15 ms·

I'm happy this reversal occurred, but I am exhausted by the continuous flip-flopping of legislation depending on which party is in charge. Feels like we're stag

I'm happy this reversal occurred, but I am exhausted by the continuous flip-flopping of legislation depending on which party is in charge. Feels like we're stagnating as a nation by going in a circle rather than finding commonality to go forward. Maybe it's always been this way though and I'm just getting old enough to be bothered by it?

bgentry 2y ago
It's partly what happens when such important rules are determined by who is appointed at an executive agency, rather than requiring an act of Congress. The former can be trivially gamed by the party in power after each election, whereas getting Congress to take action on something can be difficult and requires you to first get them motivated to do so at a given moment.
- bearjaws 2y ago
  I'd flip it and say its what happens when Congress has been dysfunctional for over a decade. It's not even possible to get a house bill with net neutrality passed without it included 99 other things that will inevitably get the bill punted on forever. Congress could have drafted this anytime if they had seen fit, but they are "too busy" fighting ideology wars.
  - mrguyorama 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - cityofdelusion 2y ago
      There are de-facto one party systems in many cities, counties, and some states. They all suffer from getting nothing done. “Both sides” is a legitimate observation by those who recognize politics as upper class nobility vs the peasants. They run in the same social circles. We’re still primates at our core.
    - seanp2k2 2y ago
      And when the House Speaker won’t even let it get to a vote in the first place, no one has any motivation to even draft such a bill. But yeah let’s ban TikTok because in theory they could do something bad that every US-based company already does. Way to represent the will of the people, House.
  - pessimizer 2y ago
    > Congress could have drafted this anytime if they had seen fit, Congress as a whole does not support net neutrality, and the reason they have not drafted a simple house bill to do it that doesn't include 99 other things is because they had no desire to. It has nothing to do with "ideology wars."
    - miah_ 2y ago
      Have no desire because they've been bribed, I mean lobbied.
  - jrockway 2y ago
    To be fair Congress does some work. They have avoided 2 government shutdowns. They funded the war efforts in Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. They passed the infrastructure bill. The reality is, they just don't care about net neutrality. I'm still mad that they haven't passed the bill that gets rid of DST (or rather, gets rid of standard time). Everyone wants it in both parties. Just get it done. Even more annoying is the whole Section 174 debacle. Completely killing the field of software engineering in the US.
    - _aavaa_ 2y ago
      > They have avoided 2 government shutdowns. My what a low bar
      - jszymborski 2y ago
        "They didn't trip on their own feet"
    - packetlost 2y ago
      > They have avoided 2 government shutdowns You mean they passed a bill that was necessary for them to get their paychecks. I fail to see how this is even remotely surprising.
      - idiotsecant 2y ago
        I think their congressional salary is probably not where most members of Congress are deriving their main income. I think the paychecks their 'other' employers are cutting are more lucrative.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        TaylorAlexander 2y ago
        It’s true but “keep the government from grinding to a halt due to pure inaction” is kind of the absolute minimum bar for congress that I don’t think it’s reasonable to call it a win.
  - Dalewyn 2y ago
    While I agree Congress is quite dysfunctional, the sheer difficulty with which to get a bill written, passed, and signed into law is by design. Legislation is supposed to take a large amount of deliberation, agreement, and time. Also consider that this works both ways: If something is passed into law by Congress, it's going to take monumental effort to undo it just like getting it passed was. An example of this is Obamacare, where getting it passed was difficult and revoking it has been difficult. Likewise, the flippant nature of orders authorized by the Executive Branch is also by design. Such orders are meant primarily to address short-term concerns requiring immediate or expedient attention, not long-term concerns that require thorough deliberation.
    - magicalist 2y ago
      > the sheer difficulty with which to get a bill written, passed, and signed into law is by design No, the 118th Congress was not how anything was designed to operate. This is hand waving mixed with Founding Father fairytales.
  - loldk 2y ago
    [dead]
  - redeeman 2y ago
    because nobody wants single subject bills, it would semi make them accountable.. remind me, who in congress is for single subject bills, who is against? (and its very few individuals FOR, so not super hard)
- bullfightonmars 2y ago
  This is the tyranny of minority rule. When congress is not representative of the electorate and the minority doesn’t have to compromise to get things done to gain political favor and power, nothing gets done.
- Dig1t 2y ago
  Exactly, we never voted any of the people making these decisions into office, they didn’t have to campaign or explain their policies to the public. Having a layer in between these regulators and the public (the politicians who appoint them) removes power from the common people.
Bjartr 2y ago
The supreme court has a long history of overturning its rulings years, or decades, later https://constitution.congress.gov/resources/decisions-overruled/ https://constitution.congress.gov/resources/decisions-overru...
- jackcosgrove 2y ago
  An implicit assumption of the American political order is that a body that makes policy also has the ability to unmake that policy. I think that's good because otherwise there would be a land rush to create policies that are irreversible or have a higher bar for reversal than enactment. These policies would inevitably become out of date and reversing them could be politically impossible. The big exception to this was the drafting of the Constitution itself, which arguably was easier to ratify than it is to amend. The problem of the practical impossibility of undoing past policies applies very much here.
  - whatshisface 2y ago
    The Constitution was very difficult to get ratified. For one thing, it was recognized that it had to be unanimous. Don't forget it was replacing an existing political order of the Continental Congress + state governments.
wredue 2y ago
[flagged]
- itishappy 2y ago
  Perhaps one commonality is that we all seem inclined to assume the other half makes political decisions out of spite.
  - wredue 2y ago
    I find the only commonality is that after the right wing does something, both sides say “this is going to hurt so many people”. It’s just that one side is laughing when they say it. I visit alt-right circles A LOT, and I have literally never once heard “the other side does these things out of spite”. The vast majority of the time, they don’t have anything to say on a topic beyond repeating some stupid meme. Additionally, I would also like to point out that people on the right actually demonstrably DO have zero conviction for their beliefs. It is a tested fact that on the whole people on the right will absolutely flip flop on a topic the moment they find out that the left supports it (some 90% of right wing voters in tests), however, on the whole, people on the left are *far* less likely to flip flop (only some 10% of left wing voters flip on a topic upon learning the right supports it). That the right actually votes out of spite is not just something people assert, it’s a tested fact. Mitch *blocked his own goddamn bill upon finding out that dems supported it*.
    - dotnet00 2y ago
      You obviously haven't been in any right-wing circles. They're constantly saying that the other side "hates you and wants to destroy the country", exactly the same thing left-wing circles are constantly saying about them. If they're laughing when they're saying it, it's either because you're failing to read the room and arguing with someone who's just sharing an edgy meme rather than actually talking politics (I see this very often on the fediverse), or they're doing it in a cynical "haha, we're so screwed" manner.
    - curvedinf 2y ago
      [flagged]
granzymes 2y ago
The Supreme Court is poised to decide a case this term, Loper Bright, which should help restore more finality to decisions like this. Because agencies receive considerable deference to their interpretation of the law, even when that interpretation flip-flops every four years, we never get a definitive ruling on what the law says. The Court seems likely to greatly reduce this deference, leading to more consistency.
- chimeracoder 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - granzymes 2y ago
    Hard to see how reducing deference could lead to less consistency. You are literally commenting on a post about the FCC reinterpreting their authority to regulate internet broadband years after the lawsuits over the original Net Neutrality laws concluded. If Loper Bright had been decided ten years ago we would already know today whether the FCC possessed this authority or not and it would be settled. Instead, we are about to embark on another round of litigation because the FCC just unsettled expectations again. Case 1: agencies reinterpret the law ever four years in each new administration until the end of time. Case 2: we figure out what the law means once and apply it going forward until Congress changes it again.
    - Retric 2y ago
      Case 1: Changing after clear notification is not ambiguous. Case 2: Waiting until every single individual aspect of every single law is litigated means for years to decades the actual meaning is ambiguous until each court case finishes.
  - threemux 2y ago
    The overruling of Chevron is not about stripping power from federal agencies, it's about determining who should resolve ambiguities in regulations. Should it be the agency itself, or should it be the branch of government whose job it is to "say what the law is"? That being said, I don't think Chevron deference has a part to play when it comes to Net Neutrality flip flopping all the time - these are not ambiguous regulations. In that sense I don't agree with the person you're replying to - Loper Bright won't help here. Now, if you want to say that the FCC doesn't have the authority to issue this rule, that's something that was always reviewable by the courts. The concept that would actually attempt to strip power from agencies is the nondelegation doctrine. While I suspect that has support among a few justices, it would be a very radical change and there is no case on the horizon that I'm aware of that would be a vehicle to implement it.
huytersd 2y ago
Part of the reason some one like Modi came into power and has been able to maintain it (amongst many other reasons) is people were disgusted by the continuous reversal of administrations and their policies. Nothing ever progressed to completion. That malcontent is generally settling into the west as well and strongmen are looking more and more attractive. The auth option in the US is a regressive dummy, but India, China and several African, Latin American and South East Asian countries have competent people filling those roles.
- dotnet00 2y ago
  IIRC with Modi a big factor was that the previous prime minister was seen as effectively a spineless puppet, kind of like how Biden is seen by many. Modi came in promising to try literally anything rather than just sitting by and doing nothing unless ordered to by the political dynasty leading the party, and has largely delivered on that promise. It has meant lots of controversial legislation being forced through, but to many that's better than just letting the issues simmer for decades. Especially since many of those issues had no uncontroversial solution. Trump came in promising similar action, but in hindsight did absolutely nothing besides further divide the country. Unfortunately at the moment neither side seems to have a candidate that's actually willing to do something similar. Biden will continue to make excuses about not being able to do things, and Trump will continue to focus more on PR and dominating the news cycle than actual work.
  - huytersd 2y ago
    Manmohan Singh was seen as exceptionally spineless (because he pretty much cowtowed to whatever the Gandhi family said). That’s not how Biden is perceived. At all. Biden has installed more justices than Obama and Trump combined. He has done it without the right freaking out about it. He has been incredibly effective if you delve past the surface.
    - dotnet00 2y ago
      In right wing circles Biden is often perceived as a puppet for 'elites', too old and senile to make his own decisions. Every other tweet about him seems to get people joking about how he had to go to bed early or how they had to drag him out to make a speech. I was a bit young to carefully follow Manmohan's term, but I recall that one of the comments I often heard from adults were that he was clearly too old for office.
kjkjadksj 2y ago
Its always been this way, but the internet sure has amplified the effect of Edward Bernay’s theories. So much free PR copy is created on your behalf by your army of sheep active on the internet. Used to be that stuff was put on car windshield wipers and promptly thrown away, now people are engaging with it online now that there’s a mechanism to talk back to it.
smsm42 2y ago
Unfortunately, if you have a contentious issue which is decided by fiat of one of the sides being in power and not by mutual compromise, there's no reason for the other side, coming in power, to not change it back. Since, fortunately, we still have a functioning democracy in the US, the sides in power change. Since, unfortunately, there seems to be not enough will to reach a workable compromise satisfactory to both sides, flip-flopping will likely continue in the foreseeable future, until either societal consensus moves firmly on one side of the issue to the point that makes other side's position untenable, or some mutually agreeable compromise emerges.
- WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
  > Unfortunately, if you have a contentious issue At it's core, it is a technical issue - primarily network management. Under NN framework, ISPs would adhere to minimal straightforward rules that would disallowed them from prioritizing, throttling, capping, purposefully degrading, etc wireline networks. For most of 2 decades, this is where NN lived. In apparent response to NN becoming reality, ISP funded representatives began echoing the talking points of ISP lobbyist groups and contention was born.
  - smsm42 2y ago
    I don't think it's a technical issue. The implementation is technical, but the implications are societal. Is the state allowed to restrict ISPs from certain forms of network management? How far the governmental control over ISP actions can go? Does such restriction benefit the society? I'm sure a lot of people have opinions on these questions, but it's not a technical issue and not one that has an obvious correct solution. It's not like "is quicksort better than bubble sort" (even that is not 100% clear cut but let's not get into the weeds) where you can make mathematical arguments and tests to establish the conclusion. It's a matter of values and policies, and as such, it's bound to produce disagreement. I don't think it's also useful to frame it as "it all worked super awesome and then greedy capitalists stole it from us by their dirty tricks". It's usually not how it works and it's not what happened in this case.
jmyeet 2y ago
> ... I am exhausted by the continuous flip-flopping of legislation depending on which party is in charge. By design, Congress is unable to do anything. It's either one party (always the same party) being completely obstructionist, even other presidential appointments, or if a rotating villain who defects and stops any meaningful legislation. Power has moved to the courts and to the states. Again, entirely by design. In the current term, there is an inocuous sounding case called Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo [1], which is expected to overturn a longstanding (~40 years) precedent called Chevron [2]. This would gut Federal agencies. Chevron set a precedent that in areas of ambiguity courts would give deference to Federal agencies. The argument for this is that Congress has to be explicit but Congress cannot possibly explicitly regulate, for example, salmon quotas and inspections. The goal here is deregulation for profit. That's it. For the last 30+ years, every president issues an executive order on day 1 either banning or allowing recipients of foreign aid to provide counselling on abortion, depending on the party. The real question here is why did this take 3 years into Biden's regime for the FCC to act? The FCC is an appointed position. This could've been done in 2021. > Maybe it's always been this way though and I'm just getting old enough to be bothered by it? No, it's now more obstructionist than it ever has been but it's always been more difficult to make changes than not. Previously there was more respect for institutional norms. For example, if the president nominated someone for a position, that person would always get a Senate hearing regardless of who controlled the Senate. There is no law that required that but people previously accepted the president had a mandate for appointments. Now? It's way more scorched earth. [1]: https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/loper-bright-enterprises-v-raimondo/ https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/loper-bright-ent... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_U.S.A.,_Inc._v._Natural_Resources_Defense_Council,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_U.S.A.,_Inc._v._Natura....
- tivert 2y ago
  > By design, Congress is unable to do anything. It's either one party (always the same party) being completely obstructionist, even other presidential appointments, or if a rotating villain who defects and stops any meaningful legislation. Don't pretend like the Democrats wouldn't be just as obstructionist if it suited their political objectives. What we actually have is lack of consensus, and excessively polarized factions that are unwilling to budge to create a consensus (or rather waste their energy making a great deal of noise on non-consensus issues and nonstarters and bickering with each other).
tootie 2y ago
[flagged]
- adolph 2y ago
  Yes, total agreement. If the other half of people wouldn't make bad policy selections, we'd all be better off.
- rootusrootus 2y ago
  > half the voting population of the 50 states of the union keep making a conscious selection of bad policy Which half?
  - feoren 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - adamtaylor_13 2y ago
      I’m not sure either side is invested in making sure people are suffering. I do think both sides have differing opinions on what the role of government should be in Americans lives. Neither side is wholly consistent, which is okay. Demonizing “the other” is the root issue. Everyone should stop doing that.
      - rootusrootus 2y ago
        > I do think both sides have differing opinions on what the role of government should be in Americans lives. I think everyone seems to largely agree that the government should definitely have a big role in Americans' lives, but they differ significantly on what issues they think the gov't should be involved in. Relatively few people seem think the gov't should largely leave people alone (although it is popular for some folks to say they feel that way while simultaneously agitating for the opposite).
      - tootie 2y ago
        I actually don't believe this anymore. I think that up to the Bush years, you could argue the sides were just taking different paths to achieve the same goals. As bad his policy ended up being, I think Bush and Cheney and their cohort were really trying to do the right thing. I also genuinely think that Trump and his enablers are people with bad intentions. Their intentions range between callous self-interest and downright nativist authoritarianism. They would harm democracy and their perceived enemies in America to further their goals. That's maybe not 100% of the political right but I have very little pushback against it.
scarface_74 2y ago
The issue is that it isn’t legislation. It’s a regulation. Laws are both harder to get passed and harder to overturn
vkou 2y ago
We are flipfloppimg because the legislature is paralysed, so only the executive can function. This is a fundamental issue with the American form of government. Parliamentary systems which have the executive made up of members of the legislature have way less flip-flopping, finger-pointing, and paralysis. The governments they produce are more reflective of current public sentiment, end up with more than two parties, and are thus less stable. Minority rule and coalition rule is very common... which actively forces either compromise, or a new election.
- massysett 2y ago
  This "paralyzed" legislature just passed, by large margins, a large amount of foreign aid and a very significant provision on a popular social media platform. Before that it spent billions of dollars on covid aid. Throughout that time it has appropriated billions of dollars to keep the government running. This "paralyzed" narrative is something the press and politicians like to push because it serves their ends, though for different reasons. It's false.
  - vkou 2y ago
    > Throughout that time it has appropriated billions of dollars to keep the government running. In no other country is it considered an accomplishment for a government to debate a budget, agree on it, pass it, spend it, and then three quarters of the way through the year refuse to pay for the spending it agreed on, manufacturing a crisis that sometimes gets resolved at the eleventh hour, and sometimes results in a multi-week disaster and government shutdown. If a company had a department that ran that way, every single director and manager in it would be fired after the first time it happened. It has so far happened three times (Including once when the Republicans fully controlled congress), and has been threatened every year.
    - massysett 2y ago
      > three quarters of the way through the year refuse to pay for the spending it agreed on, At no time did this happen.
dmorgan81 2y ago
Congress was destined to this fate when they eliminated earmarks. Earmarks, or pork barrel spending, were derided as gov't waste, but in reality they were the grease that kept legislation moving. A representative could go back to their voters and say, "I voted for this thing you might not like, but I did it to ensure this crucial local project got done." Without earmarks there is no incentive to compromise. Compromise is actually a liability now, because there is always someone who will challenge you in a primary and promise to be more "ideologically pure." Without the ability to point to money and public works to defend yourself both during a primary and an election the best you can do is point to a record without compromise.
- favorited 2y ago
  Earmarks are back. They were against the House's rules for 10 years, but the 117th Congress started allowing them again in 2021.
  - 1980phipsi 2y ago
    And the past three years have seen the return of friendliness and comity unseen for a decade /s
    - favorited 2y ago
      I'm glad we've established that the absence of earmarks isn't the problem.
- mrcwinn 2y ago
  I think the results are mixed and the lessons aren’t clear to me. Perhaps earmarks were the result of an electorate that wanted more purity in decision-making (at the cost of stability). In other words, earmarks didn’t break cooperation. Corrupted cooperation led to the end of earmarks. Earmarks probably do grease the wheels, but it’s important to remember a step existed before the compromise: a member of the congress could hold out until they received something, often unrelated to the matter at hand. That is wasteful and, to some, dishonest. Now, did a removal earmarking result in more financial efficiency? Surely not. The budget deficit continued to grow, mostly because of Obamacare, Covid, wars, tax cuts. So what of compromise? One might think compromise is dead, and yet we live in a world where Ukraine aid is tied to social media ownership. Shruggy dude.
adastra22 2y ago
It used to be the case that Congress actually passed laws. And pre-Chevron, the regulatory agencies actually constrained their rule making to be within the law, and so laws were more specific. The problem started IMHO with Republican obstructionism under Clinton, but got out of control with Obama’s shift to using executive orders over legislation after the affordable care act nonsense. It’s definitely a both sides issue.
Rury 2y ago
Perhaps it's getting worse, but it has always been this way to a degree. What few people seem to realize, is that while democracy and the separating of powers seem good in principle, they also have innately dysfunctional qualities to them. The more divided or opposed things are, the more dysfunction there is.
Ericson2314 2y ago
Proportional representation, multiple parties, and parliamentary system (no legislative executive divide) can fix this.
- Gormo 2y ago
  Proportional representation is a terrible idea, in that it entrenches the role of parties per se, but ranked-choice balloting in SMDs would be a massive improvement over the status quo.
  - Ericson2314 2y ago
    Nope nope nope. Political parties are good. 2 incumbent political parties in a permanent grapple is what is bad. Politics is a "team sport", by which I don't mean it must a facile context practiced by west-wing-loving weirdos, but that is is a fundamentally collective effort. Americans love to think political parties are inherently bad, but seriously when are mere individuals reliable? How the hell am I supposed to tell who all these down-ballet no-names are and what they actually believe in? Much of the rest of the democratic world functions fine with parties that are not all 150+ years old and ship-of-theseus-ed beyond recognition.
    - Gormo 2y ago
      Nah, parties are bad. They perfectly exemplify the adage about people dedicated to the ostensible mission of the organization vs. those dedicated to the organization as an end it itself. With formalized parties, we often see the strategic concerns of the party as an organization eclipse any coherent policy goals that are the ostensible reason for the party existing in the first place. Multi-party in particular democracy has some significant pitfalls, including the tendency of marginal and extremist parties to play kingmaker. The historian Hannah Arendt made some salient points about how the multi-party structure of Weimar Germany contributed directly to the radicalization and eventual total control of the state by the Nazis. Politics will always involve factions forming around shared interests or values, but in a situation without those factions being calcified into formal organizations, or even identities, we'd expect them to be much more fluid and ephemeral, and for politicians to be much more willing to reach across ideological divides without worrying about institutional discipline or being ostracized by the party establishment regardless of their constituents' opinions. Ranked-choice balloting wouldn't eliminate parties per se, but it would reduce their influence in the electoral process significantly. > How the hell am I supposed to tell who all these down-ballet no-names are and what they actually believe in? I'd expect a reasonable voter to investigate the actual candidates on the ballot and make an informed choice, and not merely rely on party affiliation as the only criterion for casting a vote.
rchaud 2y ago
Hard problems are considered unsolvable by today's Congress (except for military funding bills), so they focus their energies on 'red meat' for the voting base (abortion resrictions, affirmative action), or for wealthy donors (tax cuts, SC nominations).
cco 2y ago
Your comment inspired me to make this: https://net-neutrality.vercel.app/ https://net-neutrality.vercel.app/

bgentry 2y ago

It's partly what happens when such important rules are determined by who is appointed at an executive agency, rather than requiring an act of Congress. The former can be trivially gamed by the party in power after each election, whereas getting Congress to take action on something can be difficult and requires you to first get them motivated to do so at a given moment.

bearjaws 2y ago
I'd flip it and say its what happens when Congress has been dysfunctional for over a decade. It's not even possible to get a house bill with net neutrality passed without it included 99 other things that will inevitably get the bill punted on forever. Congress could have drafted this anytime if they had seen fit, but they are "too busy" fighting ideology wars.
- mrguyorama 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - cityofdelusion 2y ago
    There are de-facto one party systems in many cities, counties, and some states. They all suffer from getting nothing done. “Both sides” is a legitimate observation by those who recognize politics as upper class nobility vs the peasants. They run in the same social circles. We’re still primates at our core.
  - seanp2k2 2y ago
    And when the House Speaker won’t even let it get to a vote in the first place, no one has any motivation to even draft such a bill. But yeah let’s ban TikTok because in theory they could do something bad that every US-based company already does. Way to represent the will of the people, House.
- pessimizer 2y ago
  > Congress could have drafted this anytime if they had seen fit, Congress as a whole does not support net neutrality, and the reason they have not drafted a simple house bill to do it that doesn't include 99 other things is because they had no desire to. It has nothing to do with "ideology wars."
  - miah_ 2y ago
    Have no desire because they've been bribed, I mean lobbied.
- jrockway 2y ago
  To be fair Congress does some work. They have avoided 2 government shutdowns. They funded the war efforts in Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. They passed the infrastructure bill. The reality is, they just don't care about net neutrality. I'm still mad that they haven't passed the bill that gets rid of DST (or rather, gets rid of standard time). Everyone wants it in both parties. Just get it done. Even more annoying is the whole Section 174 debacle. Completely killing the field of software engineering in the US.
  - _aavaa_ 2y ago
    > They have avoided 2 government shutdowns. My what a low bar
    - jszymborski 2y ago
      "They didn't trip on their own feet"
  - packetlost 2y ago
    > They have avoided 2 government shutdowns You mean they passed a bill that was necessary for them to get their paychecks. I fail to see how this is even remotely surprising.
    - idiotsecant 2y ago
      I think their congressional salary is probably not where most members of Congress are deriving their main income. I think the paychecks their 'other' employers are cutting are more lucrative.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - TaylorAlexander 2y ago
        It’s true but “keep the government from grinding to a halt due to pure inaction” is kind of the absolute minimum bar for congress that I don’t think it’s reasonable to call it a win.
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  While I agree Congress is quite dysfunctional, the sheer difficulty with which to get a bill written, passed, and signed into law is by design. Legislation is supposed to take a large amount of deliberation, agreement, and time. Also consider that this works both ways: If something is passed into law by Congress, it's going to take monumental effort to undo it just like getting it passed was. An example of this is Obamacare, where getting it passed was difficult and revoking it has been difficult. Likewise, the flippant nature of orders authorized by the Executive Branch is also by design. Such orders are meant primarily to address short-term concerns requiring immediate or expedient attention, not long-term concerns that require thorough deliberation.
  - magicalist 2y ago
    > the sheer difficulty with which to get a bill written, passed, and signed into law is by design No, the 118th Congress was not how anything was designed to operate. This is hand waving mixed with Founding Father fairytales.
- loldk 2y ago
  [dead]
- redeeman 2y ago
  because nobody wants single subject bills, it would semi make them accountable.. remind me, who in congress is for single subject bills, who is against? (and its very few individuals FOR, so not super hard)
bullfightonmars 2y ago
This is the tyranny of minority rule. When congress is not representative of the electorate and the minority doesn’t have to compromise to get things done to gain political favor and power, nothing gets done.
Dig1t 2y ago
Exactly, we never voted any of the people making these decisions into office, they didn’t have to campaign or explain their policies to the public. Having a layer in between these regulators and the public (the politicians who appoint them) removes power from the common people.

Bjartr 2y ago

The supreme court has a long history of overturning its rulings years, or decades, later https://constitution.congress.gov/resources/decisions-overruled/ https://constitution.congress.gov/resources/decisions-overru...

jackcosgrove 2y ago
An implicit assumption of the American political order is that a body that makes policy also has the ability to unmake that policy. I think that's good because otherwise there would be a land rush to create policies that are irreversible or have a higher bar for reversal than enactment. These policies would inevitably become out of date and reversing them could be politically impossible. The big exception to this was the drafting of the Constitution itself, which arguably was easier to ratify than it is to amend. The problem of the practical impossibility of undoing past policies applies very much here.
- whatshisface 2y ago
  The Constitution was very difficult to get ratified. For one thing, it was recognized that it had to be unanimous. Don't forget it was replacing an existing political order of the Continental Congress + state governments.

wredue 2y ago

[flagged]

itishappy 2y ago
Perhaps one commonality is that we all seem inclined to assume the other half makes political decisions out of spite.
- wredue 2y ago
  I find the only commonality is that after the right wing does something, both sides say “this is going to hurt so many people”. It’s just that one side is laughing when they say it. I visit alt-right circles A LOT, and I have literally never once heard “the other side does these things out of spite”. The vast majority of the time, they don’t have anything to say on a topic beyond repeating some stupid meme. Additionally, I would also like to point out that people on the right actually demonstrably DO have zero conviction for their beliefs. It is a tested fact that on the whole people on the right will absolutely flip flop on a topic the moment they find out that the left supports it (some 90% of right wing voters in tests), however, on the whole, people on the left are *far* less likely to flip flop (only some 10% of left wing voters flip on a topic upon learning the right supports it). That the right actually votes out of spite is not just something people assert, it’s a tested fact. Mitch *blocked his own goddamn bill upon finding out that dems supported it*.
  - dotnet00 2y ago
    You obviously haven't been in any right-wing circles. They're constantly saying that the other side "hates you and wants to destroy the country", exactly the same thing left-wing circles are constantly saying about them. If they're laughing when they're saying it, it's either because you're failing to read the room and arguing with someone who's just sharing an edgy meme rather than actually talking politics (I see this very often on the fediverse), or they're doing it in a cynical "haha, we're so screwed" manner.
  - curvedinf 2y ago
    [flagged]

granzymes 2y ago

The Supreme Court is poised to decide a case this term, Loper Bright, which should help restore more finality to decisions like this. Because agencies receive considerable deference to their interpretation of the law, even when that interpretation flip-flops every four years, we never get a definitive ruling on what the law says. The Court seems likely to greatly reduce this deference, leading to more consistency.

chimeracoder 2y ago
[flagged]
- granzymes 2y ago
  Hard to see how reducing deference could lead to less consistency. You are literally commenting on a post about the FCC reinterpreting their authority to regulate internet broadband years after the lawsuits over the original Net Neutrality laws concluded. If Loper Bright had been decided ten years ago we would already know today whether the FCC possessed this authority or not and it would be settled. Instead, we are about to embark on another round of litigation because the FCC just unsettled expectations again. Case 1: agencies reinterpret the law ever four years in each new administration until the end of time. Case 2: we figure out what the law means once and apply it going forward until Congress changes it again.
  - Retric 2y ago
    Case 1: Changing after clear notification is not ambiguous. Case 2: Waiting until every single individual aspect of every single law is litigated means for years to decades the actual meaning is ambiguous until each court case finishes.
- threemux 2y ago
  The overruling of Chevron is not about stripping power from federal agencies, it's about determining who should resolve ambiguities in regulations. Should it be the agency itself, or should it be the branch of government whose job it is to "say what the law is"? That being said, I don't think Chevron deference has a part to play when it comes to Net Neutrality flip flopping all the time - these are not ambiguous regulations. In that sense I don't agree with the person you're replying to - Loper Bright won't help here. Now, if you want to say that the FCC doesn't have the authority to issue this rule, that's something that was always reviewable by the courts. The concept that would actually attempt to strip power from agencies is the nondelegation doctrine. While I suspect that has support among a few justices, it would be a very radical change and there is no case on the horizon that I'm aware of that would be a vehicle to implement it.

huytersd 2y ago

Part of the reason some one like Modi came into power and has been able to maintain it (amongst many other reasons) is people were disgusted by the continuous reversal of administrations and their policies. Nothing ever progressed to completion. That malcontent is generally settling into the west as well and strongmen are looking more and more attractive. The auth option in the US is a regressive dummy, but India, China and several African, Latin American and South East Asian countries have competent people filling those roles.

dotnet00 2y ago
IIRC with Modi a big factor was that the previous prime minister was seen as effectively a spineless puppet, kind of like how Biden is seen by many. Modi came in promising to try literally anything rather than just sitting by and doing nothing unless ordered to by the political dynasty leading the party, and has largely delivered on that promise. It has meant lots of controversial legislation being forced through, but to many that's better than just letting the issues simmer for decades. Especially since many of those issues had no uncontroversial solution. Trump came in promising similar action, but in hindsight did absolutely nothing besides further divide the country. Unfortunately at the moment neither side seems to have a candidate that's actually willing to do something similar. Biden will continue to make excuses about not being able to do things, and Trump will continue to focus more on PR and dominating the news cycle than actual work.
- huytersd 2y ago
  Manmohan Singh was seen as exceptionally spineless (because he pretty much cowtowed to whatever the Gandhi family said). That’s not how Biden is perceived. At all. Biden has installed more justices than Obama and Trump combined. He has done it without the right freaking out about it. He has been incredibly effective if you delve past the surface.
  - dotnet00 2y ago
    In right wing circles Biden is often perceived as a puppet for 'elites', too old and senile to make his own decisions. Every other tweet about him seems to get people joking about how he had to go to bed early or how they had to drag him out to make a speech. I was a bit young to carefully follow Manmohan's term, but I recall that one of the comments I often heard from adults were that he was clearly too old for office.

kjkjadksj 2y ago

Its always been this way, but the internet sure has amplified the effect of Edward Bernay’s theories. So much free PR copy is created on your behalf by your army of sheep active on the internet. Used to be that stuff was put on car windshield wipers and promptly thrown away, now people are engaging with it online now that there’s a mechanism to talk back to it.

smsm42 2y ago

Unfortunately, if you have a contentious issue which is decided by fiat of one of the sides being in power and not by mutual compromise, there's no reason for the other side, coming in power, to not change it back. Since, fortunately, we still have a functioning democracy in the US, the sides in power change. Since, unfortunately, there seems to be not enough will to reach a workable compromise satisfactory to both sides, flip-flopping will likely continue in the foreseeable future, until either societal consensus moves firmly on one side of the issue to the point that makes other side's position untenable, or some mutually agreeable compromise emerges.

WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
> Unfortunately, if you have a contentious issue At it's core, it is a technical issue - primarily network management. Under NN framework, ISPs would adhere to minimal straightforward rules that would disallowed them from prioritizing, throttling, capping, purposefully degrading, etc wireline networks. For most of 2 decades, this is where NN lived. In apparent response to NN becoming reality, ISP funded representatives began echoing the talking points of ISP lobbyist groups and contention was born.
- smsm42 2y ago
  I don't think it's a technical issue. The implementation is technical, but the implications are societal. Is the state allowed to restrict ISPs from certain forms of network management? How far the governmental control over ISP actions can go? Does such restriction benefit the society? I'm sure a lot of people have opinions on these questions, but it's not a technical issue and not one that has an obvious correct solution. It's not like "is quicksort better than bubble sort" (even that is not 100% clear cut but let's not get into the weeds) where you can make mathematical arguments and tests to establish the conclusion. It's a matter of values and policies, and as such, it's bound to produce disagreement. I don't think it's also useful to frame it as "it all worked super awesome and then greedy capitalists stole it from us by their dirty tricks". It's usually not how it works and it's not what happened in this case.

jmyeet 2y ago

> ... I am exhausted by the continuous flip-flopping of legislation depending on which party is in charge. By design, Congress is unable to do anything. It's either one party (always the same party) being completely obstructionist, even other presidential appointments, or if a rotating villain who defects and stops any meaningful legislation. Power has moved to the courts and to the states. Again, entirely by design. In the current term, there is an inocuous sounding case called Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo [1], which is expected to overturn a longstanding (~40 years) precedent called Chevron [2]. This would gut Federal agencies. Chevron set a precedent that in areas of ambiguity courts would give deference to Federal agencies. The argument for this is that Congress has to be explicit but Congress cannot possibly explicitly regulate, for example, salmon quotas and inspections. The goal here is deregulation for profit. That's it. For the last 30+ years, every president issues an executive order on day 1 either banning or allowing recipients of foreign aid to provide counselling on abortion, depending on the party. The real question here is why did this take 3 years into Biden's regime for the FCC to act? The FCC is an appointed position. This could've been done in 2021. > Maybe it's always been this way though and I'm just getting old enough to be bothered by it? No, it's now more obstructionist than it ever has been but it's always been more difficult to make changes than not. Previously there was more respect for institutional norms. For example, if the president nominated someone for a position, that person would always get a Senate hearing regardless of who controlled the Senate. There is no law that required that but people previously accepted the president had a mandate for appointments. Now? It's way more scorched earth. [1]: https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/loper-bright-enterprises-v-raimondo/ https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/loper-bright-ent... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_U.S.A.,_Inc._v._Natural_Resources_Defense_Council,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_U.S.A.,_Inc._v._Natura....

tivert 2y ago
> By design, Congress is unable to do anything. It's either one party (always the same party) being completely obstructionist, even other presidential appointments, or if a rotating villain who defects and stops any meaningful legislation. Don't pretend like the Democrats wouldn't be just as obstructionist if it suited their political objectives. What we actually have is lack of consensus, and excessively polarized factions that are unwilling to budge to create a consensus (or rather waste their energy making a great deal of noise on non-consensus issues and nonstarters and bickering with each other).

tootie 2y ago

[flagged]

adolph 2y ago
Yes, total agreement. If the other half of people wouldn't make bad policy selections, we'd all be better off.
rootusrootus 2y ago
> half the voting population of the 50 states of the union keep making a conscious selection of bad policy Which half?
- feoren 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - adamtaylor_13 2y ago
    I’m not sure either side is invested in making sure people are suffering. I do think both sides have differing opinions on what the role of government should be in Americans lives. Neither side is wholly consistent, which is okay. Demonizing “the other” is the root issue. Everyone should stop doing that.
    - rootusrootus 2y ago
      > I do think both sides have differing opinions on what the role of government should be in Americans lives. I think everyone seems to largely agree that the government should definitely have a big role in Americans' lives, but they differ significantly on what issues they think the gov't should be involved in. Relatively few people seem think the gov't should largely leave people alone (although it is popular for some folks to say they feel that way while simultaneously agitating for the opposite).
    - tootie 2y ago
      I actually don't believe this anymore. I think that up to the Bush years, you could argue the sides were just taking different paths to achieve the same goals. As bad his policy ended up being, I think Bush and Cheney and their cohort were really trying to do the right thing. I also genuinely think that Trump and his enablers are people with bad intentions. Their intentions range between callous self-interest and downright nativist authoritarianism. They would harm democracy and their perceived enemies in America to further their goals. That's maybe not 100% of the political right but I have very little pushback against it.

scarface_74 2y ago

The issue is that it isn’t legislation. It’s a regulation. Laws are both harder to get passed and harder to overturn

vkou 2y ago

We are flipfloppimg because the legislature is paralysed, so only the executive can function. This is a fundamental issue with the American form of government. Parliamentary systems which have the executive made up of members of the legislature have way less flip-flopping, finger-pointing, and paralysis. The governments they produce are more reflective of current public sentiment, end up with more than two parties, and are thus less stable. Minority rule and coalition rule is very common... which actively forces either compromise, or a new election.

massysett 2y ago
This "paralyzed" legislature just passed, by large margins, a large amount of foreign aid and a very significant provision on a popular social media platform. Before that it spent billions of dollars on covid aid. Throughout that time it has appropriated billions of dollars to keep the government running. This "paralyzed" narrative is something the press and politicians like to push because it serves their ends, though for different reasons. It's false.
- vkou 2y ago
  > Throughout that time it has appropriated billions of dollars to keep the government running. In no other country is it considered an accomplishment for a government to debate a budget, agree on it, pass it, spend it, and then three quarters of the way through the year refuse to pay for the spending it agreed on, manufacturing a crisis that sometimes gets resolved at the eleventh hour, and sometimes results in a multi-week disaster and government shutdown. If a company had a department that ran that way, every single director and manager in it would be fired after the first time it happened. It has so far happened three times (Including once when the Republicans fully controlled congress), and has been threatened every year.
  - massysett 2y ago
    > three quarters of the way through the year refuse to pay for the spending it agreed on, At no time did this happen.

dmorgan81 2y ago

Congress was destined to this fate when they eliminated earmarks. Earmarks, or pork barrel spending, were derided as gov't waste, but in reality they were the grease that kept legislation moving. A representative could go back to their voters and say, "I voted for this thing you might not like, but I did it to ensure this crucial local project got done." Without earmarks there is no incentive to compromise. Compromise is actually a liability now, because there is always someone who will challenge you in a primary and promise to be more "ideologically pure." Without the ability to point to money and public works to defend yourself both during a primary and an election the best you can do is point to a record without compromise.

favorited 2y ago
Earmarks are back. They were against the House's rules for 10 years, but the 117th Congress started allowing them again in 2021.
- 1980phipsi 2y ago
  And the past three years have seen the return of friendliness and comity unseen for a decade /s
  - favorited 2y ago
    I'm glad we've established that the absence of earmarks isn't the problem.
mrcwinn 2y ago
I think the results are mixed and the lessons aren’t clear to me. Perhaps earmarks were the result of an electorate that wanted more purity in decision-making (at the cost of stability). In other words, earmarks didn’t break cooperation. Corrupted cooperation led to the end of earmarks. Earmarks probably do grease the wheels, but it’s important to remember a step existed before the compromise: a member of the congress could hold out until they received something, often unrelated to the matter at hand. That is wasteful and, to some, dishonest. Now, did a removal earmarking result in more financial efficiency? Surely not. The budget deficit continued to grow, mostly because of Obamacare, Covid, wars, tax cuts. So what of compromise? One might think compromise is dead, and yet we live in a world where Ukraine aid is tied to social media ownership. Shruggy dude.

adastra22 2y ago

It used to be the case that Congress actually passed laws. And pre-Chevron, the regulatory agencies actually constrained their rule making to be within the law, and so laws were more specific. The problem started IMHO with Republican obstructionism under Clinton, but got out of control with Obama’s shift to using executive orders over legislation after the affordable care act nonsense. It’s definitely a both sides issue.

Rury 2y ago

Perhaps it's getting worse, but it has always been this way to a degree. What few people seem to realize, is that while democracy and the separating of powers seem good in principle, they also have innately dysfunctional qualities to them. The more divided or opposed things are, the more dysfunction there is.

Ericson2314 2y ago

Proportional representation, multiple parties, and parliamentary system (no legislative executive divide) can fix this.

Gormo 2y ago
Proportional representation is a terrible idea, in that it entrenches the role of parties per se, but ranked-choice balloting in SMDs would be a massive improvement over the status quo.
- Ericson2314 2y ago
  Nope nope nope. Political parties are good. 2 incumbent political parties in a permanent grapple is what is bad. Politics is a "team sport", by which I don't mean it must a facile context practiced by west-wing-loving weirdos, but that is is a fundamentally collective effort. Americans love to think political parties are inherently bad, but seriously when are mere individuals reliable? How the hell am I supposed to tell who all these down-ballet no-names are and what they actually believe in? Much of the rest of the democratic world functions fine with parties that are not all 150+ years old and ship-of-theseus-ed beyond recognition.
  - Gormo 2y ago
    Nah, parties are bad. They perfectly exemplify the adage about people dedicated to the ostensible mission of the organization vs. those dedicated to the organization as an end it itself. With formalized parties, we often see the strategic concerns of the party as an organization eclipse any coherent policy goals that are the ostensible reason for the party existing in the first place. Multi-party in particular democracy has some significant pitfalls, including the tendency of marginal and extremist parties to play kingmaker. The historian Hannah Arendt made some salient points about how the multi-party structure of Weimar Germany contributed directly to the radicalization and eventual total control of the state by the Nazis. Politics will always involve factions forming around shared interests or values, but in a situation without those factions being calcified into formal organizations, or even identities, we'd expect them to be much more fluid and ephemeral, and for politicians to be much more willing to reach across ideological divides without worrying about institutional discipline or being ostracized by the party establishment regardless of their constituents' opinions. Ranked-choice balloting wouldn't eliminate parties per se, but it would reduce their influence in the electoral process significantly. > How the hell am I supposed to tell who all these down-ballet no-names are and what they actually believe in? I'd expect a reasonable voter to investigate the actual candidates on the ballot and make an informed choice, and not merely rely on party affiliation as the only criterion for casting a vote.

rchaud 2y ago

Hard problems are considered unsolvable by today's Congress (except for military funding bills), so they focus their energies on 'red meat' for the voting base (abortion resrictions, affirmative action), or for wealthy donors (tax cuts, SC nominations).

cco 2y ago

Your comment inspired me to make this: https://net-neutrality.vercel.app/ https://net-neutrality.vercel.app/