Proposing to cut funding to the EPA, the Energy Department, NASA, National Institute of Health, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration...
And then there's the nomination of climate change denier Scott Pruitt as head of the EPA.
Not to mention the dozens of science and technology positions in the administrations that are yet to be filled.
But this one is just pure cartoonish moustache-twirling evil. Even the most staunch Libertarians out there think government supported law enforcement is a worthwhile use of taxpayer money, and in particular making sure that it's done correctly. The conflict of interesting inherent in having scientific standards for conviction and evidence be determined by prosecutors, not scientists, is easy to see. Here we have Sessions saying: "We don't need to make sure that we are convicting people accurately, or that the science we use to lock people in cages for the rest of their lives to be repeatedly raped is based on fact". We have recently learned that nearly all forensic science is FAR less accurate than the people using it suggested and that FBI forensic scientists have been testifying under oath and wildly exaggerating the accuracy of their methods in order to get convictions -- this is public knowledge, and yet Sessions still wants to quash any investigation.
Of all the cabinet picks and even more so than the president, I think Sessions is the most terrifying. What do you do when the Attorney General, a person with near unlimited power to imprison anyone in the country is explicitly and blatantly malicious and corrupt? He earned his way up the ranks, after all, abusing his position as a prosecutor to go after his political opponents, some of whom are still in jail for daring to run for office with a D next to their name in Sessions' turf in Alabama: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/04/jeff-session...
We consider ourselves lucky that the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
No seriously: a wingnut DoJ can do terrible damage, but one thing Sessions doesn't have is a "near unlimited power to imprison". Courts are still courts. They've been doing their job so far.
Obviously injustice exists. And it did under Lynch and Holder too.
But the larger concern is that if you investigate or follow someone around long enough, you'll find a reason to lock them up. And if not, evidence can be easily fabricated (this very ruling facilitates fabricating evidence more effectively!). The courts can do nothing if a prosecutor provides legally (or "legally") obtained evidence of one of the thousands of federal felonies. Would they even if they could? The courts have been obedient servants of the law enforcement/national security apparatus for quite some time now. Plus there are many, many avenues available to Law Enforcement (especially federal) that no longer require any input from the judicial branch, like administrative subpoenas, national security letters. Asset forfeiture requires some but minimal judicial oversight.
Most agencies are now captured by the large interests. https://i.imgur.com/UiH0Dmb.png https://i.imgur.com/ZQsJN6T.png
Anyone who mentions anything about this must face an army of shills and dependents, while actual whistleblowing goes unreported and ignored. https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/JessRowlandMari...
Sure, in a perfect world you'd rather have functioning agencies operating in the public interest, but people need to remember that every agency created represents yet another attack surface for corruption.
Yes
> and the connection has become so hardened,
maybe (but probably not)
> that the only option becomes to shut them down
Not even close.
The answer is to prosecute the corruption, not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the entire system is corrupt to the core.
I think it's in line with mainstream conservative messaging. Their first resort is to argue against policy goals, but some "liberal" policy goals, such as keeping poisonous chemical out of rivers and streams, have broad popular appeal. To deal with that, conservatives rely on a broad anti-government message that they have been repeating and reinforcing for decades. No matter what the mission is, no matter how straightforward it seems, the government will find a way to cause more harm than good. That's how people can grow up next to a waterway, eat fish from it every week growing up, see it poisoned by dumping, reluctantly stop eating the fish, see animals die after drinking the water on a bad day, forbid their children from playing near it, and still thank God for their Republican congressmen gutting environmental regulations. The stream should have been kept clean, the dumping should have been prevented, but environmental protections would have made things worse, because it's just common sense that government makes everything worse. Everybody knows that.
Another message conservatives have been drilling for decades is that liberals are only interested in helping degenerate, parasitic subsets of society. Conservative voters on the lower end of the economic spectrum don't trust law enforcement much more than liberals do. They can easily imagine themselves being railroaded by corrupt or incompetent law enforcement using bogus forensic data. However, they don't imagine that liberals, or a program set up by liberals, would help someone like them. Conservative messaging has drilled it into their heads that liberals are only interested in helping lazy, dishonest, dissolute, parasitic people, and that's not how they see themselves. So they see government programs as indifferent to people like them, which adds an extra layer of distrust on top of the perception that the government gets everything wrong anyway.
Trump is not a conservative, but he understands the voters that conservatives have created.
No wonder, when it's even OK for fox news to say that the left wants to "destroy everything" and "wish death on everybody".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MEmqqvH2Aw&ab_channel=yazak...
it's utterly terrifying that this seems to be totally OK to say on one of the most watched news networks of the U.S.
It is "the perspective of very very conservative people" that has forced these agencies to be politicized by failing - or refusing - to accept the findings of scientific research.
You claim these 3 organizations are paragons of objective fact and science and they have no political agenda and motives at all other than where the science happens to lead. And yet we all know this is not true: they are organizations of (almost entirely liberal) human beings who I believe try to do their best to be objective in their work. Plenty of people don't think they are objective or that they don't even try and that's not an objection you can dismiss out of hand without argument. A quick google search turned up this example (http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/261307-why-c...) of someone who thinks the CDC (not one of your examples but close) was for some time taking part in explicitly political anti-gun advocacy (taking the political position first, then finding the science to back it up later). He thinks that is the case because there is a quote from the relevant section head of the CDC saying literally exactly that.
A lot of these positions are also moral/value judgments intertwined with science. Environmental impact analysis is scientific. Suggesting there is some imperative to do something about the results is a value judgment, which is (arguably) not in the purview of the EPA. Voters and their representatives (i.e. Republicans) are the ones who get to decide whether these environmental protections are something we as a country want to put into place or if they are worth the loss in industrial efficiency. Voters and their representatives get to decide if it's morally acceptable for the government to assist and advocate for birth control, abortion, sexual health, etc. It doesn't matter what the science says -- science can only tell you how effective the measures are. If the representatives know they will never be implemented no matter how effective because they are morally opposed by politicians (as proxy for the voters), doing studies on them is arguably not an effective use of time, money, and expertise for a policy agency, since the object of the study will never affect policy.
They aren't the first to do that, but I can't think of it happening on such a large scale since the Communists and fascists. In a way, it's reminiscent of the struggle that ended the Middle Ages and gave rise to the Enlightenment.
The left has their own set of "religious" reasoning. It's important that we make the debate about logic and reality vs magical thinking and emotional reasoning. Not only does "us vs. them" just set people off, it really only shuffles the problem around a bit rather than solving it.
I strongly disagree with the argument that it's all the same, both sides are the same, etc. It's like saying that everyone is a liar, therefore they all are equally dishonest. Or that all software has bugs, therefore it's all equally flawed.
In fact, 'it's all the same' is the refuge of liars (not the parent, to be 100% clear) - 'we all lie, right?' - and a well-known, well-practiced tactic of propagandists - their purpose isn't to persuade, but to make truth indistinguishable from lies.
It's not the same at all. There is a serious problem on the right.
It sucks right now to finally be speaking up and having folks just assume I somewhat agreed with them in the past. No. I just didn't realize how misguided you were. All people are highly likely to make mistakes. This does not excuse the brazen bullshit we have gotten from the right.
Fair point, and it crossed my mind when I wrote my GP comment. I disagree with your statement but I can't disprove it and any comment's implications are in the eye of the beholder, to a degree. But I still think the implication I took is a reasonable one, and I did write carefully so as address an argument made by many, even if not by the GGP:
> I strongly disagree with the argument that it's all the same [emphasis added]
It's much more widespread and long-term than this administration; it's the Republican Party. A great many other Republican leaders, current and past, advocate and enact the same measures at many levels of government.