Quote of the Day
Dude…
If they actually did this, and have that massive of a roll back of government regulation and power, it would be one of the most important things in American history.I don’t think most people grasp just how awful Chevron was, and how it empowered the government to meddle in literally everything.
SCOTUS just kicked Chevron in the junk, which enabled people to push back against government regulation, but we all expected the government to fight back and cling to power every expensive and time consuming step of the way. Having the government actually curtail itself? That would be astounding.
Larry Correia @monsterhunter45
Posted on X, November 14, 2024
Corrreia was referencing this post:
I agree with Correia with special emphasis on the “if”.
Here’s a key point about our mission at DOGE: eliminating bureaucratic regulations isn’t a mere policy preference. It’s a legal mandate from the U.S. Supreme Court:
- West Virginia v. EPA (2022) held that agencies cannot decide major questions of economic or political significance without “clear congressional authorization.” This applies to thousands of rules that never passed Congress.
- In Loper Bright v. Raimondo (2024), the Court ended Chevron deference, which means agencies can’t foist their own interpretations of the law onto the American people. Over 18,000 federal cases cited the Chevron doctrine, often to uphold regulations, many of which are now null & void.
- In SEC v. Jarkesy (2024), SCOTUS restricted the use of “administrative law judges” by agencies. The same agency that wrote the rules shouldn’t be able to prosecute citizens in “courts” that it controls.
- In Corner Post v. Board of Governors (2024), the Court held that new businesses can challenge old regulations, greatly expanding the statute of limitations & opening many more rules up for scrutiny. So we shouldn’t just look at rules passed in the last 4 years, but over the past 4 decades (or more).
DOGE is ready help the U.S. government conform to the U.S. Constitution once again. @elonmusk and I are ready to serve.
Vivek Ramaswamy @VivekGRamaswamy
Posted on X, November 13, 2024
That is a really big IF. I can believe the intention is there. I can believe they are the best people for the job. I am not convinced they will overcome the incredible resistance they will encounter. This resistance may even include assassination attempts.
I wish them well.
This country’s Mandarins and Eunuchs will fight this tooth and nail.
They have to to preserve their power and prestige.
It could get very ugly.
“Ugly” is cooked in the books.
You can just factor that issue out of your analysis.
You misspelled “shall” in your last sentence.
There is a critical aspect of this effort that is missing. Actual accountability for decisions at the individual level. Agencies don’t make decisions, individuals do. Much like guns don’t kill people, people kill people. So focusing on agencies will be about as effective as gun control’s focus on the gun. Getting rid of qualified immunity will put government employees on the same footing as employees in the private sector. In the private sector, if you are a manager and make a costly bad decision, you are going to be history. If you are an hourly worker and don’t follow instructions or policy, same thing. You are gone. Why should people that ostensibly work for us be any different?
As for the swamp effecting assassinations? Do you really think that the idiot kid on the roof could only hit people in the crowd around Trump with the first three shots out of how many fired? I think they have already shown a willingness to do anything to meet their ends.
It is, first and foremost the agencies, which hold their individuals to account. Once an issue reaches a certain “size”, broad strokes are warranted.
But of course you are right: In the end, the only thng that works is bringing individuals to justice. At this late stage though, it appears the Kipling switch may have thrown, and public executions may no longer be avoidable.
First, one needs to get rid of the DC court.
After that, no one can force the government to do anything. For years congressional pages didn’t even get minimum wage because they were in the District of Colombia. Which is not a state and controlled totally by congress and the executive.
Trump and congress could lock DC down to the point no one could come in to work if they wanted too.
But the inflation that is going to slam us and the government shortly after Trump takes office? Is going to be the perfect excuse.
No matter, DOGE has it’s work cut out for it. And I don’t expect government to give up easy.
Senior executive services is going to be the real problem. And the fastest way to fix them is through staff.
Fire everyone that makes their job work. Then turn off their electronics.
And we should never forget assassination works both ways.
SES members start disappearing? Well, they probably took off to a non-extradition country with all their stolen lute. Never to be heard from again.
No one to investigate, so no investigation.
They called Trump Hitler for the last 8 years.
Well, you take a shot at Hitler and miss. Or worse yet, just shoot him in the ear.
What do you expect he’s going to do to you and your crime syndicate?
Shooting someone in the ear tells them they haven’t been listening.
So who do you think he’s been listening to when he says. “God saved me for a reason.”
You get Hitler with a mandate from God. I don’t see a whole lot off the table at this point.
Clown-world is in deep-do-do on this one. They lost the narrative, legitimacy, and political cover. And their losing the information war.
No matter what they do. They can’t get any of it back.
Plus, Biden and family have dirt and bodies that go back 50 years. And the way he was grinning at Trump? Tells me he cut a deal.
We’re going to need more popcorn, friends.
So instead of bureaucratic tyranny, we get judicial tyranny. It is the same except judges are less knowledgeable, less accountable and more random than bureaucrats. It also tends to paralyze government since there are not enough judges to do all the things that modern government does. This may be a good thing in the long run, if DOGE actually gets anything accomplished but in the short run, it is chaos.
Wait, what?? “judges are less knowledgeable … and more random than bureaucrats”
Have you ever read transcripts of Supreme Court arguments?
We have all seen what passes for “argument” among bureaucrats, who these days “argue” that argument, and reason itself are “white supremacy”.
Bureaucrats have publicly abandoned meritocracy. They have abandoned logic, and reasoned debate as a means to truth, in favor of calls to authority, and gut feel.
They have publicly abandoned reality, and the gods of the copybook headings have returned.
It’s coming. You need a bunker in Idaho.
I have known and dealt with judges and bureaucrats up close and personal and I stand by my comment.
I’ve personally witnessed a judge confess to a felony from the bench once, so yeah, there’s that.
Though my experience has been that judges are expectated to entertain reasoned debate, and for the most part, at least attempt to uphold that illusion… while bureaucrats have a very different job description.
I’ll defer to your more direct experience.
One other technique that’s in the lawbooks already and needs to be used: the “Congressional Review Act” describes a 60 day window to kill new regulations by a simple majority vote in Congress plus the President’s signature. It was used a fair amount in the first Trump term.
This doesn’t sound all that interesting because of the short window, but there is a not well known angle: the Act says that the clock starts when the issuing agency delivers a “Report” to Congress about the new regulation. And until it does so, the regulation does not go into effect. I suspect there are lots of regulations for which that report does not yet exist, so by law those “regulations” are merely irrelevant bits of paper. (Sort of like unratified treaties such as the “Paris Accord”, come to think of it…)
Musk & Ramaswamy Inc will have a surprising amoutn of success but it will not be the total revamp that’s needed because agencies will find new ways to divert the effort. Eventually, the effort will run out of steam and be pronounced “well, it’s not all we wanted to do, but it’s a lot better than it was.”
Next administration the Deep State will start building everything back.
I’m afraid the only way everything that needs to be done can be done is to have Congress zero out an agency – eliminate it completely from the budget by eliminating all – and by “all” I mean every last fraction of a cent then abolishing the agency name and, in some cases, removing the building it used to be in.
It’s possible that when agencies begin resisting the change Congress will have to zero out at least a couple agencies in a very visible and extremely painful to the employees way – “we want to reduce the scope of Agency X, you’re fighting us at every step and won’t let us reduce it, so we just eliminated it completely. If we decide some of that agency was useful, we’ll consider creating a new, smaller, very severely limited agency to perform those tasks, and we will not use any employees from the former agency to do it with. Have a nice day.”
No one who has not dealt with federal agencies in detail fully understands how ruthless the bureaucracy can be in protecting itself. It will not succeed without putting blood on the floor. Perhaps a lot of blood.
The intentions of Musk and Ramaswamy are good. I believe they will try. But the bureaucratic swamp is deep, convoluted and endemic. It’s tied into so many facets of society that rooting it out and ending it may very well destroy society. We shall see what comes in the next year or so. Regardless of the outcome the “Reeeing” from the left will be amazingly hilarious.
In the end, Ramaswamy will have more impact. Musk is a genius but tends to flit around. Ramaswamy is using this as a platform for the next stage of his career and will buckle down and do the work. The Swamp is not easy to deal with and it will take sustained effort. I experienced several iterations of governors enlisting business to try to clean up operations. Those attempts ended in ignominious failure because the corporations didn’t send their best. Trump did send his best so the next stage is to see what the staff looks like. I don’t think the employment model expressed by Musk is going to work. He needs to pay people-a lot. He can afford it.
Most of Musk’s wealth is tied to his stock ownership in Tesla. He doesn’t have the cash wealth that say Buffet has. And that wealth can evaporate quickly if the value of Tesla plummets….for whatever reasons. Same can be said of Bezos though he has sold some of his ownership in Amazon and converted it into more liquid assets. The uber wealthy don’t usually have near as much actual money as most think. It’s all tied up in things…which is why they don’t usually pay much if any in income taxes. I suspect that Musk will likely bow out of the DOGE work soon and go back to the things that truly interest him. Ramaswamy is a bit harder to say for sure.