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Articles of Discussion: The Cabinet (11/19) (1 Viewer)

Summer Wheat said:
Make it a "Trump free" zone and I am in.    Suffering from Trump fatigue due to all the other threads.
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Or at least put them under one thread, an example is the new thread about Trump getting heckled at the baseball game.  Don’t understand why a new thread is needed for that.  But some posters hate Trump so much they will post anything they can find about him.

 
Should we survive the holiday season, I submit taxation as the topic for January.  Perfect timing as most of us start the process of filing.  I’m a FairTax-er, but admittedly not fully up to speed on it’s overall implementation.  It’d be nice to discuss the actual topic of taxation, not what’s done with the taxes.  What’s the best method?  Pros and cons of income v consumption v VAT v other methods that might exist.  Which produces the most revenue, which is most/least exploitable, etc?  I’ve long held the belief that until each American can more easily monitor how much they pay in taxes, how much the government takes in as a whole, the issues of cost surrounding government and policies proposed by government will be supported/opposed simply by partisan beliefs.  

 
That one guy said:
Should we survive the holiday season, I submit taxation as the topic for January.  Perfect timing as most of us start the process of filing.
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I'll try to keep this in mind, but I hope you stick around and push for this discussion as 2020 rolls around!

I've edited post 3 with the current submissions list. Something to be thinking about for those who have submitted: have you seen any thought-provoking articles about your topic you'd like to share?

 
Gopher State said:
Or at least put them under one thread, an example is the new thread about Trump getting heckled at the baseball game.  Don’t understand why a new thread is needed for that.  But some posters hate Trump so much they will post anything they can find about him.
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That is a great idea.  Merge every Trump thread into the Trump years thread.  

 
hagmania said:
I'll try to keep this in mind, but I hope you stick around and push for this discussion as 2020 rolls around!

I've edited post 3 with the current submissions list. Something to be thinking about for those who have submitted: have you seen any thought-provoking articles about your topic you'd like to share?
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Oh I’ll be here and participate in each topic that comes up.  I mainly suggested mine for a couple months out so I could have time to read the FairTax book again and try to get some research in for other methods of taxation; having W-2s show up in late January was just a timely bonus.

 
Bump for anyone that would like to submit a discussion topic!

Sometime tomorrow I'll put up a poll to vote on November's discussion.

 
Already some good topics on the list but I'd like to throw out one more for consideration: Is corporate consolidation a threat to free markets? And if so, how do we fix it?

 
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Voted, another topic for next time: How would single payer healthcare actually work in America?  What would happen to the insurance, pharmacy benefit manager (PBM), etc. industries and all the jobs associated with them?

 
Voted for the policy discussion I'd like to see most, probably given away by my love emoji of the topic in this thread. 

 
We have a healthy amount of poll responses. Going to close this up sometime around lunch. One last bump for poll votes.

 
dgreen said:
Now that I think about it, each cabinet-level department is probably a topic at some point. And now that I think about this even a little more, maybe an initial topic about the structure/organization of our government might be good. Gathering all of the mission/vision/values of each department and highlighting some of the work each department is involved in. How long has each department/cabinet seat been around? What % of the federal budget goes to each department? A quick civics lesson to start us off.
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Well, no better place to start than the foundation.

November's topic for discussion is both past and present: an overview of the Cabinet-level Departments of the United States government. Please join in to discuss the formation, finances and function of the:

Department of State
Department of the Treasury
Department of Defense
Department of Justice
Department of the Interior
Department of Agriculture
Department of Commerce
Department of Labor
Department of Health and Human Services
Department of Housing and Urban Development
Department of Transportation
Department of Energy
Department of Education
Department of Veterans Affairs
Department of Homeland Security

...including the now superseded Department of War (then Army, Air Force and Navy, and now Department of Defense) and Department of the Post Office.

 
I should have voted more than once.  :kicksrock:

I don't have anything to add here.  There are others who are much more versed in the inner-working of cabinet positions.  So, I will simply follow along.

 
hagmania said:
Well, no better place to start than the foundation.

November's topic for discussion is both past and present: an overview of the Cabinet-level Departments of the United States government. Please join in to discuss the formation, finances and function of the:

Department of State
Department of the Treasury
Department of Defense
Department of Justice
Department of the Interior
Department of Agriculture
Department of Commerce
Department of Labor
Department of Health and Human Services
Department of Housing and Urban Development
Department of Transportation
Department of Energy
Department of Education
Department of Veterans Affairs
Department of Homeland Security

...including the now superseded Department of War (then Army, Air Force and Navy, and now Department of Defense) and Department of the Post Office.
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We need to get rid of 3 of them: education, energy, and um...I can't think of the third one....oops.

 
hagmania said:
Department of State
Department of the Treasury
Department of Defense
Department of Justice
Department of the Interior
Department of Agriculture
Department of Commerce
Department of Labor
Department of Health and Human Services
Department of Housing and Urban Development
Department of Transportation
Department of Energy
Department of Education
Department of Veterans Affairs
Department of Homeland Security
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[Mr. Burns]

Eggggselent!

[/Mr. Burns]

 
I randomized into the Department of the Interior. After spending 15 minutes more than I have ever spent reading about the Department of the Interior, I already feel like an expert.

This was a good idea, me. Good job.

 
The Department of State was the first cabinet position formed by the new government under Washington.  You can go to wiki to find out about the history of the department, but the important thing I would focus on is the fact that it was the first department.

Coming out of the revolution and forming a new country one of the most important things that the United States needed was international relations with other countries.  From those relationships you gain allies and trade.  Going all the way to the initial problems of the colonies, the colonists were not given fair representation to the royal court, and when the colonists and the colonial governments would send "ministers" to the King to be heard, they were not treated as we would treat an ambassador.  It resulted in our new nation not having a backbone of diplomats that could work with foreign leaders and their governments.

Frankly, we only had four - John Adams, Benjamin Franklin,  Thomas Jefferson and John Jay.  

The State Department started with a ton of domestic powers simply because the new government was forming, but over the years it has become the central administrative and diplomatic arm of the executive branch for foreign relations.  The Secretary of State is one of the most important jobs in our government for those and other obvious reasons.  It's made all the more clear by the order of succession to the office of President which goes from the President, to the Vice President, to the Speaker of the House (the people's most direct representative as leader of the popular branch) to the Senate pro tempore President ( the stand in for the Vice President in leading the Senate and as a result the next most powerful leader of the people through the legislative branch) and then the Secretary of State.  

It's an important distinction.  If we assume that there a massive catastrophe that required us to get to the SecState (war, cylons, etc.) then our leader would be the one that all other countries interacted with, whose leaders had some kind of relationship and who would be in the best position to project American leadership to the world in the midst of chaos.  To be fair, it's also first among cabinet positions because it was the first cabinet position, but it was first because it had to be.  America needed to be seen as a viable country on the world stage. 

On a daily basis, most voters probably don't give this office the respect it deserves or the full appreciate for the power and prestige that it has.  We seem to think that our President is our chief diplomat and he/she will just talk with world leaders and that the SecState is little more than a bench coach for foreign affairs.  But that isn't correct.  Far too few people vote for President with an eye on who could be the SecState in that process.  The easiest and best way for the United States to project power to the world is to have an effective SecState.  That is who deals with foreign governments on a daily basis.  And while our system has a Vice President, in terms of effective exercise of power, the SecState is probably the second most important executive branch officer, after the President.

 
hagmania said:
I randomized into the Department of the Interior. After spending 15 minutes more than I have ever spent reading about the Department of the Interior, I already feel like an expert.

This was a good idea, me. Good job.
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Good trivia note - the Dept. Interior was formed - basically - because President Polk was so good at his job that the country grew so fast and so westward that the State Department wasn't big enough or staffed enough to deal with everything while also dealing with foreign affairs.  

 
Yankee23Fan said:
Good trivia note - the Dept. Interior was formed - basically - because President Polk was so good at his job that the country grew so fast and so westward that the State Department wasn't big enough or staffed enough to deal with everything while also dealing with foreign affairs.  
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I just read this! The Department of the Interior was the first Cabinet-level position formed after Washington's initial Cabinet. As I understand it, it became the "Department of Everything Else" for a while, taking on such oversight not only of Indian affairs and public parks, but also of patents and the Census.

 
It's really weird to me that the Bureaus of Indian Affairs and Indian Education roll up to the same Secretary as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the US Geological Survey.

Like, kind of insultingly weird to me.

 
As I head out for the day, I'll leave with a question that I really should know the answer to but don't.

These Departments were all formed with duties in mind, and the President fills out their seats best that they see fit. They execute the Legislative's newly written laws and carry out Executive orders. So, now, these people are plugged in and have a mind for policy as well. What authority for policy do the different Secretaries actually have? Please, hold my hand for this one.

Edit: I guess what I'm asking is more along the lines of - do their decisions carry the same authority as if the President had made them? Are they only bound by their personal judgment and the other two branches of government? Or do they have more bureaucracy they have to work through than what I'm describing in my previous statement?

 
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hagmania said:
As I head out for the day, I'll leave with a question that I really should know the answer to but don't.

These Departments were all formed with duties in mind, and the President fills out their seats best that they see fit. They execute the Legislative's newly written laws and carry out Executive orders. So, now, these people are plugged in and have a mind for policy as well. What authority for policy do the different Secretaries actually have? Please, hold my hand for this one.

Edit: I guess what I'm asking is more along the lines of - do their decisions carry the same authority as if the President had made them? Are they only bound by their personal judgment and the other two branches of government? Or do they have more bureaucracy they have to work through than what I'm describing in my previous statement?
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If I'm understanding your question, I think the answer is they are free to do whatever is in scope of their agency. I'm sure they mostly carry out the President's agenda and have to do so within the confines of the United States Code and Executive Orders.

 
Something that's informative that some people may not know about is the Federal Register. New proposed rules are added every day. For example, today the Coast Guard posted their desire to establish a security zone for the upcoming Super Bowl in Miami. And anyone can comment on the proposals!

 
hagmania said:
Edit: I guess what I'm asking is more along the lines of - do their decisions carry the same authority as if the President had made them? Are they only bound by their personal judgment and the other two branches of government? Or do they have more bureaucracy they have to work through than what I'm describing in my previous statement?
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As a general rule the agencies are directed with implementing the laws passed by Congress.  So Congress will pass a law to alter the level of mercury in the water supply and then pass it to the EPA to decide what that level should be.  When the EPA promulgates the regulation it can be challenged in court, and the court will go through two questions to determine if the regulation is valid (the Chevron test):

1) Did Congress give the agency the authority to pass this regulation?

2) If so, is the regulation contrary to law or arbitrary and capricious?

If the answer to question 1 is yes and question 2 is no, then the regulation basically has the force of law (except it’s easier for future administrations to change).

 
hagmania said:
It's really weird to me that the Bureaus of Indian Affairs and Indian Education roll up to the same Secretary as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the US Geological Survey.

Like, kind of insultingly weird to me.
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I think it's interesting to see how things are organized within the Executive Branch and I also think it's interesting just to see some of the bureaus/agencies/offices that exist. I had no idea there was a Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

In this vein, here is my DYK for this thread for today: Did you know there are 13 government agencies who have statistical activities at the core of their mission. The 13 principal statistical agencies (by Department) are:

  • USDA

    National Agricultural Statistics Service
  • Economic Research Service

[*]DOC

  • Census Bureau
  • Bureau of Economic Analysis

[*]DOE(ducation)

  • National Center for Education Statistics

[*]DOE(nergy)

  • Energy Information Administration

[*]HHS

  • National Center for Health Statistics

[*]DOJ

  • Bureau of Justice Statistics

[*]DOL

  • Bureau of Labor Statistics

[*]Treasury

  • Statistics of Income Division (within IRS)

[*]DOT

  • Bureau of Transportation Statistics

[*]Independent Agencies

  • National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (within NSF)
  • Office of Research, Evaluation, and Statistics (within SSA)

There has been talk for a while about whether they should all be consolidated into one statistical agency. Other countries have a single agency that deals with all of the stuff that the above 13 agencies do in the US.

You might also not know about Data.gov. A site that gathers tons of official government datasets from the above agencies and other agencies into one place. A big challenge for all the data the government has and shares freely is how to how to make it easy for data users to find and use.

 
hagmania said:
Well, no better place to start than the foundation.

November's topic for discussion is both past and present: an overview of the Cabinet-level Departments of the United States government. Please join in to discuss the formation, finances and function of the:

Department of State
Department of the Treasury
Department of Defense
Department of Justice
Department of the Interior
Department of Agriculture
Department of Commerce
Department of Labor
Department of Health and Human Services
Department of Housing and Urban Development
Department of Transportation
Department of Energy
Department of Education
Department of Veterans Affairs
Department of Homeland Security

...including the now superseded Department of War (then Army, Air Force and Navy, and now Department of Defense) and Department of the Post Office.
Click to expand...
Bump - this will provide some good reading material over the next 6 weeks as the holiday slowdown hits our office.

 
Somehow this topic won the voting but hasn't generated a ton of discussion.

Anyone know about how the various agencies are funded? For example, I know most are funds that are appropriated by Congress. But, I also know the Highway Trust Fund is used to fund a decent amount of DOT work. One result of that is that many DOT workers keep working during the big government shutdowns because their funding is in place. They have their own potential shutdowns at different times, although I'm not familiar with that ever happening.

Are there other special funding sources?

 
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