[QUOTE=El Cid Viscoso]
Think about an Intel bigwig taking a few years off to manage a Santa Clara school district. Would he run the thing like a business or would he keep cranking out a half-assed community outreach?
[/QUOTE]
The latter, I hope, if those are the only options. A public-service agency is not a business and should not be run like one.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
A public-service agency is not a business
[/quote]
Why?
WHY?!!
[QUOTE=El Cid Viscoso]
Not just top officials, pay each position competitively. Accordingly, school executives get executive fucking wages.
Think about an Intel bigwig taking a few years off to manage a Santa Clara school district. Would he run the thing like a business or would he keep cranking out a half-assed community outreach?
As for altruism? Professionally, that shit’s a bad trip.
[/QUOTE]
Great idea. We could pay our soldiers a basic wage plus a bounty for each scalp brought in.
[QUOTE=David Simmons]
Great idea. We could pay our soldiers a basic wage plus a bounty for each scalp brought in.
[/QUOTE]
Don’t be silly, a scalp goes for thousands on eBay. You’re making some kind of horrible joke, right?
[QUOTE=El Cid Viscoso]
Why? WHY?!!
[/QUOTE]
Because its purposes are entirely different and not profit-oriented.
[QUOTE=El Cid Viscoso]
Don’t be silly, a scalp goes for thousands on eBay. You’re making some kind of horrible joke, right?
[/QUOTE]
Are you objecting because an ordinary soldier might make thousands? Why? Isn’t the idea that those who do the job best make the most money and the more money the more the incentive?
Of course the troops might start fighting over who’s scalp it is but what the hell, it’s a dog eat dog world, or vice versa.
[QUOTE=elucidator]
Well, there is Blackwater, who provides mercen…ah, professional security for the Bushiviks in Iraq. A fairly recent start up, and doing rather well by all accounts. One can do quite well, it would seem, if one provides a needed service.
[/QUOTE]
And has the political connections to write blank checks.
I’m astonished by the number of posters who state plainly that “Congress has no oversight power” with regard to the executive branch. That would come as a surprise to most of the people on Capitol Hill. Congressional committee have for decades been holding “oversight hearings” in which they call forth members of the executive branch and ask for information on the operations of their agencies.
Oversight, in the federal government, does not mean “supervision.” It means the power and the right to be informed about the workings and activities of executive branch agencies in order to determine whether any legislative action is necessary to cure administrative problems.
[QUOTE=acsenray]
Oversight, in the federal government, does not mean “supervision.” It means the power and the right to be informed about the workings and activities of executive branch agencies in order to determine whether any legislative action is necessary to cure administrative problems.
[/QUOTE]
This is not the general definition of “oversight,” nor is it the definition apparently used in the OP. You also overstate your case to the point of being incorrect – i.e., legislative action is not availalbe to “cure administrative problems” other than by referring illegal activity for investigation and/or using the carrot/stick approach to budgetary issues in order to effect the change Congress would like to see. Neither constitutes direct “oversight” of the executive branch by the legislative branch.
[QUOTE=Jodi]
nor is it the definition apparently used in the OP.
[/quote]
This isn’t apparent to me at all. “Congressional oversight” with respect to the executive branch is a term used on a daily basis on the hill and in political news reporting and it’s the most obvious connotation to be applied to the OP. Is there any evidence that the OP was talking about a different kind of oversight?
“Legislative action” to me means nothing more than “exercise of legislative (congressional) authority,” which, most often means “enactment of statutes.” I don’t see how stating that “Congress may exercise congressional powers” (which is essentially what I said) is in any way “overstating” the matter.
Many statutes (perhaps, the bulk of them) are aimed directly at the funding, authority, scope, operations, power, etc., of executive agencies. Often, such legislative action is taken in response to perceptions (on the part of the legislature) of some deficiency in executive funding, authority, scope, operations, power, etc. Statutes also routinely demand reports from executive agencies that have been granted powers through “legislative action.”
In addition, there are also the less-frequently-exercised functions of the legislature, such as impeachment and removal. This is also legislative action, and I doubt it would be taken in a case in which the legislature did not believe there was a problem that needed to be cured in the administration.
In the language of the federal government and political journalism, this is exactly what “legislative oversight” means.
[QUOTE=Jodi]
This is not the general definition of “oversight,” nor is it the definition apparently used in the OP. You also overstate your case to the point of being incorrect – i.e., legislative action is not availalbe to “cure administrative problems” other than by referring illegal activity for investigation and/or using the carrot/stick approach to budgetary issues in order to effect the change Congress would like to see. Neither constitutes direct “oversight” of the executive branch by the legislative branch.
[/QUOTE]
Legislative action is also available to redefine executive officers’ duties, abolish offices and departments, create new ones, reorganize their relationships, change their rulemaking procedures, change their operating procedures, and countless other things.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Legislative action is also available to redefine executive officers’ duties, abolish offices and departments, create new ones, reorganize their relationships, change their rulemaking procedures, change their operating procedures, and countless other things.
[/QUOTE]
All presidential powers other than those defined in the constitution arise from legislative action and can be changed by congress in any way that seems desireable to at least 2/3 of the members and the president can’t do a damned thing about it.
Congressional oversight is clearly a term of art with which Snow is familiar. His statement that congress has no oversight (thereby implying the term of art) is, in context, simply incorrect. As many here have shown, Congress has plenty of oversight implied by express oconstitutional grants of power. Where terms of art are concerned, dictionary definitions are not going to apply.
So, apparently today the White House is claiming that the vice presidency is NOT a part of the executive branch.
Please, someone come forward and argue that this is the case…
OK (ahem)
Really, there is no underlying crime here, and there is no actual Constitutional text relative to the question. The Vice President performs functions that in no wise are similar to those of the President, it just so happens that the VP becomes President if the President dies. He has no executive powers, only such that are delegated by the President, who is at liberty to delegate to anyone - he is not required to constrain himself to the Executive Branch. So there is no controlling legal entity to determine in what branch, if any, the Office of the VP resides.
Damn, that was tough! Typing that part about not having any power, almost wet myself…
[QUOTE=elucidator]
OK (ahem)
Really, there is no underlying crime here, and there is no actual Constitutional text relative to the question. The Vice President performs functions that in no wise are similar to those of the President, it just so happens that the VP becomes President if the President dies. He has no executive powers, only such that are delegated by the President, who is at liberty to delegate to anyone - he is not required to constrain himself to the Executive Branch. So there is no controlling legal entity to determine in what branch, if any, the Office of the VP resides.
Damn, that was tough! Typing that part about not having any power, almost wet myself…
[/QUOTE]
Well the method of electing the Vice President was originally specified in Article II which establishes the executive branch. That was superseded by Amendment XII and that specifies the election of the President and Vice President as a pair. It sure looks to me like the obvious plan of the framers was that the VP was an executive officer. A sort of supernumerary president ready to step in should anything happen to the president. Sort of like the guy that used to follow the flag-bearer ready to step in when the original got shot.
It’s all academic now anyway. Bush has said he didn’t intend the order to apply to him or Cheney.
You can claim to magicly divine the intentions of the Founders, but the fact remains that there is no such textual support. Hence, the notion that the Vice President falls under the Executive is one of those penumbra things, shadowy at best. The Constitution makes no mention of Cheney, the only reference is a note from Madison to Hamilton: “Al, really, can’st thou not convince Thom. Jeff. not to scratch his cheny with my quill pen, he knows I shan’t use it after such a vulgar rubbage, shan’t even touch it, have it burned, more like…”
I did not have trouble finding an official government site (.gov) that lists the Office of the Vice President under the Executive Branch.
Of course, it didn’t say “the Vice President.” It said the Office of the Vice President. So technically, the Veep might have us.
And it didn’t mention Cheney by name…
Tony Snow was wrong.
From a May 3, 2006 news story:
This is, of course, an old news story, but more info is available at the website.
Each branch of the government has a way of having some control over the other two branches.
[QUOTE=elucidator]
He has no executive powers, only such that are delegated by the President, who is at liberty to delegate to anyone - he is not required to constrain himself to the Executive Branch.
[/QUOTE]
Anyone to whom the president delegates executive authority is by that delegation a member of the executive branch. The president does not have the power to create new extra-constitutional branches of government.