8 ms·

>"We need a law prohibiting secret law. Any legally-binding statute, regulation, opinion or judgement that is not published to the Federal Register within 18 mo

by nickff 10y ago

>"We need a law prohibiting secret law. Any legally-binding statute, regulation, opinion or judgement that is not published to the Federal Register within 18 months would be rendered invalid." The federal agencies continually avoid the Federal Register by issuing 'guidance letters' and 'advisory opinions', as well as re-interpreting existing rules in very creative ways. What is really needed is greater fidelity to the structural protections by the constitution (such as the Bill of Rights and non-delegation), but I have lost almost all hope of that coming to pass.

adrianratnapala 10y ago
The federal agencies continually avoid the Federal Register by issuing 'guidance letters' and simply re-interpreting existing rules in very creative ways Yes, Chikasu's broad-stroke laws can only work if they are part of a cultural shift away from seing micromanagement as the government's job. The agencies are what they are from the mentality that everything in our society must be "run" perhaps by a "czar". People call this regulation, but in order to run things, the authorities need not laws and predictable rules, but arbitrary (if scope-limited) powers.
caseysoftware 10y ago
This is why "term limits" sound great in theory but are worthless in practice. The people who are writing these laws by another name (guidance letters, recommendations, etc) are nameless, faceless people who no one will ever know. And unless it's an official "memorandum of understanding" or similar, we won't even know their names. The people we see and hear in the news are just the distraction so we miss the real show.
- zanny 10y ago
  This can only happen when you lack accountability and actual representation in a republic. I've concluded that the general chain of reasoning is this: Unrepresented -> Corruption -> Money -> Corporate Influence -> Gerrymandering / First Past the Post / Term Limits -> Whole election system is fucked The way the US, and most other governments, are organized is broken because of a lack of humanity. If you try having one person represent millions, those millions will always be numbers to anyone, and that person will just be a name on a ballot to the numbers. Real representation requires a personal relationship, and that means you need to build government on the foundation of your community first. I generally see every position added to the ballot as a failure of a republic, because what you really should be doing is electing, say, a regional council (using STV or other proportional voting systems) whom then both nominates higher offices and appoints everything you would normally have on the ballot. Because that is their job, and you would not be picking between the lesser of two evils on a ticket but one of a few hundred of your neighbors who is exemplary who would do the best job. Most people I know, at least in less dense neighborhoods (and community interaction in cities and dense living always has been problematic) can name someone who lives around them they would want to represent them in government. And you are much more likely to have reason to trust, and hold responsible, your neighbor than some guy who lives in the richest part of the city, state, or country and whom you will never meet in person, and they will never know you to give a damn about your liberty.
  - mahyarm 10y ago
    You have synchronization problems when every hill has it's own fiefdom. You get political deadlock, effective NIMBYism, corruption too small to get sunlight repeated at every hill, and things like making a metro transit system impossible because 60 municipalities can't work together. Just think about the general issues of a HOA gone bad and how hard it can be to deal with it without great personal cost. That is the problem of micro government in a nutshell. Scalable government is a hard problem in general.
    - rhizome 10y ago
      We've been seeing this in practice as the spotlight has shone on the white-flight enclaves in and around St. Louis after the Michael Brown killing.
  - rjbwork 10y ago
    Well, congress has kept their constituents per critter at almost criminally high levels for going on a century now. As we see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_congressional_apportionment#House_size https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_congressional_ap... It is constitutionally provided for to have ~30k citizens per critter. But congress is left to determine how many critters there should be. Providing more critters, and thus less people per critter would reduce the amount of power they wield individually, thus there are absolutely perverse incentives at work to keep our congressional representation as citizens to a minimum.
  - nitrogen 10y ago
    I would like to see a system of government that is similarly granular to your suggestion, but on technical lines rather than geographical. I tend to agree with very, very few of my neighbors on some issues, so rather than having to form a geographically local coalition, maybe better representation can be achieved by allowing the like-minded to choose representation across geographic boundaries, or to choose different representatives for different categories. While we're at it, could we make this hypothetical government's legislature use a fractional (or maybe one-citizen-one-vote) tally, with representatives acting as proxies that individuals could override for specific votes?
- no-s 10y ago
  We don't need term limits for people. People come with built in term limits of one form or another. What we need are term limits for laws. Absolute Sunset should be built into the constitution and every law, regulation, charter, advisory, authorization, order, or any other kind of governmental rule should be subject to it. At regular intervals we should require our elected representatives to explicitly affirm, without debate, the existing laws. void all the ones that don't get reaffirmed at the end of the session. That way we'll always know whether the politicians can be trusted to make the right choices and also it will put a limit on how complex government can be.
gohrt 10y ago
Are 'guidance letters' and 'advisory opinions' secret?
- rayiner 10y ago
  No. And they're also not legally binding. And an agency treating guidance as legally binding is also a great way to get the guidance overturned in court, because there are strict legal requirements for the procedures agencies must follow before issuing binding rules.
  - rhizome 10y ago
    Can a person be fired from their government job for refusing to adhere to a guidance letter or opinion?
    - rayiner 10y ago
      Almost certainly, but that's true for any employee refusing to follow an instruction from an employer.
      - rhizome 10y ago
        Seems like they become de facto law at that point.
        rayiner 10y ago
        Not at all. A "law" is where the government tells you or I what to do in its capacity as the government. These directives are where the government leadership tells its own organs and employees what to do in their capacity as leaders of a large organization.
        rhizome 10y ago
        Right, I know how the legalistic mind works. My point is about where "its own organs and employees" meets the citizenry. Leadership means these things permeate the org chart, and you can't segregate this stuff into a closed box of "their capacity as leaders."

by nickff 10y ago

adrianratnapala 10y ago

The federal agencies continually avoid the Federal Register by issuing 'guidance letters' and simply re-interpreting existing rules in very creative ways Yes, Chikasu's broad-stroke laws can only work if they are part of a cultural shift away from seing micromanagement as the government's job. The agencies are what they are from the mentality that everything in our society must be "run" perhaps by a "czar". People call this regulation, but in order to run things, the authorities need not laws and predictable rules, but arbitrary (if scope-limited) powers.

caseysoftware 10y ago

This is why "term limits" sound great in theory but are worthless in practice. The people who are writing these laws by another name (guidance letters, recommendations, etc) are nameless, faceless people who no one will ever know. And unless it's an official "memorandum of understanding" or similar, we won't even know their names. The people we see and hear in the news are just the distraction so we miss the real show.

zanny 10y ago
This can only happen when you lack accountability and actual representation in a republic. I've concluded that the general chain of reasoning is this: Unrepresented -> Corruption -> Money -> Corporate Influence -> Gerrymandering / First Past the Post / Term Limits -> Whole election system is fucked The way the US, and most other governments, are organized is broken because of a lack of humanity. If you try having one person represent millions, those millions will always be numbers to anyone, and that person will just be a name on a ballot to the numbers. Real representation requires a personal relationship, and that means you need to build government on the foundation of your community first. I generally see every position added to the ballot as a failure of a republic, because what you really should be doing is electing, say, a regional council (using STV or other proportional voting systems) whom then both nominates higher offices and appoints everything you would normally have on the ballot. Because that is their job, and you would not be picking between the lesser of two evils on a ticket but one of a few hundred of your neighbors who is exemplary who would do the best job. Most people I know, at least in less dense neighborhoods (and community interaction in cities and dense living always has been problematic) can name someone who lives around them they would want to represent them in government. And you are much more likely to have reason to trust, and hold responsible, your neighbor than some guy who lives in the richest part of the city, state, or country and whom you will never meet in person, and they will never know you to give a damn about your liberty.
- mahyarm 10y ago
  You have synchronization problems when every hill has it's own fiefdom. You get political deadlock, effective NIMBYism, corruption too small to get sunlight repeated at every hill, and things like making a metro transit system impossible because 60 municipalities can't work together. Just think about the general issues of a HOA gone bad and how hard it can be to deal with it without great personal cost. That is the problem of micro government in a nutshell. Scalable government is a hard problem in general.
  - rhizome 10y ago
    We've been seeing this in practice as the spotlight has shone on the white-flight enclaves in and around St. Louis after the Michael Brown killing.
- rjbwork 10y ago
  Well, congress has kept their constituents per critter at almost criminally high levels for going on a century now. As we see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_congressional_apportionment#House_size https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_congressional_ap... It is constitutionally provided for to have ~30k citizens per critter. But congress is left to determine how many critters there should be. Providing more critters, and thus less people per critter would reduce the amount of power they wield individually, thus there are absolutely perverse incentives at work to keep our congressional representation as citizens to a minimum.
- nitrogen 10y ago
  I would like to see a system of government that is similarly granular to your suggestion, but on technical lines rather than geographical. I tend to agree with very, very few of my neighbors on some issues, so rather than having to form a geographically local coalition, maybe better representation can be achieved by allowing the like-minded to choose representation across geographic boundaries, or to choose different representatives for different categories. While we're at it, could we make this hypothetical government's legislature use a fractional (or maybe one-citizen-one-vote) tally, with representatives acting as proxies that individuals could override for specific votes?
no-s 10y ago
We don't need term limits for people. People come with built in term limits of one form or another. What we need are term limits for laws. Absolute Sunset should be built into the constitution and every law, regulation, charter, advisory, authorization, order, or any other kind of governmental rule should be subject to it. At regular intervals we should require our elected representatives to explicitly affirm, without debate, the existing laws. void all the ones that don't get reaffirmed at the end of the session. That way we'll always know whether the politicians can be trusted to make the right choices and also it will put a limit on how complex government can be.

gohrt 10y ago

Are 'guidance letters' and 'advisory opinions' secret?

rayiner 10y ago
No. And they're also not legally binding. And an agency treating guidance as legally binding is also a great way to get the guidance overturned in court, because there are strict legal requirements for the procedures agencies must follow before issuing binding rules.
- rhizome 10y ago
  Can a person be fired from their government job for refusing to adhere to a guidance letter or opinion?
  - rayiner 10y ago
    Almost certainly, but that's true for any employee refusing to follow an instruction from an employer.
    - rhizome 10y ago
      Seems like they become de facto law at that point.
      - rayiner 10y ago
        Not at all. A "law" is where the government tells you or I what to do in its capacity as the government. These directives are where the government leadership tells its own organs and employees what to do in their capacity as leaders of a large organization.
        rhizome 10y ago
        Right, I know how the legalistic mind works. My point is about where "its own organs and employees" meets the citizenry. Leadership means these things permeate the org chart, and you can't segregate this stuff into a closed box of "their capacity as leaders."