Brian Cook
@2ndadminstate.bsky.social
330 followers 170 following 1.3K posts
Tinkering with the Constitution has failed. The American commercial republic must be reconstructed. Professor Emeritus of Public Administration & Policy, Virginia Tech. Constitutionalism and administration, administrative ethics, environmental policy.
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Here is the essence of the American republic’s dilemma. Those with considerable wealth and control over productive assets do not necessarily need a regime of self-government to sustain their lifestyle and wealth-generating pursuits. But the republic needed them if was to prosper over time.
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Trump losing the public on immigration is the moment to strike, and recapture the center, not the moment to pivot to health care. www.offmessage.net/p/make-john-...
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This is a huge scandal, one of the worst in modern law enforcement and something that is astoundingly unconstitutional and illegal.
I see two non-existent officials. There is no Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States. Unless Article II has been amended and I missed it.
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The fact that not only is the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is still increasing, but the *rate of CO2 increasing* in the atmosphere is still increasing is true nightmare stuff.
“[Last year] CO2 in the global surface atmosphere increased by 3.5 ppm, the largest one-year increase since modern measurements began... This increase was driven by continued fossil CO2 emissions, enhanced fire emissions and reduced terrestrial/ocean sinks… which could signal a climate feedback.”
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I was casually acquainted with him pre-CNN as "Harry J. Enten," a precocious polling-nerd kid. He was data-driven then.

Prediction markets are repackaged conventional wisdom and are half vibes. It doesn't make them false - but it's disinformative to present them in the same format as hard data.
CNN is covering prediction market odds from an online casino as if it’s actual polling data
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I'll add that the President's "Standing Authorities" as commander in chief do not in fact authorize the violation of federal criminal laws—including those on murder.

To the contrary, Article II of the Constitution imposes a duty upon POTUS to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed."
Please add mass fire to the effects of detonation in or above urban areas. The initial thermal pulse ignites practically everything in a wider radius than the blast effects by creating its own local weather that feeds the fire.
The US tried patronage, and then rejected it for so-called neutral competence, which still is the default normative basis. But experts aren't neutral. There are disciplinary biases, agency biases, and administration is inherently political. New thinking is required.
When we have an opportunity to rebuild it, we will need a different normative basis than neutral competence. I've proposed several possibilities over the past 30 years, but the question is what normative foundation for the civil service will be most broadly acceptable politically. Not sure yet.
To Protect and To Serve, I guess?
"Though tear gas was classified as a chemical weapon in 1993 and banned from use in international warfare, law enforcement officers are still allowed to use it on civilians in the United States."
maybe it is time for that new public to emerge from this crisis, and for "a fully inclusive polity [to form] a strong constitution of its own."
the reformation." I agree with your argument that a constitution is useless if one segment of the polity rejects the progress toward full inclusion and trashes the law and constitution in the process. We should enforce the constitution we have! But . . .
If you will permit me one last point, after rereading the last five pages, there is a slightly more hopeful message anchored in John Dewey's views, "that a public [will] form that [is] both strong enough to break with old forms and resilient enough to accommodate a more fully inclusive polity in
My skeletal summary doesn't do the book justice. You wouldn't find everything in it to your liking and that's okay. I also think what you are saying is kind of a version of where he is. Maybe.
The Mayor of Casterbridge is Thomas Hardy’s best, with a final page revealing the life lessons and true strength of who proves to be the heroine.
can no longer work. Everybody has retreated to the constitutional text. But the Constitution is not, cannot be, the solution to this problem. We are stuck at this crossroads so to speak, with only bad responses being advanced. He doesn't offer a way out.
His main thesis is that as the US has moved toward expanding inclusion, it found ways to work around the constitutional obstacles to that. But those work arounds always had some groups still excluded from full constitutional protection. Now that we've gotten close to full inclusion, the old formula
My book proposing a big structural change still has validity but now I’m really starting to rethink it after reading Stephen Skowronek’s new book, The Adaptability Paradox. Finding agreement on ways to cooperate across structural divisions is key. The Constitution is not the solution to a puzzle.
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Indeed so. The only major effort was to repair the Electoral Count Act. Important - but reforms to the National Emergencies Act, the Civil Service Reform Act (to bar Schedule F), the Insurrection Act, etc., should not have been out of reach.
Congressional Dems and the Biden admin should have put more effort into passing post-Trump reforms. We need more aggressive reform than what was on offer then, but it could really have helped
Memo to folks hoping to put in place robust reforms after the fascist nightmare ends —
Please add this to your list of targets for real reform: www.americanbar.org/groups/publi...
Situation awareness is a really underappreciated responsibility, especially elusive in business it would appear.
Despite its flaws, one of the very good things about the New Deal public philosophy was the expansion in who deserves public honors from individuals enriching themselves to public servants and collective endeavors. Now like so much else, we’ve retreated from much of that to our cultural detriment.