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How is this thoughtful? (I can see how it's reflective.) The last time the Dems controlled the Presidency and both houses of congress was the first two years o

How is this thoughtful? (I can see how it's reflective.) The last time the Dems controlled the Presidency and both houses of congress was the first two years of Obama's first term (Jan 2009 - Jan 2011). And prior to that the first two years of Clinton's first term (Jan 1993 - Jan 1995; which had limited success, for the same reason this will have limited success: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Partnership_for_Reinventing_Government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Partnership_for_Reinv... ). The last time the Reps controlled both houses and the Presidency was the first two years of Trump's last term (Jan 2017 - Jan 2019). Prior to that the first 6 years under Bush II (Jan 2001 - Jan 2007). And the last time Dem appointees controlled the Supreme court was in 1969. So I really, really cannot trust the thoughtfulness of any opinions or marshallings of fact in the linked article. ...I've now read the entire article and stand by my more general point. This person is looking at government from one limited perspective, as someone who has worked with people who've tried to work in it and reform it in the past. The fundamental barrier to government reform is in Congress, nowhere else. There's nothing special about Musk's ability to convince Congress to do things it doesn't want to do. Even if he threatens to primary them. Most of these people are in relatively safe districts. They have the name recognition in their districts. They can point to the things they've done for their districts. Most of them are not in any danger from a Musk-funded primary opponent. The only thing that would truly reform government in more than bits and pieces would be enough Congress people, in both houses, who are not only of the same party, but are basically also of the same sub-caucus within that party. Fat chance getting that. Without that all you get is horse trading, which leads to the bits and pieces reformations.

burningChrome 2y ago
>> The fundamental barrier to government reform is in Congress, nowhere else. The most salient point here. I had a huge conversation with a friend of mine last night at a Christmas party our mutual couple friends have every year. We both agreed on this and one thing we both understood was the fact that Republicans talk about smaller government, but at no time, either when they've had the presidency or been in control of congress have they ever reduced spending. If you want to really reign in government, you either have to raise taxes to account for all the social program spending, or you have to reduce spending. Both are political suicide and no candidate ever wants to be on record saying they'll do either. As an independent, I see both sides making the situation worse, but only one side saying they want smaller government, but then doing nothing to stand behind that principle.
- SllX 2y ago
  > We both agreed on this and one thing we both understood was the fact that Republicans talk about smaller government, but at no time, either when they've had the presidency or been in control of congress have they ever reduced spending. Absolutely. If Republicans were what they said they were, I’d still hate their rhetoric and a lot of their preferred social policies but I could put all of that aside if it meant reigning in the size, scope, budget (zeroing out the deficit and chopping away at the debt to bring it down over time rather than explosively growing it) of the Federal government and call myself a card-carrying member of the Republican Party. But that’s not the case, and I don’t really want to be associated with either of them in any way, shape or form. If Elon Musk can do what nobody else has and convince Congress to downsize the Federal government, good for him. You can’t even scale the mission creep of the Federal government next to anything else because it has so thoroughly mission crept itself so many times people can’t even imagine it being any other way. I’m not holding my breath though, and in anticipation of Trump being sworn in and taking the Oval Office for himself once again and all the “crazy” things Musk says he wants to do with DOGE, real or not, I think people have just kind of forgotten that during his first term, Trump was very much a “what have you done for me lately” kind of boss who would fire people who weren’t performing at the level he wanted at the drop of a hat and sometimes in very inglorious and humiliating ways that came out of nowhere, even people who had bent over backwards to prove their loyalty to him during their time working for him. I don’t think Musk is immune to that either; he has a lot of money and that money can be leveraged into power, but the Office of the Presidency has real power that Trump doesn’t need to spend any of his own money or Musk’s money leveraging because it is paid for by taxpayers with the Executive power vested wholly in him post-Noon on January 20th 2025.
  - rayiner 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - SllX 2y ago
      > It is structurally impossible to reform the government. That’s the conclusion I’ve come to as well, but between you and I, I’d like us to be wrong about that. I agree with you on all of your other points here as well.
dang 2y ago
I've detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42426235 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42426235 because it's about the article content and should be at the top level. One can be both thoughtful and wrong, no? She apparently has years of working in the space, I thought the piece was well-written and substantive, it doesn't obviously reduce to canned arguments or ideological talking points, plus Stewart Brand recommended it. That's enough for me.
rayiner 2y ago
Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency in 2020-22.
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  > Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency in 2020-22. No, they didn’t. They did control all those at the same time from noon Jan 20, 2021 until noon Jan 3, 2023, though.
  - lovich 2y ago
    No they didn’t either. There were only 48 Democratic Senators and 2 Independents who were convinced to caucus with the Democrats. I don’t know how that gets spun as having a majority or control guts it’s irked me ever since the news started reporting it as such
    - dragonwriter 2y ago
      Of these four, which were more reliable votes on important Democratic policy priorities: Bernie Sanders, Angus King, Joe Manchin, Kristen Sinema? Now which of the four were Democratic Party members at the time, and which were independents who caucus with the Democrats? The problem with Democratic policy priorities wasn’t that their razor-thin Senate majority rested on independents who had been caucusing with Democrats for quite a while prior to 2021 – 30 years, between the House and Senate, for Sanders.
      - lovich 2y ago
        Can’t go down this line of discussion unless you and I can agree that in the 117th Congress of the United States there were these many Senators of each party affiliation. 50 Republican Senators 48 Democratic Senators 2 Independent Senators And that integers can be ordered on a number scale which allows for integers to be placed on a deterministic scale where the number 50 is larger than the number 48 and thus cannot be considered the majority in any system where the two numbers are part of the same super set. If you can agree to those statements of fact I can go into the nuance with you, but if you want to call that a Democratic majority and treat it the same as having an actually majority, then I have no interest in further discussion
pessimizer 2y ago
> Most of these people are in relatively safe districts. I don't think that any of them are in safe districts. I think that they are in districts that are invulnerable to partisan attacks (i.e. they will not change from Republican to Democrat or from Democrat to Republican) but they're all vulnerable to principled attacks because almost none of them are very popular or inspire much turnout. They just bus the same old people in, and show up to the same churches, and that's enough to get them through another primary. If the new administration's principle is "cut social spending", though, which it seems to be for some reason, there's absolutely nobody vulnerable to that. Everybody wants to cut government waste and corruption, but there's no such thing as cutting spending. Without cutting actual waste, cutting services, neglecting infrastructure, raising taxes, or cutting imports/growing exports, the only way to cut government debt is to raise private debt, and people in the US are already in debt to their eyeballs. And the mobility scooter brigade that has always given Trump its biggest mandate did not do it to get their Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and VA benefits cut. If they could cut it off for just black people or just Mexicans, fine, but if they see cuts, they're going to punish administration-backed challengers, not take out incumbents. I have no idea why a lot of pundits on the right seem to this this election was a mandate for crypto (our next systemic crash) and cutting social spending. Or privatizing the Post Office, after what happened in the UK? They might get away with that because it's bipartisan, but it will weigh the party that does it down for decades. If they actually do any of this, they're going to get killed at every level and the White House is going to turn over again in 4 years.
- lovich 2y ago
  Or they won’t? After botching the handling of Covid and trying to overturn an election the electorate seems to have only been angry at Trump for 1 election before deciding to give him another go. You must have seen the videos of Trump supporters lamenting that he wasn’t hurting the right people when they were harmed by his policies, and their only feelings on it were that it was an honest mistake and he’ll fix it with time. Nothing about our current political winds is in the realm of predictability as far as how the electorate will react
- rob74 2y ago
  >And the mobility scooter brigade that has always given Trump its biggest mandate did not do it to get their Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and VA benefits cut. Yeah,it has always puzzled me why people vote against their own interests, but for some reason they do. And not only once, repeatedly. Maybe it's "ok, I'll get less money, but these guys I hate will get even less, or they'll get deported, so it's a net positive"? No idea...

burningChrome 2y ago

>> The fundamental barrier to government reform is in Congress, nowhere else. The most salient point here. I had a huge conversation with a friend of mine last night at a Christmas party our mutual couple friends have every year. We both agreed on this and one thing we both understood was the fact that Republicans talk about smaller government, but at no time, either when they've had the presidency or been in control of congress have they ever reduced spending. If you want to really reign in government, you either have to raise taxes to account for all the social program spending, or you have to reduce spending. Both are political suicide and no candidate ever wants to be on record saying they'll do either. As an independent, I see both sides making the situation worse, but only one side saying they want smaller government, but then doing nothing to stand behind that principle.

SllX 2y ago
> We both agreed on this and one thing we both understood was the fact that Republicans talk about smaller government, but at no time, either when they've had the presidency or been in control of congress have they ever reduced spending. Absolutely. If Republicans were what they said they were, I’d still hate their rhetoric and a lot of their preferred social policies but I could put all of that aside if it meant reigning in the size, scope, budget (zeroing out the deficit and chopping away at the debt to bring it down over time rather than explosively growing it) of the Federal government and call myself a card-carrying member of the Republican Party. But that’s not the case, and I don’t really want to be associated with either of them in any way, shape or form. If Elon Musk can do what nobody else has and convince Congress to downsize the Federal government, good for him. You can’t even scale the mission creep of the Federal government next to anything else because it has so thoroughly mission crept itself so many times people can’t even imagine it being any other way. I’m not holding my breath though, and in anticipation of Trump being sworn in and taking the Oval Office for himself once again and all the “crazy” things Musk says he wants to do with DOGE, real or not, I think people have just kind of forgotten that during his first term, Trump was very much a “what have you done for me lately” kind of boss who would fire people who weren’t performing at the level he wanted at the drop of a hat and sometimes in very inglorious and humiliating ways that came out of nowhere, even people who had bent over backwards to prove their loyalty to him during their time working for him. I don’t think Musk is immune to that either; he has a lot of money and that money can be leveraged into power, but the Office of the Presidency has real power that Trump doesn’t need to spend any of his own money or Musk’s money leveraging because it is paid for by taxpayers with the Executive power vested wholly in him post-Noon on January 20th 2025.
- rayiner 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - SllX 2y ago
    > It is structurally impossible to reform the government. That’s the conclusion I’ve come to as well, but between you and I, I’d like us to be wrong about that. I agree with you on all of your other points here as well.

dang 2y ago

I've detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42426235 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42426235 because it's about the article content and should be at the top level. One can be both thoughtful and wrong, no? She apparently has years of working in the space, I thought the piece was well-written and substantive, it doesn't obviously reduce to canned arguments or ideological talking points, plus Stewart Brand recommended it. That's enough for me.

rayiner 2y ago

Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency in 2020-22.

dragonwriter 2y ago
> Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency in 2020-22. No, they didn’t. They did control all those at the same time from noon Jan 20, 2021 until noon Jan 3, 2023, though.
- lovich 2y ago
  No they didn’t either. There were only 48 Democratic Senators and 2 Independents who were convinced to caucus with the Democrats. I don’t know how that gets spun as having a majority or control guts it’s irked me ever since the news started reporting it as such
  - dragonwriter 2y ago
    Of these four, which were more reliable votes on important Democratic policy priorities: Bernie Sanders, Angus King, Joe Manchin, Kristen Sinema? Now which of the four were Democratic Party members at the time, and which were independents who caucus with the Democrats? The problem with Democratic policy priorities wasn’t that their razor-thin Senate majority rested on independents who had been caucusing with Democrats for quite a while prior to 2021 – 30 years, between the House and Senate, for Sanders.
    - lovich 2y ago
      Can’t go down this line of discussion unless you and I can agree that in the 117th Congress of the United States there were these many Senators of each party affiliation. 50 Republican Senators 48 Democratic Senators 2 Independent Senators And that integers can be ordered on a number scale which allows for integers to be placed on a deterministic scale where the number 50 is larger than the number 48 and thus cannot be considered the majority in any system where the two numbers are part of the same super set. If you can agree to those statements of fact I can go into the nuance with you, but if you want to call that a Democratic majority and treat it the same as having an actually majority, then I have no interest in further discussion

pessimizer 2y ago

> Most of these people are in relatively safe districts. I don't think that any of them are in safe districts. I think that they are in districts that are invulnerable to partisan attacks (i.e. they will not change from Republican to Democrat or from Democrat to Republican) but they're all vulnerable to principled attacks because almost none of them are very popular or inspire much turnout. They just bus the same old people in, and show up to the same churches, and that's enough to get them through another primary. If the new administration's principle is "cut social spending", though, which it seems to be for some reason, there's absolutely nobody vulnerable to that. Everybody wants to cut government waste and corruption, but there's no such thing as cutting spending. Without cutting actual waste, cutting services, neglecting infrastructure, raising taxes, or cutting imports/growing exports, the only way to cut government debt is to raise private debt, and people in the US are already in debt to their eyeballs. And the mobility scooter brigade that has always given Trump its biggest mandate did not do it to get their Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and VA benefits cut. If they could cut it off for just black people or just Mexicans, fine, but if they see cuts, they're going to punish administration-backed challengers, not take out incumbents. I have no idea why a lot of pundits on the right seem to this this election was a mandate for crypto (our next systemic crash) and cutting social spending. Or privatizing the Post Office, after what happened in the UK? They might get away with that because it's bipartisan, but it will weigh the party that does it down for decades. If they actually do any of this, they're going to get killed at every level and the White House is going to turn over again in 4 years.

lovich 2y ago
Or they won’t? After botching the handling of Covid and trying to overturn an election the electorate seems to have only been angry at Trump for 1 election before deciding to give him another go. You must have seen the videos of Trump supporters lamenting that he wasn’t hurting the right people when they were harmed by his policies, and their only feelings on it were that it was an honest mistake and he’ll fix it with time. Nothing about our current political winds is in the realm of predictability as far as how the electorate will react
rob74 2y ago
>And the mobility scooter brigade that has always given Trump its biggest mandate did not do it to get their Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and VA benefits cut. Yeah,it has always puzzled me why people vote against their own interests, but for some reason they do. And not only once, repeatedly. Maybe it's "ok, I'll get less money, but these guys I hate will get even less, or they'll get deported, so it's a net positive"? No idea...