Disclaimer: I am not a constitutional scholar, but I still harbor a quaint belief in the rule of law and stuff.
I don't see how Musk can operate in his current role without Senate confirmation. The appointments clause requires any principal officer of the United States (who exercises "significant authority") to be confirmed first. And if locking agency heads out of their own systems isn't "significant authority", I don't know what could be.
Sigh.
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I know there's probably little in practice that can be done about this, given the state of congress and the courts right now. And, yes, this is perhaps not the most outrageous of the many assaults against norms and values being committed right now.
But it's an example of how the damage being done goes beyond merely just bad policies, and involves foundational democratic institutions being dismantled.
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@mattblaze
Observing from the outside, it's been driving me nuts, too. The USA has constitutional law, statute law, regulations, procedures, norms against so much of what your new administration has been doing for the last two weeks.
And ... no one's doing anything about it. You may as well not have any prohibitions on any of it at all -- if you don't enforce the laws, they're not laws. If a tree falls in the forest, etc, etc.
Musk's monkeying with the money machinery is just the latest example - clearly exceeding any legal authority he might have, and ... crickets. The Democrats aren't even making a peep about most of this stuff.
Between the "stupid evil" nature of the threat and the existing systems, I thought that it would at least slow them down some, but it's like no one's even trying. I'm no longer confident that any significant remnant of the US experiment will exist in four years.
[#]pessimism #observer #USPol #law
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@cazabon @mattblaze
Well, the past year has shown us that the supposed "rules-based international order" is just an awful joke. Same goes for the rest.
The wealthiest and most powerful people on the planet have been undermining every democratic institution-- and our "democracy" was pretty damn flawed to begin with, established as it was by genocidal, ecocidal, white supremacist slavers.
This is finally the transition to corporate feudalism.
For a long while now, the sovereignty of nations has been largely decorative. Even the facade is crumbling now, turning ugly and slow and broken, but still lingering-- the collapsing system will trap ordinary people in a tangled and spastic mass of bureaucratic wreckage, while those with wealth and connections buy themselves tickets to the rareified heights where they can get what they want.
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@violetmadder @cazabon @mattblaze
While I agree generally, this is a very USA-centric view. The Nordic countries are not perfect, but they're light years more advanced than the USA. Brazil is currently prosecuting Bolsanero for what Trump tried in 2020. Etc. Democracy is under attack and the Americans have gone from friend of democracy* to enemy of all.
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@Greengordon @cazabon @mattblaze
The social safety nets in all those places, even the most functional and successful ones, are being dismantled a piece at a time, up against the same neoliberal playbook that's made the US what it is. They may not be as far down this pit yet, but they're on the same trajectory.
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