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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I care about the health of our citizens and natural environment more than any convoluted political dogma. This is the real world where people are suffering and dying from preventable cancer caused by greedy business people who only believe in profit. You legal purists might feel satisfaction in your navel gazing thought experiments but the people you just sided with don’t give a damn about legal purity. They just used you to make a profit and escape any accountability for the death and damage that they cause against innocents. Thanks a whole lot. But at we made some sort of empty statement about “the administrative state”….

SMH[/quote]

Then use your constitutionally-protected political rights to build the coalition you want to bring about the change you want.

I’m truly flabbergasted that your fellow citizens just went through a nearly 16-year ordeal to build a house on their land facing fines of $40,000 per day from the federal government. The outrageous behavior of the EPA was so flagrant that all 9 nine justices said the EPA went too far and the hand wringing is about how out of control the court is.

I’m glad that you care about your fellow citizens health and about the environment. I share your concerns. But why don’t you redirect your anger and energy at building the political coalition you need to bring about the change you want?

If your answer is really that the government should be able to do what it believes is best to advance the common good regardless of whether the people have given it the authority to do so or not, then you better be prepared to live by those ground rules under a President DeSantis (or worse).

But my guess is that the moment government is under the control of your political opponents you’ll rediscover your affinity for a constitutional system of checks and balances along with small “l” liberalism.

A multicultural democracy cannot survive without strong procedural guardrails. [/quote]

Well said and completely agree. And I am a liberal Democrat who supports protecting the environment. But as I have grown older, I have also come to believe that that in matters of governance, the end does NOT justify the means. Without the guardrails of rules and norms, there will be no liberal democracy to protect.

In this case, anyone with a smidgen of objectivity would agree that the EPA vastly exceeded its mandate, as all SC judges (including those on the left) did. Maybe as a nation, we want EPA to have that mandate. But then that has to come from a process of lawmaking, not the creative interpretation of its own authority by an agency. Adherence to rules and norms protects all of us against different types of tyranny, which can come from either end of the political spectrum depending on who is in power. [/quote]

That all sounds like a nice goal but once again these natural ecosystems will not continue to exist if we keep quibbling about our legal system. The laws have been corrupted and ignored by wealthy industrial capitalists for the entire existence of our legal system. The EPA was created legally and is good enough for me. I measure justice by what the real world results are and not some fantasy of one day achieving a perfect dogma.

You act like I don’t stand for rules and principles. That isn’t the case. The rule and norm that I stand for is one where our shared natural resources are not destroyed by private interests.[/quote]

Every tyrant (or to be more exact, every movement that has empowered tyrants) throughout history has beloved in the righteousness of its cause.  That’s literally the lesson of history. Caesar was just trying to establish Pax Romana in the provinces and provide protection from the barbarians at the gates.  He couldn’t let a silly little thing like the senate get in his way.  And so on throughout history, including the shameful times our country has failed to live up to its ideals.

You think you stand for rules and principles but what you’re really expressing is an outcome. As PP correctly said, you’re expressing the idea that the ends justify the means.  That is a TOTALLY legitimate position to take as long as you are willing to live with it when your political opponents are in control of the government.

If the ends justify the means only for so long as the ends line up with your goals, but when Trump or DeSantis or some other deplorable to you is in power you want it reassert the constitutional order of checks and balances, then you’ll sign the death certificate for our democracy.

An insurgent Christian nationalist movement is using the same words you are using but inserting their goals. They are measuring “liberalism” and “justice” by real world results as compared against their goals. They too are tired of process and procedure that leads to bad outcomes. Proceed down this path at your own risk. [/quote]

Again you are misusing general agreement regarding one narrow case of executive branch over reach in order to justify an unelected court gutting the entire CW act. You continually fail to grasp the irony regarding  the judicial branch’s extreme over reach.

Now you are using the same Narrow case to propose a grandiose theory of history that cites the corruption of Ancient Rome, even though it was never a fully fledged democracy anyway. It was controlled by aristocratic men. Women, slaves, the proletariat and younger men were excluded formally from power.

Those of us who wish to protect our fragile environment rely on solid and pain staking science, while white Christin nationalists rely on scripturally unsound dogmas and hate and fear mongering.

You claim the lofty high ground that really is more slippery than the wet lands you are fine with letting corporations and agricultural sector pollute without sensible restraints.[/quote]

Please quote the part of the constitution that says the rules don’t apply because you are relying on pain staking science. Please cite the part of the constitution that says the rules don’t apply because you want sensible restraints to protect the fragile environment.

Whether you realize it or not, you are making the argument that the rules shouldn’t apply to your side because of the nobility and righteousness of your cause. But every tyrant in history has been convinced of his cause. “It’s different when I’m in charge” is a really crappy limiting principle. More commonly, this is stated as “the ends justify the means.”

Look, I don’t care if you’re an authoritarian that doesn’t believe in checks and balances. Call yourself a philosopher king if you want a softer label. Reject small L liberalism if you wish.  But own it. Your position here makes it clear that you aren’t committed to divisions of power or the constitutional process. You only care about outcomes. You want what you want and you don’t seem to particularly care what it takes to get there.

I’m not claiming a lofty high ground. I was born and raised in a country where there are few checks on government and rule of law means whatever the people who happen to be in power think is the best thing to do. My home country has limped along for 100+ years, sometimes experiencing horrendous, destabilizing violence.  By luck, I am also a US citizen and have been able to escape that mess and live  and raise a family in the USA.  From experience, I’m a huge fan of the American system of checks and balances. And while pollution is terrible and horrendous (try growing up where you have never been able to drink the tap water or can never swim in the ocean), your anger is misplaced here.

Be angry at the EPA for consistently thumbing its nose at SCOTUS, be angry at Congress for abdicating its responsibility to lead and delegating authority to an unelected bureaucracy, or better yet engage in the political process to achieve the change you want.

Look, calling SCOTUS unelected, while defending the EPA really undermines your argument. SCOTUS at least was granted its power via the Constitutional process.  Perhaps that was a mistake, but the people had some say in that. There is no such saving feature when it comes to the EPA’s status as an unelected, rulemaking  and enforcement body.  I don’t think you actually care that SCOTUS is unelected because if electoral status really mattered you’d dislike the EPA even more. [/quote]

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