My experience with Government bureaucracy isn’t nearly as deep as yours, primarily with National Park Service and the DOD. But that has been my experience also is “process uber alles.”. Even among intelligent, well intentioned leaders what really counts is following the process. Even when they know that the process doesn’t result in good outcomes. I don’t know if the concept of begging forgiveness and not permission is actively beaten out of government employees or people with that mindset simply never enter government service. But it result is a highly risk adverse culture that punishes failure by never properly rewarding success.
So that possibility of a adverse drug reaction injuring 10 people is virtually almost always more important that the possibility of it helping a 1,000. We see that same attitude in almost all government bureacracies. The possibility of wrongfully detaining a troubled young person almost always seems to outweigh slight chance that doing so might prevent a shooting. In my experience with NPS and other parks, the emphasis is always on protecting the health and safety of staff, and visitors, to the exclusion of goal focusing on increasing the number of visitors and the quality of their visit. Now I’m sure Disney is very concerned about health & safety since lawsuits are expensive, but somehow they seem to get more folks to visit their theme parks.
Apparently this hasn’t been ruled on by the courts, which I find a little surprising. Though if this ruling just means PASPA is unconstitutional, presumably it now depends on what each state declares to be legal, rather than what PASPA/28 U.S. Code § 3702 says.
Another case of Trump supporters getting exactly what they voted for. They wanted a guy who will stop all those gay rights and abortions. He’ll assuredly vote for that too, but Gorsuch is also happy to put the rich first.
By the letter of the law, the decision could really go either way. Depends on which act of Congress you decide is more important. Which means that the way to fix this is really for Congress to get their act together, in a time when we have a President that would sign a bill supporting worker’s rights. Anyone want to lay bets on when that might happen?
I know you are being sarcastic, but I feel like that’s exactly where we are headed. Trump really does believe in a Gilded Age, even though he has no idea what that phrase means.
There are enough Trump idiots making minimum wage that I think it’s a safe issue. I have no doubt that Trump & minions would love to get rid of it but Congress, etc, would stop it from actually happening. Right? Right?!
The fact that The Arbitration Act of 1925 was used here is telling. That thing was a dead letter for decades until a movement of conservative legal activism (of which John Roberts was a major part) revived it starting in the 80’s. What a great way to bypass the court system and stack the deck in favor of the people who hold all the power already!
You think if they get rid of the federal minimum wage suddenly everyone is going to get a… raise? or is it you think that the people who voted for him believe that?
No, his detractors would lose their minimum wage, his supporters wouldn’t (and would get extra money to boot). It’s a stupid suggestion, but I think Trump would do it if it were legal, and it didn’t come out of his or his wealthy supporters’ pockets. (Basically, a transfer of wealth from one group of people to another.)
And there is a little piece of me that thinks he could get away with it. Nothing really surprises me any more when it comes to the GOP and what they let Trump get away with…
