White House Circulating Draft of Executive Order On Cybersecurity 94
New submitter InPursuitOfTruth writes with news that the Obama administration has been circulating a draft of an executive order focused on cybersecurity. This follows the recent collapse of an attempt at cybersecurity legislation in the Senate. According to people who have seen the draft, the order would codify standards and best practices for critical infrastructure. That said, it's questionable how effective it would be, since participation would be voluntary, and the standards would be set by "an inter-agency council that would be led by the Department of Homeland Security." The other agencies involved would include NIST, the DoD, and the Commerce Dept. "It would be left up to the companies to decide what steps they want to take to meet the standards, so the government would not dictate what type of technology or strategy they should adopt."
Executive Orders vs. Checks & Balances (Score:5, Interesting)
On the other hand, the complete usurping of the very principles of enumerated and separated branches of gubmint in order to prevent abuse and provide for accountability.
Re:How about some basic guidelines? (Score:2, Interesting)
You make too much sense, especially regarding the manufacturing. Our manufacturing base is dead and gone and if we are ever to regenerate economicallly it will be when we begin making things again...
Re:I'd like what you're smoking (Score:2, Interesting)
in 1929, Herbert Hoover actually implemented many of the Tea Party recommendations in an attempt to prevent the national debt from growing as the federal government's income revenue shrank.
That's absolutely false. Hoover never cut taxes (which is Keynesian incidentally), spending, or the deficit. He increased all three. In 1932, he proposed increases in spending. Roosevelt mocked him and ran on a balanced budget platform. In 1932, Roosevelt was the Tea Party candidate. Once elected, Roosevelt rebranded Hoover's programs as the New Deal and implemented them, abandoning his campaign promises of a balanced budget.
It's true that the economy showed some signs of recovery at that time. It is not clearly established that the New Deal programs were helping rather than hurting. Another thing that Roosevelt did at the same time was to drop the gold standard. This helped compensate for the Fed's massive decrease in the money supply in the 1929-33 period, which caused deflation and unemployment. Our understanding of economics is not advanced enough to clearly say what the effects of each were. There are wildly differing estimates of how each change affected the economy. Some economists believe that the Hoover/Roosevelt fiscal policy helped and some that it hurt. Same thing for dropping the gold standard.
Personally, I believe that it was the monetary policy change that was positive. Roosevelt continued Hoover's fiscal policies. It was in monetary policy that he made changes. Therefore, I think that it makes more sense to credit positive results to the monetary policy changes than to the ongoing fiscal policy.