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That is why I said even within existing precedent there were plenty of actions Obama could have taken. Obama was in charge of the entire executive branch. htt
by cwhiz 6y ago
That is why I said even within existing precedent there were plenty of actions Obama could have taken. Obama was in charge of the entire executive branch.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_executive_departments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_executiv...
It's a real cop-out to say his hands were tied. He had wide latitude and authority to implement changes within the executive branch.
- mschuster91 6y ago> Obama was in charge of the entire executive branch. Obama was in charge of the entire federal executive branch. The problem at the core of anti-police protests is not the FBI and not any other federal branch (okay, a bit the DEA/ICE), it is local police and sheriffs!
- pnw_hazor 6y agoBut the vast majority of those problem police are governed by liberal or progressive governments. Those police agencies should be models for the rest of the country and the world absent any involvement by the federal government.
- Ididntdothis 6y agoVery true. You should think that LAPD or NYPD should be good examples how liberal cities are running great police departments but that’s clearly not the case.
- learc83 6y agoPolice unions have so much power that local officials are generally afraid to touch them.
- mschuster91 6y agoAgain, it's not that easy to blame "the democrats". The people at the top may go away in reelections when a Republican loses their seat, but the "base" structure, think the cops and their management that has been there for decades, will stay the same - and so will the organizational inertia. To make it worse, a large part of the blame lies on police unions, e.g. in Minneapolis, whose leaders are hard authoritarian/right-wing and use all powers they have including staging expensive and often successful legal battles to keep "bad apple" cops in the service instead of holding them accountable.
- pnw_hazor 6y agoSome of these cities have been under complete liberal democrat or progressive control for decades. These cities are operating under police contracts and policing standards set and enforced by liberals or progressives.
- nitrogen 6y agoIt's a real cop-out to say his hands were tied. For some reason CGP Grey's video called The Rules for Rulers was recommended to me recently by The Algorithm. It sort of clarified in my mind all the vague ideas I'd absorbed from countless online and in-person conversations. Basically, even a dictator has to have the support of the keys to power. We can speculate that a president's hands were tied by one of those key groups. We can also speculate that another president has different key groups, and might be more willing, with the consent of core key groups, to reduce their numbers in ways not previously/recently considered an option.