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Handing the power over to the dysfunctional Congress is exactly how the oil and gas industry intends to win. They own enough congressmen to make sure any such

Handing the power over to the dysfunctional Congress is exactly how the oil and gas industry intends to win. They own enough congressmen to make sure any such legislation never makes it out of committee.

akira2501 2y ago
> They own enough congressmen to make sure any such legislation never makes it out of committee. Campaign donations are a powerful motivator but they lose to real public pressure every time. The public is not very interested in this problem because it's incredibly abstract and none of the proposed solutions seem designed to actually solve it without forcing a religious level of austerity on them.
- gman83 2y ago
  This definitely used to be the case, but since Citizens United those donations have absolutely exploded, and combine that with the gerrymandering of districts into very safe districts, public pressure might no longer be sufficient to sway those politicians, the jury is still out on that. Most Americans do actually want action on climate change: https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/ycom-us/ https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/yc...
  - akira2501 2y ago
    > but since Citizens United those donations have absolutely exploded That case has implications respecting third party advertising but it has no bearing on direct campaign contributions to candidates. > combine that with the gerrymandering of districts into very safe districts The purpose of this gerrymandering is to reduce the total voter turnout. Most senators get elected with less than half the voting population turning out, many as little as 25%. Which means currently only 1/8 of your population needs to vote for you to win. It's really a vulnerability they've created for themselves, but you have to have the confidence to run as a third party candidate in order to take advantage of this. This is a uniparty game that strengthens the false dichotomy and not really material for our purposes here. > public pressure might no longer be sufficient to sway those politicians, the jury is still out on that. Is there a case where significant public pressure has failed? Saying "voters want action on climate change" is meaningless. Of course they do. Who actually _wants_ to ruin the planet or destroy their health? Nobody. How do we do this? Which metrics do we use? Who is responsible for implementation? What impacts will this have on average citizens? These are the questions that need answering, and unfortunately, there's too much actual division on these issues to foment a clear _federal_ plan forward let alone anything that would be effective or enforced world wide.
    - gman83 2y ago
      > That case has implications respecting third party advertising but it has no bearing on direct campaign contributions to candidates. It's by now become rather clear that both parties have found loopholes to get around the so called firewall between the campaigns and these third parties: https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2023/08/super-pacs-raise-millions-concerns-illegal-campaign-coordination-raise-questions/ https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2023/08/super-pacs-raise-mi... > Is there a case where significant public pressure has failed? I guess the best example would be campaign finance reform itself. That's an issue Democrats and Republicans actually agree on: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/09/19/money-power-and-the-influence-of-ordinary-people-in-american-politics/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/09/19/money-power-...
  - nradov 2y ago
    Most Americans do actually want action on climate change, but what action? More fission power plants? Subsidies for electric cars? A carbon tax? A cap and trade system? There's not much agreement on the specific actions, hence the legislative gridlock.
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  Who do you think generates public pressure? The same marketing minds donating to political campaigns.
- sillystuff 2y ago
  > Campaign donations are a powerful motivator but they lose to real public pressure every time. It is actually exactly the opposite [1]. The US is a country controlled by oligarchs. "Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence." [1] http://www.princeton.edu/~mgilens/Gilens%20homepage%20materials/Gilens%20and%20Page/Gilens%20and%20Page%202014-Testing%20Theories%203-7-14.pdf http://www.princeton.edu/~mgilens/Gilens%20homepage%20materi...
lupusreal 2y ago
Congress being "dysfunctional" is just a way of saying Congress doesn't agree to do what you think it should. If the political will to do this isn't there (and it clearly isn't, otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation) then it shouldn't be done.
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  No, it says more than that. The most fundamental duty of Congress is to pass the budget. Well, how are they doing at that? Lousy, that's how. Congress has been historically terrible at that the last few years. They can't even pass a budget. (No, the Nth continuing resolution for the next M months is not the same.) So "dysfunctional" means "can't function", not just "doesn't do what I want".
  - lupusreal 2y ago
    Congress is only meant to pass budgets if they can agree on one. If they can't, then they aren't supposed to. Anyway, after a lot of bluffing and negotiation they inevitability get it done, the process you deride as dysfunction is simply politics. There's no rule that they must do it as fast or smoothly as you think they should. Calling Congress dysfunctional is just political rhetoric.
    - immibis 2y ago
      And if Congress doesn't pass a budget because it doesn't agree on one, the whole country is meant to grind to a halt. This is mutually assured destruction, guaranteeing that Congress will pass a budget.
      - lupusreal 2y ago
        > the whole country is meant to grind to a halt. That's flagrant hyperbole. > This is mutually assured destruction, That's even worse hyperbole. Anyway, yes, Congress inevitably does always manage to pass a budget. There are sometime delays, the consequence of which is exaggerated to put pressure on the other side to give up ground in the negotiations, but at the end of the day it's just politics and people carry on.
hash872 2y ago
Handing more & more power to a president is exactly how all of the other presidential systems in the world have collapsed into autocracy. I do not think the oil & gas industry 'owns' more than a minority of Congressmen and women, however you want to define that term. Remove the filibuster, weaken the Speaker of the House and return more power to the old committee system- that's how you empower Congress and get more legislation passed. But whatever you do do not hand more power to 1 single person. The US still has a relatively weak presidential system compared to other countries, and we should strive to stay that way Edit to include: And this includes administrative agencies staffed by executive branch appointees. I'd like to see the Venn diagram of confused people who think 'no we shouldn't have an imperial presidency' but 'yes courts should defer to agency interpretations when the agency is run by appointees of the President'. Like The Office meme- it's the same picture!
- ticviking 2y ago
  Simply requiring an actual, physical filibuster would weaken it's power while keeping it as a check on excess or an option for a principled stand/PR stunt.
- jandrese 2y ago
  Do you think everybody at the EPA is fired and a new batch of people are brought in every time control of the White House changes? The main advantage of these federal agencies is that they were somewhat stable regardless of who is in charge. Career bureaucrats who just do their job decade after decade. Sure the head of the agency gets appointed by the President and they do set a general policy, but it's not like the rulebooks are getting rewritten every 4 or 8 years.
  - gman83 2y ago
    Trump has a plan to reclassify 50,000 career bureaucrats as "Schedule F" political appointees.
    - mc32 2y ago
      They should at least stack rank the rank and file and at least quintimate all the slackers after each election cycle, regardless of winner, like clockwork, stack rank and renew. There is too much accumulated putrid growth in many departments -but it hardly ever gets sorted out.
elzbardico 2y ago
As if there was not plenty of money to be done on renewables, replacing all the current fleet of automobiles, and of course all the financing that will be required to enable the green transition. As if the investor behind both industries weren't basically the same. There are orders of magnitude more money to be made by the billionaires with a renewable based green transition than with oil. It will be the biggest transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class into the pockets of the bastardly rich in the whole history.
- pfisch 2y ago
  huh? People are going to buy cars. They will be electric or they won't. Either way, people are going to buy cars.
  - JadeNB 2y ago
    > huh? People are going to buy cars. They will be electric or they won't. Either way, people are going to buy cars. I think that this is a short-term picture. The US infrastructure has been set up to make owning a car a very rewarding proposition, so, of course, lots of people own cars, and that will continue to be the case as long as things stay in the neighborhood of where they are. But there's no reason that future infrastructure decisions have to be made in a way that continues to privilege cars over other forms of transportation, and car ownership will follow, with a lag, the way that infrastructure decisions point.
jerf 2y ago
So, the theory is, the oil and gas industry can afford a few dozen or hundred Congressmen, but can't afford a President, or a Secretary, or even a few unelected bureaucrats whose offices I don't even know how to name that are actually making these decisions? The problem isn't that you are wrong. You're right that Congress is for sale. The problem is, everyone is for sale, so that's a null argument; it cuts against you exactly as much as it cuts for you. I mean, that totally blows. Don't mistake me for celebrating this. But it doesn't work as a "let's give the $BRANCH power over this" argument in any direction.
- enragedcacti 2y ago
  Kind of a weird argument when the whole discussion is about a time when the executive stood up to the fossil fuel industry and heavily tightened regulations. Further, un-elected bureaucrats accepting bribes for official acts is plainly illegal* and they don't have campaign funds which is the primary way money moves from industry to congress' pockets. *becoming less illegal thanks to scotus https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-limits-scope-of-anti-bribery-law/ https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-limits-scop...
- gunapologist99 2y ago
  Agreed. It's also a lot harder, more expensive, and much more easily detected to buy off the majority of Congress than a single President or Secretary.
  - jandrese 2y ago
    You don't need a majority, you only need to buy off the committee chair. Maybe just enough to cover the gap (currently 2) if something manages to slip out of committee, maybe a few more if you think the legislation is going to be especially popular.
JoshTriplett 2y ago
You say that as if supreme court justices aren't also for sale. We need a solution for bribery (including current forms of "legal" bribery).
- burningChrome 2y ago
  >> You say that as if supreme court justices aren't also for sale. Is this something that's recent you're seeing? I haven't done any research to find out if this has been a thing for the entire time the court has been around. I just know the media has suddenly gone after the justices since the courts majority changed from liberal to conservative for the first time in its existence.
  - chrisoverzero 2y ago
    > […] changed from liberal to conservative for the first time in its existence. Not at all: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lochner_era https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lochner_era
    - vitus 2y ago
      Also: the court hasn't had a liberal tilt in something like 30 years (when Clarence Thomas replaced Thurgood Marshall in 1991). Despite Anthony Kennedy not voting with the conservative bloc 100% of the time, he voted with them far more often than with the liberal bloc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehnquist_Court https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehnquist_Court is probably a better timeline for when the court changed from liberal to conservative.
  - pyth0 2y ago
    The parent could be referring to Justice Clarence Thomas and his well-documented past of accepting expensive things from Republican billionaires. [1] [2] [1] https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-scotus-undisclosed-luxury-travel-gifts-crow https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-scotus-un... [2] https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2023/09/new-filings-reveal-more-luxury-trips-and-opaque-payments-to-clarence-thomas-wife-ginni/ https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2023/09/new-filings-reveal-...
cortesoft 2y ago
You don’t think they can hold the same sway over the executive branch?
burningChrome 2y ago
This is how they've always won. In 1978 after the oil crisis Carter was already talking about getting off of foreign oil, we should develop renewable energy resources, be energy independent. Imagine where we'd be had we done even a few of the things he suggested? Instead, the big oil companies, their lobbyists and OPEC made sure there would be abundance of cheap oil and then everybody just moved on and forgot about the long lines waiting for gas, rationing and other horrible stuff the oil crisis brought. Not much has changed over the past 45 years which is pretty depressing.
- mminer237 2y ago
  Uh, ironically, the recently-overturned Chevron was at the time a big win for Chevron, the oil company, because SCOTUS required courts to defer to President Reagan's EPA which interpreted the Clean Air Act very generously in the oil companies' favor even though the courts ruled Congress intended stricter regulations. Now everyone is decrying Loper saying the EPA should be given nigh-unlimited authority since they agree with its policies under Administrator Regan. People support empowering whichever branch of government agrees with their politics at the moment. Things have just completely flipped in the last 40 years.
  - gunapologist99 2y ago
    Well, also what happened in the last 40 years was that the administrative state exploded in size. And, now, for every new law that Congress passes, unelected bureaucrats in federal agencies create TWENTY-SEVEN new laws. https://www.forbes.com/sites/waynecrews/2017/08/15/how-many-rules-and-regulations-do-federal-agencies-issue/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/waynecrews/2017/08/15/how-many-... And the size of the federal government has become simply immense, even discounting the size of the world's largest military. It's by far the world's largest employer in terms of monetary spend. So, overturning Chevron was just a tiny step toward curbing the massive power that government agencies have over the citizens that they purport to serve.
    - spencerflem 2y ago
      Its worth mentioning that congress passed only 27 laws in 2023. You can read them all here, many were for trivial things like commemorative coins or digital duck hunting licences: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/19/us/politics/bills-laws-2023-house-congress.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/19/us/politics/bills-laws-20... Delegating is how things get done, surely you wouldn't like the individual details of every single thing you do at work to decided by the C-Suite.
datahack 2y ago
Especially when 1 in 4 congresspeople are still invested in the fossil fuel industry. Money talks. > As of Dec. 13, 2019, 134 members of Congress and their spouses own as much as $92.7 million worth of stock in fossil fuel companies and mutual funds, according to an analysis of financial disclosures by Sludge. House members own between roughly $29.5 million and $78.2 million in fossil fuel stocks, while senators have between $3.8 million and $14.5 million invested in oil, gas, and coal interests. Members of Congress generally report the value of their investments in broad ranges, so it’s not possible to know exactly how much their stocks are worth. https://prospect.org/power/members-of-congress-own-up-to-93-million-in-fossil-fuel-stocks/ https://prospect.org/power/members-of-congress-own-up-to-93-...
wakawaka28 2y ago
You think it's easier to bribe hundreds of people instead of one at the top? If it's money in government you're worried about, I have bad news for you. Everyone in government is susceptible to getting paid off, including (and especially) unelected people.
playa1 2y ago
I agree with you but handing the power to the Executive Branch doesn't solve the problem. The people need to demand more from their elected officials but the two parties have done an outstanding job getting us to fight with each other so we forget how the corporations are controlling everything.

akira2501 2y ago

> They own enough congressmen to make sure any such legislation never makes it out of committee. Campaign donations are a powerful motivator but they lose to real public pressure every time. The public is not very interested in this problem because it's incredibly abstract and none of the proposed solutions seem designed to actually solve it without forcing a religious level of austerity on them.

gman83 2y ago
This definitely used to be the case, but since Citizens United those donations have absolutely exploded, and combine that with the gerrymandering of districts into very safe districts, public pressure might no longer be sufficient to sway those politicians, the jury is still out on that. Most Americans do actually want action on climate change: https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/ycom-us/ https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/yc...
- akira2501 2y ago
  > but since Citizens United those donations have absolutely exploded That case has implications respecting third party advertising but it has no bearing on direct campaign contributions to candidates. > combine that with the gerrymandering of districts into very safe districts The purpose of this gerrymandering is to reduce the total voter turnout. Most senators get elected with less than half the voting population turning out, many as little as 25%. Which means currently only 1/8 of your population needs to vote for you to win. It's really a vulnerability they've created for themselves, but you have to have the confidence to run as a third party candidate in order to take advantage of this. This is a uniparty game that strengthens the false dichotomy and not really material for our purposes here. > public pressure might no longer be sufficient to sway those politicians, the jury is still out on that. Is there a case where significant public pressure has failed? Saying "voters want action on climate change" is meaningless. Of course they do. Who actually _wants_ to ruin the planet or destroy their health? Nobody. How do we do this? Which metrics do we use? Who is responsible for implementation? What impacts will this have on average citizens? These are the questions that need answering, and unfortunately, there's too much actual division on these issues to foment a clear _federal_ plan forward let alone anything that would be effective or enforced world wide.
  - gman83 2y ago
    > That case has implications respecting third party advertising but it has no bearing on direct campaign contributions to candidates. It's by now become rather clear that both parties have found loopholes to get around the so called firewall between the campaigns and these third parties: https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2023/08/super-pacs-raise-millions-concerns-illegal-campaign-coordination-raise-questions/ https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2023/08/super-pacs-raise-mi... > Is there a case where significant public pressure has failed? I guess the best example would be campaign finance reform itself. That's an issue Democrats and Republicans actually agree on: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/09/19/money-power-and-the-influence-of-ordinary-people-in-american-politics/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/09/19/money-power-...
- nradov 2y ago
  Most Americans do actually want action on climate change, but what action? More fission power plants? Subsidies for electric cars? A carbon tax? A cap and trade system? There's not much agreement on the specific actions, hence the legislative gridlock.
kjkjadksj 2y ago
Who do you think generates public pressure? The same marketing minds donating to political campaigns.
sillystuff 2y ago
> Campaign donations are a powerful motivator but they lose to real public pressure every time. It is actually exactly the opposite [1]. The US is a country controlled by oligarchs. "Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence." [1] http://www.princeton.edu/~mgilens/Gilens%20homepage%20materials/Gilens%20and%20Page/Gilens%20and%20Page%202014-Testing%20Theories%203-7-14.pdf http://www.princeton.edu/~mgilens/Gilens%20homepage%20materi...

lupusreal 2y ago

Congress being "dysfunctional" is just a way of saying Congress doesn't agree to do what you think it should. If the political will to do this isn't there (and it clearly isn't, otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation) then it shouldn't be done.

AnimalMuppet 2y ago
No, it says more than that. The most fundamental duty of Congress is to pass the budget. Well, how are they doing at that? Lousy, that's how. Congress has been historically terrible at that the last few years. They can't even pass a budget. (No, the Nth continuing resolution for the next M months is not the same.) So "dysfunctional" means "can't function", not just "doesn't do what I want".
- lupusreal 2y ago
  Congress is only meant to pass budgets if they can agree on one. If they can't, then they aren't supposed to. Anyway, after a lot of bluffing and negotiation they inevitability get it done, the process you deride as dysfunction is simply politics. There's no rule that they must do it as fast or smoothly as you think they should. Calling Congress dysfunctional is just political rhetoric.
  - immibis 2y ago
    And if Congress doesn't pass a budget because it doesn't agree on one, the whole country is meant to grind to a halt. This is mutually assured destruction, guaranteeing that Congress will pass a budget.
    - lupusreal 2y ago
      > the whole country is meant to grind to a halt. That's flagrant hyperbole. > This is mutually assured destruction, That's even worse hyperbole. Anyway, yes, Congress inevitably does always manage to pass a budget. There are sometime delays, the consequence of which is exaggerated to put pressure on the other side to give up ground in the negotiations, but at the end of the day it's just politics and people carry on.

hash872 2y ago

Handing more & more power to a president is exactly how all of the other presidential systems in the world have collapsed into autocracy. I do not think the oil & gas industry 'owns' more than a minority of Congressmen and women, however you want to define that term. Remove the filibuster, weaken the Speaker of the House and return more power to the old committee system- that's how you empower Congress and get more legislation passed. But whatever you do do not hand more power to 1 single person. The US still has a relatively weak presidential system compared to other countries, and we should strive to stay that way Edit to include: And this includes administrative agencies staffed by executive branch appointees. I'd like to see the Venn diagram of confused people who think 'no we shouldn't have an imperial presidency' but 'yes courts should defer to agency interpretations when the agency is run by appointees of the President'. Like The Office meme- it's the same picture!

ticviking 2y ago
Simply requiring an actual, physical filibuster would weaken it's power while keeping it as a check on excess or an option for a principled stand/PR stunt.
jandrese 2y ago
Do you think everybody at the EPA is fired and a new batch of people are brought in every time control of the White House changes? The main advantage of these federal agencies is that they were somewhat stable regardless of who is in charge. Career bureaucrats who just do their job decade after decade. Sure the head of the agency gets appointed by the President and they do set a general policy, but it's not like the rulebooks are getting rewritten every 4 or 8 years.
- gman83 2y ago
  Trump has a plan to reclassify 50,000 career bureaucrats as "Schedule F" political appointees.
  - mc32 2y ago
    They should at least stack rank the rank and file and at least quintimate all the slackers after each election cycle, regardless of winner, like clockwork, stack rank and renew. There is too much accumulated putrid growth in many departments -but it hardly ever gets sorted out.

elzbardico 2y ago

As if there was not plenty of money to be done on renewables, replacing all the current fleet of automobiles, and of course all the financing that will be required to enable the green transition. As if the investor behind both industries weren't basically the same. There are orders of magnitude more money to be made by the billionaires with a renewable based green transition than with oil. It will be the biggest transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class into the pockets of the bastardly rich in the whole history.

pfisch 2y ago
huh? People are going to buy cars. They will be electric or they won't. Either way, people are going to buy cars.
- JadeNB 2y ago
  > huh? People are going to buy cars. They will be electric or they won't. Either way, people are going to buy cars. I think that this is a short-term picture. The US infrastructure has been set up to make owning a car a very rewarding proposition, so, of course, lots of people own cars, and that will continue to be the case as long as things stay in the neighborhood of where they are. But there's no reason that future infrastructure decisions have to be made in a way that continues to privilege cars over other forms of transportation, and car ownership will follow, with a lag, the way that infrastructure decisions point.

jerf 2y ago

So, the theory is, the oil and gas industry can afford a few dozen or hundred Congressmen, but can't afford a President, or a Secretary, or even a few unelected bureaucrats whose offices I don't even know how to name that are actually making these decisions? The problem isn't that you are wrong. You're right that Congress is for sale. The problem is, everyone is for sale, so that's a null argument; it cuts against you exactly as much as it cuts for you. I mean, that totally blows. Don't mistake me for celebrating this. But it doesn't work as a "let's give the $BRANCH power over this" argument in any direction.

enragedcacti 2y ago
Kind of a weird argument when the whole discussion is about a time when the executive stood up to the fossil fuel industry and heavily tightened regulations. Further, un-elected bureaucrats accepting bribes for official acts is plainly illegal* and they don't have campaign funds which is the primary way money moves from industry to congress' pockets. *becoming less illegal thanks to scotus https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-limits-scope-of-anti-bribery-law/ https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-limits-scop...
gunapologist99 2y ago
Agreed. It's also a lot harder, more expensive, and much more easily detected to buy off the majority of Congress than a single President or Secretary.
- jandrese 2y ago
  You don't need a majority, you only need to buy off the committee chair. Maybe just enough to cover the gap (currently 2) if something manages to slip out of committee, maybe a few more if you think the legislation is going to be especially popular.

JoshTriplett 2y ago

You say that as if supreme court justices aren't also for sale. We need a solution for bribery (including current forms of "legal" bribery).

burningChrome 2y ago
>> You say that as if supreme court justices aren't also for sale. Is this something that's recent you're seeing? I haven't done any research to find out if this has been a thing for the entire time the court has been around. I just know the media has suddenly gone after the justices since the courts majority changed from liberal to conservative for the first time in its existence.
- chrisoverzero 2y ago
  > […] changed from liberal to conservative for the first time in its existence. Not at all: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lochner_era https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lochner_era
  - vitus 2y ago
    Also: the court hasn't had a liberal tilt in something like 30 years (when Clarence Thomas replaced Thurgood Marshall in 1991). Despite Anthony Kennedy not voting with the conservative bloc 100% of the time, he voted with them far more often than with the liberal bloc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehnquist_Court https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehnquist_Court is probably a better timeline for when the court changed from liberal to conservative.
- pyth0 2y ago
  The parent could be referring to Justice Clarence Thomas and his well-documented past of accepting expensive things from Republican billionaires. [1] [2] [1] https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-scotus-undisclosed-luxury-travel-gifts-crow https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-scotus-un... [2] https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2023/09/new-filings-reveal-more-luxury-trips-and-opaque-payments-to-clarence-thomas-wife-ginni/ https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2023/09/new-filings-reveal-...

cortesoft 2y ago

You don’t think they can hold the same sway over the executive branch?

burningChrome 2y ago

This is how they've always won. In 1978 after the oil crisis Carter was already talking about getting off of foreign oil, we should develop renewable energy resources, be energy independent. Imagine where we'd be had we done even a few of the things he suggested? Instead, the big oil companies, their lobbyists and OPEC made sure there would be abundance of cheap oil and then everybody just moved on and forgot about the long lines waiting for gas, rationing and other horrible stuff the oil crisis brought. Not much has changed over the past 45 years which is pretty depressing.

mminer237 2y ago
Uh, ironically, the recently-overturned Chevron was at the time a big win for Chevron, the oil company, because SCOTUS required courts to defer to President Reagan's EPA which interpreted the Clean Air Act very generously in the oil companies' favor even though the courts ruled Congress intended stricter regulations. Now everyone is decrying Loper saying the EPA should be given nigh-unlimited authority since they agree with its policies under Administrator Regan. People support empowering whichever branch of government agrees with their politics at the moment. Things have just completely flipped in the last 40 years.
- gunapologist99 2y ago
  Well, also what happened in the last 40 years was that the administrative state exploded in size. And, now, for every new law that Congress passes, unelected bureaucrats in federal agencies create TWENTY-SEVEN new laws. https://www.forbes.com/sites/waynecrews/2017/08/15/how-many-rules-and-regulations-do-federal-agencies-issue/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/waynecrews/2017/08/15/how-many-... And the size of the federal government has become simply immense, even discounting the size of the world's largest military. It's by far the world's largest employer in terms of monetary spend. So, overturning Chevron was just a tiny step toward curbing the massive power that government agencies have over the citizens that they purport to serve.
  - spencerflem 2y ago
    Its worth mentioning that congress passed only 27 laws in 2023. You can read them all here, many were for trivial things like commemorative coins or digital duck hunting licences: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/19/us/politics/bills-laws-2023-house-congress.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/19/us/politics/bills-laws-20... Delegating is how things get done, surely you wouldn't like the individual details of every single thing you do at work to decided by the C-Suite.

datahack 2y ago

Especially when 1 in 4 congresspeople are still invested in the fossil fuel industry. Money talks. > As of Dec. 13, 2019, 134 members of Congress and their spouses own as much as $92.7 million worth of stock in fossil fuel companies and mutual funds, according to an analysis of financial disclosures by Sludge. House members own between roughly $29.5 million and $78.2 million in fossil fuel stocks, while senators have between $3.8 million and $14.5 million invested in oil, gas, and coal interests. Members of Congress generally report the value of their investments in broad ranges, so it’s not possible to know exactly how much their stocks are worth. https://prospect.org/power/members-of-congress-own-up-to-93-million-in-fossil-fuel-stocks/ https://prospect.org/power/members-of-congress-own-up-to-93-...

wakawaka28 2y ago

You think it's easier to bribe hundreds of people instead of one at the top? If it's money in government you're worried about, I have bad news for you. Everyone in government is susceptible to getting paid off, including (and especially) unelected people.

playa1 2y ago

I agree with you but handing the power to the Executive Branch doesn't solve the problem. The people need to demand more from their elected officials but the two parties have done an outstanding job getting us to fight with each other so we forget how the corporations are controlling everything.