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Comment by jjk166 | Hacker News Reader

> Chevron, he complained, “ushers in shocks to the system every four or eight years when a new administration comes in” and implements “massive change” in areas like securities law, communications law, and environmental law.

New laws being enacted as governments change is not a shock to the system, it is business as usual. Overturning decades old precedents on the other hand...

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I can’t help but to read this as “we need a life-long dictator so we will not have to deal with the results of the elections”

Conservatives will not go into the night quietly.

> Conservatives will not go into the night quietly.

David Frum in 2018:

> Maybe you do not care much about the future of the Republican Party. You should. Conservatives will always be with us. If conservatives become convinced they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy. The stability of American society depends on conservatives' ability to find a way forward from the Trump dead end, toward a conservatism that can not only win elections but also govern responsibly, a conservatism that is culturally modern, economically inclusive, and environmentally responsible […]

* https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/56364271-trumpocracy-t...

* https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/frum-tr...

The problem isn't "new laws being enacted as governments change", it was "new interpretations of existing laws being enacted as control of the executive branch switches parties". Net Neutrality either is or isn't the law of the land, depending on which president last got to appoint to the FCC, and is in charge now. Federal prosecution for possession of marijuana is or isn't the law of the land depending on which president is in charge of the DEA. It should be considered a complete failure of our system that the status of those things can change overnight, without debate or challenge and on the whims of which of the octogenarians running for president wins in November.

> It should be considered a complete failure of our system that the status of those things can change overnight, without debate or challenge and on the whims of which of the octogenarians running for president wins in November.

I would consider an election to be the highest form of debate and challenge. It is not a failure of the system that the leaders the people choose get to lead the way they see fit, that is the point of the system.

Yes, the election of our legislators, whose job it is to craft laws. Not the election of one single person whose job it is to oversee the enforcement of those laws. Our government is built with its powers divided up, and the ability to change law intentionally kept out of the hands of individual deciders. The president isn't even (technically) allowed to send the military, of which they are the constitutional head, to war without congress' consent.

If anything the last two elections should have taught everyone the dangers of resting so much power in the hands of a single person.

If the Executive is not allowed to decide how laws are executed, what exactly has he been elected to oversee?

The agencies of the executive branch have been making decisions on how to enforce the law based on the president's discretion since Washington. That's how the constitution was set up to work. That's how congress has assumed every law they've passed would be handled. They have always been free to put more details into their laws to take the discretion out of the hands of the executive, and they have chosen not to, as is their prerogative.

Yes, the executive is allowed to decide how the laws are executed. And in the event that such laws are ambiguous, the courts are supposed to make a judgement on what the law is. If you default to just deferring to the interpretation of the executive, why have a legislative branch at all? Why not just pass a law that says "regulate all the things"?

Our government is intentionally limited. It may only do the things it has been explicitly granted the power to do. When whether that power has been granted is ambiguous, that is something that needs actual judgement on. We should not have a default to the government's own interpretation. We certainly don't (try to) default to the courts just assuming whatever the police say the law is when it's ambiguous is what the law is. Why should we do that for other regulations?

Not laws but executive agency rulemaking.

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