Hard Power and Soft Power

[sevenhelmet]

Yes, terrible, I agree. Now, why is no one noticing that USAID is so poorly run that their forward contingency planning long reaches out to one week! Sounds like an agency in need of a reset.

Perhaps. But reset =/= deletion. I challenge you to find a government organization that doesn’t have at least some objectionable leadership and waste issues.

Organizational issues don’t mean the mission is fundamentally flawed. Tossing out the baby with the bathwater and saying “fuck you, baby- fend for yourself!” is not a solution, nor is it leadership. It’s childish, and creates a political vacuum. We know what tends to happen with those.

Mark my words, Donald Trump is the most pro-terrorist president of our time.

 

[ChuckMK23]

Dan Crenshaw on the concept of a EU Army - an grand army of Europe and the EU.

 

[Griz882]

Perhaps. But reset =/= deletion. I challenge you to find a government organization that doesn’t have at least some objectionable leadership and waste issues.

Organizational issues don’t mean the mission is fundamentally flawed. Tossing out the baby with the bathwater and saying “fuck you, baby- fend for yourself!” is not a solution, nor is it leadership. It’s childish, and creates a political vacuum. We know what tends to happen with those.

Mark my words, Donald Trump is the most pro-terrorist president of our time.

As I have noted several times, Trump isn’t doing this well, far from it, but he is doing something and that is what people want. He is far from one to utilize soft power, or especially smart power but what he is doing is ripping off a band aid so we can fix fundamentally flawed organizations. I am simply stating that I think the brief pain will be worth the potential change. I was listening to Pod Save America and the team there (mostly former Obama guys) were lamenting that they failed to make this kind of change…I’ve cut and pasted a bit of the synopsis here:

“Federal employee retirements are process3d using paper, by hand, in an old limestone mine in Pennsylvania. Seven hundred-plus workers operate 230 feet underground to process about 10,000 applications a month, which are stored in Manila envelopes and cardboard boxes. The retirement process takes multiple months.

Musk’s team sees this Alice in Wonderland filing scheme and decides it needs to end right now. It can all be done on a single spreadsheet and people can just click. We don’t need to send people spelunking in order to get someone’s 401(k) withdrawn. Except modern Democrats see this and think: charming tradition and special workers who must be defended. Every magazine would profile the limestone workers, featuring portraits of them with their grandchildren. There would be elegies to what’s lost when we digitize files in general, and how digitizing files led to this man’s depression and that woman’s divorce. It would be a constitutional crisis not to have a pulley system for the retirement papers. There would be rallies: These are 700 real people! What kind of heartless monster wants 700 lovely people out of a job? Not me! And so the limestone mine retirement processing center for federal workers would continue.”
“Some of this is pretty annoying because it’s some of the stuff we should have done.”

And there it is. We must change but we can’t because this political party, or that, will get credit so let’s keep rolling like it’s 1955!

 

[robav8r]

Interesting Hard Power discussion on the Shawn Ryan show . . .

 

[sevenhelmet]

@Griz882 , I would be more disposed to that argument if it was clear the administration was building the new, improved system before destroying the old. Instead, it appears as if they are breaking things and firing people- and cruelly- in order to create a problem only they can solve.

I disagree that we will be better off for all of this “brief pain”. I will agree with your implicit argument that the interplay between republicans and democrats is likely to be a contributing factor to our continued downward spiral. Partisanship is ruining this country.

 

[Griz882]

@Griz882 , I would be more disposed to that argument if it was clear the administration was building the new, improved system before destroying the old. Instead, it appears as if they are breaking things and firing people- and cruelly- in order to create a problem only they can solve.

I disagree that we will be better off for all of this “brief pain”. I will agree with your implicit argument that the interplay between republicans and democrats is likely to be a contributing factor to our continued downward spiral. Partisanship is ruining this country.

I don’t deny that Trump is a wrecking ball. Surely there was a better way forward, but I highly doubt an existing bureaucracy would tolerate being “reformed.”

 

[taxi1]

what he is doing is ripping off a band aid so we can fix fundamentally flawed organizations

What a fucking clownshow. the DoD is next.

The US government is trying to rehire nuclear safety employees it had fired on Thursday, after concerns grew that their dismissal could jeopardize national security, US media reported.

The Trump administration has since tried to reverse their terminations, but has reportedly struggled to reach the people that were fired after they were locked out of their federal email accounts. A memo sent to NNSA employees on Friday and obtained by NBC News read: "The termination letters for some NNSA probationary employees are being rescinded, but we do not have a good way to get in touch with those personnel."

"Please work with your supervisors to send this information (once you get it) to people's personal contact emails," the memo added.

I wonder if they briefed all those people out of their Q clearances.

 

[Spekkio]

What a fucking clownshow. the DoD is next.

5% cut to all DoD civilians and contractors. Extend CG service life. Cut out LCS / FFG, buy fewer carriers, cut two Army divisions, buy more DDGs, submarines, munitions, and unmanned stuff is the early plan I came across.

The CG part was ... odd. They are all broken-ass money pits.

 

[Griz882]

It all kind of reminds me of Truman’s efforts to create the Department of Defense out of the old National Security Establishment (War Department/Navy Department). The process destroyed James Forrestal’s health and when it was done Truman noted…“We finally succeeded in getting a unification act that will enable us to have unification, and as soon as we get the crybabies in the niches where they belong, we will have no more trouble.”

Historically this period is known as the Quiet Coup or by the Navy as the Revolt of the Admirals. News papers at the time were outraged by the change, politicians demanded things slow down for the sake of continuity, sacred oxen were gored, old bureaucracies shattered, and new systems established. It is actually quite painful, but it can be done.

 

[Spekkio]

As I have noted several times, Trump isn’t doing this well, far from it, but he is doing something and that is what people want. He is far from one to utilize soft power, or especially smart power but what he is doing is ripping off a band aid so we can fix fundamentally flawed organizations. I am simply stating that I think the brief pain will be worth the potential change. I was listening to Pod Save America and the team there (mostly former Obama guys) were lamenting that they failed to make this kind of change…I’ve cut and pasted a bit of the synopsis here:

“Federal employee retirements are process3d using paper, by hand, in an old limestone mine in Pennsylvania. Seven hundred-plus workers operate 230 feet underground to process about 10,000 applications a month, which are stored in Manila envelopes and cardboard boxes. The retirement process takes multiple months.

Musk’s team sees this Alice in Wonderland filing scheme and decides it needs to end right now. It can all be done on a single spreadsheet and people can just click. We don’t need to send people spelunking in order to get someone’s 401(k) withdrawn. Except modern Democrats see this and think: charming tradition and special workers who must be defended. Every magazine would profile the limestone workers, featuring portraits of them with their grandchildren. There would be elegies to what’s lost when we digitize files in general, and how digitizing files led to this man’s depression and that woman’s divorce. It would be a constitutional crisis not to have a pulley system for the retirement papers. There would be rallies: These are 700 real people! What kind of heartless monster wants 700 lovely people out of a job? Not me! And so the limestone mine retirement processing center for federal workers would continue.”
“Some of this is pretty annoying because it’s some of the stuff we should have done.”

And there it is. We must change but we can’t because this political party, or that, will get credit so let’s keep rolling like it’s 1955!

Trump is a businessman and is trying to run the government like a business. When you have a product line or department or whatever that isn't working, you clear house and cut your losses (and sometimes declare bankruptcy to erase all your debt).

You don't wait around for people to talk it to death and get consensus approval.

Since it's generally a lot easier to unilaterally stop payments than to start them, he's going to keep doing this until someone makes him stop.

 

[Griz882]

he's going to keep doing this until someone makes him stop.

Now, to round this discussion out…wouldn’t it be nice if Congress actually did its job and set Constitutional limits to POTUS power?

Nah….we’d rather have a mess so “our guy” can use those powers to advance “our agenda.”

 

[Spekkio]

Now, to round this discussion out…wouldn’t it be nice if Congress actually did its job and set Constitutional limits to POTUS power?

Nah….we’d rather have a mess so “our guy” can use those powers to advance “our agenda.”

As I said earlier, I believe the relationship is supposed to be that the executive asks Congress to fund the executive functions of the government... the President is not supposed be forced to manage executive agencies and programs that he does not want. Quite frankly, organizations like USAID and the DOE could be considered Unconstitutional, insofar as the power to create these entities was not explicitly given to Congress in Article 1 and you have to really stretch that elastic clause and delete the entire paragraph around the words 'general welfare' to get there.

Why do we have such things? Because FDR launched a court packing scheme to avoid his social welfare programs from being overturned. That set the precedent, and we've accepted federally run social welfare ever since.

The President is also the de facto head of the political party, which happens to have a majority in both chambers.

Elections have consequences, and Trump's approval rating has a positive slope since taking office.

Trump is not 'my guy.' But I think that the ACA was significantly more unconstitutional than what Trump is doing (and the Courts eventually struck down most of the ACA's provisions).

 

[taxi1]

Trump is a businessman and is trying to run the government like a business.

Problem is if he runs it like one of his businesses.

Now, to round this discussion out…wouldn’t it be nice if Congress actually did its job and set Constitutional limits to POTUS power?

Nah….we’d rather have a mess so “our guy” can use those powers to advance “our agenda.”

This goes back to a fundamental blind spot the Founding Fathers had regarding political parties. They gave the Legislative the key power to balance the Executive. That is gone as the Repub legislators sit on their hands like cowards. Good article from Ezra Klein

Why was Congress made so strong? Congress reflects the second and, in some ways, more important form of fracture the founders imagined. Our political system was designed to fracture power by place. Senators are elected by states — until 1913, they were elected by state legislatures — not by a national vote; the House is sliced up into geographically bound districts.

…It’s astonishing. Republicans in Congress could demand that Trump cut them in. They won the election, too. It is their job to write these bills.

Agreement with Trump’s policy aims need not mean agreement with his power grab. But the most powerful branch of government — the branch with the power to check the others — is supine. It is not that it can’t act to protect its power. It’s that it will not act to protect its power. This is a nonplayer Congress.

Behind it is the collapse of the Madison structure and the nationalization of the two parties. I am not going to rehash the whole story of how the parties nationalized here — I tell that story in detail here, if you’re interested — but it’s been true for decades now. And the possibility that something exactly like this could happen has been feared for decades.

 

[Spekkio]

Problem is if he runs it like one of his businesses.

Not really. People point to his bankruptcies, but Trump is notorious for using financial tomfoolery to keep his fortune in tact. He's raised his net worth from tens of millions to over $5 billion over the course of his career. Most businessmen would consider that successful.

Kevin O'Leary was livid at why NYC sued Donald Trump over his taxes. He basically said every businessman ever does the same exact thing, including himself.

 

[taxi1]

People point to his bankruptcies

Why are they even a thing on an SF86, then?