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There is no will to fight back. Because fighting back would, by definition, make you a populist.

Fear of populism is the ultimate FOOLery. Literally. On the axis we're talking about, there's a continuum of government power vs. individual autonomy. Any move in the direction of individual freedom is by definition a populist appeal.

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Philip Hamburger is a national treasure, but I'm not sure what the COO/CA model would do for the problem he's getting at in Purchasing Submission. The example of the drinking age wasn't even an "unelected unaccountable bureaucrats in the administrative state" issue, though, if it had been, a COO could make things even worse.

It was Congress itself in the NMDAA that said that states had to raise or age or go without 10% of their federal highway money, and in SD v Dole (1987) SCOTUS said that was fine, 7-2. More like 7.5-1.5, since one of the two dissents was O'Connor, who still agreed in principle that putting conditions on spending was fine, but who said the relationship wasn't close enough in this particular case.

The doctrine is a total mess because there is no good way in principle to precisely define this kind of soft 'coercion' that crosses the line only when SCOTUS judges feel like it does. A coherent policy would be "never any strings attached" but then state and local jurisdictions often wouldn't cooperate on even minor things like standardized data collection and reporting. That's probably a price worth paying.

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Only about 74 million voted against unrestrained power - some 81 million, so it's claimed by the frequently dishonest but always power hungry Deep State, voted for unrestrained power.

Arnold doesn't like how Trump fights, and is unwilling to do anything so "icky". But let's be honest & real - fighting is lousy and is not how normal, nice people want to live. But without fighting, now, normal people lose.

Trump fights against unrestrained deep state power.

If you oppose Trump, you oppose fighting.

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Very pleased to see Philip Hamburger mentioned. I had also read the review by Nelson Lund which motivated me to order several of Hamburger's books (quite affordable at Abebooks). Very much looking forward to reading his work which would appear to be insightful and substantive.

I completely concur with Handle's questioning of the potential for the COO/CA model. Its important to remember that the COO/CA model is written into many nations' constitutions, for example Mexico, with little result outcomes-wise. Political scientists seem to have done serious work in this area using the framework of "clientelism." That is, understanding political entities as middlemen specializing in building patterns of patronage, satisfying rent seekers, and otherwise transfering wealth around to produce stable groups of constituents who will reliably vote for their political patrons. Adding oversight bodies only smooths the process and provides a means for political patrons to ensure they receive the political support (or silence) that the transfers they provide (contracts, grants, legislative/regulatory protection, maintenance of barriers to entry, non-interference, actions against competing groups, etc. Clientelism is a very useful framework that explains a lot, particularly the rise of one-party munincipal government, and relationships like the teachers unions and the Democratic Party.

Adding another enforcer like the COO/CA will never address the problem of clientelism. Political scientists have found that the countries that have had the most success in addressing the clientelism problem are parliamentary democracies with proportional representation. These limit the payoffs to political patrons in two ways. First, members of parliaments serve as ministers of executive branch agencies so the camoflauge of bureaucratic middlemen is erased. Ministers bear more acccountability. Secondly, proportional representation allows political cleavage to persists amongst mulitiple parties. The parties must form alliances to govern. This makes arranging the patterns of specialization required for clientelism much more difficult to maintain and much more easily attacked by the greater electorate who can and do frequently punish parties that become involved in corruption. On the other hand, clientelism is endemic in presidential systems. Belgium, with the first truly modern constitution adopted back in 1830, is a great example of how clientelism can be suppressed. Their system of governance recognizes multiple major blocs of citizens and empowers the blocks politically. Political patrons have great difficulty in sustaining patters of patronage and scandals erupt regularly with real consequences when they do.

Unfortunately for the United States, far too many people believe, like Dr. Kling, that the ordinary people are incapable of participating effectively in their own governance. Which is why the US is minimally democratic and highly corrupt. Belgium on the other hand enjoys the second highest median wealth per adult in the world (second to Australia). Modern democracy and prosperity go hand in hand.

Not sure which populist figure ever called for maximum scrutiny of government officials. Would be interested in names. Clinton, Obama, and Trump, all populists, never said anything like that. I suspect that all the anti-populism espoused at this site is really just a strawman. And populism is much more about devotion to a free and fair electoral system than it is about any particular policy preference. But let's take the alternative anti-populist ideology for a spin, lets call it "Gnostic Bigotry." Gnostic because it posits that policy is the realm of of highly complex knowledge only accessibly to the select few highly credentialed topwits with the genetic superiority necessary for the job. And "bigotry" because all the midwits and little people, lets face it, just don't have what it takes to participate in their own governance which would be better off left to the chosen few. Now, who is this "we" that you are appealing to? Are you going to persuade midwits based on your claims of innate superiority? Sounds like that mutual flattery with demagogues that was being yammered about yesterday. Or is the appeal to your fellow topwits, the elect chosen to rule? Is it just all the democracy getting in the way of your campaign to purify the corrupt bureacracy? If so, the topwits don't appear to have going for them. No, I think a better alternative might be to reform the political process with incentives in mind, particularly the incentives for clientelism. As a populist, I would have to say that there are many models of democracy and some are better than others. Moving to a bettter model of democracy will produce better governance.

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Kling criticizes people fighting back as trying to "ban" unrestrained government power and brands them as FOOLs afraid of the liberty of unrestrained government power.

Kling is right that these issues need to be fought beyond the ballot box, in the culture, and in the institutions. Winning elections isn't enough.

Kling is wrong to criticize CRT bans and similar policy. There is a moral high ground in using government power to limit government power. Playing games with words and calling it a ban doesn't change that.

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The government HAS unrestrained power because we didn’t fight back.

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Saturday we went to Frederick County MD, only to find out that the entire county had been placed in a mask mandate. This ruined a good chunk of our day, as we now had to drive all the way back to Virginia.

Apparently, the Frederick County Health Board, an unelected body of officials, imposed this requirement on Dec 31st by fiat. It is to remain in place until they reach some absurdly low case count dictated by CDC guidance (itself another unelected body). No word on weather cases rising back up during the next wave would automatically re-trigger the mask mandate (I see nothing in the regulation that would prevent this).

A similar thing happened in Carroll County MD when its local school board voted to get rid of masks and the State Health Board overruled them.

I think its wrong to blame people for COVID restrictions when, outside of deep blue enclaves, they have pretty uniformly opposed them. Whenever they have a secret ballot the restriction party gets hammered. People engage in non-compliance where possible.

The issue isn't average people being FOOLs, its public health official tyranny (and also elected officials who have not been subjected to the democratic process so far in the pandemic).

It's not clear to me how people overcome the fiat power of unelected health officials beyond protest and disobedience. Maybe that is rude, but it deserves rude.

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Power centralized in the Federal government is part of the problem. These police and public health powers are safer in local government. They will still be abused, but people have more recourse. If things get too bad they can even leave town.

True, we do travel more, and more widely.

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