Comment by strangeloops85 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by strangeloops85 | Hacker News Reader

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This is disingenuous: there is no "DEI" component of NSF proposals. There is a Broader Impacts section which is mandated by law - the America Competes Act of 2010, which congress passed. https://www.congress.gov/111/plaws/publ358/PLAW-111publ358.p... It states that:

GOALS.—The Foundation shall apply a Broader Impacts Review Criterion to achieve the following goals: (1) Increased economic competitiveness of the United States. (2) Development of a globally competitive STEM workforce. (3) Increased participation of women and underrepresented minorities in STEM. (4) Increased partnerships between academia and industry. (5) Improved pre-K–12 STEM education and teacher development. (6) Improved undergraduate STEM education. (7) Increased public scientific literacy. (8) Increased national security.

That's it. I've won many NSF proposals and have never talked about DEI. Instead we talk about outreach work we do with local schools, our involving undergraduate students in research who would not otherwise be able to volunteer their time, and of course the economic impacts of working on these topics.

An executive order cannot override the law authorizing the National Science Foundation and its activities. We are, for now, a country of laws.

A recent Major Research Instrumentation proposal that I submitted to NSF had this required section in the Broader Impacts section [1], where I've pasted the text from the instructions:

Institutional Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion - Using no more than one paragraph, describe indicators of institutional commitment to promoting diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) within the awardee/subawardee institution(s).

[1] https://new.nsf.gov/funding/opportunities/mri-major-research...

Is the item (3) what the parent comment refers to?

Who knows? The executive orders read like they were written by children and don't clearly define what they mean by "DEIA". But NSF's authorization is from Congress. Unless congress passes a law rescinding this as a part of what counts as broader impacts, or the Supreme Court rules that increasing participation of underrepresented groups is unconstitutional (by precedent it is certainly not!), then NSF cannot simply change the definition of broader impacts.

NSF is an independent agency, and the degree of control over it which a President can legitimately exercise is disputed, but presidents from both parties have treated the independent agencies as being subject to executive orders.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_agencies_of_the_Un...

Which article of the Constitution describes "independent agencies"? I'm only aware of: Executive, Legislative, Judicial, and State agencies.

I believe that Independent Agencies were created by the Progressives of the early 20th century. They were subsequently found to be constitutional, through somewhat dubious reasoning, and it seems like they’re now too big to fail.

Thank you for the thoughtful response. Exactly what I was referring to, they are extra-Constitutional at best. And now the executive is rightfully taking them back under control

I think a better approach would be to rewrite the Constitution, taking into account what has been learned over the centuries. The executive branch should become more like a bureaucracy and less like a monarchy. In particular, department heads should have a degree of independence from the President, and it should only be possible to remove them before the normal term expires by impeachment or if the President and the Senate agree.

Agree in theory that we should try to rewrite our foundational laws rather than twist or ignore them.

Disagree with your specific proposals though. I want more accountability, not less. Your proposals also rely on Congress stepping up, which it hasn't done in some time

The way I see it, the dysfunctionality of the Congress and the rule by executive orders have made the President closer to an elected king than the chief executive of a republic. The US is now closer to a monarchy than the actual monarchies in Europe.

It's one thing to have a presidential republic, because you want an independent executive branch. (Unlike in parliamentary republics, where it's subordinate to the legislative branch.) But vesting so much power in a single individual is against everything a republic stands for. It's better to have an executive branch consisting of many independent departments than everyone serving at the will of the President.

In agreement on the POTUS being an "elected king". My instinct is to downsize government rather than increase independence from the exec.

In terms of realism I'd say our suggestions rank as:

   1. Increase executive power (current trend)
   2. Your suggestion
   .
   .
   .
   X. decrease size of gov

> The way I see it, the dysfunctionality of the Congress and the rule by executive orders have made the President closer to an elected king than the chief executive of a republic. The US is now closer to a monarchy than the actual monarchies in Europe.

This is not new, and not caused by “Congressional dysfunction”, it is inherent in the design of the American system. To quote an editorial in the long-defunct Knoxville Journal, published all the way back in 1896 (February 9): "Great Britain is a republic with a hereditary president, while the United States is a monarchy with an elective king"

The British historian David Cannadine argues [0] that the American Founding Fathers created an elective monarchy, instead of a republic, in part because from the other side of the Atlantic they didn’t understand that the King was already more of a figurehead than a genuine power, and that the Prime Minister and Parliament were the ones who called the shots. So they gave the President, not the very limited powers that King George III actually had in practice, nor the less limited but still quite constrained powers of the Prime Minister, but a rather large chunk of the much more expansive powers they mistakenly thought the King still had-and their “checks and balances”, despite being conceptually neater than those in the UK, in some ways turned out to be weaker. In 1776 and 1787 (writing of the US Constitution), the modern office of Prime Minister was still a relatively new development-it is generally considered to have begun with Sir Robert Walpole’s appointment as First Lord of the Treasury in 1729-prior to that, the First Lord of the Treasury was closer to a finance/economics minister than a national leader.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32741802

I will take the SCOTUS opinion on these laws being Constitutional over an comment on hackernews. We'll see what happens, I'm sure that Trumpy will try and get it to SCOTUS and test such institutions.

That's fair, I generally apply the same rule!

Wondering what your thoughts are on presidential immunity, gun control, and abortion decisions though. Corporate personhood? Civil asset forfeiture?

They're created by Congress but administratively part of the executive branch, as described in the first two paragraphs of the linked wiki article, and they're independent so they can be insulated from politics and regulate effectively.

I understand that, I just think that's extra-constitutional and shields these agencies from accountability

"independent agencies" isn't meant to be at the same level of the "Big Three", but rather agencies that are deliberately created by the Legislative branch (typically) to be as independent as the constitution allows. We don't need the president, congress, and the supreme court to vote/judge on every single decision that happens in this country. We create bodies to do that for us.

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