[ExI] question for it hipsters

[The Avantguardian]

On Friday, October 17, 2014 2:55 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 3:55 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
>
> 
>>OK then, they establish that they have absolute power, outranking the legislature, the courts and the executive branch.  We are likely to see a big swing in power in the next few years.  It looks like a disaster waiting to happen, with all these guys looking for revenge and being handed power from their predecessors.
>
>
>### They are one of the most hated branches of a widely distrusted organization and they don't have direct control over the apparatus of coercion (army, police). In a shakeup, every one of them can be swept away in a week, if they piss off enough people with more direct access to the sources and levers of power. And, filth as they are, they are cunning weasels with decades of experience in bureaucratic institutional warfare. I predict a continued, uneasy truce between the various branches of the state, with nobody's heads rolling and nobody really grabbing a much bigger chunk of the power pie. 

I wish I could be that copacetic. Lately there has been this trend of POTUS's naming "X"-Czars to wield unsupervised constitutionally ambiguous power. Our latest POTUS has just created an "Ebola Czar". This seems to be a bureaucrat of ill-defined power and undisclosed pay grade to be effectively "in charge" of ebola whatever that means. Am I the only one who finds this disturbing? How many Czars do we have? How much are they paid? And what have they been up to?
 
Stuart LaForge
 
"We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring." - Carl Sagan