From 2004:

http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/preeminent-scientists-protest-b...

"Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

I disagree with Andrew here. I like the separation of powers (e.g. gridlock is a great thing), and -- although a quick search did not reveal the specific edits -- I believe that the administration was working in the public's interest here. Using the clean air act to regulate CO2 would be an abomination, and any creep in that direction is bad.

CO2 is a crucial piece of the ecological life cycle (part of what you exhale), not pollution. Speculation about disease based upon speculative inadvertant human terraforming (aka anthropomorphic global warming) does not strike me as crucial testimony. Striking such out is certainly weak toast in support of an argument that the administration is absolutely corrupted.

In case one might choose to ignore my comment as from a wacko right winger, I would point out that I approve of Mankiw's Pigou club (and Andrew's inclusion). I think a carbon/gas tax makes sense for national security, economic, and pollution/environmental concerns (with GW being only a small speculative part).

My economic argument for a gas tax (beyond the benefits of having a Pigovian tax to balance the market) is that it would be useful to pull forward the inevitable Energy change over (alternative energy R&D,etc) so that we continue our leadership in this crucial industry (regardless of how the current Exxon/Mobils fare).

"CO2 is a crucial piece of the ecological life cycle (part of what you exhale), not pollution."

Anything is pollution when it exists in the wrong place or in the wrong proportion.

Motor oil isn't a pollutant until it's dumped down the drain and flows into the river (the wrong place for it).

CO2 isn't a pollutant until it disproportionately displaces the oxygen we breathe. CO2 is an asphyxiant.

http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2008/january9/co-010908.html

Gagging the scientists is not in the public's best interests.

If you were a legislator, and you took your job seriously, and you had appropriated billions and billions of dollars on the federal bureaucracy, why would you want to have the testimony of that bureaucracy on matters of concern to you subject to the editing of the explicitly political elements of the White House?

You wouldn't--you could always solicit the VP's opinion on the health effects of climate change in addition to those coming from the CDC.

Too much of the responsibilities of the legislature have been outsourced to the executive branch, to the detriment of the ability of the government to work toward the public good.

The problem is corrupt crony politics at the National level. This administration has viewed Congress alternatively as a rubber stamp or an adversary, never as a partner. This has occurred because the executive is following policies that lack broad consensus public support and favor special interests. (The unfavorable polling of both President Bush AND Congress suggest that the public does not like current policy).

The pursuit of special interests over the public interests puts the administration at odds with Congress that is NOT beholden to the same special interests and is accountable to the public for their policy. In order to try to implement their unpopular special-interest-driven policies, the administration tries to maneuver around Congress and subvert the will of the people. The agencies are stuck between following the mandate given to them by Congress and an Administration that is actively trying to subvert the will of Congress in favor of special interests.

The "my way of the highway" approach to governing has deprived the administration of good advice and constructive criticism that could have led to vast improvements in policy for the public (if that was ever a goal). This administration adopted this approach because it is bent on serving special interests over the public interest. This is a direct indictment of this president who is the worst ever. This will be self-correcting once the public "votes the bums out" and elects new leadership that is committed to public interest above special interests.

The executive job is a public trust. Their special interest serving arrogance destroyed it.

And that's implicit in Obama's "Change you can BELIEVE in" tagline. It's why it resonates so profoundly. People are looking for someone and something they can believe in. They are looking for healing and restoration of trust.

Talk to your neighbors. They'll say it in different ways, using different words, but it is the #1 issue.

The pursuit of special interests over the public interests puts the administration at odds with Congress that is NOT beholden to the same special interests...

Congress is every bit as beholden to special interests as the Executive branch. That's how our system works. Designed by the Founders to pit 'faction' against 'faction'.

Perhaps you might make a post about James Baker and Warren Christopher's War Powers presser?

We need another president like the first Bush, who was able to largely resist his Defense Secretary's relentless push for steamrolling Congress. He may not have rolled back his powers to a Hamilton or even TR level, but at least he didn't go as far forward as he might have. That's as close as we'll come to a Washington-resigning-his-commission moment in this new world, I'm afraid.

are there other inputs to the "separate but equal" equation besides just measures of manpower?

For example, if I were to look at the relative output of food services vs. high-tech development (software, manufacturing, etc), it would be odd to measure only the human component and use of human resources because the capital component of production varies greatly between the two.

Couldn't power = F (manpower, institutional processes [government's proxy for capital])? If so, is the difference in manpower partly due not just to changes in the power equation but also to changes in the makeup of the "missing" input?

"The problem is corrupt crony politics at the National level."

Whenever has this ever not been the problem? Starting in Washington's own administration when, while sitting in adjoining offices, Jefferson used govenment money to hire journalists to libel Hamilton, and Hamilton used Treasury agents to attack Jefferson's camp?

The "genius" of the Constitution as explained in the Federalist papers is that it accepts this kind of situation as the norm and designs a goverment that functions anyhow. (In fact, off the evidence of the last 200 years, pretty much "best by test".)

This administration has viewed Congress alternatively as a rubber stamp or an adversary, never as a partner.

Whenever has this not been true, starting with Washington's admimistration? This is exactly what the drafters of the Constitution intended, by separating the powers of government and putting them in competition with each other for political influence.

And I'll tell ya', anybody who thinks things are worse today than in the past in this regard is only showing a lack of knowledge of history.

"Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own time." -- Flaubert.

That's another thing that's always been true.

I mean, we may have a vice president who shoots people, but he doesn't shoot his worst public political critics, like say Krugman, dead and then return to the Senate and resume presiding over it, as happened in the Founders' own time.

"It's ok honey, husbands have beaten their wives for hundreds of years, so don't worry about it. It's the norm. Just be grateful he hasn't killed you yet."

Why SHOULD the legislative or judicial branches have the human capital allocated to them?

In an ideal scenario, all human resources (and other capital) in the legislative branch would be devoted to the process of legislation: the act of making and enacting laws.

The human resources (and other capital) in the judicial branch would be devoted to the process of adjudicating: the act of pronouncing or decreeing by judicial sentence.

And the executive would be left with the capital (human and otherwise) required to execute enacted laws deemed constitutional.

Of those three, I would fully expect the human resources to shift to the executive as a proportion of the total as executive duties have a far larger variable need for human capital than do legislation and, least of all, adjudication (at least at a federal level).

Personally, I have no desire to have this PARTICULAR executive in charge of the lion's share of resources. However, curtailing the executive's control of resources might be a roundabout way of restoring branch equality that Bush has destroyed through more direct (and possibly illegal) methods. It doesn't necessarily mean to me that having an incompetent / powerful executive is reason in and of itself to lament a human capital shift to the executive.

"...most of the activity of government should be done through the legislature, as the most broadly representative of those branches. We are far from this ideal and moving in the wrong direction...."

Very true. And the reason is that the gov't has expanded in size vastly beyond what its creators ever imagined it would be -- or designed it to function as. If you had told them that govt would one day control 40% or more of the economy through direct tax-and-spend and regulation, even the "big govt" Federalists would've had their hair turn white -- Jefferson would've had a stroke and died on the spot.

With a govt this big, there isn't a legislator in all of Congress who knows even 1% of what all the bureaucracies are doing -- literally. So why ever would legislators want to take on personal responsibility for all they don't know? They don't, obviously, so they've punted it away from them.

Who created this situation? The legislators. It benefits them.

Just look at where the manpower is in the federal government--civil servants working in cabinet departments headed by political appointees of the President.

Cabinet departments created by the legislature -- and which, in (rare) cases where a President has tried to get rid of them, Congress has refused to go along. So the legislature wants these cabinet department bureaucracies to exist.

OK, this is political reality, like it or not. I personally do not like it. But if it really is something to complain about, there has to be an alternative. How else are these bureaucracies to be organized and run other than through the executive? Which makes the Prez and V-P their "boss".

The founders would've had a good deal of sympathy with Patrick Sullivan's observation that the Prez and V-P are answerable to the voters, while the bureaucracies are answerable to nobody, so the Prez and V-P should have the power to tell them what to do as "boss".

Remember that a good number of the founders, starting with Jefferson, didn't even want the Supreme Court to have the power to decide the constitutionality of laws enacted by Congress, because the Justices on the Court aren't elected, while the Congress is. (The Constitution is silent on the issue because its authors couldn't agree.)

So the idea that all these massive bureaucracies would be running such a large part of peoples lives today immune from the voters and even from taking orders from the President ... Jefferson would've had a stroke on the spot.

Why should all of that manpower not be directly accountable to Congress as opposed to the President?

Because that is the way Congress has set things up and wants it. So it is "the will of the people". If Congress wants to change things so the bureaucracies it pays for are run by it directly, it can do so at any time. But it has expressed zip interest in the idea.

Should Congress do that? If so, the interesting question is, why has it no interest in doing so?

Also, beware what you wish for -- remember that it is literally true that the Senate can't even run its own cafeteria, so as to it directly running massive govt bureaucracies ...

(And as to a news report that a bureaucrat is complaining about the likes of Dick Cheney to the likes of Barbara Boxer, I take that with a full shaker of salt concerning the political motives of every party involved including the reporter.)