U.S. Politics: Great Men Master trends

[Corvinus85]

But will Fox News tone down their fearmongering, fascist rhetoric? Me thinks no. They're too afraid of their base.

Will Tucky announce a run for 2024? Or will he simply join the indicted's campaign team with hopes of being on the ticket?

Edited April 24, 2023 by Corvinus85

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

8 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

But will Fox News tone down their fearmongering, fascist rhetoric? Me thinks no. They're too afraid of their base.

Will Tucky announce a run for 2024? Or will he simply join the indicted's campaign team with hopes of being on the ticket?

The only corporate policy change that will happen is to tell everyone to stop texting their real thoughts. Which is another level of dystopia. 

[Phylum of Alexandria]

On a scale of 1 to 5, in which 1 is "Settle Down, Chicken Little" and 5 is "Holy Shit the Sky is Actually Falling!", how worried should we be about the repeated calls among MAGA folks to purge the federal government of anyone who disagrees with them?

Trump issued an Executive Order at the end of his term creating Schedule F positions, which would have allowed him to transfer protected billets for nonpolitical positions to something that he could use for more political purposes. Biden has since reversed the order, but this is an idea that seemingly has a lot more planning and support on the far right:

https://www.axios.com/2022/07/22/trump-2025-radical-plan-second-term

The House passed a bill in late 2022 that would prevent abuses like this from happening, though the Senate never passed their own version, so now the chance of a resolved bill is pretty much dead given the new makeup of the House.

Even if Trump loses in 2024, this pet project of theirs isn't going to go away. So what does this mean for the future of US civil service?

[LongRider]

Does Russia Today have an opening?

[Jaxom 1974]

1 hour ago, Mindwalker said:

Dang, I wanted to be the first to post it... Bye bye F*cker Carlson!

Which of the nutcases will move up now?

Don Lemon is also a free agent now...

Also...

 

 

Edited April 24, 2023 by Jaxom 1974

[Varysblackfyre321]

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

24 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

 

Clear violation of the 1st Amendment.

[Corvinus85]

2 hours ago, Week said:

Coincidentally, not long after he contributed to costing his employers $787m and, I believe, the Smartmatic case is still to come.

It may have been a factor, but it appears that the straw dumbbell that broke the camel's back is the other lawsuit filed by a former Fox producer for discrimination. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2023-03-21/tucker-carlson-producer-sues-fox-news-discrimination The firing order came straight from on high.

[DMC]

18 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

It may have been a factor, but it appears that the straw dumbbell that broke the camel's back is the other lawsuit filed by a former Fox producer for discrimination.

Yeah, that does seem to be the initial consensus.  The timing right after the Dominion settlement is curious though.  Who knows, there's dozens of reasons Tucker could have left or been forced to leave.  Let's just all be happy he's not on television at least for a little while.

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

 

Abbott is far more effective than FL clown satan.  He's doing an excellent and concerted job of preparingh TX to secede -- and then to make all out war upon large populations within his state, in prepe for doing the same thing -- with our tax dollars and military resources on the rest of us, while building surrounding rings on us out of Missouri, Kentucky, TN, OK, ID, SD, AR, etc.  One wonders if FL satan will be in such a snit though, over his failure to be the POTUS nom that he will undercut . . . .

[polishgenius]

What is happening today

[DMC]

2 hours ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

Trump issued an Executive Order at the end of his term creating Schedule F positions, which would have allowed him to transfer protected billets for nonpolitical positions to something that he could use for more political purposes.

To use your terminology, the media's been doing quite a bit of chicken little on this EO for awhile now.  Trump could never implement it.  Even a competent president would have a very difficult time getting agencies to comply with the "Schedule F" designation for career civil servants.  Let alone the fact that interpretation of the 78 Civil Service Act is highly dubious, and is directly opposed to 140 years of building the bureaucracy to a merit-based system.  You would need a Court with five Thomases or Alitos in order to let that fly if it was ever put into practice.

Where this could be more easily implemented is in the EOP (Executive Office of the President).  Structurally it's a lot easier for the president to completely reorganize it, and it is about 1800 employees including a considerable number of careerists.  Conceptually, though, hard to have too much of a problem with that because that's the president's prerogative.  I'd still be very stupid to do in practice - ousting expertise and attempts to centralize policy implementation never work, that's literally what my dissertation was on - but it could happen, sure.

Edited April 24, 2023 by DMC

[Kalbear]

To be a bit more pessimistic on the above - a lot of that also depends on the SCOTUS viewpoint about how legal ANY executive-led departments are. As insane as it sounds there is some lawsuits pending on the actual constitutionality of congress abdicating any of their power to these departments can be. If that changes substantially from the current norm all bets are off on the civil service and how functional they'll end up being. 

It's of course incredibly stupid, but that's also very much in line with current Republican policy goals in general, especially when it comes to anything that the government is doing that is not privatized. Making government-run systems suck hard is an important step in being able to sell those things off to private companies to make money off the government and funnel taxes back to corporate entities.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

4 minutes ago, DMC said:

To use your terminology, the media's been doing quite a bit of chicken little on this EO for awhile now.  Trump could never implement it.  Even a competent president would have a very difficult time getting agencies to comply with the "Schedule F" designation for career civil servants.  Let alone the fact that interpretation of the 78 Civil Service Act is highly dubious, and is directly opposed to 140 years of building the bureaucracy to a merit-based system.  You would need a Court with five Thomases or Alitos in order to let that fly if it was ever put into practice.

Where this could be more easily implemented is in the EOP (Executive Office of the President).  Structurally it's a lot easier for the president to completely reorganize it, and it is about 1800 employees including a considerable number of careerists.  Conceptually, though, hard to have too much of a problem with that because that's the president's prerogative.  I'd still be very stupid to do in practice - ousting expertise and attempts to centralize policy implementation never work, that's literally what my dissertation was on - but it could happen, sure.

Maybe if we didn't have our current Supreme Court, I might have a little more faith that things would work out. But Gorsuch and ACB are only a little less batty than the two you named, and Kavanagh a little less than them. All of the conservatives on the court have proven to be slippery and unprincipled, so who's to say they won't find some way to placate their people in this ruling?

I mean, Ginny Thomas herself has been playing a role in this effort, apparently keeping a list of "disloyal" individuals to oust and replace.

I don't think the reporting I've seen on this has been in any way hyperbolic. Even assuming it can't happen (and I don't know if I agree with you there), it's worth reporting on the efforts/"causes" that preoccupy the minds of the extreme people who seek power. They talk about this stuff a lot, and so it's worth reporting.

Do I think they could implement their plans perfectly, without resistance, or without some eventual correction coming at some point? Probably not. But could they do a lot of damage through chilling effects, or just sowing a lot chaos and distrust? Yes.

 

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

But Gorsuch and ACB are only a little less batty than the two you named, and Kavanagh a little less than them. All of the conservatives on the court have proven to be slippery and unprincipled, so who's to say they won't find some way to placate their people in this ruling?

Precisely because Kavanaugh, ACB, and Gorsuch have demonstrated more basic sanity than Alito and Thomas throughout their respective tenures.  Maybe Gorsuch would go along with it, but I doubt it.  Gutting the federal bureaucracy's expertise is ridiculously stupid even for Republicans, this isn't really a partisan issue.  It would make it incredibly more difficult for Trump to actually affect policymaking change.  So, they'd be protecting him from himself.  Plus, ya know, following the law.

5 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

it's worth reporting on the efforts/"causes" that preoccupy the minds of the extreme people who seek power. They talk about this stuff a lot, and so it's worth reporting.

Certainly, sure.  But a lot of that reporting - particularly on Axios - suggests if Trump wins next year he will immediately enact this.  He may try, sure, but it ain't gonna work.  We already know how Trump operates as president - he'll issue the EO then entirely fail to follow through in any way once met with resistance.  And, frankly, that's what EOs often are - messaging rather than substantive.  I agree even the messaging is chilling, of course, no argument there.

[DMC]

18 minutes ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

As insane as it sounds there is some lawsuits pending on the actual constitutionality of congress abdicating any of their power to these departments can be.

Aye that's West Virginia v EPA wherein the Court revived the nondelegation doctrine widely discredited during the Lochner Era (even by Federalist Society types), and just lazily renaming it the "major questions" doctrine.  That was a huge power grab by the Court allowing them to determine discretion on a wide variety of agencies.  But monitoring discretion/delegation by agencies is distinctly different than gutting civil servants altogether.

[Varysblackfyre321]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2023/04/22/bud-light-marketing-shake-up-following-dylan-mulvaney-controversy/11719274002/
 

Reminder to everyone the controversy here is that an adult trans person said she liked an adult average for money on a tic-tok.

And the culture warrior right is still doing the “won’t you think of the children” shtick. I’ve interacted with someone just today who took Budlight saying they were trying to appeal to young people with this as synonymous with trying to appeal to minors.

[Zorral]

This is what I've been wondering since hearing the news.

 

[Zorral]

They also encourage him to run for POTUS.

[DMC]

As a political observer/junkie, I would love if Carlson ran against Trump.  It'd be a lot of fun to watch.