> The left has an extremely consistent view of the administrative state. They want it to exist as a quasi-fourth branch where the president doesn’t have full authority to turn those agencies into an embodiment of their personal will.
Yes, and many people don't want the administrative state to exist as a quasi-fourth branch. As someone who now runs a business with multiple lines of business in heavily regulated areas, you basically have three problems.
First, what does the regulator think the law says.
Second, what administrative actions has a regulator occupying the position previously done.
Third, what does the law actually say.
The administrative state has very real issues between the first and second points. In particular, the ability for an executive to do things like "imply" greater investigative actions may be taken for engaging in certain lines of business effectively means that laws can be selectively reinterpreted to achieve political aims.
An obvious example of this is Operation Choke Point from the Obama presidency. To this day, it makes obtaining MSB bank accounts for handling things as simple as payroll quite difficult. The administrative state is a very real issue for a nation governed by laws.
Certainly it’s not a system without flaws, but I think it beats congress in specific situations. Congress is where corporations literally write the regulations in a system of unlimited legal bribery and insider trading.
Operation Choke Point was an example of a failure but it’s surrounded many successes.
You’re a business owner so you have a certain perspective. My perspective as a consumer is that consumer protection agencies in the administrative state are the only entities that actually seem to make tangible enforcement efforts to protect me from people like you (or at least, much more powerful people like you - people like Mark Zuckerberg).
The FTC is the one that sues businesses like Ticketmaster for antitrust violations. The FBI is the one that catches my politicians breaking corruption laws. Meanwhile, the judicial branch is the one that took away my right to reproductive healthcare and expanded the criminal immunity rights of the president.
> Certainly it’s not a system without flaws, but I think it beats congress in specific situations. Congress is where corporations literally write the regulations in a system of unlimited legal bribery and insider trading.
> You’re a business owner so you have a certain perspective. My perspective as a consumer is that consumer protection agencies in the administrative state are the only entities that actually seem to make tangible enforcement efforts to protect me from people like you (or at least, much more powerful people like you - people like Mark Zuckerberg).
What enforcement efforts do you believe help you? Specifics are helpful.
> The FTC is the one that sues businesses like Ticketmaster for antitrust violations. The FBI is the one that catches my politicians breaking corruption laws. Meanwhile, the judicial branch is the one that took away my right to reproductive healthcare and expanded the criminal immunity rights of the president.
So first: the FTC under Lina Khan has not been performing well, and notably lost their suits. Second, it's the DOJ suing Ticketmaster, and the DOJ is actually won their Google suit, and seems to be poised to win against Ticketmaster and RealPage, which I'm rooting for.
And to address your points regarding the judicial branch: this is why laws are so important. People tend to treat elections as red vs blue, but the reality is that depending upon administrative agencies to legislate a contributing factor to what allows such tribalism to exist at all: a perception that progress on "issues", however minor, is permanent outside the bounds of congress can be made. To change the laws of the country, it must come from the seat of power: congress.
Yes, and many people don't want the administrative state to exist as a quasi-fourth branch. As someone who now runs a business with multiple lines of business in heavily regulated areas, you basically have three problems.
First, what does the regulator think the law says.
Second, what administrative actions has a regulator occupying the position previously done.
Third, what does the law actually say.
The administrative state has very real issues between the first and second points. In particular, the ability for an executive to do things like "imply" greater investigative actions may be taken for engaging in certain lines of business effectively means that laws can be selectively reinterpreted to achieve political aims.
An obvious example of this is Operation Choke Point from the Obama presidency. To this day, it makes obtaining MSB bank accounts for handling things as simple as payroll quite difficult. The administrative state is a very real issue for a nation governed by laws.