Monday, January 30, 2017

Cato on the refugee ban

I generally agree with the libertarians on most issues so let me add this link from the Cato Institute: "Five reasons Congress Should Repeal Trump’s Immigrant & Refugee Ban."

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, we wouldn't be in this predicament (I think) if Mr. Phone and Pen hadn't decided to run roughshod over traditional executive limitations, while liberals cheered him on.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, we wouldn't be in this predicament (I think) if Mr. Phone and Pen hadn't decided to run roughshod over traditional executive limitations, while liberals cheered him on.

Obama - 275 executive orders in 8 years
GW Bush - 291 in 8 years
Clinton - 364 in 8 years
GHW Bush - 166 in 4 years
Reagan - 381 in 8 years
Carter - 320 in 4 years
Ford - 169 in 2.4 years
Nixon - 346 in 5.6 years
LBJ - 325 in 5+ years
Kennedy - 214 in ~3 years
Eisenhower - 484 in 8 years
Truman - 907 in 7.7 years
FDR - 3,522 in 12.3 years
Hoover - 968 in 4 years
Coolidge - 1,203 in 5.5 years
Harding - 522 in 2.5 years
Wilson - 1,803 in 8 years
Taft - 724 in 4 years
T. Roosevelt - 1,081 in 7.5 years

Oh, that Obama! Did this expansionist egomaniac have NO respect for executive norms?

Roger Bournival said...

You're forgetting the many times Obama's either did end-runs around congress and / or ignored laws he didn't like by not enforcing them. Nice try, bunky!

Anonymous said...

And those are things, it goes without saying, that Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, LBJ, Kennedy, Eisenhower, Truman, FDR, Hoover, Collidge, Harding, Wilson, Taft, Roosevelt and the rest of the gang never, ever, ever did.

Executive power was so smooth for 220 years, before that nasty ol' Obama came along and "ran roughshod" all over the virgin snow, which is why responsibility for Trump's use of the expanded power that he never would have had belongs to one man: Barack Obama.

It's hard going cold turkey off your Obama nightmare juice. I know that. But if and when you dry out, name the five most egregious, narcissistic, imperial acts from Obama's reign of unprecedented lawlessness. And then we can look at the list of presidents above, and see whether it's possible to find a single executive order, or congressional end-run, or unenforced law that was even half as bad.

And then it will be beyond all dispute that conservative criticism of Obama's uniquely autocratic record was true, sincere, and proportionate.

Roger Bournival said...

So, now you can provide me with five examples of the same from all the presidents you named. If not, go fuck yourself.

Anonymous said...

Concession accepted.

Eric said...

I don't have the resources here in the office to compare executive orders on "quantity versus quality." We do have this as a benchmark: "Obama Has Lost In The Supreme Court More Than Any Modern President."
http://thefederalist.com/2016/07/06/obama-has-lost-in-the-supreme-court-more-than-any-modern-president/
Now let's weaponize the IRS and then claim "not a smidgen of evidence." Good times.

Anonymous said...

Another way of presenting the identical data set:

FDR-- lost about 320 cases (in 12+ years)
Truman-- lost about 165 cases
Eisenhower-- lost about 160 cases
Nixon-- lost about 95 cases (in 5 1/2 years)
Reagan-- lost about 95 cases
Clinton-- lost about 90 cases
Obama-- lost about 90 cases
Bush v.2-- lost about 75 cases
Johnson-- lost about 70 cases (in 5 years)
Carter-- lost about 65 cases (in 4 years)
Kennedy-- lost about 50 cases (in 3 years)
Bush Classic-- lost about 45 cases (in 4 years)
Ford-- lost about 40 cases (in 2 1/2 years)

To clear that up, losses per year:

FDR-- approximately 27 cases lost per year
Truman-- approx. 20
Eisenhower-- approx. 20
Kennedy-- approx. 17
Nixon-- approx. 17
Ford-- approx. 16
Carter-- approx. 16
LBJ-- approx. 14
Reagan-- approx. 12
Bush 1-- approx. 11
Clinton-- approx. 11
Obama-- approx. 11
Bush 2-- approx. 9

The progression of that second table, with only Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush out of their chronological place, tells a story.

For obvious reasons, "Obama, Bushes, Clinton and Reagan have roughly equal Supreme Court failure totals" is not a headline that Cato or the Federalist are interested in running. Not that batting average is a worse stat to use than totals. It's just the stat they unsurprisingly preferred to emphasize.

Just as with the Federalist article, this kind of analysis necessarily defines all federally prosecuted cases as "the president's," and includes those cases that are not especially germane to the political philosophies, emphasized polices or personal reputations of each president. The number of SC losses that actually stung each president, or reflected poorly on his legal overreach, is much lower.

In some of those cases, the federal government was represented on both sides, as plaintiff and defendant; we must rely on the data sifters' acuity and fairness in their assessments of whether those decisions counted as wins or losses for the president. Many cases began under one president and reached the Supreme Court under another. Complications like these make the Federalist's interest that Clinton's numbers "pipped" GW Bush's by 3% a little silly.

Anonymous said...

Correction:
"Obama, Bushes, Clinton and Reagan have roughly equal Supreme Court failure totals" - should be "rates."