I’m pretty sure the coup happened in the 1930s when the government created the modern system of unaccountable executive agencies and a Supreme Court, under duress, approved it.
For nearly a hundred years, the people have voted for those reforms. That’s called governance and democracy. Reactionary people have always been upset about any change.
This using an unaccountable fall guy to break the law at will, so that congress can avoid accountability is gross. Folks with your opinion like to wax on about constitutional principles, blah blah blah, as we stand by and watch the shitshow that is happening right now.
Ignoring the constitution isn't a "reform" it's lawlessness. There's no other developed country in the world where the government's actual structure is so divorced from its written constitution.
People voted for the administrative state in the 1930s, and they've been voting to cut back on it since 1980. Since then, the only President who won elections without promising to shrink government were Obama (in response to the disaster of Iraq and the Great Recession) and Biden (in response to COVID).
The constitution doesn’t say there cannot be a civil service or whatever you are mad about. Congress is empowered to enact laws.
I don’t remember an article in the constitution that allows a rich crony to act in contempt of the laws established by congress as an officer of the government without appointment. But I guess our dedication to solemn constitutional principles varies.
So you can have a civil service (and the framers assumed there would be one) but Congress can’t insulate the civil service from the president’s direct supervision. That’s obviously true—because the presidential election is the only way people have to politically influence the internal operation of the executive branch itself.
Why this amorphous "the government" wording? The people elected Congress and Presidents, who did this over decades with popular support.
Executive agencies are not unaccountable. They have specific charters and there is a huge volume of rules they have to follow. eg:(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_Procedure_Act). Congress writes their budgets every year and the heads of those agencies are reviewed at congressional and presidential levels.
Accountability means democratic accountability. The APA is not meaningful democratic accountability--it just means that lawyers like me end up running the country.
Yeah it’s hard to reconcile a permanent layer of unelected officials, that can’t be sacked by either the President or Congress, with many parts of the constitution.
And I’ve never seen a clear explanation of how that change was constitutionally justifiable.
Most don’t even have sufficient clearances to know the names of random middle managers in many many offices in the CIA/NSA, let alone do anything to them.
They can be fired, there’s a variety of processes to do so.
The obsession with firing people is this weird narrative the right wingers are always obsessed with. The cognitive dissonance between these high and mighty principles and what our principled republican colleagues have and will do is beyond ridiculous.
Functional government is the goal of any mature stakeholder. We have 100+ years of spoils system that aptly demonstrates why that methodology doesn’t make sense in a modern society.
Viable processes don’t suddenly pop into existence just because someone says so…?
Most of Congress can’t acquire sufficient clearances to even learn the names of random middle managers in many offices in the IC, let alone to do anything about them.
They can defund the whole office, subdivision, or function.
Life isn’t an episode of the apprentice… nobody in congress sees their oversight role as firing random post office clerks. That’s idiocy. Congress controls the law and the purse. Conservatives have been wielding this power for years - that’s why single moms are routinely nabbed in audits for earned income fraud, while rich people get away with donating millions to phoney foundations that they control for years. (Congress limits funding for enforcement)
The executive has broad authority to take personnel actions while adhering to the law.
> They can defund the whole office, subdivision, or function.
This doesn’t make sense, to suggest they have the opportunity to defund something that they don’t even know exists or what it includes is just not credible.
How could if possibly come to their attention in the first place?
