On the legality of DOGE
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@jon-nyc said in On the legality of DOGE:
Laws are sticky that way. Our system is meant to be very conservative.
Laws are way more ambiguous than you give them credit for when you're in rhetorician mode. Clarence Thomas made a very clear argument that Jack Smith appointment was illegal. How far did that go? It's one SCOTUS justice's opinion. Let's see how far this goes. What it is not, or so I predict, is a slam dunk illegality.
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I am not sure why setting up what is basically a committee to look at government efficiency would be illegal?
I always have assume that the "DOGE" would make suggestions, but did not really have any power to do stuff directly.
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Always remember, Operation Valkyrie was an act of sedition.
Warning: I post things that interest me. Read and comment at your own discretion. -
@89th said in On the legality of DOGE:
Maybe it should be changed to ROGE. Recommendations of Government Efficiency.
It's always sounded rather Pythonesque to me. The Government Department for reducing Government Departments.
How about calling it the Department of Surrealism? Elon Musk could sport a nice bowler hat.
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@taiwan_girl said in On the legality of DOGE:
I am not sure why setting up what is basically a committee to look at government efficiency would be illegal?
There’s nothing illegal about it, they just need to follow certain transparency and accountability rules. Public meetings, publicly accessible records, open to public input, etc. Also there’s some requirements about balanced representation to prevent the undue influence of individual interest groups, etc. Nothing bad really. And other external commissions have followed these rules since it was enacted in the Nixon administration.
When you shake someone's deep sense of self-worth, leaving a scar in their ego, they will persistently try to diminish you through petty arguments & obsessive captious criticism of your actions, just to soothe the wound.
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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When you shake someone's deep sense of self-worth, leaving a scar in their ego, they will persistently try to diminish you through petty arguments & obsessive captious criticism of your actions, just to soothe the wound.
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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@jon-nyc said in On the legality of DOGE:
@taiwan_girl said in On the legality of DOGE:
I am not sure why setting up what is basically a committee to look at government efficiency would be illegal?
There’s nothing illegal about it, they just need to follow certain transparency and accountability rules. Public meetings, publicly accessible records, open to public input, etc. Also there’s some requirements about balanced representation to prevent the undue influence of individual interest groups, etc.
Elon doesn't strike me as the sort of person who's particularly good at that tiresome balance and accountability stuff.
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When you shake someone's deep sense of self-worth, leaving a scar in their ego, they will persistently try to diminish you through petty arguments & obsessive captious criticism of your actions, just to soothe the wound.
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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@jon-nyc said in On the legality of DOGE:
No he doesn’t. My guess is they’ll come up with some genius theory that as long as they never call themselves an ‘advisory committee’ it doesn’t apply to them and the courts will giggle.
That would set them up for what is now apparently being described as a visit to pound town.
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@jon-nyc said in On the legality of DOGE:
@Jolly said in On the legality of DOGE:
It's the Church Commission, in essence. The lawsuits are frivolous.
It isn’t frivolous. The Church commission followed FACA.
FACA wasn't codified until just a few years ago. And many view it as unconstitutional as it applies to the Executive Branch.
I don't think Trump will mind taking this to SCOTUS at all. Be careful what you sue for...
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By the way a useful mental exercise is to imagine if, four years ago, President Biden had established the Department of Government Equity, co-led by Ibrahm X Kendi and Nicole Hannah Jones, with the mission of bringing racial and gender equity to every aspect of government policy.
Would you want them to be transparent? Publish who they met with and when? Document their meetings and findings and decisions?
When you shake someone's deep sense of self-worth, leaving a scar in their ego, they will persistently try to diminish you through petty arguments & obsessive captious criticism of your actions, just to soothe the wound.
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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@jon-nyc said in On the legality of DOGE:
By the way a useful mental exercise is to imagine if, four years ago, President Biden had established the Department of Government Equity, co-led by Ibrahm X Kendi and Nicole Hannah Jones, with the mission of bringing racial and gender equity to every aspect of government policy.
Would you want them to be transparent? Publish who they met with and when? Document their meetings and findings and decisions?
What I want and what is constitutional are two different things. I don't like the blanket pardons Biden gave out, but I don't see where anything can be done about them.
The power of the Executive is the power of the Executive.
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@jon-nyc said in On the legality of DOGE:
By the way a useful mental exercise is to imagine if, four years ago, President Biden had established the Department of Government Equity, co-led by Ibrahm X Kendi and Nicole Hannah Jones, with the mission of bringing racial and gender equity to every aspect of government policy.
Would you want them to be transparent? Publish who they met with and when? Document their meetings and findings and decisions?
Does every DEI office in every government department act that way? This seems to be a "useful mental exercise" only for those who believe a "department of government equity" would be a novel initiative that doesn't already exist as a distributed system of 1000s of DEI cells in thousands of departments. Just as, in Biden's time, almost all large corporations had such a department.
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When you shake someone's deep sense of self-worth, leaving a scar in their ego, they will persistently try to diminish you through petty arguments & obsessive captious criticism of your actions, just to soothe the wound.
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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I was listening to NPR on the way to haircut this morning. They had some DEI person on who said the Trump EOs won't matter much because it's not really about race and gender, DEI is about a color and gender blind meritocracy. Then she said when you walk into a room or a meeting and look around you'll know whether they have DEI or not.
“I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.” ~Winston S. Churchill
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@jon-nyc said in On the legality of DOGE:
You’re missing the point. FACA governs external groups staffed by non-governmental employees. Government departments have their own transparency and accountability rules, for what they’re worth.
Ok then. The "useful mental exercise" yields a yawn from me, considering we already have a distributed system for the purpose described, all of which have nominal reporting requirements. It would have moved zero needles, but for pundit talking points at the worst, to have a department of DEI with no reporting requirements.
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@Mik said in On the legality of DOGE:
I was listening to NPR on the way to haircut this morning. They had some DEI person on who said the Trump EOs won't matter much because it's not really about race and gender, DEI is about a color and gender blind meritocracy. Then she said when you walk into a room or a meeting and look around you'll know whether they have DEI or not.
DEI is about the opposite of what DEI is about? Is that what the rhetoric of the left has become? Or maybe just that particular pundit.
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@Horace said in On the legality of DOGE:
@jon-nyc said in On the legality of DOGE:
You’re missing the point. FACA governs external groups staffed by non-governmental employees. Government departments have their own transparency and accountability rules, for what they’re worth.
Ok then. The "useful mental exercise" yields a yawn from me, considering we already have a distributed system for the purpose described, all of which have nominal reporting requirements. It would have moved zero needles, but for pundit talking points at the worst, to have a department of DEI with no reporting requirements.
The broader point I was making is that both sides, when their guy is in power, seem to want very few constraints on executive power, forgetting that eventually the office will be occupied by someone they wish were more constrained. It’s useful to imagine some alternative scenario where the other is in the office so you can be careful why you wish for.
You may want Trump to be able to coerce states into doing his bidding by withholding highway funds. But do you president AOC to be able to do that? No? Ok then, be thankful that’s not allowed.
When you shake someone's deep sense of self-worth, leaving a scar in their ego, they will persistently try to diminish you through petty arguments & obsessive captious criticism of your actions, just to soothe the wound.
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb
