2025 @04:26AM (#42930179)
Not for purposes of the Alien Enemies Act they aren't the same.
Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by incompatible on Monday February 03, 2025 @06:37PM (#42924964)
Didn't the Supreme Court judge that the president can't be prosecuted for crimes relating to his official duties? The only recourse is impeachment, and that requires the cooperation of his own party. The president can also pardon all the rest of his associates as required.

So good luck relying on rule of law.

Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by elif on Monday February 03, 2025 @09:54PM (#42927153)
His official duty is not to subvert the constitutional process.
Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by matthewdgreen on Monday February 03, 2025 @05:32PM (#42924243)
And yet all of the inefficiency of Congress and the Courts is better than the alternative, which is dictatorship with no guardrails. We've seen what this looks like in many countries, and nothing you say, do, or own will be safe.
Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by tmountain on Monday February 03, 2025 @05:40PM (#42924335)
Right, the crusty 236 year old government is showing it’s age and has problems but has also resulted in an exceptionally successful country, so the logical solution would be to incrementally improve it, but instead, the voting populace just decided to burn it to ash; although, many are too politically ignorant to even understand the consequences of their decision.
Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by lmm on Monday February 03, 2025 @07:21PM (#42925450)
> the logical solution would be to incrementally improve it

You can't, though. It's ossified too much. The constitution was always meant to be a living document, but now it's a sacred text for which new amendments are practically inconceivable.

Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by Clubber on Monday February 03, 2025 @08:15PM (#42926073)
It's called a living document because you can amend it.
Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by trilbyglens on Monday February 03, 2025 @05:59PM (#42924574)
Tariffs will soon educate them.
Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by vkou on Monday February 03, 2025 @10:31PM (#42927495)
The markets expected the tariffs to be cancelled, and as if by magic, they just got cancelled.

Unfortunately, the speedrun to an autocracy won't be, the market's fine with that one.

Re:The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Gov... by api on Monday February 03, 2025 @08:25PM (#42926200)
How much of this is due to the fact that our congress is a hospice ward?

We desperately need term limits. Age limits might make sense too but term limits would mostly take care of that.