Modern swift makes this technically possible but so cluttered that it's effectively impossible, especially compared with typescript.
Swift distinguishes between inclusive and exclusive / exhaustive unions with enum vs protocols and provides no easy or simple way to bridge between the two. If you want to define something that typescript provides as easy as the vertical bar, you have to write an enum definition, a protocol bridge with a type identifier, a necessarily unchecked cast back (even if you can logically prove that the type enum has a 1:1 mapping), and loads of unnecessary forwarding code. You can try and elide some of it with (iirc, its been a couple years) @dynamicMemberLookup, but the compiler often chokes on this, it kills autocomplete, and it explodes compile times because Swift's type checker degrades to exponential far more frequently than other languages, especially when used in practice, such as in SwiftUI.
I think you’re conflating 'conciseness' with 'correctness.' The 'clutter' you're describing in Swift like, having to explicitly define an Enum instead of using a vertical bar |, is exactly what makes it more robust than TS for large-scale systems.
In TypeScript a union like string | number is structural and convenient, but it lacks semantic meaning. In Swift, by defining an Enum, you give those states a name and a purpose. This forces you to handle cases exhaustively and intentionally. When you're dealing with a massive codebase 'easy' type bridging is often how you end up back in 'id' or 'any' hell. Swift’s compiler yelling at you is usually it trying to tell you that your logic is too ambiguous to be safely compiled which, in a safety first language, is the compiler doing its job.
I mean there should be _some_ sugar in a language like swift, no? It has sugar in many parts of the language, being able to define a simple type union should not require custom declaration of every forwarding accessor, a protocol, an enum, bridging back and forth between them, etc.
It would be one thing to say that the vertical bar is a shortcut for these more exhaustive constructs (setting aside whether these constructs are actually exhaustive - they're not really for the purposes they're used for in practice), but as it is right now, you have no bar! If it were simple and easy to use you'd have enums dictate the state of every app which, as any app developer knows, is not how its currently done! Swift enums are so hard to use you have just a mess of optionals on view state instead of how it should formally be done, where almost every non-trivial view has a single state that's an enum of all possible configurations of valid states.
Indeed, if you put in a ton of effort to try and go down this route defining views "properly" with something like Swift TCA, you're not going to be able to get there even if you break up your app into 40 different targets because incremental recompilation will take a few minutes for something as simple as a color change.
I think we are talking past each other because we are optimizing for different domains.
You seem to want the ergonomics of a structural type system like TypeScript where data shapes are fluid but explicitly unsound [1]. In that paradigm requiring a named Enum feels like clutter because it forces you to pause and define a relationship that you just want to infer.
But Swift is a nominal static language designed for long lived binary compiled applications [2]. In this context that clutter is actually architectural definition. The friction is a feature not a bug because it discourages passing around anonymous bags of data and forces you to model what that data represents.
Swift actually has plenty of sugar but it puts it in places that don't compromise static analysis. It is designed to be expressive without being loose.
Complaining that Swift doesn't handle anonymous unions as easily as TS is like complaining that a tank handles worse than an F1 car. It is true but the tank is built to survive a direct hit whereas the F1 car trades that safety for raw speed.
I agree that you should evaluate languages in their domains. At the end of the day, Swift is mainly used for systems and iOS apps. In this, it is inadequate, as you can tell by, again, most apps not using the type system to enumerate valid views but instead (because enums and union types more broadly are so clunky to use!) masses of uncoupled types in their views, allowing for many, many implicitly invalid states.
SwiftUI is almost certainly the biggest application of Swift; even if we relax it to just iOS applications you'll see the same issues appear with invalid state combinations.
This is just cope. Swift's compiler doesn't choke because your logic is too ambiguous, it chokes because it's simply too slow at inferring types in certain cases, including a very common case where you write a normal Swift UI view. There is nothing ambiguous about that.
Secondly, I'm not sure why you think the mountains of boilerplate to replace | leads to semantic meaning. The type identifier itself is sufficient.
| is a massive footgun because it's usually exclusive in practice and occasionally silently inclusive. Having it in a language is a mistake, even if it superficially seems to make things easier, just like e.g. null.
I appreciate the enthusiasm! And yeah, I'm planning to start blogging about the build process and some of the technical decisions probably after launch week settles down. I'll post about it on LinkedIn and in the GitHub Discussions when it's live. If you're following either, you'll see it!
> Whereas these days any Democrat supporting any Republican action is likely to get primaried at the next election, and vice versa.
Biden passed the bipartisan infrastructure act as well as USICA subsidies. The first step act was bipartisan. The deficit reduction in Obama's time was bipartisan. The american rescue plan wasn't bipartisan, but republicans claim credit for its effects. You don't really have much evidence here.
> But DOGE likely achieved hundreds of billions a year in savings. USAID alone had a $50 billion budget that was mostly eliminated, though a few billion just moved over to State.
A lot to unpack here
----
If you're an institutionalist: Does the executive now hold power of the purse?
If you're a humanitarian: was $50B for millions of lives and god knows how many more of massive quality of life improvement worth it?
If you care about evidence: "Likely hundreds of billions a year in savings" is insufficiently rigorous to throw around such large numbers. I've heard its as low as $2B and likely lower.
USAID was also a key channel for gathering open source intelligence in developing countries, and provided cover identities for CIA agents. There was certainly some waste and corruption but eliminating it completely was a massive own goal from a soft power perspective.
Saying "red tribe" is a pretty dead giveaway of, say, a certain way of thinking.
George Soros or Bill Gates will never be able to buy their own department for reasons that the people with the tribalist lens can't seem to grasp: the democratic coalition is FAR more principled and fractured / diverse than the republican coalition. I can already hear people howl for evidence; for evidence, look no farther than the party platforms for the last few electoral cycles.
A lot of things that seemed impossible a few years ago are now old hat. The Democrats wouldn’t be so hamfisted, but never say never.
And my point wasn’t that the Democrats would. It’s that the Democrats could and may even be forced to, in order to win an election. If JD Vance is selling a department for $500M, from a game theoretical perspective, the Democrats may have no choice.
The whole problem is that all the norms that allowed the republic to function are being stripped away, and this is one of the biggest violations of our norms to date, yet no one has even mentioned this aspect.
This makes a fair bit more sense when you realize that hierarchy and the resulting feudalist structures are basically the core tenets of right-wing ideology. On paper, the right should have a harder time working together: The fascists, theocrats, and kleptocrats have wildly divergent worldviews. However, more fundamental than any of their specific views, they all believe in rigid power hierarchies. Which means to bring one branch of the right into the fold of whichever group currently holds the most power, all they really have to do is win over the upper echelons of the weaker faction, and then secure them a place (not necessarily even that highly ranked of a place) within their power structure.
Meanwhile, across the isle, a vague alignment in short term goals is basically all that keeps the left and the liberals together as a coalition. Whereas the right can say and do just about anything as long as it doesn't jeopardize their direct underlings' position in the overarching power structure, even small, strategic concessions can obliterate what little trust leaders have built up over the years.
> the democratic coalition is FAR more principled and fractured / diverse than the republican coalition.
_Currently_. On the other hand, realistically, it's impossible to imagine this happening under, say, Bush (either version of Bush), and yet now here we are. Things change.
This petty score keeping is an intentional dodge of the real problems: This administration is doing ham-fisted execution of their strategy and trying to go around the law wherever they can get away with it.
Any country that enforces immigration laws (almost all of them) will be constantly deporting people. Saying a lot of people were deported under Obama is an intentional dodge around the glaring fact that we have masked ICE agents doing ham-fisted raids and doing extraordinarily dumb things like detaining factory workers at an important battery plant just because.
Obama didn’t bring in an external, unvetted team of 20 year olds to run amok and abjectly humiliate the Federal workforce. He also kept services running. And he did it within the law.
Get all of that? That’s what he didn’t do that DOGE did do.
I don't think you realize how good your first link makes Obama look and how badly it supports your claims, did you even read it?
Half that article is about cutting healthcare costs for the American people, which is a good thing that Republicans haven't had any results on since Nixon.
The other half demonstrates very plainly that Obama worked with Congress to pass laws to streamline spending and cut out middlemen, and that's notable because DOGE completely circumvented congress who is supposed to be the sole possessor of the power of the purse.
That part of the article pointed out that Obama cut the deficit by trillions, which of course Republicans have refused to do in the last few decades (with the Big Beautiful Bill and Tax Cut and Jobs Act both ballooning the deficit).
>and that's notable because DOGE completely circumvented congress who is supposed to be the sole possessor of the power of the purse.
Congress has the constitutional power of the purse but that refers specifically to raising and appropriating money[].
The executive has the power to actually go out and spend the appropriated money. Congress tried to usurp that power around the time of Nixon by stopping executive impoundment. But it's not clear if that's constitutional; it might be now under current SCOTUS interpretations but I wouldn't be surprised if SCOTUS reviews it and find that to be incorrect.
Personally I think congress usurping power of impoundment is a bright and clear violation of checks and balances built into the constitution that requires two branches to approve of spending before it can actually get spent. DOGE was a valiant attempt to bring us back into constitutional compliance.
"Congress—and in particular, the House of Representatives—is invested with the “power of the purse,” the ability to tax and spend public money for the national government."
But you said
"The executive has the power to actually go out and spend the appropriated money."
Most of congresses appropriations can't be faithfully executed because they largely violate the tenth amendment, appropriating functions of the federal government outside the scope authorized by the constitution and reserved to the people and states. This is exactly what DOGE was helping to keep in check.
At the times when the federal government was mostly within the constraints of the 10th amendment, federal spending was under 5% of GDP in non war-time.
The courts don't decide what the constitution is, the people that wrote and amended it did. The courts can only interpret it, often wrongly, as evidenced by the fact they routinely contradict themselves. The president has a duty to ignore any unconstitutional court ruling, as his oath requires.
No, but it says it’s his job to execute the law, not to use his discretion to pick and choose which laws to execute. The entire purpose of the constitution is to balance powers, not to ensure it’s never at any time violated. Any violation of the constitution is supposed to be corrected by the balancing force of other branches.
You might think giving one branch all the power to make sure the constitution is not violated might lead to a situation where it’s never violated, but what actually happens is the powers become unbalanced and the executive is free to violate the constitution at will.
Each branch can consider if law is unconstitutional. It takes all three in agreement to execute it.
The legislature is bound not to create unconstitutional laws. If the law does pass, the executive is bound not to execute it. If the law is executed, the court is bound to strike it (you can argue the court is also bound to strike it even if it's not executed, but Knife Rights v Garland for example found there is at least in that case no standing to challenge a non-executed law).
It's not that one branch has all the power so much as each branch has veto power to stop the unconstitutional law from actually coming into effect. The power to actually do something takes all 3 branches but the power to stop something only takes one. Even the founders understood this -- Jefferson helped block the Sedition Act and actively encouraged states to nullify and avert its enforcement. Obama and later presidents stopped the enforcement of many prohibitions on recreational intrastate commerce of marijuana, a blatantly unconstitutional federal law, which nonetheless still stands (enforcement of medical marijuana is defunded but not recreational). These increased our compliance with the constitution, without creating dictators.
The constitution states the bounds of the government, then gives the president no authority to outstep them. The 10th amendment is what you seek, it stops POTUS from executing extra-constitutional law as it would outstep the powers outlined for the federal government in the constitution.
That is, the constitution limits POTUS powers to ones explicitly given. If the law exceeds it, he cannot implement it, regardless of the opinion of the judiciary or congress. This is bound on all 3 branches, and due to the design of the constitution it only takes one branch blocking a law to stop it.
Now, you state we need to challenge laws before the president can stop enforce them. Riddle me this, why is it the federal courts won't even let you challenge the federal Switchblade Act, because they state no standing as it hasn't been enforced (by their definition) in over 10 years (Knife Rights v Garland) []. How could what you say possibly be true if the law isn't even allowed to be challenged? If what you said was true, and POTUS had to enforce the law, then there would always be standing by the people jeopardized by it to challenge it. The courts wont even let you do what you've asked.
> Each branch can consider if law is unconstitutional. It takes all three in agreement to execute it. The legislature is bound not to create unconstitutional laws. If the law does pass, the executive is bound not to execute it.
I agree the legislature is bound to not create unconstitutional laws, but the sole power the executive has under the Constitution as to the constitutionality of laws is his veto power, which was intentionally limited by the Framers:
“But it is to be remembered that this qualified negative is in no respect a violation of the rule which declares that the legislative power shall be vested in the Congress. It is not a transfer of the power of legislation to the Executive, because it does not enable him to do any thing more than to suspend the passage of a law, and is a mere check upon the legislative body, by subjecting their resolutions to revision and consideration. The power of preventing bad laws includes that of preventing good ones; and this alone would furnish a complete answer to the objection, if any could be supposed to exist. But the principal answer is, that the veto is not absolute, and that it may be overcome by two-thirds of both Houses.” - Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 73
You're saying that the President actually has an absolute veto; if he vetoes a bill, and Congress overrides the veto, you're saying the President gets the ultimate veto in that he can just claim the law is unconstitutional and refuse to implement it. So now you have to answer why the Framers would have limited the veto power if they had intended POTUS to have an ultimate veto through selective execution of laws.
> Even the founders understood this -- Jefferson helped block the Sedition Act and actively encouraged states to nullify and avert its enforcement.
The Sedition Act expired as soon as he entered office, so I'm not sure how you figure he "blocked" it in any sense. Whatever Jefferson had to say about the sedition act was his right, but he didn't use any unconstitutional powers to work against it.
> Obama and later presidents stopped the enforcement of many prohibitions on recreational intrastate commerce of marijuana, a blatantly unconstitutional federal law, which nonetheless still stands (enforcement of medical marijuana is defunded but not recreational).
The scope of POTUS' power over the DOJ is circumscribed by Congress; Article II gives the President general executive power, but the specific scope of prosecutorial discretion is grounded in statutory law -- whatever discretion he has over prosecutions is granted by Congress. You concede that POTUS have not stopped enforcement of the law entirely, which would be unconstitutional; but they have used persecutorial discretion to focus resources, which is constitutional.
>You're saying that the President actually has an absolute veto; if he vetoes a bill, and Congress overrides the veto, you're saying the President gets the ultimate veto in that he can just claim the law is unconstitutional and refuse to implement it. So now you have to answer why the Framers would have limited the veto power if they had intended POTUS to have an ultimate veto through selective execution of laws.
Veto prevents the law from going on the books.
Unconstitutional 'veto' doesn't stop future administrations, it's much softer and merely reflects the president following his oath, but allows people to elect another executive who could then enforce the law. That is, veto power is for stopping constitutional or constitutional laws from going on the books. Refusing to execute doesn't strike from the books but allows execution of oath to follow the constitution.
Of course, I'm not sure your point about president not acting on good faith and thus refusing to execute constitutional laws -- in that case he could be impeached but if not it's a sign the whole system has broken down as at that point at least 2 of the 3 branches of government no longer respect the constitution.
>The Sedition Act expired as soon as he entered office, so I'm not sure how you figure he "blocked" it in any sense. Whatever Jefferson had to say about the sedition act was his right, but he didn't use any unconstitutional powers to work against it.
You're right that his time in office didn't actually block it, although Jefferson made clear that he believed the executive had the power to stop enforcing it, and had encouraged states to nullify it before he even took office and before it expired. I'll concede here the argument he personally was the one that blocked it was weak, although it clearly shows a founders take that the constitution permits the executive to follow the constitution instead of an unconstitutional legislation.
>You concede that POTUS have not stopped enforcement of the law entirely, which would be unconstitutional; but they have used persecutorial discretion to focus resources, which is constitutional.
If you prefer, you can switch to the Switchblade Act , which the federal courts have absolutely and unequivocally ruled has had the enforcement of the law "stopped entirely" (albeit in very twisted logic, they didn't count seizures that were then returned) for 10 years (Knife Rights v Garland). In fact the courts in that case basically found you couldn't even challenge a law that had been unenforced by the executive in 10 years, as they basically considered it as no one having standing as it basically doesn't exist as something jeopardizing anyone. Of course the main reason to challenge it is because it's unconstitutional (violates 2nd amendment) in the first place (thankfully executive took care of this before it went to courts, though would be nice if they'd double tap on it)!
I would think if the courts agreed with you, and the executive did have to enforce the laws, they couldn't have argued there is no standing to challenge the Switchblade Act, since the executive was bound to enforce it. The fact you can't challenge a law the executive has chosen not to enforce would seem to presume the courts have decided that the lack of standing stands on a legitimate machination of government, else it would be an absolutely preposterous premise that you won't be in jeopardy.
POTUS has no power to defy the constitution if the opinions requires unconstitutional activity. I.e. if congress passes a laws that says "no guns" and SCOTUS says "yes that's what the 2A says" the president has to ignore it because the 10th amendment blocks him from having the power to enforce it.
Nowhere in the constitution would it give him the ability to ignore the constitution if the other 2 branches violate it. You are inventing new dictatorial rights for POTUS.
>.e. if congress passes a laws that says "no guns" and SCOTUS says "yes that's what the 2A says" the president has to ignore it because the 10th amendment blocks him from having the power to enforce it.
No. Because the law would be constitutional since the Supreme Court said it is
You keep trying to argue that the president determines what is constitutional but the courts do. It doesn't matter what the president thinks is constitutional
Federal courts have argued they there isn't even standing to consider the constitutionality of an unenforced law (Knife Rights v Garland).
If the president was bound to enforce the law, how could the court possibly argue the constitutionality can't be considered because no one is in jeopardy?
The court basically decided you can't even challenge the Switchblade Act on 2A constitutional grounds because it's already been nullified by the executive as it's not been enforced in 10 years[].
Nullification of execution/enforcement was something even the founders (Thomas Jefferson) considers legitimate application of the constitution in regards to the unconstitutional Sedition Act.
It says there's no standing, not be because the law is _unenforced_, but because plaintiff hasn't suffered any perjury _from enforcement_ (which is ofc bc the law isn't enforced, but that's besides the point).
...As a result, Plaintiffs contend they reasonably fear that Defendants will continue to enforce the Federal Knife Ban against them.”10 The evidence presented by Defendants show there are only records of four enforcement actions in the county under the Act since 2004 and it has not been enforced since Plaintiffs do not counter this factual assertion. Accordingly, the threat of prosecution under Section 1242 “is therefore a mere hypothetical dispute lacking the concreteness and imminence required by Article III.
...it has not been enforced since at least 2004—the farthest back that systematic data is available.26 As a result, Plaintiffs plainly lack standing when they fail to provide evidence that the statutory provision has ever been enforced against them or regularly enforced against others.
This is my last transmission -- both of you are in a loop denying the documents say the very things I've quoted ( other commenter just keeps sea lioning the 10th amendment in a loop then doesnt understand the word 'power' or why POTUS is part of the 'United States' because it doesnt explicitly say that in that sentence lmao). Good luck, you now have the facts, our nation will need it.
The president (I'm assuming you mean by way of the justice department) doesn't always do a good job.
The court's opinion is lack of standing due to lack of harm because the law wasn't enforced and unlikely enforced. They can have this opinion even if the law is supposed to be enforced.
A requirement isn't invalid because it's not always followed.
I said what laws are constitutional not "what is the constitution".
I was very specific and my argument was not long so can you explain what I said, by quoting me, that implied the courts decide the contents of the Constitution?
>The president has a duty to ignore any unconstitutional court ruling, as his oath requires.
The Constitution states “The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties…”
The president's oath is to uphold the Constitution. Therefore by ignoring court rulings he's not upholding the constitution
Ignoring constitutional court rulings violates the constitution.
Ignoring court rulings requiring him to violate the constitution, is something he's required to do, under his oath which constrains his authority to a narrowly defined scope.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people
POTUS has no power to execute an unconstitutional law
> Most of congresses appropriations can't be faithfully executed because they largely violate the tenth amendment
This is plainly untrue, as the constitutionality of these appropriations can only be established by a court. Bills signed into law are presumed constitutional and valid until an Article III officer decides otherwise. The system is: Congress writes the law, funds the law. President signs the law, executes the law. Court interprets the law, invalidates the law. You can't have the POTUS sign, execute, interpret, and invalidate laws.
Separation of powers is what made the government work. Right now the Article II branch is the one who usurped power, the Congress and SCOTUS abdicated power, and it's causing the government to fail at all levels. If you give the executive the power you want it to have, the entire thesis of the Constitution crumbles (as we are witnessing), so quoting it at this point is futile and meaningless until balance of power is restored.
Right now, what would happen if what you said is true, is every time a new executive comes in, he can invalidate not just the executive orders but all laws passed by the previous administration, on a whim; without review, evidence, or argument he can shut down agencies and choose not to enforce any laws that are politically expedient. That's not how to run a constitutional republic. It's certainly descriptive of another form of government, but here you were quoting the Constitution.
> At the times when the federal government was mostly within the constraints of the 10th amendment, federal spending was under 5% of GDP in non war-time.
You'd have to go back to 1929 to see that kind of spending level. Since then, we went through a great depression and got a New Deal for America, which means the Federal Government has a larger role. We can surely revisit that role, and that's kind of what's happening right now. But it's wrong to say that the spending levels circa 1930s are somehow ideal of more constitutional without presenting more evidence.
>Court interprets the law, invalidates the law. You can't have the POTUS sign, execute, interpret, and invalidate laws.
see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45388993 as to why it takes all three branches agreeing on the constitutionality of a law for it actually to be put in effect and why that doesn't create the kind of dictatorship you're envisioning.
>is every time a new executive comes in, he can invalidate not just the executive orders but all laws passed by the previous administration, on a whim; without review, evidence, or argument he can shut down agencies and choose not to enforce any laws that are politically expedient.
POTUS is bound by constitution, even if SCOTUS thinks following the constitution is unconstitutional. This doesn't create an unchecked executive -- the legislature can also check the executive by impeaching him if he violates the constitution.
>You'd have to go back to 1929 to see that kind of spending level. Since then, we went through a great depression and got a New Deal for America, which means the Federal Government has a larger role. We can surely revisit that role, and that's kind of what's happening right now. But it's wrong to say that the spending levels circa 1930s are somehow ideal of more constitutional without presenting more evidence.
Yes exactly, it was circa the 30s when the apparatus of the state really cranked up to exceed the constitutional constraints of the federal government. The courts would create a more lasting correction to the problem, but that doesn't mean POTUS isn't also bound to stop executing all the unconstitutional laws. A lot of this stems from fraudulent portrayal of intrastate commerce as interstate commerce, which means a great deal of the actions of DEA, ATF, FDA, EPA, etc cannot legally be funded nor most of the wildly unconstitutional provisions of the cherished tyrannical civil rights act.
> This doesn't create an unchecked executive -- the legislature can also check the executive by impeaching him if he violates the constitution.
The impeachment clause is for high crimes and misdemeanors and is supposed to be an extraordinary procedure that takes an immense amount of time. It's not realistic to rely on it to prevent a President from selectively enforcing or ignoring laws on a day-to-day basis, especially considering it has never been successfully used to remove any president from office even in the case where Trump used his office to extort a bribe.
Anyway here's what James Madison had to say about your proposal in Federalst 47:
"No political truth is certainly of greater intrinsic value, or is stamped with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty, than that on which the objection is founded. The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self–appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. Were the federal Constitution, therefore, really chargeable with the accumulation of power, which the argument supposes, it would be the very worst of all possible governments."
> the state really cranked up to exceed the constitutional constraints of the federal government... this stems from fraudulent portrayal of intrastate commerce... a great deal of the actions of DEA, ATF, FDA, EPA, etc cannot legally be funded
See, this is the problem with giving a single person the power to decide which laws to implement. You've made sweeping statements about "fraudulent" portrayals and the government exceeding constitutional authority, but these are just your own conclusory assertions. It's not clear that any constitutional constraints were actually violated, that portrayals of intrastate commerce were fraudulent, or that agencies like the DEA, FDA, etc. cannot legally be funded. These claims are unsupported, in fact they are anti-supported by decades of judicial review. Given your position, the President could just decide to shut down those agencies just on the flimsy basis you have provided. That's not how the system works.
I and others have realized that, despite your frequent appeals to the Constitution and the Framers, you do not appear to genuinely support the idea of a constitutional republic. Instead, you seem comfortable with a king-like authority, a single individual wielding absolute control over the government. That's a legitimate position, but you should be upfront about it rather than twisting the Constitution to fit your ideology. You're never going to squeeze a dictator-shaped peg into a constitution-sized hole -- doing so destroys the constitutional order.
It seems Congress took action on presidents withholding funds with Title X of the "Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974"
If a president wants to permanently withhold funds then they must ask Congress for a "rescission"(request to cancel the funds) within 45 days~~\
This was created because Nixon withheld funds from programs he didn't support.[1]
This law was challenged in a 1975 court case, Train v NYC, which the Supreme Court upheld the law and stated the full amount appropriated must be spent
>The executive has the power to actually go out and spend the appropriated money. Congress tried to usurp that power around the time of Nixon by stopping executive impoundment. But it's not clear if that's constitutional; it might be now under current SCOTUS interpretations but I wouldn't be surprised if SCOTUS reviews it and find that to be incorrect.
>Personally I think congress usurping power of impoundment is a bright and clear violation of checks and balances built into the constitution that requires two branches to approve of spending before it can actually get spent. DOGE was a valiant attempt to bring us back into constitutional compliance.
It's constitutional because the Supreme Court ruled it was in the case Train v NYC. They are the ones who determine what laws are constitutional or not. You can disagree but their opinion is what is acted upon.
>the constitution that requires two branches to approve of spending
The president must sign spending bills and while he may be overridden with a veto that's the check and balance.
>It's constitutional because the Supreme Court ruled it was in the case Train v NYC. They are the ones who determine what laws are constitutional or not. You can disagree but their opinion is what is acted upon.
We're going in circles, I already addressed this.
>The president must sign spending bills and while he may be overridden with a veto that's the check and balance.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people
POTUS has no power to execute an unconstitutional law
1. I said "Where does it say he doesn't have to [enforce a law] if it violates the Constitution?"
2. You pasted the 10th amendment - This says the federal government has the powers specified by the constitution and any power not mentioned are for the states unless prohibited
3. Then I asked you how this related to the president not enforcing laws he believes are unconstitutional and you said "If the "United States [government]" doesn't have the power, POTUS in his official capacity doesn't."
> DOGE was a valiant attempt to bring us back into constitutional compliance.
What garbage. I can guarantee the concept or discussion of "constitutional compliance" came up exactly zero times in Trump and Elon's discussion of deploying DOGE. Because if that was their true concern, there are other ways of figuring that out. Valiant? Our heroes...
People call Elon a Nazi because of the salute he did, stuff he has said about Jewish people, pro-white nationalist dog whistles, etc.
I feel like you also overlooked the context of Obama's severe cuts and reorg... it was coming out of the Great Financial Recession which was the worst economy the US had seen in ~100 years...
> Obama did far more severe cuts and re-orgs in his second term.
You fail to mention that Obama did this through legislation and actual proposals rather than giving random tech bros and billionaires access to government systems to stop payments on a whim. Did you even read your own links?
> Nobody cared because we weren't in the sensationalist era where one becomes a "nazi" for wanting a smaller government.
This is a strawman. No one is claiming that wanting government efficiency is the equivalent of being a Nazi. Although, there are plenty of other actions from Trump and his ilk that warrant that view.
> Did you know that Obama deported more people than Trump as well? Was he somehow a fascist for respecting the border?
I'm not sure what this has to do with DOGE but I'll bite: Did Obama send people to a foreign labor camp in El Salvador? Did Obama deport international students for the their protest against Israel? Did Obama create a detention facility called Alligator Alcatraz?
Still looking for the people on hn who eight months ago said that this would be a good thing to come out and admit not only that they were wrong, but the model of the world and their way of absorbing info that led them to such a conclusion is also wrong. Looking at you, geohot.
There are multiple generations of folks who've been trained to believe that Ronald Reagan was delivering divine wisdom when he said "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem" / "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."
I know many folks that don't have any animus to individual people. They just have been brainwashed since early childhood...
Yes. I'm not for calling out individual people, those who probably had hope and some may be young and didn't have the warning flags going off. I can only imagine they're disappointed and had no malice.
But people who have some level of fame who put their name behind it, and who had some influence in inspiring others down this wrong path most definitely need to address it. If you truly believe the intelligence of tech people over others in every field which led you down this path, follow the proper postmortem process.
It's a point of pride to fight tooth and nail arguing a wrong point. I worked with a guy who out right admitted that he will argue with you even if he knows he is wrong. It's not a discussion, its a fight they must win. They will die on their hill of macho pride. THEY MUST DEFEAT YOU.
Smart people admit they are wrong and learn, then move on for the better. The stagnant macho person will never learn anything and just wants status quo in perpetuity, so long as it benefits them.
They might act like it's a macho thing to argue against you, but let's be real, it can be painfully embarrassing to admit you're wrong, especially if you were really dug in already. Since it's about avoiding pain, it's the weak route to take to continue to defend a position you know is wrong.
What pain? If you feel pain from being wrong or having someone point it out you have thin skin. It's akin to being called stupid which is such a weak insult.
That's... exactly my point? They put up the defense because they are "thin skinned". It only looks all strong and macho on the surface when they continue to argue back.
Conversations around this administration and the people related or in support of them always bring me back to the Alt-Right Playbook.[1]
Usually I have a specific video in mind that is relevant, but this feels like a good time to link the whole series. It’s a good, informative, and (depressingly) humorous look at the alt-right - and while it doesn’t offer much in solid solutions, I think being able to understand how they operate and where they’re coming from allows us all to have a better chance in mitigating them and stopping the tide of fascism.
It was a reward for the biggest campaign donation in US political history. Musk didn't rig the election, he's not that competent or powerful. Occam's Razor tells us what happened was the Democrats went with a strategy that has never worked before (changing candidate mid-race), and they ended up predictably losing. That's it.
geohot has/had a weird obsession with Elon for a few years now. He copied what Elon did a lot and is sort of like an Elon Stan. Which led to him agreeing and competing with Elon a lot. However, after geohot interned at Twitter/X I think he moved on from Elon and liking his views etc.
But I suspect for most them their real desire was simply long lasting harm to the federal government and pain and suffering inflicted on those who work for the government.
I'm not sure why you think any of them would believe they were wrong. I don't think any of them were hoping for some kind of transformation other than destruction.
Really? Curious why you think a reference to Baudrillard’s Fatal Strategies would lead you to consider this projection (but always happy to meet another Baudrillard fan!)
I didn't see the cultural reference. Never heard of Baudrillard before. I was just playing off the word "revenge".
That being said, your take did stop me in my tracks. Even though it's not the first time I see sentiments like this on HN.
You said:
> I don't think any of them were hoping for some kind of transformation other than destruction.
Maybe I read you wrong. But isn't that the opposite of "Don't attribute to malice ..."?
I mean, come on. How many people grow up really wanting to do harm?
Sure, there are some. For example, there are people who have no power to create anything. For them, being able to at least destroy someone else's creation can be a form of satisfaction. Like the kid in kindergarden that doesn't have the patience to build a brick tower, but takes joy in smashing down someone else's. It's a low-effort way on leaving some mark. "I destroyed, therefore I am." Such people exists.
But those aren't the people you're targeting here, are they? As I read it, you're targeting Trump, Musk, and perhaps all the proponents of "small government". Who are, by and large, people who build, create and have an impact on our time. I'd argue that the idea of "small government" appeals first and foremost to those who stand to gain from lower taxes and less regulation - i.e. those who already do affect the world around them.
There are many reasons why someone might disagree with these people's values. For example, one might argue that nobody deserves to be that rich, or that wealth should be distributed, etc.. You could argue that "small government" is really just the selfish interest of those who stand to gain from it, in just the same way as "big government" is just a selfish interest of those who stand to gain from that. That it isn't about right or wrong at all, but about what camp you are in.
But the idea that "small government" people want to destroy America? That's a circle I can't square. There are interviews of Trump from the 1980s where he spoke about America vs. China, etc.. You may disagree with his ideas about how to make and keep America great. But the idea that he's driven by a desire of destroying the country? Is that rhetoric, or do you really think that's what he secretly dreams about?
What about Reagan in the 80s? He talked about "small government", reducing regulation, agencies, etc.. Do you think he hated the country?
And Elon Musk? The man has been talking about making human life multiplanetary. Heck, he's launching one rocket after another in order to get there. Every single endeavour of his (maybe with the exclusion of PayPal and Zip2), at least from his perspective, is explicitly pro-human in motivation: Sustainable energy, human-friendly non-monopolistic AGI, self driving, multi-planetary humanity. Again - I can understand if someone disagrees with these efforts. But the idea that this man is looking in the mirror every morning thinking, "Let's see how I can destroy this country"? Like, everything he does and says 24/7 over decades is just a façade to hide the real secret wish? All that work is supposed to be just a disguise? He pretends to love humanity, because, deep down, he really hates it? That makes my head spin.
There was this debate in the 16th century between Martin Luther and Erasmus of Rotterdam. Erasmus said that a human is good if he strives to do good deeds. Being human, you don't see the whole picture, so you may err. But as long as you strive to do the best you can, to be courageous, to use what you've been blessed with for the good of all, you are good – and even if you err, you will be forgiven. Luther countered: No - an evil man can never be good. You're either one of the chosen ones that are good, or you're inherently bad. And if you're inherently bad, then whatever you touch is going to be tainted with evil. You're not a person, you're not a soul - you're a mere vessel for the devil, and it would be foolish to even argue with you.
I'm quite sure there are people who hate society. But where I'd look for them is among criminals and fraudsters. Every crypto scam, every Nikola or Theranos. That's where I see a hatred of humanity. Or, if not hatred, then at least a disregard of everyone outside of their own circle, or of those who came before and who will come after them.
Isn't it a much safer assumption that most people are trying to be good and helpful? They sure can develop a damn blindspot, or myopia. For example, in the internet space, I'd say Cloudflare is "destroying" a lot of the web's original openness. But that still doesn't make me believe they do what they do out of a desire to destroy. They just focus on one kind of stakeholder at the expense of some others. If I went out there on Hacker News and claimed the Cloudflare CEO was driven by a pure hatred of the internet, everyone would think that I must be a grumpy dude with anger issues. And rightfully so, as it would be just an over-emotionalized reaction to an adverserial situation.
If you say you think the DOGE efforts were misguided, that the execution was flawed, or that the goal of downsizing government expenses in itself was the wrong thing for the country - that's an argument I can follow.
Anyway. I'm off doing my homework - checking out Baudrillard!
Why do you suspect this? Is it your view that right wingers are inherently evil as opposed to, say, having different opinions about how things should be done? I urge you to find some empathy.
To be fair, many are evil and hold evil opinions about their fellow humans. How do I find empathy with someone who doesn’t subscribe to the same reality and does not value lives of even their own neighbors?
I think if you actually spoke with them, many would make the same claims about the left. Many right wingers see the left as being equally evil, that doesn't mean it's true.
I have friends who are gay, trans, non-Christian, or brown. Not all right-wingers say that they aren’t fully people but many do, and the more libertarian ones aren’t exactly rushing to shut that down. It is very hard to trust a group of people unwilling to recognize my neighbors as fully human.
In the federal space, we’ve seen purges of women and minorities, shutdowns of groups which work on things like civil rights or pollution in poor communities, widespread refusal to pay money as promised, and attempts to punish organizations for 1st amendment activities. There is zero expectation of good-faith from anyone who supports that.
Conversely I distrust people with a view of educating kids on an array of issues in gender and sexuality.
Unfortunately your/US views have become simplistic (yes simplistic) along two hyper extremes. Both sides are wrong at this stage. Just wrong in different ways.
Are you saying that respecting other people and letting them live their own lives without affecting you is worthy of distrust? Because I have directly seen what’s taught in schools here and it’s basically the golden rule without the quiet exceptions.
The golden rule is to treat people how I would like to be treated, and I welcome opinions from my friends and family on my life choices. I might not agree, and if I disagree strongly enough I might resolve to find a community where people are more aligned with me - but I'd expect that community to also have opinions on what's a good or a bad way to live your life.
You say that not all right wingers are bigoted, and then go on to proclaim the entire group doesn't recognize minorities as being human. Have you spoken honestly and in good faith with right wingers?
Let me clarify my point: I’m not saying every Republican is the same on every one of those issues, I’m saying that the people who disagree are not standing up to the people rejecting the idea that certain groups deserve full rights.
I have a number of family and a few remaining right-wing acquaintances (all of the libertarians I knew are voting straight-ticket for Democrats against MAGA) – not “kinda liked Reagan” but people who’ve had worked published in national media or been invited to dinner at Rupert Murdoch’s estate. Privately, people express concern or distaste for anti-liberty actions - but not in public, never to the point of standing up for a group being targeted. Like the Mexican woman who cleans their house, she’s great even if her husband was originally undocumented, so of course ICE shouldn’t go after them – but they won’t speak up on behalf of anyone they don’t know personally, even just to call for due process.
I left the Republican sphere during the Bush years when it became obvious that for all of the talk about ethics and the rule of law during the Clinton administration, there wasn’t a desire to hold their fellows to that same standard. Sadly, it’s only gotten worse since then – as we can see from the blatant lawlessness this year where even people who might share goals like reducing government spending or reconsidering industrial policy should feel safe saying there’s a better, legal way to do it.
I have had many such conversations (Texas is a fun state) and while many don't consider themselves bigoted, their policy preferences amount to, essentially, "but I'd rather we not treat people equally."
They don't "hate gay people". (They have gay friends!) But they don't think gay people should be able to marry or adopt children. Sometimes Leviticus comes up.
They don't "hate Black people" (They have black co-workers!). They just think the disparities in the justice, education and financial systems are all Black people's own fault.
They don't "hate immigrants" (They love Mexico!), they just think they're not assimilating, taking American jobs and draining tax payer resources.
Trans people seem to be the only group they'll outright admit to hating.
This is an odd comment, do you not know any right wing people? Especially in the non-coastal parts of the country?
This opinion comes from having many conversations with (real, not online) people who literally state that they consider that the government is inherently evil and it's sole function is to rob people of their liberty and hard earned money. I've spent a considerable amount of time doing business travel and working in parts of the country where I've heard people, in an public office conversation, voice that support for public radio is literally fascism to nodding agreement among their peers. I once mentioned an experience I had in the beginning of the pandemic and the response was "oh yea, that's when people still thought it was serious right?"
I don't think these people are inherently evil, they believe the government is evil and that those who work for it are working to undermine everyday Americans. If you actually had a conversation with anyone deep in the MAGA community you would know that harming the federal government, for them, is seen as a victory and virtuous.
It's baffling to me that anyone can still not understand the foundation of the MAGA community and growing extreme right. For years they have increasingly felt that their way of life has been robbed from them (and to be fair, it has been, rural communities in the US are in trouble), and they sincerely believe that this is caused by sinister forces working in the federal government, immigrants, the global elite, and "radical" woke leftists that want to harm their children.
Empathy is always good, but in this case, within your "right winger" party you've got powerful factions with active and explicitly stated intentions to dismantle the federal government.
I said it would be a good thing and still do. Dismantling USAID alone was worth it. It's easy to spend taxpayer money, it's harder to make cuts, no matter how you do it you'll be the bad guy. But government needs to live within its means.
Dismantling USAID has condemned hundreds of thousands of people (if not millions) to literal death through a loss of famine relief and life saving medications for diseases like HIV and tuberculosis. It has diminished the soft power of the United States, destroyed the credibility of the country for a generation or more, and didn't even save that much money. It has profited the average American not at all and likely made everyone less safe.
I have no idea what kind of person thinks that was a good idea.
Borrowing billions of dollars when you are $37 trillion in debt and giving that borrowed money to people who hate you is insane. And most of that money goes to warlords and dictators. USAID needed a complete overhaul. And do you accuse the countries who don't give aid of causing famine and death? Why just America? You are welcome to give out of your own pocket if it assuages your guilt.
The venn diagram of that group and the group that immediately, with zero evidence, following the Charlie Kirk incident, declared war on “the left” is a circle.
I’m not sure what this is supposed to mean. At the time of the original post, where people were condemning “leftists” and saying “this means war against the left,” there was zero evidence. No one had been caught (I guess they may have piled drived a poor janitor or something at this point), no idea who it could even be. This was days before it was revealed to be some MAGA splinter group.
One of the strange joys of this site is reading the insane takes of otherwise intelligent right-wingers as they try to bend reality to fit with their beliefs.
At the very best you'll get "the left forced them to do it" but blank denial of reality and invention of entirely fake parallel worlds is much more likely.
They've been doing that for climate, renewables, COVID, Trump etc. far longer than for DOGE with no sign of giving up.
I thought it was a good idea in spirit although I wasn't sure how effectively it would be done. To be honest I'm still not sure how effective it was. Almost all criticism I've seen of DOGE has been from those biased against it already. Obviously federal employees will be negative about a program designed around reducing their scope and funding...
All you have to do is look at the non-serious initial claim of $2T savings. That is wildly high, and told you that the people running it had no interest in success. It’s like if we have a startup founder here saying they’re going to have AGI by Christmas and be the first $10T company.
That's a non-sequitur. Plenty of serious AI companies have made predictions about AGI or replacing programmers which have not come to fruition. That doesn't mean they don't have interest in success.
I said serious in the sense of something they seriously believe they can deliver. Those wild predictions on unrealistic timeframes are for the stock market.
For an example: Sergei Brin, Sebastian Thrun, and Elon Musk were all interested in self-driving cars. Musk has been making materially misleading statements promising to deliver L5 in the next year or so many times since 2013, and still doesn’t have more than L2. Waymo did not promise things they couldn’t deliver, treated safety as a top priority, and is expanding L4 taxi services around the country. They’re all interested, Waymo is serious, but Musk’s strategy has made him enormously rich and I think that’s always been his top priority.
The spirit of the "program" leaned in the right direction, but Elon was absolutely the wrong guy to put in charge of it. Misplaced incentives, lack of interpersonal skills, lack of respect and empathy, lack of organizational skills when he does not have strong, professional lieutenants that will implement changes.
Edit: and who TF would have thought putting "big balls doge kid" in a position of power would be a good thing? That kid, along with whomever hired him, would be tossed out of any professional corp env swiftly.
> The spirit of the "program" leaned in the right direction ...
Congressional oversight in combination with incorporating CBO[0] work products to perform the oversight obviates the purported need for DOGE.
> ... Elon was absolutely the wrong guy to put in charge of it. Misplaced incentives, lack of interpersonal skills, lack of respect and empathy, lack of organizational skills ...
A more succinct way to describe this is; corruption.
It was an effort in spirit only. It was aimed almost entirely at damaging those agencies that Trump hated and that Musk wanted to muck up so he could gain advantages from less government oversight and regulations. In the end it had almost no effect on overall government spending, but it certainly helped Trumps aims to damage the government departments he didn't like, undo what Biden had done, and gain some advantages for Elon's companies.
It’s still completely insane that people still think it was anything other than this. I can understand if you’re a musk fan you could have thought he was being serious on the bullshit (otherwise how could you be a musk fan?) but think today there was any plan or “spirit” behind it is pure delusion.
The spirit of the program did not lean in the right direction at all.
It started and ended with malicious intent and demonstration of power. Classic Trump.
The correct spirit is how it was done under Clinton / Gore. Slowly, thoughtfully, carefully, properly planned and delicately executed.
(and this says nothing of party politics or the quality of president that Clinton was, this is only commentary of that particular action as comparison)
The program started from ignorance of the functions of the federal government and the people who work in it. People who don’t know anything drank and believed the koolaid. Their actions might make sense if the propaganda was true. But it isn’t.
The whole thing seemed to me to be a quid pro quo for Elon to get Trump elected via Twitter. I'm fairly sure everyone but DOGE knew it would not accomplish anything.
He also lacked the authority to realize the full vision, being only a guest of Trump. Hence the inevitable conflict when it came to the big beautiful bill.
I'm a bit worried - there could be idiosyncratic links that these models learn that causes deanonymization. Ideally you could just add a forget loss to prevent this... but how do you add a forget loss if you don't have all of the precise data necessary for such a term?
This is the right question. If full attribution-based control is achieved, then this would be impossible. And the ingredient you've suggested could be a useful way to help achieve it.
because no one here seems to have said it yet: I actually think experts and academics, by and large and especially in physics, are the most likely to know what they're talking about! Personalized mavericks are rarely right, and the mavericks people hold up as mavericks are usually just conventional (researchers, leaders, etc) who either are right place right time (jack welch, for example: good ceo, but what catapulted him to myth wasn't him, it was being in the spot where law was such that he had the opportunity to make the first real shadow bank before people realized the consequences) or just have charisma so they seem different.
Swift distinguishes between inclusive and exclusive / exhaustive unions with enum vs protocols and provides no easy or simple way to bridge between the two. If you want to define something that typescript provides as easy as the vertical bar, you have to write an enum definition, a protocol bridge with a type identifier, a necessarily unchecked cast back (even if you can logically prove that the type enum has a 1:1 mapping), and loads of unnecessary forwarding code. You can try and elide some of it with (iirc, its been a couple years) @dynamicMemberLookup, but the compiler often chokes on this, it kills autocomplete, and it explodes compile times because Swift's type checker degrades to exponential far more frequently than other languages, especially when used in practice, such as in SwiftUI.
reply