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Comment by moistoreos | Hacker News Reader

Tax dollars hard at "work" at "protecting" consumers.

Consider the administration, and the fact the GOP has hated this bureau since it's inception, promising to curtail it. This is hardly evidence that governmental consumer protection can't work, just evidence that the GOP has delivered on its promise to stop government from trying.

Indeed.

Run on a platform saying that government doesn't work, and once in office govern in a way that proves the premise!

Brilliant.

^^ P.J. O'Rourke's observation

The purpose of all this "deep state" talk is to cast doubt on the idea that certain government policies should not change at each administration's whims, and there should be a semblance of continuity of both policy and personnel across presidential elections. Now that anyone who's been working for the government since before 2017 is being demonized as the "deep state," it opens the door to politicize every single action from every single agency.

If a Democratic president gets elected in 2020, it'll be interesting to watch whether this standard gets upheld. (Most likely the Republicans will complain about how the Democrats are attacking loyal Americans working hard for their government, and the Democrats will do their usual thing of feeling bad and giving in.)

Politics is a pendulum. It has always swung back and forth every few year. But now it's swinging much farther and much heavier, and it's making the whole system unstable.

Democrats are unlikely to give in again. Giving in is what drive away their base cost them the election in 2016. If they do it again in 2020, the party is dead.

Good luck with that, the Democratic party has not suddenly grown a spine.

Please vote in your local Democratic caucus/primary and force them to grow a spine. We need your help to make it happen.

Of course agencies should follow the administration's whims, that's the administration's job.

If executive behavior should be constrained by previous administration's decisions, then Congress or if necessary a Constitutional convention should make a law to establish that.

If our country is so divided that we can't maintain basic consistency across changing administrations, then we don't deserve to be a country anymore, and we should split into 2.

This was largely by unspoken agreement up to now, because it was understood that certain things -had- to be maintained. Even if not as a promise to the american people (they did, after all, vote the prior pack of people in, so what those people set in motion is just as valid as anything you want to do now), as a promise to the world. Imagine the state of diplomacy if any agreement could be thrown out on a whim by a newly elected president? That's effectively what we're seeing now, and even if you disagree with the agreements, and feel they never should have been made, the tarnishing of our diplomatic status and general trustworthiness on the world stage is not easily dismissed.

Sorry but this is a misunderstanding of how things work. Constitutionally it is congresses job to negotiate and enact treaties, though there was that hubbub about passing fast_track which I strongly disagreed with. GP is talking about agencies which as part of the executive fall under POTUS, while treaties are treated as on equal footing with the constitution. Eg once enacted it's the executives job to enforce.

And the executive office is not enforcing them, or otherwise maintaining agreements we entered into on the international stage. For instance, the state department still has not delivered its Climate Action Report to the United Nations, which was supposed to be delivered by Jan 1st, as we're a part of the UNFCCC.

An unenforced, unmaintained agreement is the same as pulling us out, and it erodes trust in the United States on the international stage. Yes, the OP was talking about domestic policies; I was saying that historically some of those things would still be maintained, rather than introduce complete instability with every administration, and that this administration has broken that precedent both on the domestic and the international front.

Ah, I just misunderstood. Good points and I agree.

We've arrived at Orwell's doublespeak.

Consumer financial protection is now in charge of making sure corporations can harm consumers without obstacle.

Given the trillions in waste, fraud, and abuse prevalent for decades in DoD projects all with the intent to “protect the American people and soldiers”, surely a few million for protecting consumers is pretty decent value even if it’s nowhere near as effective as our defense / offense department by now?

Amusingly, the other comments in this thread point out that the last budget request for this agency was for $0. So it's more like not-tax-dollars not being at work.

"Big dollar reapers good, small dollar earners bad."

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