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Leaving it up to "the people" (read: Congress) over the past decade would've surely put us in a much worse position.

by mikeyouse 10y ago

xapata 10y ago
I voted for Obama, but I'm not so sure Congress would have been (much) worse.
- mikeyouse 10y ago
  I honestly don't understand this viewpoint.. the false equivalence lately is just insane. We're talking about Climate Change, can anyone possibly believe that the Republicans in Congress for the past 6 years would have been better on Climate than what Obama achieved through executive orders? Do people just not pay attention? Here's a quote from the official GOP platform[1]: > Climate change is far from this nation’s most pressing national security issue. This is the triumph of extremism over common sense, and Congress must stop it. Fuck it, I'll quote the rest of the references to climate in the official platform! > Information concerning a changing climate, especially projections into the long-range future, must be based on dispassionate analysis of hard data. We will enforce that standard throughout the executive branch, among civil servants and presidential appointees alike. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a political mechanism, not an unbiased scientific institution. Its unreliability is reflected in its intolerance toward scientists and others who dissent from its orthodoxy. We will evaluate its recommendations accordingly. We reject the agendas of both the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement, which represent only the personal commitments of their signatories; no such agreement can be binding upon the United States until it is submitted to and ratified by the Senate. > We demand an immediate halt to U.S. funding for the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in accordance with the 1994 Foreign Relations Authorization Act. That law prohibits Washington from giving any money to “any affiliated organization of the United Nations” which grants Palestinians membership as a state. There is no ambiguity in that language. It would be illegal for the President to follow through on his intention to provide millions in funding for the UNFCCC and hundreds of millions for its Green Climate Fund. > We firmly believe environmental problems are best solved by giving incentives for human ingenuity and the development of new technologies, not through top-down, command-and-control regulations that stifle economic growth and cost thousands of jobs. These people are pathological. [1] - https://www.gop.com/platform/americas-natural-resources/ https://www.gop.com/platform/americas-natural-resources/
  - mseebach 10y ago
    On net, long term, Obama will turn out not to have been very effective at all, because everything he's done through executive order has/will be undone through executive orders in the few weeks. That's the curse of executive order, and why good, long term legislation won't arise from executive order.
    - mikeyouse 10y ago
      That's all well and good, but there is absolutely no indicaition that congress would have produced anything resembling "good, long-term" legislation. In my completely made up system, if we started at 0 and add up the number of points in favor of averting Climate Change, Obama probably added 3 for a few years with the Paris Agreement, CAFE and some of the EPA rules were also pretty beneficial, maybe net 4 over his term. Call it +10 for Obama. Trump's going to reverse many of those decisions, probably make some of them much worse within the next few years. Let's say he wipes out all of Obama's work and does 50% more 'damage' in this system. So by 2020, we're at -5. If we had left it to the Republicans in Congress, we would have been at least at -5 every year since 2010.. So -5 net with Obama/Trump's dueling executive orders or -50 with Republicans in Congress. Yes the system is made up and the points don't matter, but there is absolutely no way we would be in a better position. It's the height of naivety to dismiss what they promised to do and to assume they would have suddenly changed their views 180º to support action on climate change for 'the limelight'.
    - anigbrowl 10y ago
      Obama issued executive orders after asking and arguably begging Congress to act. It's not like he came into office and started kicking over the metaphorical furniture. When we're talking about the quality of the policy he attempted to promulgate, rehashing partisan mischaracterizations about his style of governance is unhelpful.
  - xapata 10y ago
    The president could still veto, even if the pseudo-legislative powers were removed. If the executive were less powerful, perhaps the attitudes in Congress would be different. It's hard to know how they would behave, because we haven't had that situation in living memory. I read a good article conjecturing that the decline in civility in Congress is due to the increased pressure to essentially run a permanent election campaign. The congress people used to spend more time in Washington becoming friends, but now spend most of their time at home, campaigning. Now I can't find my source...
mseebach 10y ago
The cost of getting what you want from the president is the next president undoing it. Over the long term, I suspect that's way more destructive and wasteful than waiting longer for Congress to decide to do something which then stands a chance of being the law for a while and actually achieving something. Also, when you stop giving all the important, flashy stuff to the president and let Congress have a bit of limelight, you'll probably find them rising to the challenge (more than today, at least, where Congress only gets credit for the boring stuff that the president don't want).
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
anigbrowl 10y ago
'the people' and 'Congress' are two distinct entities as far as the Constitution is concerned. It is not appropriate to equate one with the other.

Leaving it up to "the people" (read: Congress) over the past decade would've surely put us in a much worse position.

xapata 10y ago

I voted for Obama, but I'm not so sure Congress would have been (much) worse.

mikeyouse 10y ago
I honestly don't understand this viewpoint.. the false equivalence lately is just insane. We're talking about Climate Change, can anyone possibly believe that the Republicans in Congress for the past 6 years would have been better on Climate than what Obama achieved through executive orders? Do people just not pay attention? Here's a quote from the official GOP platform[1]: > Climate change is far from this nation’s most pressing national security issue. This is the triumph of extremism over common sense, and Congress must stop it. Fuck it, I'll quote the rest of the references to climate in the official platform! > Information concerning a changing climate, especially projections into the long-range future, must be based on dispassionate analysis of hard data. We will enforce that standard throughout the executive branch, among civil servants and presidential appointees alike. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a political mechanism, not an unbiased scientific institution. Its unreliability is reflected in its intolerance toward scientists and others who dissent from its orthodoxy. We will evaluate its recommendations accordingly. We reject the agendas of both the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement, which represent only the personal commitments of their signatories; no such agreement can be binding upon the United States until it is submitted to and ratified by the Senate. > We demand an immediate halt to U.S. funding for the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in accordance with the 1994 Foreign Relations Authorization Act. That law prohibits Washington from giving any money to “any affiliated organization of the United Nations” which grants Palestinians membership as a state. There is no ambiguity in that language. It would be illegal for the President to follow through on his intention to provide millions in funding for the UNFCCC and hundreds of millions for its Green Climate Fund. > We firmly believe environmental problems are best solved by giving incentives for human ingenuity and the development of new technologies, not through top-down, command-and-control regulations that stifle economic growth and cost thousands of jobs. These people are pathological. [1] - https://www.gop.com/platform/americas-natural-resources/ https://www.gop.com/platform/americas-natural-resources/
- mseebach 10y ago
  On net, long term, Obama will turn out not to have been very effective at all, because everything he's done through executive order has/will be undone through executive orders in the few weeks. That's the curse of executive order, and why good, long term legislation won't arise from executive order.
  - mikeyouse 10y ago
    That's all well and good, but there is absolutely no indicaition that congress would have produced anything resembling "good, long-term" legislation. In my completely made up system, if we started at 0 and add up the number of points in favor of averting Climate Change, Obama probably added 3 for a few years with the Paris Agreement, CAFE and some of the EPA rules were also pretty beneficial, maybe net 4 over his term. Call it +10 for Obama. Trump's going to reverse many of those decisions, probably make some of them much worse within the next few years. Let's say he wipes out all of Obama's work and does 50% more 'damage' in this system. So by 2020, we're at -5. If we had left it to the Republicans in Congress, we would have been at least at -5 every year since 2010.. So -5 net with Obama/Trump's dueling executive orders or -50 with Republicans in Congress. Yes the system is made up and the points don't matter, but there is absolutely no way we would be in a better position. It's the height of naivety to dismiss what they promised to do and to assume they would have suddenly changed their views 180º to support action on climate change for 'the limelight'.
  - anigbrowl 10y ago
    Obama issued executive orders after asking and arguably begging Congress to act. It's not like he came into office and started kicking over the metaphorical furniture. When we're talking about the quality of the policy he attempted to promulgate, rehashing partisan mischaracterizations about his style of governance is unhelpful.
- xapata 10y ago
  The president could still veto, even if the pseudo-legislative powers were removed. If the executive were less powerful, perhaps the attitudes in Congress would be different. It's hard to know how they would behave, because we haven't had that situation in living memory. I read a good article conjecturing that the decline in civility in Congress is due to the increased pressure to essentially run a permanent election campaign. The congress people used to spend more time in Washington becoming friends, but now spend most of their time at home, campaigning. Now I can't find my source...

mseebach 10y ago

The cost of getting what you want from the president is the next president undoing it. Over the long term, I suspect that's way more destructive and wasteful than waiting longer for Congress to decide to do something which then stands a chance of being the law for a while and actually achieving something. Also, when you stop giving all the important, flashy stuff to the president and let Congress have a bit of limelight, you'll probably find them rising to the challenge (more than today, at least, where Congress only gets credit for the boring stuff that the president don't want).

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

anigbrowl 10y ago

'the people' and 'Congress' are two distinct entities as far as the Constitution is concerned. It is not appropriate to equate one with the other.