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Comment by apexalpha | Hacker News Reader

>A White House Liaison is to be installed in every independent regulatory agency to enforce direct presidential control

Wow. Literally installing political officers in agencies.

How very Soviet; installing political commissars to spy on renegades and ensure everyone on the right side of the Politburo^w President.

Sounds about right. Trump worships Putin, and Putin misses the Soviet Union.

Incidentally, this is still how it works in China today.

It's the Leninist model of governance which was the reason China was able to defy Western expectations that economic freedom would eventually lead to political freedom.

But there is one difference which is that the Leninist model also involves party loyalists being appointed to corporations. The US isn't there yet.

Not yet, but now we have major corporate leaders very publicly aligning themselves with the party and in the case of Musk actively directing party policies.

Political commissars

> The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.

Seems fine that the bureaucrats to whom executive power is delegated should be answerable to the executive.

They already are, via cabinet members and their deputies/undersecretaries. Those people are appointed by the president, but need to be confirmed by the Senate as a check on the president's power.

Trump is doing another end run around the confirmation process with his "liaisons".

Well, some of them are, indirectly. But there are also those allegedly independent agencies (which, although maybe not a bad idea, is probably unconstitutional—we don’t have a fourth branch).

Yeah this is a key tenant of the MAGA 2016 and 2024 campaigns: draining the swamp, fighting the deep state, etc.

How else is the executive supposed to align fed bureaucrats to his goals?

The unitary executive theory is hardly a maga invention.

Honestly didn't know it had a name, but didn't claim maga invented it. They did run on bringing the "deep state" into line with Trump.

It makes sense to me, as a worker bee, i know I have to do what the boss says

It works for red China, why not the USA too?

BTW, it's not Trump we're going to have to worry about. It's the next guy, who will have Trump imprisoned or executed for treason. This one won't be a blunderer, though, and will seize these levers of control much more firmly and competently.

Stephen Miller worked the DHS and HHS the way you described in the first Trump administration. Presumably Biden had ample time to “seize these levers” no?

Don't fall for the "us vs. them" distraction. This is about seizing power, not Democrats and Republicans.

Biden chose not to use the power available to him to its full extent. He could have done something really extreme with the immunity he was granted by SCOTUS, but instead, he disavowed it.

That's because people who are not power-hungry see the dangers in becoming too powerful (and therefore often best suited to be in power). Not saying Biden was the best president ever or anything, but power-hungry leaders for the most part do not work out well for citizens -- history is full of examples.

My understanding is that politicians are elected whereas bureaucrats are not.

I don't see the point you are making? It isn't politicians that are getting elected to be White House Liaisons, they will almost certainly be appointed.

The will of the people is better reflected by people appointed by their elected representatives than by bureaucrats.

I am very confident that you probably do understand that.

The heads of departments are people appointed by elected representatives.

And these sorts of people should need to be confirmed by the Senate, but of course Trump is not going to do that.

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