Originally published at: DC Circuit Decides Supreme Court Already Overturned Its Own Precedent And Just Didn’t Tell Anyone - TPM – Talking Points Memo
To hear DC Circuit Court Judge Justin Walker tell it, the Supreme Court basically already axed the last vestige of independent executive branch agency protections — it just did so very quietly. Walker, a Trump appointee, with Judge Karen Henderson, a Bush appointee, on Friday allowed President Trump’s firings of board members at the National…
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removing one of the last protections for these entities and putting a whole host of them — including the Federal Reserve — at acute risk of partisan takeover.
Why wouldn’t a political party plan and execute a complete control of every entity? And, in a world of billionaires, why wouldn’t the 1% just outright buy ownership of the government? Why should we presume that the person who wields total power will be a good person?
The idea that the president will just dabble in an agency here and there – though basically letting it do what he doesn’t want it to do – is utter nonsense.
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This makes it all the more noteworthy that Henderson went the other way in the deportations case.
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The NLRB will now become death trap for union organizing. I wonder if Trump’s pal, Teamster president Sean O’Brien, has any regrets about his swooning over the GOP last fall.
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Harris’s attorney says they will seek a rehearing en banc. But SCOTUS would likely grant cert if they were to prevail before the full DC Cir.
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Spoil System, here we come. Noting that a system where Government employees are all political appointees who every 4 years will need to find a new job, corruption will be, as it was before we had Civil Service, dominant. Which is for Republicans, what they want.
Trump is turning the clock back 150 years to when Government was for sale and over 90% of people lived below the poverty line.
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Auditions for seats on the SC.
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It kind of amazes me that, even as the unitary-exec fans stare at a government being led by an incredibly stupid, ignorant, malevolent infantile whining old fart and an arrogant-beyond-comprehension pretend=genius tech bro who knows nothing about government or economics and has the oblivious attitude of the most assholeish 15-year-old imaginable, that they remain eager to take away still more power from people with experience, knowledge and actual concern for the functions of government and hand it to the current Clowns-in-Chief…
Do they actually want to be the serfs of jerks like this for the rest of their lives, with nobody else left who could conceivably patch up some of the enormous messes these fools are capable of making? Hard to believe that just the smell of authoritarian power, even if in the hands of malevolent idiots with no redeeming features, can so derange virtually all Republican brains. But I guess that is the case.
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Well, Walker heard from a guy who clerks for a judge that used to clerk for Alito’s neighbor Mr. LaFontaine who had it on good authority that members of the Supreme Court majority fantasize about eating pudding off the bald pate of an Unitary Executive.
So Walker decides, hey! I’m an efficiency guy! I will just make the ruling that the SC would, he thinks, make in the future. If every judge did this, we could make the SC redundant! Almost as smart as Elon!
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Yeah, and I’m sure that scenario repeatedly makes Trump smile that sickening broad I=look-like-I’m-dead-but-I’m-loving-this smlle.
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So of I’m reading this correctly the court is saying in effect that DonOLD needs to get up early, go to bed late, so he can personally manage all of the agencies that are under his control. None of this can be passed off to say Miller, or any other WH aides. He has become the Decider In Chief. And I assume that the DIC doesn’t have to answer to no body for his decisions.
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I’ve asked roughly the same question more than once, and I don’t think there’s a rational explanation–at least not that I’ve heard or been able to come up with. Logic, reason, even sanity seem to be largely out the window with this crew. Fear, greed, cruelty, and mania seem more likely to be informing their decision making.
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As long as they get rid of the “others”, yes they do. They figure that:
- President Johnson’s theory of racial politics is just fine.
- The leopard will not bite their face.
GLWTS.
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The only explanation that holds any logical sense, but not in any kind of logical sense, is that they expect the rapture to come along any day now, thanks to all their efforts, and make the nightmarish mess they’ve created moot, and those left behind, well, who cares about those losers anyway.
So by that reasoning Satan could get in too coz he certainly helped bring it, amirite?
Or maybe they know they’ve been such monumental shits their entire lives, there’s no chance in hell of getting the call-up so might as well just revel in the cesspool of their greed and vindictiveness for as long as their livers can take it.
Whatever, the stupid is truly stupendous and beyond any kind of sense.
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Don’t they expect the rapture to come after we’re all immersed in a hell of a mess? If so, they’d better get crackin’. Abortion is legal in Greenland ; - )
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“assholeish 15 year olds. . .” My nightmare working in a Middle School.
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I’m curious where you got that figure of 90%.
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What the heck, they did it for Reagan. So did the Air Traffic Controller’s union.
Earlier, they did it for Nixon.
https://www.nytimes.com/1984/08/31/us/teamsters-vote-to-endorse-reagan.html
I am a staunch union supporter, but frankly a lot of union members just aren’t very bright.
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The other thing about a spoils system is that it would render our government largely nonfunctional in a way that wouldn’t have been true 150 years ago.
Nowadays, our Federal workers are engaged in many complex tasks that you don’t just pick up overnight. Hell, the new top brass in each department would take a few years just to learn all the statutes that apply to their agency and what they really mean in terms of what Congress has told them to do.
If you throw everyone out every four years when a new Administration comes in, the new set of workers would just be getting up to speed when the next election comes along. That would be insane.
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I’m not sure if you’re being facetious or not. There’s a spectrum going from total independence to total subservience. The independence is supposed to protect govt employees from arbitrary manipulations so they can actually do their jobs and have some security, and not be pawns in game-of-thrones all the time. That’s what maintains our civilization. Maybe you could argue that the Biden administration didn’t have a firm enough hand on things, but these latest actions are not a great or positive trend.
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