Journal Captain Splendid's Journal: The Imperial Presidency 6
This is why I stopped paying attention to conservatives long ago: Breathless hype of impending doom, but as you investigate, you find that no matter what technical truth is contained in these overhyped claims, the reality always turns out to be underwhelming at best.
I got my first taste of it back in the late 90s when the big conspiracy theory of the day was FEMA's apparently limitless power during a crisis. Clinton, busy with Lewinskygate, and on his way out, was just waiting for one good disaster in order to unleash FEMA and some sort of New World Order. And then you find out it's just boilerplate shit about responsibility, chain of command, and agency co-operation in order to better respond during an emergency.
And so we come to Dictator Obama and his Fascist Regime, Executive Orders flying out as as fast as his army of statist apparatchiks can churn them out, making a mockery of the Greatest Democracy in the world, like no other politician in the history of ever.
To be fair though, shame on me. I'm the one got excited then disappointed. No point in blaming the howler monkeys for being the usual idiots on this one.
That's only because Obama tried (Score:2)
To do things differently and work with Congress. Now he's fed up.
What gets me isn't the number of executive orders, it's the type. An executive order announced in the State of the Union to stop debate on a scientific matter? Unilaterally raising the minimum wage without any debate on the topic, at least for federal contractors? WMOBE certifications? The HHS Mandate?
You'll find most of Roosevelt's executive orders were about preventing civil war at home and persecuting the war in Europe and the Pacific,
Re: (Score:2)
So, Imperial is a good thing then?
stop political debate on a scientific matter
FTFY, and it's a good thing. Governments have to actually do stuff now and again, they can't wait around until some magically tiny threshold of certainty is reached.
Unilaterally raising the minimum wage without any debate on the topic
That's fucking funny. If workers were actually compensated in line with the US economic growth over the last 25 ye
Re: (Score:2)
I know I've been living in a hole- for all of my life and then some.
Agreed all around (Score:1)
That said, none of this will stop the setting up of guillotines across America in the near future.
I don't think a French-style revolution's possible (Score:1)
If states seceded, they had relatively more identity and economic sustainability than they do today. Or if Versailles imploded, the French peasants hardly noticed.
You go jacking up modern logistics, and start perturbing food & electricity, and the results are going to be swift & ugly.
There may be a few fringe cases that would think the chaotic fallout somehow swell, I suppose,