Trump kills NYC congestion pricing

It used to be you could simply say you were against fraud waste and abuse without submitting a resume with infinite references.

So when Elon Musk wipes out US AID he claims he got rid of waste fraud and abuse, because he thinks it's a waste to pay for foreign aid. That's a debate worth having, but conflating the alignment of government spending with your values and getting rid of fraud is disingenuous.

No.

First of all, we have agencies that handle that. You know, as in people who do this for a living and therefore understand what's actually involved in these decisions. There is no reason whatsoever that the President of the United States would be personally involved in any of this, and there is no evidence Biden had anything to do with it.

So no, "Biden" didn't approve anything. 

My position is; the fact that the federal agency that handles this approved it gives us good reason to believe the program met the criteria that would have otherwise caused it to be denied.

What I'm arguing is that my ideological opponents do not fall in line with their own stated position. That's what hypocrisy means, and I've repeated that point over and over and over again in this conversation.

You did get the last part right though. A hypocrite is someone who does have a flaw in their character, that's why the word carriers weight.

This is merely hair splitting (no offense, Lex) based upon your ignorance of the fact that the head of the DOT is a cabinet level position who serves “at the pleasure of” the POTUS. If the DOT approved the congestion tolling program under Biden, it is structurally the same as Biden himself approving the program, whether the president in question chooses to tweet about it or not.

This is merely hair splitting

based upon your apparent ignorance of the fact that the head of the DOT is a cabinet level position who serves “at the pleasure of” the POTUS.

Allow me to clarify which hair is which: when I say “your position” on this matter, I mean the position which you impute to small government conservatives— which is YOUR opinion regarding how conservatives should view the matter

The difference between a political decision and a procedural decision is not hair splitting. The basis of the decision is the very thing that often determines whether it is proper or not.

A manager decides to award a contract to Party A because they're the best suited for the job - Proper. 

A manager decides to award a contract to Party A because their spouse owns the company so they can benefit personally - Corruption.

A  federal judge rules against Party A because their position is found to be in violation of the constitution - Proper

A federal judge rules against Party A because he belongs to an advocacy group and thought this would be a great opportunity to advance his cause - Improper

This isn't hair splitting.

A president of the United States determines that a traffic program is an improper use of federally subsidized roads - Procedural and therefore Proper (setting aside why the hell would a president involve himself personally in this decision, especially after it has already been made and the program already took effect)

A president of the United States decides to cancel a city's traffic program because he decided the program was not best for the city even though the local officials who were elected to deal with these very problems determined otherwise - Political and therefore Improper (if you believe in states rights and small government)

This isn't hair splitting, and if it were Biden personally interfering in a red states affair's in this exact way you wouldn't need me to write a 20 paragraph thesis to get it.

If it were proven that Biden was in regular contact with Jack Smith and personally instructed him to file charges against Trump would you have any issue with that, or would you be lecturing all the right wingers on how the DOJ servers at the pleasure of the president?

If I am wrongly interpreting how conservatives have been appealing to states rights and small government all these years, the way to address that is to explain how conservatives view the matter and explain how these two things are different. You haven't even attempted to do that, all you've done is strawman my arguments and now claim I'm misrepresenting the right.

New York can do whatever it wants with its transportation as long as we aren’t paying for it. That’s my take.

free transit would be a start. If you are so desperate to get people to take a train or subway, how about you make admissions to the subway free? How about you clean the subway system to ensure that people are safe while riding the subway.

NY is one of the country's top donor states, and most of that comes from NYC

And how do you propose cleaning the subway system upon many other fixes the system desperately needs after wiping away the billions of dollars the MTA takes in every year in fares?

Complete and total bullshit.

You downplayed my argument as mere hair splitting, so I responded with 2 sets of contrasting examples explaining the significance (the opposite of hair splitting) followed by reemphasizing how the same logic of those two examples applies to the example at hand.

8 paragraphs in response to your one sentence talking point rebuttal all for you to tell me I didn't respond to what you said. That's absurd.

No, you really didn't. Your response was to simply point to "subject to federal approval" as if that ends the conversation. It doesn't, because you're appealing to something you yourself don't believe.

you're appealing to something you yourself don't believe.

The topic of this conversation isn't whether the government has the right to cancel the program, we're talking about whether it is right. So repeating over and over again that the program was subject to federal approval does nothing to address the topic of this thread.

If Biden had tweeted his approval over his DOT approving congestion tolls, that would mean what to you exactly? 

Well, if he ended the tweet with "long live the king" I would have definitely taken issue with that.

Putting on my small government states rights hat, I would not have been the least bit concerned over the Biden administration approving the program because approval means allowing the state to carry out its own solution to its own problem. It's when you deny it that there is legitimate concern, depending on the reason why you denied it. For an extensive dive into why that is, see my last post.

A president of the United States determines that a traffic program is an improper use of federally subsidized roads - Procedural and therefore Proper (setting aside why the hell would a president involve himself personally in this decision, especially after it has already been made and the program already took effect)

Yet you are crying foul over this possibility and wondering why small government conservatives aren’t calling this out.

No. You didn't read the example. Note the bold.

The toll into NY from Jersey and into Queens from the Bronx was up to $16 the last time I crossed them. The congesting pricing toll in lower Manhatten is $9. This is a terrible argument.

Also that's not even price gouging. Price gouging is when you inflate the cost of something as a means of exploiting people for profit.

You are the one who asserted that the structural hierarchy of an agency reporting to a president means there is no difference between that agency making a decision and the president making that decision himself. So all I did was adopt that same logic to the justice department. If the logic holds then it doesn't make a difference whether we're talking about prosecutorial independence because according to your stated argument there is no such thing.

My gripe is that republicans are hypocrites. This example is a clear indication of that.

Not hard to understand.

The topic of this conversation isn't whether the government has the right to cancel the program, we're talking about whether it is right. So repeating over and over again that the program was subject to federal approval does nothing to address the topic of this thread.

Maybe if you could construct a syllogism or even a polysyllogism making your case clearly. So far, you have hollow accusations and ipse dixit (ie “because I say so”) fallacy.

The courts will decide if this was proper procedure or not. Not you or me. 

I've laid it out step by step multiple times in this thread. But if P's and C's is what it will take then here it is;

P1: Conservatives champion the principal that the federal government should be small and allow states to figure out solutions to their own problems

P2: A president of the United States deciding that it is his role to impose his will with regards to an American city's local affairs is a blatant violation of the principal of P1

C1: Conservatives should be against the actions described in P2

C2: Conservatives failure to reconcile the contradiction between P1 and P2 is hypocrisy

The purpose of discussing issues such as this in a debate forum is to provide and defend your opinion. If all you're going to do is appeal to legal authority then you have nothing to contribute to this thread, and as far as I am concerned only further demonstrate my point. I somehow suspect that if a democratic president decided to assert himself into a red state's local affairs in this way you would have very strong opinions about it, but on this you have nothing.

Perhaps they wish for no federal subsidies in most cases?

Ok. I just don't take this explanation as genuine, I take it as an ad hoc. Again, Trump made clear why he was intervening and it's not for any reason that gives the federal government the power to step in.

Again, this is a meaningless tautology. 'The government can step in here, so if they do there's no violation of state sovereignty'. This argument can be used to justify every federal encroachment of state sovereignty there's ever been. For decades we heard repeatedly when it came to abortion is that it should be left up to the states, that it was a violation of state sovereignty to force every state to allow it, gay marriage as well. Well the SC had the constitutional authority to decide otherwise, so no violation.

I've already explained why the price gouging argument fails.

My accusation is mostly based on Trump's own words. That's not bias, it's basic logic.

And I provided a definition which refuted your explanation.

As Devil's advocate: technically, choices and options nullify the standard for price gouging. For example, if somebody charged you 20 dollars for a gallon of gas, but you could get it cheaper a few miles away, it doesn't meet the standard for gouging. If you are the only station within 100 miles, that would probably meet the standard due to lack of realistic choices. The position of New York is that there is a choice, you can use the subway, or we can charge whatever we want for use of the roads. That's your choice. Now, maybe a court will look at this and declare a subway option to be separate, but NOT equal to a highway choice. Who knows?

so the motive and procedural basis behind the DOT disapproval is obscure and esoteric and not easily examined by the layperson. But Trump tweeted about it, so it must be wrong.

What is pivotal here is the presence of a federal subsidy, making the program “subject to federal approval.”

If Trump’s tweet is “genuinely” pivotal to your argument, you should have incorporated it into your syllogism

Literally every state constitution in the union includes a clause that says the state constitution is subject to the US constitution,…

so according to your logic the very concept of states rights and small federal government doesn't exist since it's all subject to whatever the federal government says.

He literally said in his tweet that "all of New York is SAVED".  I don't understand why you need that in a syllogism to understand that that has absolutely nothing to do with the reason the government is in a position to deny the program.

You pretend you're arguing in good faith but this just isn't serious.

the toll program is subject to federal approval because there have been a number of projects on various roads in lower Manhatten that have received federal subsidies.

Even accepting your premise, that's still irrelevant. This is, once again, a local solution to a local problem. If you believe in small government it is not the job of the president of the United States to "save" residents of a city from the governing solutions of their local elected leaders.