alt Hacker NewsThe only rebuttal I see in the media is that congress set these up to be “independent”. But our government doesn’t have independent branches. In fact that sounds a lot like “unelected and unaccountable”.
So which branches are these agencies under? Is it in the judicial, legislative, or executive - and if it’s in the executive why can’t the chief executive manage business?
On the other hand, one of the issues brought up in the Obama years was whether a president can choose not to enforce a law like immigration. If congres’s laws can be ignored than what power do they have?
Genuine question. Does anyone have a constitutional framing for the duties of the executive branch in prioritizing enforcement or implementation of law?
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They aren't 'independent' they are 'a mix between executive and legislative'. The Supreme Court decisions are Meyers v US and Hunters Executor v US. And I'm not a constitutional scholar but my reading of it is that the protections in question come from the legislative delegating some of their power to the executive, think legislative actions (researching laws, etc) but retaining their constitutional prerogative to protect them from executive control.
This is something that has existed for a very long time but has been changing lately and will almost certainly show up in the Supreme Court again.
If your question is whether the “independent” agencies are Constitutional, the answer is yes. Congress makes the laws and the laws can constrain the behavior of the President. If the law says the President cannot fire someone, or interfere in an agency’s work, then the President cannot.
So who are such agencies accountable to? Congress. Just like the president is accountable to Congress.
In a democracy the three branches are independent. Democracy is not just 'you get to elect the guy on top', it also attempts to preserve the rights of the population. If the population does not have rights, democracy soon becomes very fake. E.g., I don't like this or that party so I throw anyone in jail during election day if I know that they would vote for the wrong party. The general principle is that if a person/organization has too much power they will generally find a way to abuse it. The famous split-up in three branches is employed to a greater or lesser extend in all countries where the rights of the population are respected.
Not unaccountable, just requiring the cooperation of multiple branches to remove.
Cooperation which has been deemed too transparent, too vulnerable to actually caring about what is being destroyed.
It’s a false narrative that Obama was soft on immigration and even earned the nickname “deporter in chief”.
In some ways he was even harder than Bush during the post 9/11 response.
www.migrationpolicy.org/article/obama-record-deportations-deporter-chief-or-not
It’s astounding the regularity over the last 100 years that conservatives have used immigration narratives to fire up their base regardless of what statistical data shows.
> But our government doesn’t have independent branches.
In theory it does, that is the whole idea and genius of the constitution.
In fact at the moment it does not, because Trump has so captured the Republican party that the legislature has almost no power to stand up to him. The Supreme Court has a long history of judges aligning with the political party that seated them, and Trump put 3 of them into their seat.
>But our government doesn’t have independent branches.
Yes, it does, by the nature of them existing and Congress establishing them. Show me where in the Constitution that they can't do that.
There’s prosecutorial discretion. If Congress doesn’t like it, impeachment is the remedy.
The Constitution has the "Due Care Clause."
The Administration is required to follow the law and to implement it with due care as the legislation intended.
The Legislature can impeach the Administration, it can hold it's officers in contempt, and it can pass laws constraining the Administration.
It's a simple problem: NO ONE IS DOING THEIR JOB. This is because they can get away with it and you don't actually have the power to vote them out. The media is part of the problem and is no longer serving the interests of the citizens. The monopolized corporations ensure you cannot use the Internet to meaningfully solve this problem. Look at this garbage thread. Look at all these garbage threads on here every time some political problem comes up. It's all compromised claptrap designed to appeal to corporate American but in no way to connect and govern in a modern fashion with each other.
Look at turn out on voting day when a presidential election is not slated. It's typically less than 25% of the voting age population that turns out. If you sit and think about this for one minute you will see why we are where we are.
Congress makes lots of rules about how the executive can wield power:
* FOIA tells the executive branch when/how to share documents.
* APA tells executive agencies what they have to do to make a rule.
* Congress gives line item budgets, and the executive doesn't get to reassign funds.
* Executive agencies must submit to audits from GAO (within congress)
It's perfectly reasonable for congress to limit how executive agency heads can be hired/fired too. After all, it's agencies that congress enacted and gave power too, and for legitimiate reasons that congress has.