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Comment by JohnMakin | Hacker News Reader

Food regulation is one thing. What's stopping a sitting president from directing his party's governors across the states to appoint judges favorable to their politics (already happening the last 4-8 years). Wink wink, nudge nudge, they get "tipped" after the fact by big business XYZ (the supreme court ruled this is not considered a bribe) to do some terrible thing, sure, here you go.

It's long been an open secret that our politicians are for sale to the highest bidder but it's very difficult for me to understand how the mask can be this far off and people don't know, realize, or seem to care all that much.

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Why bother with all that nonsense when the sitting president could just order all their executive agencies to change the rules or stop enforcing them entirely. The argument for the most recent decision is deferring to the enforcers about the extent of their powers is a bad move to when those powers are being challenged. We’re in a lot of the messes we’re in because a lot of our federal regulations aren’t laws, they are the whims of the president and their regulatory body heads, and are subject to change at any time with the stroke of a single pen.

For example, net neutrality was a thing, and then it wasn’t, and now it might be again, all in the span of about a decade and all because different presidents and FCC chairs had different opinions about the extent (and intent) of the powers of the FCC.

Or consider marijuana, still a schedule I drug per the DEA, yet by presidential decree, the DEA isn’t supposed to be spending effort enforcing that. Until I guess a new “tough on drugs” president comes into office. Or maybe until it’s politically expedient to enforce that law against some distributor. Maybe some grower in California or Colorado where it’s legal at the state level has done something to draw the ire of the president. Gosh wouldn’t you know it, the DEA decided it has some time to start enforcing those laws after all.

Trouble is, for people who do realize and care, there isn't much we can actually do. Our two party system is effectively preventing change through the established channels, and I'm not super interested in sustaining a life-altering injury in the process of protesting.

The two party system is a huge weak point.

Consider what it means for someone who wants, say, limited but substantial restrictions on abortions. Their choices are a low-restrictions party or a party that attempts to ban it entirely every chance they get. Where’s their representation on that issue? Doesn’t exist.

Further consider that if they decide one of those is closer to their position than the other, and they take that issue very seriously, they’re now stuck supporting the entire rest of that party’s agenda no matter how much they hate it, if they want to vote close to their own views on the issue.

Repeat for all other issues.

The system basically guarantees most voters don’t agree that much with the party they end up supporting. WTF.

And the only way to fix it is an uphill—scratch that, up mountain—battle against the two parties, since they benefit greatly from the current system.

[edit] it’s a weak point, to clarify, because it enables all kinds of bundling of terrible, unpopular, and even dangerous-to-democracy policies with other issues. It elevates those unpopular positions by holding other issues hostage, basically.

>> What's stopping a sitting president from directing his party's governors across the states to appoint judges favorable to their politics (already happening the last 4-8 years).

Nothing has ever stopped this except for the ability to vote these people out. In fact, voting for people that hold the same political values as you do and expecting them to advance those political values is literally the point of representative democracy.

There is a lot of fearmongering related to the Supreme Court's decisions recently, but a lot of it seems to take an issue with our political system generally rather than the specifics of the decisions. (And the entire discussion is hampered by everyone's inability to actually read and understand what the Supreme Court decisions actually say, leading to people just repeating their favorite news agency's talking points like you have here with the "supreme court ruled this isnt a bribe" insert.)

This kind of hand waving is extraordinarily counter productive. Yes, corruption has always existed in our political system. Now it's a legitimate political strategy and has been accelerating in demonstrable ways in the last 10 years, and these decisions add fuel to that fire. Hard to really argue otherwise.

With extensive rollbacks to the voting rights act, and the inherent power of money in political campaigns, it's very difficult to swallow the "just vote" argument as well. It clearly isn't working. Also, you cannot vote out appointed judges, including the ones sitting on the SC that are making decisions that impact hundreds of millions of people and sit for life.

It's always been a legitimate political strategy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago-style_politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_machine#In_the_histo...

I'd be interested in your basis for the statement that it's "accelerating." I'd go further and bet that your basis is more of a vibe rooted in recency bias.

Edit: And to your point about voting out judges - well, some would say that's a good thing, but more importantly most judges at the state level are usually voted in or have term limits along with recall procedures (so it's not even clear how your original hypothetical of a governor appointing sympathetic judges would work in practice since governors don't appoint judges usually, but whatever). We are talking about state judges, right?

I guess one of my points here is what I said before about fearmongering. You're out here posting about these hypothetical situations that you're afraid of trying to drive Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt when you apparently don't even know how the judicial system works (federal judges vs. state judges, elections vs. appointments, federal law vs. state law, etc.).

It's always been a legitimate political strategy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago-style_politics

In Chicago.

Now it's everywhere.

> since governors don't appoint judges usually,

https://ballotpedia.org/Gubernatorial_appointment_of_judges

Hope this is informative.

> You're out here posting about these hypothetical situations that you're afraid of trying to drive Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt when you apparently don't even know how the judicial system works (federal judges vs. state judges, elections vs. appointments, federal law vs. state law, etc.).

Besides the fact that this word salad makes zero sense, it seems you are not the one that understands how the judicial system works. There has been a party-wide effort of packing the courts for years now (aware this happens on both sides) - Bannon wrote and spoke extensively on this topic.

Information is free!

>> As of April 2024, five states—California, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and New Jersey—used this method at the state supreme court level and four states used this selection method for at least one type of court below the supreme court level.

So we're only concerned about this for a few blue states' courts (and even in those cases there might be an electoral backstop permitting removal). Got it. I guess the correct answer here is for those states to change their laws to be more democratic by subjecting their judiciaries to elections and by passing state laws that criminalize bribery by state and local officials?

I'm glad we both agree that the legitimate political strategy of corruption and sympathetic political appointments has been going on for years, and been used by both parties. But you still haven't shown that it's accelerated in the past decade.

Next thing you're going to tell me is that gerrymandering has only been a problem since the Democratic-Republicans started doing it!

You're doing the typical thing where you're attacking my specific example rather than the spirit of what I am saying - that I do not think it's a good thing that politically appointed judges can overrule federal agencies, particularly in a political environment where politicians are (legally) bought and sold to the highest bidder, typically large corporate interests.

I can come up with plenty of other hypotheticals for you to nitpick, but I find this discussion pointless and you obnoxious and clearly arguing in bad faith, so I won't.

There were political norms that were followed. What stopped it from happening was an unwritten agreement to follow these rules. Those norms have been upended. New norms will form.

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