Who says they are illegal? Can you cite some sources please? Like actual legal experts, not the guardian.
As far as I know, the chevron deference ruling makes it easily arguable that these agencies don't necessarily have any legal standing anyway.
The 8 month buyout was completely legal, Clinton did the same.
I actually find it highly unlikely any of this is illegal, it's just completely unbearable to anyone who is part of the bureaucracy. But prove me wrong. Show me the legal opinions.
Boy howdy there's a lot to pull apart here but ;et's start with your core statement regarding chevron deference. The recent (and wildly stupid, I think but besides the point) Chevron deference ruling says, in summary, that federal agencies have very little latitude in deciding their internal policies where not explicitly defined by congress.
The current administration replaced the head of an agency and had that agency shut itself down. Shutting yourself down is clearly not a power given to any federal agency, so by the very policy you're citing either the judicial or executive branch must act to allow such a move.
Instead, our cheeto in chief decided that those other branches don't actually need to do any of that pesky work and it's a lot easier if everyone just does what he wants.
Overturning the 14th amendment of the constitution by executive order is illegal.
Shutting down an agency like USAID require congressional approval, but was done by executive order.
Withholding congressionally approved funding for government agencies is illegal.
Sharing sensitive documents from the fiscal service with (Doge) team members who do not have the appropriate security clearances is illegal.
Giving Elon Musk an unofficial seat and allowing him unfettered access to the entire federal government without any congressional confirmation is illegal and basically amounts to setting up a shadow government.
Congress mandates that weed is illegal, funds the DEA to go after it, yet no one complains when Obama, Trump, and Biden decided not to enforce that law. Executives clearly have discretion.
Nicely said. The problem here is the message clearly resonated and people voted for him. Yes, he might have had help in spreading that message, but the message still landed and people chose him.
To now say that the election was invalid when people actually chose him is extremely risky. My guess is it will reinforce a lot of narratives about how evil the west and the USA is. This will only make things worse, and will put the winner in an even stronger position.
People did not choose him nevertheless. He only got 1/5 of the votes and passed to the second round with another candidate. In the second round he would probably loose, but it is not the point.
The point is that he broke the election law. That is not negotiable.
>Yes, he might have had help in spreading that message
Modern mass social media isn't just "help spreading the message", as everyone on this website must surely be aware. It's not a guy handling out pamphlets. It's a hyper-optimised, hyper-targeted psychological howitzer that would make Goebbels or Bernays blush.
Ffs I search for cake recipes on YouTube and my suggested videos are infinite hours of the local far-right guy ranting about gypsies and nepalis. Of course it has an effect, of course such one-sided avalanche of propaganda skews and manipulates things. This is obvious and also empirically verified.
I stress: one-sided. It's not even so much as all the boomers (and impressionable kids) being fed this propaganda for hours on end, it's that it's the only thing that they are fed. Listening to 30 tiktoks in a row of the guy ranting about gypsies and the EU would not be so bad if at least it was followed by some tiktoks giving an opposing views, or exposing that guy's shady business deals and how he pockets millions in taxpayer money! But we all know echo chambers are more lucrative than balanced views......
> Modern mass social media isn't just "help spreading the message", as everyone on this website must surely be aware. It's not a guy handling out pamphlets. It's a hyper-optimised, hyper-targeted psychological howitzer that would make Goebbels or Bernays blush.
I still don’t understand why anyone willingly subjects themselves to mass social media, there’s absolutely nothing of value and disinformation runs rampant.
I know I have blind spots in my knowledge and believe stuff that isn’t true, but I do my best to avoid being misinformed.
>The problem here is the message clearly resonated and people voted for him.
Indeed, that's what a lot of the middle upper class urban Romanians with corporate jobs don't understand, that a lot of the people, especially the older less educated ultra conservative ones, resonated with him and his message so they voted for him.
TikTok didn't hypnotize and mind control them to vote for him, they stil had free will, they just like his message the most. Sure his message was full of lies and pandering but that's every single politician.
Do we discard the democratic process because someone undesirable by the educated middle upper class won by majority? Then what's the point of democracy? You keep repeating elections till your preferred candidate wins?
>Do we discard the democratic process because someone undesirable by the educated middle upper class won by majority?
Why do people on this thread keep hammering on this ridiculous point? He is discarded for breaking the law in multiple points, not because he is "undesirable by the urbanites" or whatever ffs. If it was the "soy globohomo candidate" or whatever you'd call it that was breaking these laws, he should also be suspended.
This is the only conclusion I take from this: you are so anti-democratic that you cannot fathom following the rules impartially, that indeed if a court determines that a candidate broke the law it must be because it is trying to manipulate election results. Because this is what you would yourself do if you had that power, protect "your" guy and persecute the "other" guy?
Which country? This matters a lot. I doubt you are in Greece, or Italy, or Portugal.
Did you know on GBP PPP Warsaw and Budapest are now better places to live than Madrid, Lisbon and many other Mediterranean cities?
It’s crazy. Perhaps Berlin and Copenhagen are still ok, but even France is on a completely unsustainable path that will explode in the next 10-20 years.
The line isn’t clear cut as risk isn’t a guarantee.
Multiple US woman have already died when doctors where unwilling to intervene despite significant issues being present. There’s a lot of politics involved but as an example Josseli Barnica died in 2021 before row vs wade was overturned with doctors refusing to act over legal concerns despite clear and significant issues.
> his past performance is terrible by all measures.
What was terrible for you? He didn't start new wars, he did the abraham accords. He put in a policy of -2 regulations for every new regulation. He was much better on spending UP UNTIL COVID than Biden was.
What was so bad? He might speak like a crazy person, but his policies weren't that bad.
His policies were terrible. He broke off several key international treaties. He instituted the family separation policy. He broke down federal institutions that could have helped fight COVID.
In what way was he better on spending? He managed to increase the deficit every single year, even before COVID.
> He might speak like a crazy person.
He does speak like a crazy person. He advocates for crazy policies. People from his administration are crazy people and advocate for crazy policies.
I agree with your sentiment, but frankly human nature just doesn’t work that way. We don’t have self control. We weren’t evolved for a world of abundance. This is no one’s fault, and it’s everywhere, china is getting fatter than most countries now.
Realistically, ozempic is a miracle and it seems to be a solution to numerous issues of our world.
It would be nice if it wasn’t so, but apart from the 10% of people who can control themselves (which also causes psychological issues btw), most people just can’t.
I reject your assumption that "This is no one’s fault, and it’s everywhere, china is getting fatter than most countries now."
It's the food industrial complex's fault, along with many others (politicians, individuals without self control, etc)
I lived in rural Colombia for 4 years. People had access to the junk food, but it wasn't consumed very much because the veggies and meat are all produced locally and super tasty and cheap. And the local dishes were extremely meat and veggie based.
Oh, and most people know how to cook there.
It's not a fact of human nature to be unhealthy. It's a fact of modern culture.
That's a side effect, dumbass. Every medicine has side effects. It's not the primary purpose of the drug or even a likely outcome, like you originally implied.
Why even bother lying if you don't possess the intelligence to formulate even a shallow deception? You understand that attempting to be deceptive, and then demonstrating you're too stupid for even simple deceptions is worse than if you had just said nothing, right?
Some advice: if you have to employ deception to make your argument, your argument is probably shit and probably isn't even worth the sound waves it travels on. So go back to the drawing board and trying coming up with something less fucking stupid.
Obesity is on the rise in a huge percentage of developed nations, and not just western ones. Even South Korea has seen a huge spike over the past decade - the amount of obese men /doubled/ between 2009 and 2019. It went up 3x in China between 1993 and 2015, and is on track to be over 20% by the end of the decade. Japan is increasing at a much slower rate, but it's still going up. 25% of people in India are overweight, with that number and morbid obesity numbers also increasing.
Basically every country sees obesity rise as the people gain access to the modern diet.
I don't care obesity is rising here and there, the fact that it is culturally induced remains, as it remains that a change lifestyle is the largest defense against obesity. Enjoy the magic pill for the rest of your life.
I'm fairly confident in my ability to get back in the same routine I had in my 20s and take myself off of it, but if staying on it is what it takes for me to remain fit and eating well, then sure. I don't mind giving myself an injection twice a week in exchange for good health.
If not needing it makes you feel superior, I'm glad you've found a source of self validation.
I don't begrudge smokers any of the tools they have their disposal for cessation. So yes, they're certainly welcome to make the same point. If using nicotine patches or gum indefinitely is what it takes someone to stop smoking cigarettes, then sure, go for it. It's a hell of a lot less harmful than continuing to smoke two packs of cigarettes a day.
It's quite obvious that you think anyone who is incapable of just willpowering through things is lesser for it. And that's fine - you're allowed to hold whatever opinion you want. Thankfully, neither of us are forced to interact with each other in any real manner.
Where? In Japan, obesity among men has increased by 1.5x over the past several decades. It remains quite low, but the rate is still increasing year over year (slower with women). Vietnam, a country with one of the lowest obesity rates in the world is seeing an increase - the overweight and obesity rate has basically tripled since the early 2000s.
Alright - so whole community intervention, including literal celebrity chefs appearing and building out menus, can improve the situation.
Yes, if we remove all of the modern, processed, high calorie, energy dense, sugar heavy foods out of a place we can improve the obesity rate.
I hope you understand why individuals are going to take things into their own hands vs. waiting for massive societal change. I thought you were referring to whole cultures or countries making significant change here, not small communities.
No. Where did I ever say that? I take the drug and it makes it significantly easier for me to eat healthy foods and in healthy quantities.
I'm someone who has spent many years of their life fit. I'm also someone who has spent many years of their life fat. I can tell you that when I was fit, I did not suffer from the sort of constant hunger I did before I was fat. It didn't take any sort of willpower or discipline on my part - I just wasn't hungry nearly as often, healthy food was satiating, and things were easy. Lifting weights multiple days a week took a bit of discipline, but it wasn't the reason I was eating healthy - I was doing that before I ever got particularly into exercise.
But I got busy with other aspects of my life and it became easier and easier to just grab some fast food, or order uber eats during the pandemic. But this was just laziness - I didn't have constant hunger or cravings. But before I knew it, I had gained significant weight, and then I did have constant hunger and cravings, and it became a tremendously difficult task for me. Losing weight by sticking to healthy food in healthy quantities required significant willpower, and shoving that hunger down had impact on my mood, ability to concentrate, etc. I struggled to make it past 6 months before some other event in my life would require me put my focus towards it, and I wouldn't have the capacity to deal with both things, so I'd go back to eating poorly.
Tirzepatide puts my relationship with food and hunger back to where it was before I had gotten fat in the first place.
My entire point is that individuals should take things into their own hands. By exercising and eating whole foods, not depending on the pharmaceutical system for a panacea that may or may not have long term side effects.
And if enough people do it, we have a healthy culture again.
It's because our culture is set up to incentivize being weak and fat. You get up from bed, walk to your car, drive to the Dunkin Donuts drive thru, then sit in an office, until you go home.
It's insane to imply this culture just needs some drugs to be healthy.
I spent a good chunk of my 20s lifting heavy weights. I ate well. Bulking was harder for me than cutting. It never took any real willpower or discipline for me to eat healthy food in healthy quantities.
Then I got busy with life and the convenience of fast food and then eventually uber eats lead me to putting on weight at a steady pace, and before I realized it, suddenly it was incredibly difficult for me to eat healthy quantities of food. As someone who had many years of success being healthy, it was not something I ever succeeded at doing for more than half a year or so after I let myself get fat, despite repeat attempts to resolve the issue.
Did our culture make it easy for me to get fat when I started devoting all my mental energy elsewhere? Yes. But I was never able to get back to where I should be prior to tirzepatide. Now my relationship with hunger is basically where it was back when I was fit.
Some people are be able to push through the various biological feedback loops based on willpower alone. I'm not one of them. So instead of staying fat, or berating myself for my repeated failed attempts, I'll take the drugs and be better off for it.
> I really loath Cato's hand-wavy libertarian claims pieced together with weak arguments in their writing pieces.
There's very few actual libertarian voices anymore, so I think just for sparking conversation it's good. Whether you are left or right, or even western or eastern, conservative or liberal, in 2024 there is basically agreement that government needs to fix things and government should have more control. Bureaucracy is increasing everywhere. Everyone is doing deficit spending.
There's almost no one mainstream that is actually advocating for less government. Dems in the US might accuse the republicans of wanting less, but I find it hard to find evidence republicans have done any reduction in government since Reagan, and even he did quite little.
Cato-style libertarianism (massive deregulation, fire the federal government, increases in corporate power) is a core principle of the GOP's Vice Presidential candidate. Trump has further discussed the possibility of mass firings of the federal bureaucracy. Is that not mainstream?
We don't need further advocates for bad policy just for the sake of it.
For me it wasn't so much about libertarian claims but about Cato's style of writing. Their written discourse is so lazy and highly disingenuous to the point it becomes offensive.
There are parts where I think libertarianism makes sense but financial control isn't one of them.
> in 2024 there is basically agreement that government needs to fix things and government should have more control.
Agreed. I think there needs to be a better control of who controls the government though.
As far as I know, the chevron deference ruling makes it easily arguable that these agencies don't necessarily have any legal standing anyway.
The 8 month buyout was completely legal, Clinton did the same.
I actually find it highly unlikely any of this is illegal, it's just completely unbearable to anyone who is part of the bureaucracy. But prove me wrong. Show me the legal opinions.
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