Maybe Musk will start a corporation named Skynet, and it won't matter.
$500B tax hit?
- Thread starter watu05
- Start date
That does not mean you need a strong man in place to do it instead. You need to fix congress.
You make arguments that are used by people who want to consolidate power for their own benefit. Kings, dictators, etc... these are the same arguments that have been made against Democracy since before Caesar.
The worst case scenario is giving all of the power to a single or a very small group of individuals who answer to no one regardless if that society is wealthy enough to take care of its poor or not. Having no means of accountability for your leaders is the reason why many civil wars have been fought throughout history and its also why millions upon millions of people died when their new despotic leaders proved incompetent.
The congressional and judicial checks are the only thing keeping us from despotism. Regardless if they make us poorer, or less efficient, they must be respected. Anyone tries to subvert that is subverting the fundamental ideals of our Constitution and our Republic (no matter if they have good intentions or not)
Last edited:
You’re not going to fix Congress until you stop them from profiting from their own spending. Which is problematic since they are the entity which would have to impose those restrictions on themselves. Something which will never happen. You talk about checks and balances but there is neither when it comes to Congressional spending and personal enrichment.
That's a flaw in our government. Don't know how you can fix it. We would have to have an agency free of the executive office, and congressional influence. Somone like a Special Prosecutor, or a DOJ free from Executive influence, or a completely independent Supreme Court.
This agency would have to have power to enforce to extremes, people giving up their investments to enter congress more than they push now. And eliminate lobbyists all together. But forming an agency with this kind of power would be hard to do without corruption. Who would check them would be another issue.
This agency's cases would go through the courts with more of a straight line to the SC. The SC would have to check them on the cases they are allowed to put before them.
They would have to have the power to eliminate corporate support of candidates. This is an impossible Agency to create.
Last edited:
I think lawpoke's solution simply allows the executive to be freely corrupt in place of congress. That is much riskier because of the concentrated power.
I thought I was pretty clear in stating that I’m not sure how to fix the problem. I am fairly confident the people receiving huge amounts of money from the current system aren’t going to fix the same. Regardless of how bleak the country’s financial future appears
Hail Caesar!!!!
Or ya know… stop voting for congressional candidates who don’t have any interest in fixing the problem. Maybe ask them about that in their next town hall. I will stop voting for them if you do. Let’s start the domino effect.
Make it a grassroots national issue. That Congress needs to get its crap together in terms of spending AND taking authority for their reductions in spending. It’s not the president’s right to do that job… and if Congress isn’t doing it then they need to be replaced.
Everybody hates members of Congress except for their own. It’s been this way for decades. How many congressional candidates have run on a platform of change only to get caught up in the money and power. Answer….almost all. The system is broken. It’s one controlled by money and influence. Changing your Congressman isn’t going to change a damn thing. You’re going to need to change the system. Good luck there
I'm not willing to change the system by giving more authority to the executive branch. Just can't do it. It's too dangerous. I would prefer it to be dysfunctional and economically disastrous over malicious or despotic.
Also, I don't agree that you can't change things with the existing system. I think the message has to span across parties and states. Right now nearly every congressman parrots the position of their national party which is that the other side is the problem... instead of acknowledging that the parties themselves are the problem.
You can't reassemble Departments like the Department of Education in 3 months like it never happened. You put people out of a job. Nobody will continue for 3 mo. without a job. It takes all the people who are experts away from the Department. Few people will sit around for 3 mo to see if congress passes a bill while they have no income. And those that do will cost the government because they will be on unemployment. The cost of reassembling a Department will cost an inordinate amount, not save money. The Department will suffer, and take years to get it back to functioning like it used to. Not to mention policies that are necessary will be on hold for 3 mo.
You can't just try things out in government for 3 mos. It's not like putting out a new product line, and realizing it is a failure a few months later. The agency I was talking about to ensure Congress was less corrupt would not work like I said when I was laying it out as a possibility. It was pie in the sky and I stated as such. But this suggestion is even more ridiculous, and you think it's a real suggestion.
There are some policies that would work better than tearing a dept apart, but most wouldn't work well. Silly idea with tons of reasons why this would make things worse. Just because things pop into your head doesn't make them a good idea. You don't even spend 5 minutes to think about the pro's & cons of utilizing your ideas. Or maybe you did, and couldn't comprehend the difficulties it would pose.
if I said the sky was blue, you would somehow dispute my comment.
Glad you defended your post against the criticism, seeing as how you can't. Nice avoidance. Why do you think 90% of your posts get attacked, not just by me?
Basic civics lesson 101:
Laws are complicated. And despite Congress's best intentions, often can't detail every possible edge case that might get caught up in the wording of the law.
So, the next step is that the executive is tasked with enforcing the law. There might be complications that crop up after a time due to unforeseen consequences, or even just not enough resources to adequately enforce every letter of hte law.
So the executive gets some discretion, and an executive order (ideally) is nothing more than the president saying, "We are prioritizing enforcement in these areas first (a la, deporting people with criminal records), because we don't have the resources for everything all at once and this is the most important area to begin with" Or, "Congress specified a list of possible exemptions to this rule, and we think X applies and will be providing exemptions given condition X".
All is well as long as the executive is more or less issuing good faith interpretations of existing laws. There might be some quibbles, but they usually can get settled.
But as we've learned in recent decades, it's possible a president oversteps and issues an EO that is really bending the law in ways that are not faithful interpretations. In that case, there are two mechanisms for redress. "Checks and Balances" if you will. One, Congress could issue clarifying legislation saying, "No, we really didn't mean to have X be an exemption and are issuing this amendment to the original bill to specifically exclude it from any exemptions". Second, someone affected by the EO can sue (This can even be Congress itself, I think, but lawpoke might know better) In that case, a federal judge will look at the law, hear both sides, and read the EO and decide if that is a legitimate prioritization/interpretation based on any jurisprudence and the written language of the laws/EOs. They can either let the EO stand or declare it invalid.
Letting EOs only be applicable for three months would wreak havok and tie down congress to do nothing else but look at EOs. Even in normal times, there are tons of EOs. And mostly not controversial. For example, Congress writes laws dictating how to handle classified material, and penalties for being irresponsible with it. But outside a few niche areas (mostly in nuclear weapons) Congress doesn't decide what is actually classified or not or how to classify it. That's left to the executive, and can be amended as needed by EO. Specific marking styles, declassification procedures, etc can all be amended periodically by EO. And they are. And Congress should not really have much interest in that because the details of implementation are intentionally left to the executive, and can be authorized via EO as appropriate.
