Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

Almost any reply to a political thread in the next four years is going to be "That sounds illegal" but it's only illegal if the law gets enforced. I encourage anyone responding with "That sounds illegal" or "They can't do that" to also include in their response, "...and it will be enforced by [xxxx]." and try to come up with a realistic xxxx.

EDIT: I'm not making any judgment about whether this particular thing is legal or not--just pointing out that it doesn't matter if it's legal if nobody in power intends to enforce the law.

View on HN

If you work for a local government, say, and your boss says ‘hey, here’s my plan: you stop coming to work, and I’ll make sure you get paid anyway for a few months’, if you accept those terms and go along with that plan, and then later on it turns out your boss was not allowed to do that, and you got paid a bunch of government money illegally… Normally that might come back to bite you, potentially years later. That’s the exact kind of shape and form of various public corruption scandals.

I would be very nervous about personally benefitting from what might amount to a scheme to embezzle government funds.

Just because nobody in government today is interested in looking into whether or not this is legal doesn’t mean it will never come under scrutiny.

I like the analogy, additionally, it seems like just 'stopping coming to work' is something that you could be fired for cause for. So if it comes up later that hey, this person has not been working due to a agreement that the government had no right to agree to.

Well we'll be nice and just fire them, won't even ask for salary to be returned.

They have a lawful direction to stop working and keep getting paid coming from their management.

If they were terminated for following a lawful direction they would have pretty easy recourse.

It's not a "lawful direction" if the order is illegal.

You would have to go pretty far to prove to a standard I would accept that "Go work from home, and do nothing, we will keep paying you" is an illegal order.

Firstly: Its telling these people to work from their principle place of work, their home. Something thats been commonplace since covid.

Secondly, "Do Nothing" seems like a very legal thing for these people to be doing.

I suspect that theres not a court in the land that would convict a government employee for doing nothing.

Very unclear to me that ‘do nothing and get paid for it with congressionally appropriated funds earmarked for doing something’ is legal.

In the context of general employment, "do nothing", is legal. "Wait" is legal.

Orchestrating a grand plan to waste government money by requesting multiple staff to stop working might be a grey area that the courts will decide on. But no employee would be expected to take it to court to test its validity instead of following a lawful direction.

Musk is not "requesting multiple staff to stop working" he's asking people to voluntarily resign and promising if they do they get paid until September 30 as if they had not resigned.

It's not clear to me that this is even a "direction" never-mind a "lawful direction".

The way the staff member opts into this arrangement is to write "I resign" in an email. There is no "direction" telling them to do this. It is entirely voluntary behavior on the part of the federal employee.

The issue being discussed I believe was whether they have any legal protections if they don't get paid.

I don't think anyone was claiming they'd go to jail for resigning or anything like that.

Since the promise to pay staff who resigned doesn't necessarily appear to be legal it doesn't appear they necessarily have recourse if not paid given their resignation was voluntary.

>it's only illegal if the law gets enforced.

It is completely valid to say something is illegal and unenforced.

Consider that non-enforcement doesn't suddenly make something legal. Enforcement can start at any time. (Will it? Who knows!)

The larger problem is that they are at the border of or past crimes that either will get prosecuted eventually or we are at the end of democratic controls (starting at term limits) so that these people never get prosecuted.

> It is completely valid to say something is illegal and unenforced.

It seems somewhat vacuous to say it when it applies to every second administrative act.

Enabling act? Executive order? Administrative regulation? The Administrative Procedure Act?

What is an administrative act in this context?

"action by the new US administration"?

But for purposes of debating what someone should do illegal and unenforced generates the same outcomes as legal and if we're only concerned about outcomes it's rational to treat them as equivalent.

>what someone should do illegal and unenforced generates the same outcomes as legal

Illegal + unenforced can generate the same outcome as legal. Or someone can get arrested later when the enforcement begins.

There's a big difference.

> There's a big difference.

There's no difference in the short term. Something being illegal, doesn't mean it will stop anytime soon in this political situation. Remaking the same obvious point is tedious and smacks of word games to try a to make a backdoor political statement. Yes, some act is odious and against a law. Not relevant to whether or not it will have the desired consequence, regardless of who is ever held accountable.

>try a to make a backdoor political statement.

Yikes. Not trying to make any statement other than legality and enforcement are two distinct concepts. I think it's important to consider all 4 combinations.

What political statement do you think I'm trying to make? I can't even identify what side of the aisle the statement you think I'm trying to make would fall on.

Sometimes a comment is just a comment, not a secretly coded political message.

There is a simple dictionary difference between "legal" and "illegal." Using the actual meaning of a word is kinda the opposite of playing word games.

From the first instance:

> That sounds illegal

> There is a simple dictionary difference between "legal" and "illegal.

This is kind of response is a repeat of exactly what I have described.

Again, "illegal" was used in context to mean something else. ie The damage will be remedied...which it cannot fully be, nor is it likely to be. Sampling conversations going forward from that, is where the thread has been allowed to be unraveled.

Elevating the original statement to be more than what it meant in context, is irrelevant. Posters are continually choosing new (eg dictionary!) interpretations of the sentiment at every turn.

Yes, I see, the dictionary definition is brand new. It just dropped right out of the sky. Very good point.

That's amusing but irrelevant. Sometimes we may not only be concerned about what you call "outcomes." To cover those occasions, we use a variety of different words.

For the government, it largely does because the individuals are immune from lawsuits and the government fining itself is a pointless ouroboros. Many things can't be retroactively unwound reasonably.

Once the impact has been made, it's pretty sticky. Once these workers are gone and have been replaced, we're unlikely to unwind it. Once people are deported we're unlikely to un-deport them (I'm not even sure what that would mean).

Completely correct for individuals, though. Unwinding is simple there, you can just send them to jail at a later date.

How can something be illegal before any judge ruled on it?

> How can something be illegal before any judge ruled on it?

If someone steals from you and there's been no conviction, was a crime committed or not? You're still out whatever was taken, but by your logic no theft has occurred until after someone has been convicted of committing the crime.

Exactly, until the judiciary system decides on the illegality of the act, the rest of society is oblivious to the nature of what happened. I'm sure that if something like that happened to you personally you'd know many of the facts at play, but if you cannot prove thorough the courts that something illegal occurred, it didn't

What role do you think the legislative branch of government plays? The judicial branch can rule on the constitutionality of the laws that have been passed and resolve other issues, but it isn't a requirement for the law to come into effect.

Looking at the Madoff saga and how some people got clawbacked decades after the fact, the wise position is to not take the offer. Today Trump is in power. Tomorrow, that might not be the case.

Illegal acts should be called out, even if our government is failing to enforce the law. Otherwise it will become easy for the acts to get ignored entirely.

Unless you’re a member of congress or a civil servant in the executive branch, paying any attention to this is wasted energy.

We already saw this play out in his last term. Directing how laws are enforced is a function of the executive branch. Nothing will be done.

Your energy is better spent identifying and articulating the values you hold that these actions are an affront to and shouting that out.

At minimum, drawing people's attention to the ongoing issues can result in a different batch of congressional representatives in the future.

Politics doesn't always act on instant gratification.

We are kind of locked into what we have. A single digit percentage of House races are ever contested. The vast majority of House districts are won by the party that already holds them[1].

1: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/10/30/decade-af...

If 4% or 18 seats were switched four years ago why wouldn't that matter because currently the majority is thin and only a few seats. That could flip in two years. My guess after the gaza comments is more likely than not to switch.

I'd love to believe that, even if only it meant our collective memory can recall events from 2 years ago.

>At minimum, drawing people's attention to the ongoing issues can result in a different batch of congressional representatives in the future.

>Politics doesn't always act on instant gratification.

The odds are slim to none since the public didn’t already act, 4 years after the previous act of treason by Trump, on top of the fact that he campaigned on pardoning his treasonous co-conspirators. In fact, he was rewarded with control of all 3 branches of government.

The Democrats were leading by 8 or more until the worst debate performance in history followed by a weak replacement. People never really cared about the capital riot. They cared about getting costs down... costs are going up with tariffing the world and businesses will suffer when they are shut out of foreign markets.

Things have already changed since the last election.

Many people cared about the attempted coup. Sadly not enough

I would say an extraordinary amount of effort from foreign adversaries had to be undertaken to get that outcome.

Careful not to assume the public is composed of rational actors all of whom have good information, when they're demonstrably not and haven't. Drawing people's attention to the ongoing issues can result in a huge amount of buyer's remorse among people who tried hard not to pay attention to the election in hopes things could be more 'normal' if they voted for what they thought would be the political party they knew.

This. Remember when he literally did a commercial for Goya products from the resolute desk? His justification was that they were being "cancelled" and that the law surrounding the white house endorsing products for political support was his to enforce or not and he was just not gonna enforce it.

It would be nice if anyone would state a law being violated. A lot of people seem to be making a lot of assumptions too about what DOGE/Elon are doing vs what the president or directors of the agencies (for instance) are doing

I do agree that citing specific laws is best. However, if the building is on fire, I want the alarm bells on immediately even if it's low specificity.

What sort of assumptions have you been seeing?

> if the building is on fire

If you're already allowing the question to be begged, there's really no need for specificity in the argument.

Because if there was no law being broken, that means that the building was not on fire. People tell me that shouting "fire!" is supposed to be bad when there is no fire. I don't think they would accept it as being "low-specificity."

There's a bunch of smoke so let's call the fire dept first and let them assess.

Here's some reading after a quick googling.

https://time.com/7212753/trump-elon-musk-federal-laws-legal-...

Definitely in uncharted territory, but these are some possible laws that have been violated:

Impoundment Control Act of 1974, Privacy Act of 1974, the Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA), Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), Internal Revenue Code’s Section 6103.

Sure. Remember this when people say that the dems constantly complain about the repubs, and that people are tired of hearing people say things are illegal.

My guess is that at this point, talk is cheap, and actions speak louder than words.

So saying the same thing, just a different language.

And no: I have zero clue what the actions would look like. Maybe suing the govt?

Also, sounding illegal and being illegal are two different things. I really hope these discussions lead to more posts to neutral reference material, rather than just asserting things are illegal.

For example:

https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artII-S2-C2-3...

I've worked for the federal government before. Garden leave is 100% go-straight-to-prison illegal. It is defrauding the government.

There's a lot of stuff that is bog standard in industry, but cannot be done in government service.

Indeed... welcome to the newest "failed state". Although, that term reminds me of Sarah Chayes' book on corruption, reviewed at length in [1].

> But, as Chayes studied the graft of the Karzai government, she concluded that it was anything but benign. Many in the political élite were not merely stealing reconstruction money but expropriating farmland from other Afghans. Warlords could hoodwink U.S. special forces into dispatching their adversaries by feeding the Americans intelligence tips about supposed Taliban ties. Many of those who made money from the largesse of the international community enjoyed a sideline in the drug trade. Afghanistan is often described as a “failed state,” but, in light of the outright thievery on display, Chayes began to reassess the problem. This wasn’t a situation in which the Afghan government was earnestly trying, but failing, to serve its people. The government was actually succeeding, albeit at “another objective altogether” — the enrichment of its own members. Washington supported Hamid Karzai and his ministers and adjutants in the hope that they could establish a stable government, help pursue Al Qaeda, and keep the Taliban at bay. But the Karzai government wasn’t a government at all, Chayes concluded. It was “a vertically integrated criminal organization.”

[1] https://archive.is/E6zXj

Things can be illegal even if there's no enforcement mechanism, and while it's a really frustrating situation, people are right to be vocal and proactive about saying it.

Yes, and it would be valuable to help understand what enforcement agencies people think can/should do enforcement, and also to help educate those people when they're wrong.

I expect a vast sea of lawsuits. There are multiple ways that things can be enforced or not. But for some things, sure, if say, both enforcement duty and presidential pardons are used or not used to fit, then for these cases, illegal doesn't matter anymore. "It's not illegal if the president does it", was it?

In the case of taking early retirement, or accepting a pile of money for doing X / nothing, then you better be somewhat certain that it will last long enough.

Let's say the lawsuits are won. Here are the two inevitable outcomes for the ones that matter:

Appealed to Supreme Court which is overrepresented by Trump cultists.

Trump's DOJ refuses to enact whatever verdict the court determines.

It matters a lot in that it makes the difference between whether you can get a court injunction or not, and in that if there are sufficiently high levels of demonstrable illegality, a government would lose political legitimacy and citizens/military might simply cease obeying it.

I am not taking a position on this particular policy being legal or not, it's too technical for me to know about and it's not something I want to research.

> I encourage anyone responding with "That sounds illegal" or "They can't do that" to also include in their response, "...and it will be enforced by [xxxx]." and try to come up with a realistic xxxx.

I encourage before doing that to find out if the thing is actually illegal, and to cite the law that it violates. This will be better than relying on sounds or smells.

The OPs procedure expect normal people to break the law.

Any observation you have for the oligopolists being able to commit mass murder or whatever won't apply to that people.

True. The rule of law died on Jan 20. Musk is likely doing a lot of things that are strictly illegal, but it seems quite likely that Trump has assured him he has his back with pardons if need be. Also, Trump controls federal law enforcement agencies that have likely been told to look the other way. The only legal vulnerability would be at the state level and they're not doing things there.

> The rule of law died Jan 20

This kind of hyperbole isn’t helpful when the outgoing President hands out pardons like they were coupons, nor when the President can’t remember signing EOs and is known to have limited mental faculties for the past few years, all while being shielded by his inner circle. I mean the Constitution is pretty specific about a President not fit to do their job.

If you had said “the rule of law stayed dead on Jan 20th” I might disagree but it’s at least a defensible opinion.

The reason it's defensible is that now checks and balances are gone because there aren't even token checks/balances from partisanship--the remaining functions of government are controlled by a single party, purging anyone who isn't loyal and willing to do whatever they deem justified.

They're paving a road to hell.

> the remaining functions of government are controlled by a single party

You realize that the check and balances never required that different parties head each branch of government?

I'm not sure you have even a basic understanding of how the US government is organized by the US constitution.

>You realize that the check and balances never required that different parties head each branch of government?

They do in effect, because the existence of political parties means there is no reason for members of the same party to check and balance each other across different branches, as opposed to collaborating across branches to consolidate their power.

Which is exactly what's happening.

No, the checks and balances are defined as simply different people, not different parties.

The Democratic and Republican parties are not monolithic. They don't always agree and there are plenty of differences across individuals.

Hence, the Founding Fathers never required that a different party sit in the executive and legislative functions.

It will be enforced by a future administration, is the answer.

If a federal civil servant receives payroll, but does no work, for months on end, they have not taken a buyout, they have defrauded the federal government. What is the statute of limitations for that crime? Longer than 4 years. And Trump is term-limited.

That said, I agree with others that the more likely outcome in this specific case is that everyone who takes the “buyout” simply has their payments cut off rather quickly.

> Almost any reply to a political thread in the next four years is going to be "That sounds illegal"

And the last four years, for which Biden pardoned his son, certainly nothing illegal in his doings I'm sure.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com