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The first comment on the blog is also illuminating: > But I would urge you to take seriously the role of the courts in creating this mess. There are bad lawyer
by scythe 2y ago
The first comment on the blog is also illuminating:
> But I would urge you to take seriously the role of the courts in creating this mess. There are bad lawyers. But the good ones often are warning the agency about real hazards that can waste enormous amounts of agency effort. Go read a regulatory preamble from the 1970s. It’s a hoot. The agencies often took a few pages to say “here’s what we’re doing”, offered a minimal justification, and that was it. Now, a rulemaking is a multiyear saga, as the agencies jump through every hoop, and know the courts are at the end of the gauntlet. A lawyer who doesn’t warn the program staff what can happen if, say, you end up in front of a judge in ND Tex, is not doing their job. If you don’t document everything to the nth degree you are going to have to do it again. Period. An agency can spend hundreds of pages documenting its reasons, but if the court doesn’t like the way it handled a few comments? Do it over.
It's one thing to reform regulatory agencies, but it's another to reform the courts. It seems like we now play racquetball with the courts, with each opposing administration appointing judges who are sympathetic to its viewpoints. This leaves the underlying system untouched and just points it back and forth, while the judges themselves are left with the same wicked problem of applying ambiguous laws to specific situations.
But I don't know if DOGE is really about analyzing government operations and producing recommendations for reform. For one thing, we already have the Government Accountability Office, and also the Congressional Budget Office. For another, personnel is policy. Musk and Ramaswamy aren't accountants. They're pundits. I would expect the primary difference between DOGE and previous attempts at government reform will be its strategy in engaging with the public.
- fastball 2y agoMusk is certainly not just a pundit. He is an operator.
- blitzar 2y agoin the arena trying stuff
- burkaman 2y agoA pundit is "a person who gives opinions in an authoritative manner usually through the mass media". He clearly fits this definition. He does plenty of other stuff too, but "pundit" is a completely valid label to use.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoThis wasn't just claiming they are pundits, but using the label dismiss their ability to do anything else.
- fastball 2y agoYes, I literally said "not just a pundit", which is the implication made in the GC.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- cjs_ac 2y ago> It seems like we now play racquetball with the courts, with each opposing administration appointing judges who are sympathetic to its viewpoints. Judges having political alignments is one of those things that non-Americans point to when they want to argue that 'America is a silly country full of silly people'.
- Uvix 2y agoOfficially they (generally) don’t. But judges are people; most judges around the world have a political alignment, even if they keep it better hidden.
- michaelt 2y agoIt's not just judges-are-human-beings. In most other countries, if there's a difficult political decision to be made, it's made through the political process. Society wants abortion to be legal/illegal? Political parties make it part of their election platform, and if elected they change the law. Judges then interpret the law as written, and any bugs are ironed out by the politicians amending the law. But in America, they face this difficult political decision - and it gets punted to a bunch of elderly judges? Who are appointed for life? Then for half a century the legality of abortion is basically decided at random, depending on which party is in power when these septuagenarians die?
- JackFr 2y agoYou understand that with respect to abortion, the effect of Dobbs was precisely what you seem to be asking for? That is, Dobbs handed the issue back to legislators.
- michaelt 2y agoMaybe - but Dobbs is 50 years too late for anyone to say "American judges aren't political" Some US states even elect judges and sheriffs, just like they elect politicians - complete with TV ads and tens of millions of dollars being spent by shady super-PACs.
- lupusreal 2y agoI don't expect the "DOGE" to ever be part of the government in any legal or official sense. I expect it to operate like a think tank or lobby, giving suggestions/orders to Trump.
- zo1 2y agoI agree with this take. It also has the unique property of causing a lot of drama and sound-bites in the media on both sides of the left/right spectrum. One side applauds it for getting things done finally, while the other bemoans the end of democracy due to "collusion" between the president and non-elected private-sector rich billionaires that supposedly seek to make a profit out of all this.
- forgetfreeman 2y agoThat they stand to profit seems fairly uncontroversial given their willingness to participate. What other motive could possibly exist?
- AnimalMuppet 2y agoThe motive of actually caring about the country you live in could possibly exist. Possibly. I don't say that I think that's what's actually the motive.
- BurningFrog 2y agoA lot of people care that the country is governed well and lives within its means. To me it's obvious that some of those people may be billionaires. I also find it weird when people assume billionaires only care about getting more money. They are the people who can care least about money!
- forgetfreeman 2y agoWhereas it seems obvious to me that zero of those individuals would be billionaires given their mere existence is proof that governance is malfunctioning. Moreover it's quite literally impossible to get valuable input from an individual who's day-to-day existence is so thoroughly divorced from reality that they couldn't tell you what a stick of butter costs.
- zo1 2y agoI think a big contributor that made this a much bigger and messier problem was allowing or enabling or not-forbidding the non-enforcement of laws. As it stands, this occurs in far more instances than is necessary for practical reasons. From policemen personally ignoring crimes and police departments issuing directives to ignore certain offenses, to prosecutors choosing which crimes to prosecute, to judges 'interpreting' laws and case law, and finally to the president who decides to pardon whomever he pleases for unknown reasons.
- llamaimperative 2y agoSurely DOGE will increasing staffing and technology at courts so they’re not perpetually clogged, requiring difficult and unjust prioritization, right? (Hint: no, they won’t)
- mschuster91 2y ago> I think a big contributor that made this a much bigger and messier problem was allowing or enabling or not-forbidding the non-enforcement of laws. That is something all legal systems have in common, alone because there won't ever be enough resources to enforce every little regulation, short of turning the entire country into an AI-enforced panopticon, and by that time people will vote with their feet (assuming they're still allowed to leave). Even the more autocratic/authoritarian systems all have had their share of selective enforcement - being a member of the ruling party or of the same religion/ethnicity (such as in Syria with the Alawites) will always bring its benefits. > From policemen personally ignoring crimes and police departments issuing directives to ignore certain offenses, to prosecutors choosing which crimes to prosecute, to judges 'interpreting' laws and case law, and finally to the president who decides to pardon whomever he pleases for unknown reasons. All of this is something we have in Europe as well. Low-level stuff that's technically illegal (say, running a red light, dropping a cigarette butt or chewing gum on the ground), police can but don't have to enforce. Actual crimes such as theft have to be enforced by the police, but DAs may choose to drop the case because of a variety of factors. And judges are literally there to interpret the law (because no law can account for the complexities of real life) and to determine if the letter and the spirit of the law are applicable to the case. The key thing is that us Europeans generally trust our governments, whereas the US population doesn't even trust the government to the point that there is one single federal ID and drivers license card.
- zosima 2y agoBut is this true? Is the number of cases where projects fail due to court actions really so many that all this proactive pre-documentation to the nth degree is necessary? Or is it rather that there are too many lawyers and administrators employed, and they are seeing this as an opportunity to justify their own existence?
- panzagl 2y agoNearly every contract award is challenged. Even if the challenge is not protracted, preparing for the inevitable challenge makes the whole process so expensive that it severely impacts the number and size of contracts an agency is able to pursue.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 2y agoFrom what I've seen so far, DOGE is explicitly about removing barriers to things Elon (and other billionaire trump supporters) want to do. The idea that they can't just pollute a lake, or put out a dangerous product, or exploit workers is simply outrageous! The 'efficiency' nonsense is the same play as is 'think of the children!' excuse for stripping away privacy rights.
- Terr_ 2y agoIt's also worth emphasizing, given their deliberate attempts to mislead the public, that DOGE isn't part of the government any more than General Motors is part of the military. At best, it is a Presidential Commission [0] of some dudes he knows. Probably not even that, in that I doubt they'll actually do the work of meetings and notes. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_commission_(United_States) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_commission_(Unite...
- tartoran 2y agoAnother striking thing is the name similarity between DOGE and Dogecoin that Elon Musk is known to control. I find that absolutely arrogant and reckless.
- brokenmachine 2y ago>Dogecoin that Elon Musk is known to control citation please