If NPR is running articles on it, I’m sure they feel they have an audience to influence.
And if colleges like Williams and Mary’s are publishing hypothetical Supreme Court cases on it…
I would say someones trying to get it into the social agenda.
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Tell 'em I said ‘good luck with that.’
And I agree with you.
But that doesn’t mean someone’s trying.
Yes. It was broken.
Is it better to have only conservatives, or only progressives on an internet message board talking politics and world events? Why would our universities be any different in subjects where there is tremendous interpretation and leeway for differing opinions and views? Wouldn’t it be better to hear intelligent people debate topics with passion and real conviction, than to have one of us present our side, and then tell the students what the other person thinks, and why their arguments aren’t all that good? If you REALLY can’t see that having an entirely conservative faculty at my new law school might be a problem, then I can’t help you.
Yes. They are examples of issues that effect our culture, some more directly than others, and the way people think about policy is a reflection of these changes, but YES they are related to cultural issues. Without writing an essay on each topic, let me say that I see a shift in what people expect government should do, and how they think government should operate.
Compliance with thousands upon thousands of regulations written by un-elected bureaucrats and signed into law by our executive branch, complete with penalties attached for noncompliance in the form of fines or imprisonment, does not equal rule of law and a government where the people enact and approve laws through their elected representatives, and where three powers of government check each other. YOUR PARTY has expanded this tremendously because your leadership likes the idea of power so long as it is “in the right hands.” Now they can see how it feels when Trump has this power. That’s the long view on this kind of power, EyeDentist.
I see activists in the current culture wars who want “fundamental transformation” and societal change in our country which often involves the restriction of freedom for their neighbors through PC garbage intended to control, and the things kinds of tools I listed above. I’d respect them more if they were a bit more concerned with their individual sense of morality and responsibility. And if they would stop with the cry-ins.
Regarding carbon footprints, and children … you misunderstand me. HUGE. Bigly huge. We see a cultural shift in the more secular societies having fewer children. Some of this has always come from “looney tunes” from the left with Malthusian ideas about zero population growth, how we’re all gonna starve if we keep having kids, and how the new climate crisis makes people having kids selfish. Yes, this crap is alive and well and we hear it in the public schools here in CA. Yes, I have friends who have said they do not plan to have children and have listed these concerns about over population. No, I don’t think these particular reasons are driving the majority of these changes, but we are seeing dramatic cultural change. All those secular humanists who are often agnostic or atheist in Europe or “nones” are not able to replace themselves. Guess who wins? @2busy and @Jewbacca do. I’m hoping to have a landslide of little like-minded grand kids. We have a cultural shift in the way we view children and the family. Many people just aren’t buying in.
First, universities are not the liberal monoliths you make them out to be. Second, and as I said previously, the ‘real world’ provides a very powerful counterweight to whatever lefty stuff gets covered in college.
That’s a shopworn conservative trope. Congress still controls the purse-strings. The courts are still independent and viable (and Obama’s opposition has not been shy about using them). I get that you don’t like regulations, but there’s nothing nefarious or un-American going on in that regard.
Interesting. So, you’re going to blame Democrats for Obama’s (ab)use of executive authority, and blame them pre-emptively for Trump’s??!!
I do too. And I’m beginning to suspect you might be one of them.
I’m sorry, but that’s simply nonsense. There is a long-established inverse relationship between socioeconomic factors such as wealth/income, education, etc, and birth rate. It has NOTHING to do with the factors you cite. You are reverse-engineering the process to make it serve your narrative.
And you presume to tell them their plans are invalid because…
I have no idea what this means.
Yes, they are monoliths of political and ideological thought. 7% of my precinct went Trump and 3% went third party. That’s the definition of a monolith.
No. The lefty stuff in college comes out into the real world and influences our culture in profound ways.
If by shopworn, you mean tried and true, then I agree with you. You better comply with my regulations has been taken to new levels by Obama. Something like 30,000 per year as opposed to 8,000 per year from the previous administration. These roll together all three branches of government in ways that I do not respect, and that threaten our system. If Trump sees that there’s this new power to wield, then yes, that will be Obama’s fault for being shortsighted, just as the brilliant idea of changing the filibuster rules seemed like a good idea when you had Harry Reid in there, but you may decide it isn’t so good now. That’s the way this works.
No, you’d be wrong about that. I don’t fall out on strict party lines on a great many issues. I take a more nuanced view of some of the big ones, and am more of a moderate in terms of public policy. I’m not interested in “fundamentally transforming the United States.” Obama quote. You voted for someone who wants to do that. I think our nation is fundamentally good.
No. I disagree. But maybe you want to stop contending with me on this.
I never said there wasn’t. You’re putting words in my mouth, or attempting to rebut or spin my attempts to discuss with you. Mr. Pedantic who cannot admit that you’d have a problem with my law school faculty being stacked with conservatives, or that our forum here is better with different points of view? That’s just getting silly. You’ve ignored points we agree on, and are focused on repeatedly trying to rebut me like we’re on a high school debate team. BTW, thanks for the link you put up about science funding. See the little 1 there by your link. That was me.
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What does your precinct have to do with it? We were talking about universities.
When that happens, the real world pushes back. Hard. Eventually, things work themselves out.
May I suggest that the next time someone tries to bamboozle you with such stats, you walk away. Regulatory law is a very complex subject, and cannot be meaningfully expressed in such simplistic terms. Some regulations impose huge costs; some impose trivial costs. Still others provide huge net savings. So even if your numbers are accurate, one can’t simply ‘count noses’ and decide, based solely on something as nebulous as ‘the number of regulations,’ that ‘Bush good, Obama bad.’
That is absurd. Trump is responsible for Trump’s behavior. If he abuses power, that’s on him.
You sound extremely reactionary in these comments. That is simply the other side of the ‘fundamentally transforming’ coin.
I’m putting words in your mouth??!! Here’s the sum-total of my response to your proposed ‘law school’:
“If it’ll keep 'em off the SCOTUS, I’ll make a contribution to the school. 
”
And from that one comment, you have pegged me as “Mr. Pedantic who cannot admit that you’d have a problem with my law school faculty being stacked with conservatives, or that our forum here is better with different points of view.” Yeesh. Silly indeed.
And that’s Doctor Pedantic to you. 
I forget that you’re new in this forum. They both have A LOT of kids. Evolutionarily speaking, they are royally beating the people who can’t maintain a birth rate that replaces themselves. Societies that can’t do that simple thing fail.
The Obama admin has found creative ways around this whenever possible.
December 2015 Justice Department Scandal. WSJ article excerpt -
"…the Justice Department, which for 16 months has engaged in a scheme to undermine Congress’s spending authority by independently transferring dollars to President Obama’s political allies. The department is in the process of funneling more than half-a-billion dollars to liberal activist groups, at least some of which will actively support Democrats in the coming election.
It works likes this: The Justice Department prosecutes cases against supposed corporate bad actors. Those companies agree to settlements that include financial penalties. Then Justice mandates that at least some of that penalty money be paid in the form of “donations” to nonprofits that supposedly aid consumers and bolster neighborhoods.
The Justice Department maintains a list of government-approved nonprofit beneficiaries. And surprise, surprise: Many of them are liberal activist groups. The National Council of La Raza. The National Urban League. The National Community Reinvestment Coalition. NeighborWorks America (which awards grants to left-leaning community organization groups, and has been compared with Acorn).
This strategy kicked off with the $13 billion J.P. Morgan settlement in late 2013, though in that case the bank was simply offered credit for donations to nonprofits. That changed with the Citigroup and Bank of America settlements, which outright required $150 million in donations. The BofA agreement contains a provision that potentially tees up nonprofit groups for another $490 million. Several smaller settlements follow the same mold.
To further induce companies to go the donation route, Justice considers these handouts to be worth “double credit” against penalty obligations. So while direct forms of victim relief are still counted dollar-for-dollar, a $500,000 donation by BofA to La Raza takes at least $1 million off the company’s bill.
The purpose of financial penalties is to punish, and to provide restitution to real victims. The Justice Department would make the case that this money is flowing to groups that aid the targets of supposed banking abuse, such as homeowners. But that assumes the work these groups do is targeted at actual victims, which it isn’t. It assumes that the work these groups do in housing is nonpartisan, which it isn’t. And it ignores that money is fungible. Every dollar banks donate to the housing arms of the Urban League or La Raza is a dollar those groups can free up to wage an assault on voter ID laws, or to help out Democrats.
This is the Obama administration riding roughshod over the most basic of congressional powers those of spending and oversight. Adding to the insult, Justice is routing money back to programs that congressional Republicans deliberately stripped of funds. In 2011 Republicans eliminated the Housing Department’s $88 million for “housing counseling” programs, which spread around money to groups like La Raza. Congress subsequently restored only $45 million, and has maintained that level. These bank settlements pour some $30 million into housing counseling groups, thereby essentially restoring all the funding.
It’s also a classic Obama end run around the law. House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, who has spent a year investigating and pushing back against Justice’s slush fund, has noted that the Miscellaneous Receipts Act requires money received by the government from any source to be deposited in the Treasury. Directing banks to give money to third parties is a slippery way of evading that statute.
He’s also noted that Justice’s own internal guidelines discourage donations to third parties, precisely because of the risk it “can create actual or perceived conflicts of interest and/or other ethical issues.” No kidding. Mr. Goodlatte has discovered that some of the activist groups that stood to benefit from these transfers were involved in getting the requirements put into the settlements. He’s called on Justice to end the practice, and the department’s response has been to double down.
Which is why Mr. Goodlatte crafted a one-sentence amendment to the annual appropriations bill for Justice, one that strips the department of money if it continues with its slush-fund ruse. His amendment passed easily on a voice vote this summer.
…It goes to the heart of the question at hand “spending” and to Congress’s right to control the national purse. If Republicans are interested in containing a president who routinely ignores the rules, here’s a place to stand."
“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judiciary in the same hands,” James Madison warned in Federalist 47, “may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” Madison goes on to paraphrase Montesquieu: “There can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person.”
Or we might consult Thomas Jefferson. In his “Notes on the State of Virginia,” Jefferson writes that “the concentrating” of the legislative, executive and judicial powers “in the same hands, is precisely the definition of despotic government.”
OR Hillary Clinton - “I think you have to restore the checks and balances and the separation of powers, which means reining in the presidency.” In 2008, still during the Democratic primary, she said: “This administration’s unbridled ambition to transform the executive into an imperial presidency, in an attempt to strengthen the office, has weakened our nation.”
Yes. I understand that. I have not been bamboozled. We’re not talking about some bureaucrat writing regulations about how many forms need to be in triplicate in some obsure gov office. President Obama has seized 553 million acres under the 1906 Antiquities Act. Obama has seized more land and water than any other American president for the federal government — ever. He has seized enough land and water to cover the state of Texas, all through executive order. Like a damn king. What a JOKE. This is personal for me. It directly effects some of my family who can no longer develop private land which borders some of these seized lands because they are now in a “wildlife corridor.” These wing dings, including Obama, have zero respect for private property.
Without saying more about where I live exactly, every single home in my neighborhood is owned by a faculty member or administrator of a large research university. There is at least one PhD, often two, in every house on my street. As you know, there are stats for this stuff by department/ area of study, but I’m giving you my experience. It’s a monolith. We’d find somewhere like 95% Dems in many departments across the social sciences and humanities.
To quote The Dude, “That’s your opinion, man.”
Yes. Or at least making WAY wrong assumptions about population stats and birth rates that could have been cleared up with a question. Yes, people are having fewer kids. Yes, it’s a profound cultural shift. Yes, it concerns me. Yes, there are some kooks. I included a kooky comment, but it doesn’t reflect some kind of big theory on my part.
No. From many comments in this thread. I think I’m a foil. You seem rigid, and unable or unwilling to see any other viewpoint. I believe you think the same of me on this topic at least. That’s fine, but I’m more interested in discussion and I don’t think that’s what we’re doing here, besides hijacking the heck out of Mufasa’s ACA thread. We’ve had some good discussions before. We’ll have good discussions again. But we seem a little stuck here, so I’ll stop.
EDITED
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Given that birth rates in the Western world are, with few exceptions, in the toilet, I would wonder what difference it would make if they did have real influence. If I recall correctly, only the UK, France and Ireland are at replacement level birth rates. Ireland is the only one where it can’t, in part, be put down to its immigrant population.
Edit: Israel, the US, Sweden, Australia, Norway, Finland and Belgium are all at 1.8 or above. However, barring Israel, all the others in this list are being buoyed by the fertility rates of their minority population. I can say that with (some) confidence given how hawkish the state is on immigration.
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Candidly, this is incorrect. If one president expands executive power, they hand their predecessor a set of tools that predecessor wouldn’t have had.
Obama’s executive power lark - done because his other choices hemmed in his ability to get actual legislation accomplished - established a series of awful precedents for a new “sociopathic toddler” president-elect. Three stand out:
-
Conducting war in Libya
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Unilaterally postponing dates on Affordable Care Act deadlines (including arbitarily postponing the individual mandate)
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Trying to pay monies to insurance companies through “risk corridors” that weren’t appropriated by Congress
Luckily, Number 3 is tied up in court (with the opposition being led by a liberal constitutional law professor).
And we aren’t even counting the attempts that were thwarted by the (often unanimous) Supreme Court, like appointing agency members during Senate recess.
All of these tools are now Trump’s thanks to Obama, and the natural opposition tasked with the job to stop his attempts to abuse executive power can’t complain on constitutional grounds.
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Fair enough. In that case, I’m officially passing the buck for Obama’s executive excesses to his predecessor, GW Bush. Now it’s all his fault.
Or if you prefer, it’s all Cheney’s fault, as he is the one who set the wheels in motion for dramatically expanding the power of the Executive branch:
Different issue, to the extent Bush expanded executive reach it was in the arena of national security, and the example I have re: Libya stands in stark contrast because Obama claimed a President Bush would have no authority to wage the kind of campaign Obama waged in Libya (and made a campaign point about it).
No offense, you’re a thoughtful and intelligent poster, but you seem to have an inability to admit Obama could have made even a single mistake or bad choice in his administration. Why?
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Oh, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge Obama’s executive overreach on immigration, which again, stalled out in a court challenge.
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To the extent!!! Do I need to provide more citations in that regard? (It’s not a problem–they’re very, very easy to come by.)
I have to point out, it was my position that each POTUS is responsible for his/her own actions. It was you who argued that a POTUS is responsible for the overreach abuses s/he provides successor POTUSes. But when I applied your argument to the Bush–>Obama transition, you want to wave this off because Bush’s excesses were related to ‘national security’–a post hoc amendment of your argument made without providing any justification or rationale.
Now, you were saying something about me having a hard time admitting something? 
No, “to the extent” is correct, becausr it denotes a distinction between the two - presidents have more latitude when it comes to matters of foreign policy and national security.
Obama unquestionably built on Bush’s executive authority in the space of national security - and re: civil liberties, some say Obama was worse. It’s fine to blame Bush for setting a bad precedent, but Obama adds the additional sin of hypocrisy because he campaigned as the antidote to Bush’s practices in national security.
But again, that is corollary to the bigger point, which is that Obama opened up a new front in executive overreach - domestic affairs. He has no one to blame but himself when a president Trump pulls some stunt to give some preferred person or industry a gift on a claim of “prosecutorial discretion”. Trump will point right to an Obama action, and Democrats will just have to eat it.
Again, why the inability to concede Obama has made mistakes?
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This will likely sound trite and/or naive, but I have faith in the process. I believe the opposition party, operating through the judiciary, will serve as a check on Executive power.
I would be happy to concede Obama’s mistakes if he had made any. But hey, he’ll be POTUS for 11 more days, so it might still happen. 
I a world where they need ‘trigger warnings’ and ‘safe spaces’ and ‘micro aggression’ and ‘white privilege’ and ‘racism’ and ‘xenophobia’, etc. I can assure you any use of the word ‘rational’ has absolutely no application in any of these circumstances. Why? Because PCness is used to stifle conversation, not promote it.
If you don’t like what somebody is say, throw one of the above terms out and the conversation has stopped before it even began.
I am not saying this occurs in all places, all the time. I am saying it’s occurring in way too many places, way too many times. The fact that we have to even talk about it and parse it out at any level is evidence that there is too much of this crap occurring.
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You need a list?
- Syria’s Red Line and the failure to enforce it. (<- This was perhaps the most catastrophic blunder in that the body count is measured in the 100’s of thousands)
- Pulling troops out of Iraq prematurely
- Releasing Abu Bakr al-Baghdad
- Ignoring the threat of ISIS until it was too late.
- Assassinating a foreign leader, who was a U.S. ally (Ghaddafi) and letting the country plunge into chaos
- The Arab Spring (more aptly should be named ‘winter’.
- Destabilizing Israeli/ U.S. relations.
- The Russian Reset.
- Benghazi
- Obamacare
- IRS Scam
- “Fast and Furious”
That’s just a few off the top of my head. It’s in no particular order save for how it came from memory. Any and all of these were/ are disasters.
I didn’t even mention the Iran deal because I am waiting for the predictable outcome of that nightmare to bare fruit.
Obama is a smooth talker, he sounds like a grown up, but his hubris has got us into some deep holes we will not soon dig out of.
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t minus 9 and counting. I look forward to showing him the door before he tries to sabotage anymore international relationships in order to preserve his precious legacy.
No doubt, the pendulum has swung too far on some campuses. That’s what such pendulums tend to do. Further, there’s no doubt such terms have been used as cudgels to squelch communication, not promote it. Again, pendulums.
On the other hand, with the possible exception of trigger warnings (which speaks more to the psychiatric issues of individuals), the rest of the phenomena you would dismiss out-of-hand are all valid concerns, so let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
It’s important to note the PC blade cuts both ways. What I mean is, there are many individuals who use the ‘I’m not PC’ boast as an excuse to punch down on those weaker than them (Trump being an obvious example).
I don’t, but thanks anyway. Apparently, attempts at humor don’t always translate well on this forum.