> Just when these American citizens needed their rights the most...their government took them away. and rights aren't rights if someone can take em away. They're priveledges. That's all we've ever had in this country is a bill of TEMPORARY priviledges; and if you read the news, even badly, you know the list get's shorter, and shorter, and shorter.
George Carlin, years ago. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1242679-boy-everyone-in-thi...
Some of them, like Senator Byrd were lauded by Hillary Clinton as a big influence.
I can't wait until the Democrat party finally pays out reparations to all of the descendents of people they enslaved.
Really, in democratic societies there are three levels; those where the offending politician is actually deposed, those where their unconstitutional action is blocked by the courts or by another arm of government (as with Boris), and those where _they never do the thing in the first place because they realise they can't get away with it, and there'll be unpleasant consequences for them_ (this is by far the most common, particularly in parliamentary democracies, where Dear Leader can be fired at a moment's notice). If none of these happen, then typically the democracy ends.
The US is probably unusually vulnerable to this sort of thing; it has an unusually powerful executive, and a highly politicised Supreme Court, in particular. Though, it kind of remains to be seen how far the Supreme Court will be pushed. Some or all of Trump's appointees may take the view that they got into the job to screw over minorities and aid business, but not necessarily to actually end democracy in the US. They are likely not all that beholden to him.
R (Miller) v The Prime Minister (not to be confused with R v Miller, or R (Miller) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (the solution here is clearly to just stop naming people 'Miller', to avoid further confusion)) was probably ultimately more important in its precedent than its concrete outcomes, though, yeah.
Now we get all these articles about evil and resistance and yet, most damaging US politics have continued regardless of red or blue but we have to try and pretend partisan fanatics are anything but.
Sorry but this time around, specially after the insane anti civil rights COVID policies and overreach, the hypocrisy is overflowing so much you'll get more backlash to your partisan narrative.
Forgive me if I laugh at your "full stops" and other absolutist statements.
Cried wolf/nazi/evil too many times.
Don’t really sympathize with the whining about hypocrisy or how you claim to be personally victimized by people who are hypocrites.
I was with you until this strawman. You don't seem to have a point after agreeing with me.
I was also alive when pro COVID policy authoritarians wanted concentration camps for people and if I had to guess, you probably were in favor of "isolating people from society" if they didn't get a COVID19 vaccine. Just guessing, based on your NPC type of insults.
So you are not even close to ready to talk to me about human rights.
Allowing that to happen basically makes the president king. It allows them to have veto power over all spending laws both current and previous and a veto that’s unable to be overruled.
“Oh, you passed social security? No, you didn’t. I’m not giving that out”. Not only this but it gives the president extreme leverage over Congress. “I’m holding funding for this specific program ransom until you do thing X”.
Interestingly enough, that’s what Trump got impeached for during his first impeachment. Withholding funding in an attempt to extort someone. If this is allowed to happen then our constitution and government fundamentally will change.
Laws of nature don't care what you believe: if everyone in the country thinks COVID is a myth, that won't stop COVID from killing people.
Human laws -- "What is the law?" or "Who is the king?" aren't like that. Human laws literally are, "What everyone thinks is true". The chiefs at USAID told Musk he couldn't have access. The President told the chiefs they were fired. The chiefs believed themselves to be fired, so they were fired.
What else could they have done? They could have called the police or the FBI, and reported illegal attempted access of classified systems. The police could have then arrested Musk or his people (or at least threatened to do so). But would they have done so? Wouldn't they have reasonably believed that such behavior would lead to their losing their jobs?
Maybe in 2016 they would have believed that allowing access to classified materials would eventually land them in hot water, and that standing up to the president would eventually lead to them being vindicated. But not now -- any reasonable person now would predict that standing up to the president would lead to them being fired (and possibly have other vindictive punishiments applied), with no recourse; while giving in would certainly be overlooked.
The People voted to re-elect a known authoritarian with no respect for the rule of law or democracy. I don't see how any democratic system can withstand that.
Ironic, considering the HN submission we are replying to.
Sure the spoils system was bad, but the current iteration where you have hundreds of independent agencies that cannot be fired breathing down your neck with statutory power is fucking insane.
You do know the president is not supposed to have that power, right? His job is to execute the law, which as currently written requires those agencies to exist.
How is that related to shutting down agencies?
You mean the international development fund that's being raided right now? You know that it exists because US realized that it's cheaper(as in - LESS money spent overall) to help countries develop, so that US is less likely to engage militarily with whatever conflict happens in those coutries eventually? It's part of being a global hagemony - it's not insane, it's just good business strategy. Out of all people, Musk and his cohort should be able to see this.
>>That's a lot of money that could go towards not being in debt.
The whole idea is that you'd be in more debt if you didn't do this, because you'd spend another trillion dollars on yet another conflict somewhere because people got fed up with having no access to fresh water and food and now there's a war that US just "has to" intervene in. Aid money is meant to explicitly prevent this.
Or you know, we can stop getting into wars? Did our adventures in the middle east advance US interests?
> It's part of being a global hagemony
It's called overextension and almost every historical power declined due to internal rot coupled by continuously getting into conflicts, which, wouldn't you know, drained the treasury.
Ah yes, "just stop". I mean, but all means - please do.
>> Did our adventures in the middle east advance US interests?
They made a few american corporations extremely rich and justified balooning the military expenditure. Whether that's in US interests or not - you decide.
>>It's called overextension
It's part of projecting your might as a superpower. The same reason why American taxpayers are paying billions of dollars to station troops in Eastern European countries - not out of charity but because it's explicitly in American interests to do so. International Aid is the same - "we're giving you money now so that we don't have to spend more money fighting with/against you(cross out one) in the future". "stop getting into wars" has the same energy as "just stop tipping" or "just stop spending so much money on the military" - imagine how quickly your entire national debt would be wiped out if you did that!
Please elaborate, and be precise because every interventionist argument is like, "but our trading partners, but our allies" but always fails to link exactly how that improves the lives of Americans. So tell me exactly what we are afraid of. If its trade tell me exactly what the comparative advantage is or what the resource we need is. And if its defense, tell me exactly what the threat vectors are, not just, "the island chains".
We've doing truly stupid things in the name of bullshit concepts like "containment" which led us into Vietnam, or "stabilizing the region" which led us into the middle east.
We can start with the Burmese scholarships that gives 300k per student; please tell me exactly what the American interests are.
That's your(American) argument, not mine. When I ask why is America building anti-missile batteries and stationing their troops in my country, the answer is "because it furthers their interests". There is of course always some bullshit of "because it improves our security" - but everyone knows that's not true. They are here because they want to project they are a superpower and therefore have bases all over the world, not because they love us.
>>We can start with the Burmese scholarships that gives 300k per student
Well I had to look it up, and apparently this is what Trump said about it:
"We also blocked $45 million for diversity scholarships in Burma. Forty-five — that’s a lot of money for diversity scholarships in Burma. You can imagine where that money went," Trump said.
I wish he was more specific. What is he insinuating, exactly?
>> please tell me exactly what the American interests are.
Having a population of burma(a historically very active conflict area) that is well educated and more likely to oppose the military Junta? Of course no one will ever say that openly, it's "humanitarian aid".
Ok so you haven't told me how this furthers Americans interests, that's pretty much every BS power projection argument I've heard for my entire life.
> When I ask why is America building anti-missile batteries and stationing their troops in my country,
Depending on your country, I'm ok with removing the batteries :)
Or do you not trust experts at this point time?
I work alongside highly skilled experts in my job and I've never heard them say anything remotely like this when someone disagrees with them, so I'm pretty skeptical that you actually are one. This sounds more like something that a rebellious high-schooler would say
The question is if an expert could change your view.
And by your response I suspect the answer is yes.
So, for you, an acceptable solution to "the budget is too big," is "let's rip up the Constitution?"
If Trump wants to veto budget bills and demand certain cuts in exchange of passage, that's fine, totally within his power, and would probably work.
Anyway I care little about the size of a government as it is the result of many perverse incentives (vetocracy, companies pushing for both deregulations and regulatory capture, late stage capitalism trying to make almost everyone poor and/or unstable) but the latest generation of attacks on the size of the government feel a lot like a Embrace Extend Extinguish on social safety nets so that predatory industries like healtcare insurance can better extract wealth from the lower classes
I would say inequality decreased as the size of the government increased, and inequality increased as the size of the government decreased from its 1967 peak, yes. The New Deal was the single greatest reduction in inequality in national history.
Because regulations cut both ways. They stop bad actors and they stop innovators.
Innovators thrive at the start of an industry, later once its commoditized, its going to be driven by people who want to cut corners. See enshittification.
Regulations put a ceiling on harm by bad actors.
Either we need industries that do not obey such laws of physical reality and entropy, or we need to accomodate for the most probable occurrence efficiently.
You will always have examples of failures of these regulations, the measure of their efficiency is from the counterfactual losses and gains.
"Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes."
"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names."
"Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community."
He's shutting them down to strengthen his own power.
The next step might be going to the DOJ and telling them to detain, let's say, Ilhan Omar on suspicion of treason. This illegal demand will have much more force because anyone refusing it will know that they stand on their own and have no recourse through the courts or congressional oversight.