8 Comments

Oh happy day!

Expand full comment

Good breakdown hoss.

Expand full comment
Jun 29Liked by Tree of Woe

Here's the Doom. Instead of bureaucrats making up enforceable rules based on their personal interpretation of vague Congressional law, we will have judges making up enforceable rules based on their personal interpretation of vague Congressional law. The same kind of judges who brought us things like ... bussing of school students. Let's reserve judgement on whether this is going to be an improvement!

The obvious better answer would be for CongressScum to do the job they are elected to do and write clear laws with no ambiguities. It would be good to enforce that with a Constitutional provision that any CongressScum who votes for a law which is found to be ambiguous or contrary to any prior existing law is immediately condemned to 10 years hard labor with no appeal. But none of that will happen. Doom!

Expand full comment
Jun 28Liked by Tree of Woe

I've been something of a low key SCOTUS nerd since reading Robert Bork's book 20(? Am I really that old?) years ago, so I enjoyed the breakdown. Not to worry, I'm sufficiently pickled and marinated in doom and despair to survive another week without your usual downbeat assessment.

I always took Chevron as something of a conservative response to the judicial activism of the Warren and Burger courts. They didn't trust judges to make good calls, so they mandated defference to other branches of government. Now they reverse themselves. Sign of newfound optimism for the judiciary? Or merely further despair in the regulators?

See? We can still despair on our tree if we wish!

Expand full comment

Here is more despair: think about Economics.

Those three words alone make me shudder and consider M.A.I.D. as compassionate alternative.

Regardless of what Economic ideology one adheres to, we always forget the basic fact that all economic analysis that is based on Government Data is biased by the underlying causes of such data, which depend on legislation and law, which ultimately depends on the whims of the metalegislature, the Supreme Court.

Forget models and theories, for everything can turn to dust in the twinkling of an eye when the Judges change the course of the State. No predictions are reliable, no planning is possible, only the bleak certainty of many decades of wasted efforts and destruction of worth in all activities.

Expand full comment

No need to apologize Pater! I have a piece that will come out in a few hours which will deliver the requisite DOOM. Meanwhile, you can relax with Mater and forget about the Woe-Tree for now! 😉

Expand full comment
Jul 14Liked by Tree of Woe

A few thoughts I've seen on the notion of a deep state:

https://www.lorenzofromoz.net/p/its-not-the-deep-state-its-just-bureaucracy

Expand full comment
author

The difference between a bureaucracy and a malevolent cabal villainously intent on preventing me from renewing my driver's license this afternoon is indeed difficult to perceive

Expand full comment