I don't know about that. Something like an executive order can have effects years after someone is gone, momentum builds and it takes effort for a successor to undo it.
To say nothing about lifetime court appointments. Not just in the supreme court either.
HN is one of those internet communities where people reply with what I read as an aggressive tone, but they agree with me, and it's as if they are angrily correcting me but they didn't realize I was saying their same thing. Is that just my perception?
I wasn't being aggressive, I was filing in the blanks for others that might be interested.
Your comment encouraged me do the research myself (I didn't remember who else was lifetime from my high school classes in the late 80's) and I figured I'd share that, as well as, give another link that explains a bit more context to what I felt you left out.
Ok, thank you. The internet is funny. Neutral tones can come across as aggressive. Aggression, generally, though, can totally be all in the head of the perceiver.
Oh, it isn't just the internet that's funny, overall society/humanity is this way - we are swimming in it daily, and complain about it endlessly.
I sometimes wonder if the reason no one seems super interested in fixing things is because we've been living in it for so long, we instinctively write it off as being "just the way it is" &/or "there's nothing you can do about it".
Oh yeah, i know it's not just the internet either. Notice i said "the internet is that way", then, the next sentence describes "aggression" generically, without specifiers. Kind of intentionally worded that way.
But i do think the internet, and maybe programmer communities especially, have a tendency to be dry and confrontational, focused on debate or correcting other people.
Oh for sure....but I am speaking extremely broadly....society and culture (two things that cover pretty much everything humans do), both "Western" and international.
We live on a planet, that much seems mostly agreed upon...and, we do various things in a various way(s), "that's how it is"...and, it produces the results we see around us (which some people think are great, others not so much).
We could try doing things massively differently than the way we do now and see what results that has. Or heck, we could even imagine doing things other ways, and imagine what results that might produce. Of course, people typically lose control of their imaginations when doing this...but maybe we should try not doing that.
The reality runtime we are in seems to afford us substantial optionality for experimentation - I propose we take advantage of this option.
Federal judges can only be removed through impeachment by the House of Representatives and conviction in the Senate. Judges and Justices serve no fixed term — they serve until their death, retirement, or conviction by the Senate.
So retirement is an option, which is what I am guessing most choose.
Not an executive order, but what led to the 2009 financial crisis was mostly done under the Clinton administration.
Honestly I think this is something us humans are really bad at (well we're known to be bad at this). Understanding causal effects through time. Not only are we bad at understanding causal facts but we're really bad at being forward thinking and understanding temporal phenomena.
But I think the main point that the gp is making is that most of the things that happen under a president aren't really felt till well after they have left office. Many wins that presidents have are due to effects from former presidents. Like both Obama and Trump got praised for high S&P 500 values at the beginning of their presidencies. Obama came in after a big crash. There's also no way Trump could be a causal factor for growth in the first 3 months of his presidency. You can't really have that kind of effect that early on. Yes these presidents contributed to these markets, but it would be naive to say that the growth was because of them. Or we can look at the long lasting effects of Regan. Or even Civil Rights and Johnson. While there was more immediate consequences under both these presidents there were also very long term effects that we still see today.
I have no idea what you think happened under the Clinton era to cause the financial crash of 2009. Most of the immediate things, such as the housing boom driven by easy lending policies, happened under Bush.
So I'd need a reference to support that idea.
However I'll give you another one. Most people's impression is that Carter destroyed the economy and Reagan's deregulation saved the day. But actually the facts are almost exactly reversed - Carter did the deregulating but the benefits were not seen until Reagan was in power.
Not OP, but the Glass-Steagall Act was repealled in 1999, under then-president Bill Clinton, and is posited as a substantial contributor to the 2007-8 Global Financial Crisis.
Canada had no equivalent of the Glass-Steagall Act, but its banks didn't suffer like the US banks did. Why would the seperation of commercial and investment banks only be important in the United States and not in other countries?
Canada did suffer during the 2007-8 crisis, though its banking system didn't collapse as the US system did.
The reasons suggested are various. I'm not an expert on either the US or Canadian experiences, though some quick searches suggest a few explanations, including an overall different regulatory and banking environment in Canada (far more centralised to the Federal government rather than distributed to numerous states). NBER and a few other sources look promising.
But you also seem to be assuming that there was a single causal factor or that people are claiming there is a single causal factor. Neither of these are true. There were many factors at play.
My only claim with Clinton was that he did things that helped lead to the events and people do not attribute that to him because he was not the acting head of state. My claim was not about a singular causality, and that would be a pretty bad faith read.
So there are things that happened under Clinton that have been posited as contributing to the financial crash, so the guy who was President for the last 8 years leading up to the crash must be blameless.
Yeah, not buying it. There are lots of things that happened under Bush that are also posited as contributing to the crash. And 8 years is more than long enough for Bush's policies to have contributed.
> so the guy who was President for the last 8 years leading up to the crash must be blameless.
That's not the argument being made. The argument being made is that actions under a president outlast the president and have to be considered as part of their legacy. Bush isn't blameless but that also doesn't mean Clinton gets off Scot-free.
The argument is about how attribution to current events doesn't solely lie upon the current acting head of state.
> ...what led to the 2009 financial crisis was mostly done under the Clinton administration...
That goes well beyond "Clinton doesn't get off Scot-free" all of the way to, "Clinton should get most of the blame."
I'm firmly in agreement that Clinton contributed. But I'm going to need serious convincing that what he did was more important than, say, failing to enforce regulations against fraudulent advertising on subprime mortgages. Or blocking the 2005 GSE reform bill which would have allowed more action before that problem blew out of control.
I was simply answering the question as to what might have been referred to as occurring during the Clinton administration. Not its overall significance in subsequent events.
The post you are responding to is probably referring to the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act. According to some, that act (signed by Clinton) was (somewhat) responsible for the financial crash. But this is certainly a matter of dispute.
To expand, this law allowed investment banks (e.g. Goldman) and commercial banks (e.g. Washington Mutual) to do what the other could. Effectively this allowed the mortgage backed securities that were a major player in the financial crisis to be created. There were a lot of other issues that contributed to the crisis, but (as far as I'm aware) the main mechanism used would not have been possible without this deregulation.
Eh. It allowed banks to have in house investment banks. They still needed to have walls that dealt with conflicts of interest between the two. Whether the walls work all the time can be disputed.
But you seem to have offered no substantial link to the existence of MBS securities and the repeal of Glass-Steagall. so your conclusion, that arbitrary deregulation, lead to the existence of MBS securities should be even more disputed.
MBS are probably more clearly linked to the complete takeover of the mortgage market by the government. if you turn debt into a commodity you can divide it up however you want. and you turn debt into a commodity by guaranteeing it.
Took a while to end 'stay in Mexico' had to go through courts iirc.
Seems like a lot of the drilling and EPA stuff has been gummed up in courts too
Interesting article link below talking about Biden's push and the problem with R partisan judges.
and the potential that if an order goes too far, court is given opportunity to make a broad and lasting ruling that would limit powers. I can very easily see this happening.
This is one prime example I was thinking of when I wrote the comment, but I was waiting for someone else to say it.
I have vague memories of other things, like maybe some Bush orders that didn't get a swift or easy rollback with Obama ... But that was longer ago.
But I think more broadly and nonpartisan, a law passed by Congress or an executive order by the president that is done when someone feels they have a mandate... Often sets broad policy for years and outlasts the mandate. More than most people understand. I think this contradicts the easy, oversimplified statement people like to make that elections don't matter and the parties and candidates are interchangable.
GIANT differences and anyone pretending not is usually acting in bad faith.
- abortion
- environment (or you know that global warming is real and caused by humans)
- LGBTQ rights
- race & equity
- immigration & treatment of asylum seekers
- role of Fed & state regulators in markets, like energy markets (tx)
- taxes
- workers rights
- federal govt powers
could go on and on but that's not the point of your comment is it
No I don't think it would. Republicans always say they are for law and order and democrats aren't. Democrats usually say that they are for some form of light reform to prisons or justice, but often vote for more aggressive policies to not be called "lawless" or some nonesense.
The difference is, republicans have always been lying about being the party of law and order. Whether through Nixon, or Iran-Contra, or everything that happened with trump (which most republicans just pretend didn't happen), they've always said that the law should apply, and then ignored it for their own.
The only minority worth protecting beyond reproach of politics are those afflicted with poverty.
I have found both parties incompetent in this regard.
800k shacks with outlets in LA for the homeless. The complete dismissal of the responsibility we have as a society to rehabilitate people in the prison system. the absolute abandonment of native americans that ultimately lead to an institution of sexual abuse. Unions run the schools but the worst outcomes happen in urban cities, which leads to violence.
the problems we face are complex. and I think we would do better to lean inwards than rely on looking to the fringes for our philosophical goals.
> The only minority worth protecting beyond reproach of politics are those afflicted with poverty. I have found both parties incompetent in this regard.
How do you think we, the people, can make a really meaningful impact to change this?
The only people I ever see asking that are right-wing pundits trying to convince left-leaning voters not to bother voting, and occasionally burned-out centrists who've fallen for it.
I've never seen a serious left-wing voter/activist/politician come out with the claim that "well, the right are just as bad as we are".
"We are not so different, you and I" is always the last-ditch claim of the villain, knowing that they have no moral ground to stand on, trying to drag down the people who are trying to do better for not being perfect. And it's bullshit. Always has been, always will be.
I've noticed there is a tendency among folks on the left (and for all I know it's also true of folks on the right) where people who do as you say are cast out and labeled "centrists", creating a dynamic where internal criticism is silenced.
I speak as someone who self-identified as on the left for many years, but no longer feels comfortable doing so because of how incurious and closed off to criticism the left has become.
"Internal criticism is silenced" is an... interesting view of the left. A more common view is that endless leftist infighting is one of the things that makes leftists ineffectual.
Insofar as that infighting takes the form of fighting over who is the most or trueist left, casting their opponents as not actually left, there is no contradiction here. The eagerness to use shibboleths, slips of tongue and anecdotal correlations to identify impostures who are merely pretending to be left for underhanded rhetorical reasons is an example of this. Crypto-fascists are the ultimate boogieman.
BTW it's not hard to find examples of the right doing this too.
Those are not contradictory. Without the ability to criticize others, different groups can each claim to be "the left", and they don't have the ability to work through their differences to unify.
> I've noticed there is a tendency among folks on the left (and for all I know it's also true of folks on the right) where people who do as you say are cast out and labeled "centrists", creating a dynamic where internal criticism is silenced.
As to whether the right also does it, Eric Greitens literally released an ad showing him "RINO hunting" with a rifle (RINO meaning "Republican In Name Only"). Leftists may infight, but at least we know how to use our words.
(As compared, for example, to the 1960s and 1970s, where bombing was a much more common tool of the left. I'll definitely take the verbal infighting.)
I think "centrist" and "moderates" are pretty bad terms. They are usually used to capture anyone that doesn't fall cleanly into the two main parties. Which honestly, is a very diverse group. One such issue (of many) with this is that many anti-authoritarian people fall into this camp. It does make sense that these people get burned out as there has been no representation for them in decades and their major concerns have only grown ever stronger and seem nigh impossible now. The right did capture some of these people (re Tea Party) until they typically find out they are hoodwinked. Now the left is capturing some of these people because Trump was the personification of authority. Still, I don't think these people feel represented and I don't think you should dismiss them so easily.
