Some of this sounds great - term limits on congress, a measure to reduce the revolving door effect of government officials going into lobbying.
Some of it sounds ridiculous - for every new federal regulation, 2 existing regulations must be eliminated. How is that considered feasible by any rational person? It might sound great if you don't think too hard about it.
The scariest things for me are the backing out of climate change accords and the opening up of additional shale/gas/etc resources. We really don't need to be heading in that direction, energy-wise.
There's a lot of room to wonder about his trustworthiness given his record as a businessman, but even in this document, he doesn't address campaign finance reform. Congressional term-limits just consolidate power in the moneyed elites--the problems is not just the politicians, it's who corrupted them. If anything, this is a document to passify those moneyed interests who, unlike say Sheldon Adelson, worry about a Trump presidency.
Everything I've seen so far suggests Trump isn't what blue-collar voters ordered for.
Funny, that "if one created, two removed" was a law imposed by a Principal Software Architect to me and my team regarding apps and apis as part of a rationalization program. "If you create this new API, make sure to remove at least two". I have to say, after two years there, that helped a lot to reduce redundancy and complexity. But well, apps and api are not the same of public policies... who knows.
But "aim for simplicity" is a good enough rule by itself, which isn't further enhanced by some "2 for 1" heuristic.
On top of that, "regulation count" is not a natural category, since one regulation can specify an arbitrary number of things. If you replace A) No smoking and B) no littering with C) No smoking or littering, have you changed anything substantive? You have not.
Regulation complexity, of course, is a natural category, but it's hard to measure before the fact and doesn't lend itself to easily-applied "follow for a guaranteed reduction" rules.
The difference is that you operate in a cooperative environment(well, most of the time) within your team. The president operates in an antagonistic environment by default - even if Congress is controlled by the same party, the two sides of government(executive/legislative) are supposed to keep each other in balance.
Yes and more specifically Washington DC, the home of the regulators, voted 92% for Hillary. So Trump needs very hard rules that aren't open to interpretation AT ALL to have any chance of them actually working.
> Yes and more specifically Washington DC, the home of the regulators, voted 92% for Hillary.
Washington D.C. may be where regulators work (though some of that is outside the District), but regulators are a very small share of the population. The vote in D.C. has little to do with regulators (it has a lot more to do with race, but even saying it was solely about that would be oversimplifying.)
In my mind, refactoring public policy is going to be like refactoring business processes in enterprise code.
The perception is that all these "horrible" duplications and inefficiencies exist.
The reality is that the duplications are actually slightly different business cases that are are difficult or impossible to generalize (it was easier to copy/mutate) and that seemingly irrelevant code has potentially far reaching and damaging consequences (oh, that was important?)
The essential problem is that we look at these individual lines of code instead of realizing that they grew as part of a dynamic system.
Refactoring code isn't a good analogy.
Try refactoring DNA.
It becomes quite tragic (or hilarious) when teams try to simplify such systems and instead end up breaking lots of business process that was ugly, but worked.
DNA/evolution is orders of magnitude more messy than that, but it gets things done more safely and efficiently than some refactoring efforts I've seen.
The goal isn't like APIs: to preserve efficacy with a smaller set of tools. The goal is to literally make the government less capable of leading on things like healthcare reform and climate change.
Check who the Trump campaign says is going to be leading the switchover of the EPA. I think I know where most of the slashed regulations are going to come from.
The US code is 22 million words. [1] is a good visualization of it. I'd wager there are tons of redundancies that could be refactored. That being said, I'd also wager that careful refactoring is not on DJT's mind. More slash-and-burn the parts he doesn't like.
The US Code is law, not regulation, and so is completely irrelevant here. What you want to cite is the Code of Federal Regulations, which is much larger than the U.S. Code.
Of course you provide no reason at all except an unsupported assumption to believe that the size of the completely wrong thing that you cite is an indicator of unnecessary complexity, and the fact that you cite the completely wrong thing is a pretty good sign that you have zero knowledge of the domain from which to form a judgement.
I spoke in generalities. You are absolutely correct. I have no claim to being an expert or even a layman. What I do know is that once a description of any thing exceeds a certain threshold, there are bound to be redundancies. Think of it in terms of codebases for large softwares. The Linux kernel is approaching 20 MLoCs. I'd wager heavily on there being a different architecture delivering the same functionality with less code to describe it. Proving it would be a tremendously hard task, far outweighing any gain from such a bet.
"If this rule needs to be broken, then bring me a proposal for why" is a good addition. The idea should be to swap the default to less-complexity rather than more-complexity. If more is less, then it should be possible to write a succinct justification for it.
Is campaign finance reform really that big an issue, considering Trump just proved it's possible to win an election without any big money or support from special interests?
Well the story to me is basically: money plays a gigantic factor and allows you to win elections, because it gives you exposure.
You can beat that moneyed system if you happen to be an eccentric billionaire, who happens to have been a household name for decades, who will say anything, racist, misogynistic, hateful, lies and false promises, to get the exposure to get elected despite not paying for it.
Just about anything else and you need money to get exposure, get on television, get yourself in the spotlight. He just didn't happen to have needed money to get exposure, but that's an exception, in exceptional circumstances, and limits potential candidates to those with exceptional media/wealth backgrounds. That's not a model that makes sense to sustain.
I disagree. I would argue that his campaign proved otherwise.
Promising to never accept special interest money, only to go on to actively seek out and take it a mere months later, proves that it's necessary to win in an election.
He has demonstrated something dangerous. It is dangerous to dispense bigotry from the highest office in the land. It has consequences. It gets people hurt and killed. The consequences are foreseeable.
Trump railed against the system that allowed politicians to be bought. It turns out his solution is to term limit congress. Sounds like treating a symptom not the root cause.
so what, then let's offer solutions and try to get them enacted? why all the armchair bitching on this site as if everyone is an expert just because they write code? what he did is nothing short of monumental and he WANTS to help America. If everyone is so damn smart then get involved and suggest changes. It's not like he's a fucking robot that is going to sit back and count how many marble statues he has in his garden!
Want money out of presidential politics? Make everybody run using only the presidential-campaign fund. You know, that one that you check the box on your tax return to give a couple bucks to?
As for Congress, we also already have a good fix, we just never got around to passing it. Congressional politics are full of money because the districts are too large, on average. The districts are too large because in the 50 states, with 320 million people, we have only 435 voting members in the House of Representatives.
The solution is more Representatives and smaller districts; when you don't have to run a campaign in multiple expensive markets across a broad area, you don't need as much money (and can get to know your constituents better).
And it turns out... there's a constitutional amendment for that.
Way back in 1789 when Congress met for the first time after the Constitution went into effect, they submitted twelve amendments to the states. Ten of them were ratified quickly and became what we know as the Bill of Rights. The other two were not ratified by enough states, and were mostly forgotten.
Today, it's common for Congress to put a time limit on an amendment, saying it has to be ratified within X years or it's dead. But back then they didn't do that. So in 1992 a random university student discovered one of the two "forgotten" amendments and that it was still legislatively "live" -- it would take effect if enough states ratified them. He campaigned hard and got the amendment (which says any increase in salary for members of Congress doesn't take effect until after the next House election) ratified, as the 27th amendment.
The other one is still sitting out there, and would become part of the Constitution if enough states (currently, 27) would ratify it. And it changes the formula for how many Representatives there are, and how they're apportioned. The original text of the Constitution set a cap on the size of the House of Representatives, at one Representative per 30,000 people. The apportionment amendment would raise that to 1 per 50,000, and the version passed by the Senate would require increasing the number of Representatives as the population of the US grows.
So if you want real change in Congress, campaign to get the House of Representatives enlarged. There's even already an amendment available to help you, if you can get it ratified.
Sounds like a good thing then to filter out non-universally good ideas and a great measure to make it harder to buy politicians. Gov needs to do less, not more.
It'll definitely make it harder to buy (a meaningful number of) politicians. It'll also filter out bad ideas, but I'm afraid it'll also filter out the good ones. After all, there is research (which I'm too lazy to look up right now) that shows that as the size of a committee grows, their output tends towards mediocrity. But I dunno, perhaps mediocrity is what we actually want in government? (Not being sarcastic.)
> So in 1992 a random university student discovered one of the two "forgotten" amendments and that it was still legislatively "live" -- it would take effect if enough states ratified them. He campaigned hard and got the amendment (which says any increase in salary for members of Congress doesn't take effect until after the next House election) ratified, as the 27th amendment.
A minor correction to this fascinating story: according to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-seventh_Amendment_to_th...), Gregory Watson, a UT Austin student, discovered it in 1982. The significance of the year 1992 (in this connection) is that that's when it actually became part of the Constitution.
Are you under the impression that campaign finance reform is a new issue brought up minutes ago on this forum, and hasn't been extensively researched with proposals before?
In the spirit of your comment, I'd like to suggest a massive income raise for elected federal officials. The leader of the free world makes something like $400k / year. If we were willing to give them more, it might reduce the temptation to take so much from lobbyists, and perhaps save us a lot of money in the long run. If I'm wrong, it won't cost much in the scheme of things anyway.
Yes, for example one of the first things he talked about in his victory speech was helping out the inner cities. He must not know that there are high populations of black people in those areas.
You're missing the incumbent bias. It's well known we prefer the devil we know to the one we don't--even if we objectively have good reason to dislike the incumbent.
Which is to say if, after electing someone to office, we immediately 1) forgot we voted for them, and 2) became completely unaware of their continuing existence and actions in office only then would elections be truly a sufficient substitute for term limits. Otherwise, given the choice, enough votes will be cast to keep the incumbent in office just because he/she is familiar. The thinking seems to go something like: well, that's the name I recognize, and hey, the world hasn't come to an end in the past few years, so... why not. Let's just keep 'em. Versus this other person who might do all kinds of things I can't foresee and may not like.
But of course incumbent bias is still dependent on the candidate not being unpopular.
I can see arguments for term limits, particularly in positions where the composition of the electorate means the other major party isn't likely to seriously challenge the governing party's preferred candidate (usually the incumbent) which makes their position very safe indeed.
But anti-corruption isn't one of them. Arguably, from a point of view of anti-corruption, the incumbent needs the special interests a lot less than the new challengers...
Well let us be honest here. Electing politicians hasn't exactly been doing us that much good. If anything we have learned we cannot accept their word at all.
I am of the opinion that politicians corrupted themselves by selling their ability to shape the laws that govern the country and decide who is punished and who is rewarded.
So then what's your alternative? Would you prefer a system without politicians? What kind of system is that?
We must elect trustworthy politicians, we must make it harder for big money to interfere, and we must have faith in our government. It's hard for me to say right now, given our current president-elect, but it's true. There truly is no good alternative to democracy.
Your comment reminds me of the following famous quote by Winston Churchill.
"Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." -- Speech in the House of Commons (11 November 1947)
There never is, until the first time. If nobody tried to do things that haven't been done before, there would be no progress.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." ~~ George Bernard Shaw
I'm sorry, but that sounds like the kind of thing an edy 18 year old would say.
It has nothing to do with reddit, and everything to do with rose-tinted glasses, since you still haven't given me an example that could serve as an inspiration. Words in a book and italicised quotes are great, but not how the world functions unfortunately. For ezanple, I'd introduce a worldwide carbon tax tomorrow and make preventing further climate change priority number one at the expense of just about everything else. One of my favorite environmental scientists, stephen schneider always used to say that we should never let the perfect get in the way of the good.
As much as we'd like to believe otherwise, virtually ALL progress is incremental. Technological AND societal.
since you still haven't given me an example that could serve as an inspiration
I'm sorry, why should I feel obligated to give you an example? Like I already said once, there are no examples of something that hasn't been done... yet. So your repeated request for something that isn't required strikes me as kinda pointless.
You're thinking of Greg Egan's idea of "Stateless", the illegal biotech'ed island. In that story, the technology and the island defends egalitarian principles and organized 'no-ruler-ship' (anarchy).
I certainly think anarchy could work, if the underlying technological stuffs were the enforcers of equality.
While any such system would obviously be a radical change from our current system, such systems do exist both conceptually and historically, and it's not just stateless societies. The most obvious example is sortition, whereby officials are selected randomly. Again, applying that everywhere overnight is obviously radical, but the idea is fairly sound. It's how jury duty works in the United States, and it's how Athenian democracy (mostly) worked.
That this is how jury duty works doesn't inspire me with a lot of confidence.
Case in point: A couple of weeks ago, a jury acquitted the Bundys after they'd occupied a federal building and used threat of lethal force to keep federal authorities from evicting them. If you'll pardon my snark, this is what happens when you turn jurisprudence over to a handful of rednecks.
Along very similar lines, modern-day politicians make decisions affecting (in some cases) millions of lives and trillions of Dollars. The issues they decide on are complex, and ideally we'd want lawmakers to really work at their "trade:" To deeply study the issues and consult competent experts. Our current crop of professional career politicians, some of whom are evolution and warming deniers heading up education and environmental/energy committees are spectacularly failing to live up to this expectation, and there's no good reason to believe a selection of people randomly chosen from the population would do better, on average.
This is not unlike how an opposing party will criticize a bill based on its number of typed pages. The thump of a couple of inches of paper on a podium makes for great and reductive theater. It's likewise naïve to consider the number of regulations to be a direct barometer of the goodness or badness of regulation in general. Next we'll see the refactoring of existing regulations into smaller or larger components to affect their numerological residue.
Wanton numerological regulation slashers should be wary of Chesterton's Fence[1].
On the scale of meaningfulness, this idea is somewhere between the Dow Jones Industrial Average and middle school kids playing with margins, spacing, and font size to satisfy a teacher's page-length requirement.
The actual Tacitus quote doesn't really serve your argument. It's "The more corrupt the government, the more numerous the laws." -- you've got it backwards.
Complexity is one thing (although it should be obvious that complex domains often require complex descriptions). But number is arbitrary.
Suppose there exists a set of three distinct regulations regarding ways to safely manufacture a drug, and a dangerous new process is invented for which there is wide consensus that a new regulation is required. Which two of those first three should be discarded? Must every new regulation be weighed in arbitrary relative value against every other possible combination of two regulations in that subject matter area? That department? The country? By reductio ad absurdum, the cut-two-to-add-one rule means that the ultimately correct number of regulations is one. And if it's not one, then there must be some higher "correct" number of regulations at which point the subtraction rule would no longer apply.
Your argument seems to be "whatever that number is, surely it's lower than what we have now". How is that number decided and by whom? Subject matter experts? Voters weighing ballot options written by government officials? Does the number somehow fall or rise to make room for new needs judged important enough? If so, by whom? Is one complex regulation better than ten simple ones? Are ten simple ones more "corrupt" than one complex one?
Unfortunately there's no obvious way to apply a tree-shaking algorithm to the full body of regulations, other than to have humans look at a rule and all agree that the "blue dress on Sundays during harvest" rule can be scrapped. And Chesterton's fence makes many of those judgments risky. So now we're back at politics.
The other thing is that presumably it's easily circumvented by dressing up multiple distinct regulations as a single new regulation.
If you make a habit of making regulations long and multifaceted because scope to pass new ones is limited, it probably becomes easier to bury terrible ideas in amongst things people actually really want to pass.
That I completely agree with, there's a lot of lobbying done to obfuscate regulations and tax code for that reason, and it should be dealt with. I was merely pointing out that it's not just a binary issue, like the proposals in the .pdf suggests.
> Sure, but the priority order should be: complexity,length,number.
I think that, of these three, reducing complexity is the only one to which we should directly aspire; reducing the length and number of regulations is, I think, helpful only to the extent that it reduces, or at least doesn't increase, complexity.
Completely agreed. That and reducing ambiguity. On the whole Increasing both length and number is perfectly acceptable if doing so reduces complexity and ambiguity.
Much like with code really. Your cleve 2 line function is really clever, but most of the time the easy to read 30 lines and 3 function version if probably better.
I agree. I hope that some version of this process is implemented and that it will change government from how it currently operates: adding layers of regulation upon layers, to a process with iteratively improves regulation--weeding out the out-dated, the irrelevant, the imprecise, the ineffective, and replacing it with improved, timely, precise, relevant, effective regulation. So we end up with a regulatory base which is more comprehendible, manageable, and relevant.
This scheme is vulnerable to the same sort of gerrymandering game we play with districts. It provides no definition or guideline on the size or shape of a (presumably atomic) regulation. It's a meaningless bullet point.
How do you guys deal with re-factoring code? Imagine a codebase that has been largely additive for 100 years.
While the "+1 minus two guideline" has plenty of shortcomings in the long term, there is lots of low hanging fruit now, and it's an important mindset shift.
Guys, don't just add LOC. Refactor, clean it up and make it better. Remove blocks we don't use anymore.
Government is strongly limited by time. There's a hard ceiling on the amount of things that can be proposed, debated, and voted on within a term. Consequently, if there are things in the statute that are no longer used it's often better to simply ignore them than to spend precious time in the house arguing about removing them. It might only take 5 minutes to call the house to order, have someone stand up and say "We don't need a law banning witchcraft any more" and then have a vote where the result is a foregone conclusion, that's 5 minutes that the government isn't doing something useful that will actually impact people's lives.
The repeal of pointless old laws comes up relatively often here in the UK. Some of our laws are really old - the government was talking about repealing some that were passed almost 750 years ago recently http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-30334812
>>>Government is strongly limited by time. There's a hard ceiling on the amount of things that can be proposed, debated, and voted on within a term. Consequently, if there are things in the statute that are no longer used it's often better to simply ignore them than to spend precious time in the house arguing about removing them.
That is exactly why all laws should have sunset rules built into them.
We should have listened to Thomas Jefferson who wanted all laws, even the constitution itself to expire every 19 years
I think we programmers are ahead here - the general public needs sometime to think this over. The "+1 - 2" rule looks like a good start for opening the discussion.
Then again there were 3,378 new fed regulations totalling 81,611 pages in 2015. It can be counter productive if the new regulations are so voluminous that no one has time to read them.
I ran into problems along those lines in the UK buying some stuff in Spain. Apparently "don't money launder" translates in to a 1 ft high stack of EU regulations that no one understands. I'm not convinced they are hugely better than the three word version.
> Some of it sounds ridiculous - for every new federal regulation, 2 existing regulations must be eliminated. How is that considered feasible by any rational person? It might sound great if you don't think too hard about it.
It may look similar on the surface but Trump's proposal is nothing like the Canadian red tape reduction laws. The latter are focused on reducing the administrative burden of demonstrating regulatory compliance but it does not impact the regulations themselves except as a last resort. The vast majority of the time, compliance can be streamlined to offset the extra cost of new regulations. What Trump wants to do is cut regulations he and his supporters are ideologically opposed to while framing it as his public service meant to benefit small business owners.
Edit: Also note that in the preamble it specifically says "Canadians and small businesses." This law does not impact, for example, environmental or safety regulations for real estate developers or utilities. Trump will almost certainly try to cut EPA regulations but something like the Canadian law would never allow that.
And this law actually started in British Columbia as "repeal 2 for every new regulation". It does seem like it could be useful as a short term policy, if Congress can't find any way to agree on directly repealing unnecessary regulations.
Don't worry, if they can't make up their minds I'm sure plenty of bright, helpful, and well-dressed citizens will come out of the woodwork to advise them as to which regulations aren't needed anymore.
The UK government actually tried this back in 2010 with a website. I think the top rated repeal suggestion was "end paid maternity leave", and eventually the website was quietly closed and never mentioned again.
> It does seem like it could be useful as a short term policy, if Congress can't find any way to agree on directly repealing unnecessary regulations.
Regulations are issued by the executive branch, not Congress (repealing regulations is actually done by issuing regulations specifying the regulations to be repealed, so the process for repeal is the same.)
Well, from reading a few articles, it seems like this has worked pretty well in Canada so far, so I think it's at least worth talking about. Gotta try to look for some positives here.
Sounds like the meaning of the executive's order to 'repeal two for every one new' could be decided within the executive branch, then. And since everyone within the executive branch is responsible to the chief executive … maybe it could even work.
Is that true? Regulatory bodies get their authority from congressional legislation. Can a president unilaterally tell the bureaucracy to stop doing what they are mandated to do by law?
In the general case, though, a lot of legislation gives the executive wide discretion as to the details of regulations, and so the president can direct his subordinates to change regulations however he wants, within what the law allows.
E.g. with a budget example the Congress might want to subsidise cantaloupe farms, and budget $100,000,000 for cantaloupe farmers, to be allocated 'as the Secretary of Agriculture may direct.' The president would be within his rights to order the Secretary of Agriculture to only allocate that money to cantaloupe farmers with a total net worth of under $1,000,000, or to give no more than $100,000 to any particular cantaloupe farmer, or (possibly — this one's a stretch) to prioritise farmers of the famed Golden Lucy cantaloupe before all others. But he can't direct that the money be spent on rutabaga farmers.
Similarly, if the Congress writes a law which gives the pertinent executive department some latitude, the President may order that department to exercise that latitude however he likes.
Moronic metric chasing. They'll just make regulations longer and more convoluted so that a single regulation has the same amount of text as 3 or even 4.
I had a variation of that for my household, except it applied 1:1 ratio, and only for shoes. For every new pair of shoes purchased, one old pair had to go out the door.
Who knows how many outdated regulations are still on the books?
It seems the thing to do would be hire interns to start scouring for every "A married woman shall not chop down a birchwood tree on the day of her wedding while wearing her bridal gown" style law.
If this idea persisted for 50 years maybe they'd have to start repealing actual relevant regulations.
> It seems the thing to do would be higher interns to start scouring for every "A married woman shall not chop down a birchwood tree on the day of her wedding while wearing her bridal gown" style law.
Sure, but how many of those exist at a federal level? Those are often city, county and sometimes state regulations.
Yes the "repeal two regulations before imposing one" is just a gimmick, but there are an insane number of federal laws and regulations that are, at best, unneeded.
Some of those can and should be consolidated - but they're not all quite as flippant as you might think. The prohibition of transport of water hyacinth, for example, is because it's a massively bad invasive species: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichhornia_crassipes#United_St...
Sure, it too should probably be consolidated - perhaps under the Lacey act or the Plant Protection Act or Alien Species Prevention and Enforcement Act. But it's not actually a dumb regulation, just an inefficient expression.
You can probably imagine that the letter carrier uniform one may have been in response to fraud. Same for the false weather reports - it's kind of useful to be able to whack someone on the wrist for publishing a hoax tornado warning.
I'm all for the idea of cleaning up our soup of regulations, but I think it's worth noting that many of them exist for a reason, and it's typically more complex than the famously silly "can't ride a horse in a dress on sunday"-type laws still found on some state books.
Putting my geek hat back on, It'd be cool if we could train an LSTM to de-dup laws... ;) But I guess in the meantime there are interns.
Sometimes it is comparatively easy to effectively ban a certain kind of fraud attempt, whereas actual success of the attempt would be impossible to prosecute because the victims can only be victims when they not even notice any wrongdoing. Not banning the attempt.
In that case, you have a choice between banning attempts, together with everything that is indistinguishable from an attempt, versus effectively giving fraudsters free reign, despite having a law that technically forbids successful execution of an attempt. Classic legal balancing act: how valuable is the freedom of dressing up as a postman compared to not having to question the authenticity of each and every on of them?
Given the staffing decisions proposed, they're probably going to be things around health care, business practice, environmental restrictions, and energy reform.
It's very difficult for States to regulate those effectively because without federal funding, they are medium term losses that inhibit growth. One of the reasons the Federal Government gets such a bad rep is because they're the one who needs to take a tough position on this.
These regulations seem completely reasonable. Several are protecting government-related insignia such as the postal uniform, and presumably serve a similar purpose to trademark law. Then you have a ban on transporting an invasive species (water hyacinth), restriction on the mailing of tobacco (often mailed to avoid taxes or tariffs), a ban on unregistered submarines (this isn't some ridiculous idea, drug smugglers have in fact used submarines to avoid border control), a ban on selling traffic signal preemption devices, ...
Some background on the water hyacinth [1]. You might have a point there. Mailing of tobacco? It is already illegal to avoid taxes and tariffs on tobacco. Why ban mailing it as well? Similarly, it is also illegal to smuggle drugs, why does the fact that someone may have done so with a submarine mean that "unregistered submarines" should be banned?
> It is already illegal to avoid taxes and tariffs on tobacco. Why ban mailing it as well?
Likely because proving intent to avoid taxes and tariffs is much harder than proving you've mailed something. I would bet it's a way to get around having complex expensive investigations for what was a common problem. Pass a law, now it's easy. You mailed tobacco? You're guilty. Case closed, problem reduced, taxpayer money saved.
I agree with much of your statement here. However, an unintended side-effect is you may end up prohibiting a lot of behavior that isn't the one you originally wanted to address and end up with an extremely broad set of laws that have the potential to be applied arbitrarily.
> However, an unintended side-effect is you may end up prohibiting a lot of behavior that isn't the one you originally wanted to address
Sure, but that's literally the case with every regulation. The point is to use them when the negatives of the behavior will likely outweigh the negatives the regulation might introduce. In a perfect world, there would be no laws, and free markets would work at peak efficiency all the time.
Now, I don't have enough information to argue authoritatively about the efficacy of this law, but based on the actual wording, where it says it's okay to do it for business as long as you've met all state and federal requirements means I think it's likely that for the most part it has little impact on individuals (who need to mail tobacco rarely) and businesses operating legally.
I would guess that it's just much easier to enforce a ban on submarines than a ban on submarines carrying drugs (it would be very easy to jettison drugs from a submarine).
Even if the concept is reasonable, it seems like these specifics should be treated as data and not their own separate law. Just have laws about trademarks, then store all the specific trademarks (including Smokey the Bear, 4-H, etc.) in the trademark registry. Likewise, there should be a law about invasive species, and a database of the actual species that are covered.
The trouble with listing a dozen very specific laws like this and considering them all reasonable is this: what if the list had 1,000 items? 10,000? And with no way to know which are the actual meaty laws (like trademark law) and which are just specific instances of said laws (like Smokey the Bear).
That's basically what the laws are. They are merge requests into the db you're talking about. It's just that there's not a good interface to the law as it stands now.
This is a perfectly reasonable law that I would not want to see repealed. Don't you agree that it's bad for people to be allowed to impersonate mail carriers? It would facilitate identity theft through rifling mailboxes, make burglary easier, etc. What's wrong with that law?
Identity theft is illegal. Rifling through mailboxes is illegal. Burglary is illegal. I don't see any particular harm from somebody wearing a postman uniform any more than say someone who wants to dress up as the UPS man. Especially for six months in federal prison.
So, is it okay to impersonate a police officer then? The USPS is a government institution, and how ur government often received and sends instructions and funds from its constituents. I don't want people impersonating mail carriers any more than I want them impersonating a police officer. Mail fraud is real, and abusing the mail for more nefarious means happens. [1][2]
> I don't see any particular harm from somebody wearing a postman uniform any more than say someone who wants to dress up as the UPS man.
You don't generally get official correspondence from the IRS through UPS. I'm fine with protecting the mailcarrier uniform. There are government expectations associated with that uniform.
First, the statute we are discussing doesn't make it a crime to impersonate a postal carrier. It makes it a crime to "wear[] the uniform [...] prescribed by the Postal Service to be worn by letter carriers". I think we can both agree there is a fundamental difference between someone impersonating a cop (who has wide discretion to order people to stop, detain them, search them or interrogate them) and someone dressing up like a letter carrier.
Second, it is already illegal to forge correspondence correspondence from the IRS. Why make people who, for whatever reason, want to dress up like Cliff Clavin subject to six months in federal prison? Similarly, I agree mail fraud is real and one can abuse the mail for nefarious means, however again mail fraud is illegal and, in respect to your example, mailing anthrax the people is also already illegal.
I suppose the problem I'm trying to highlight here is a tendency for government, at times, to create laws that are, at best, silly, and, more often, harmfully over-broad in short-sighted attempts to stop behavior that is (or can be) readily addressed by existing laws. It can lead to harmful side effects[1][2].
There's a sense in which simplifying laws merely passes the burden to the Executive Branch. It's far easier to prove that a person wore some federal uniform than it is to prove that they pretended to be a federal employee. Just imagine that you're the prosecutor and think about the difference in the amount of work you would have to do for this case. These are resources that can be used elsewhere, and as a citizen, I gladly and enthusiastically forfeit my right to dress as a mailman if it means that it will help reduce cases of fraud.
I do like the idea of simple laws, though, and I hope that a future civilization may flourish under the Golden Rule as its only law.
The ease of the prosecution proving their cases is not a higher priority to me than the feasibility of an average citizens reading and understanding most laws.
As I see it, the government's only job is to protect its citizens, and anything that gets in the way of it doing its job is counterproductive. I agree that a best-informed populace probably must also be the best-protected, but I disagree that the solution is to limit all legislation to the eighth grade level of diction. Free legal aid as a constitutional right seems like a slightly more practical alternative to me.
> I think we can both agree there is a fundamental difference between someone impersonating a cop (who has wide discretion to order people to stop, detain them, search them or interrogate them) and someone dressing up like a letter carrier.
I don't agree on any specific difference between dressing up and impersonating in general, as I'm not sure how you are defining the difference, but to my mind impersonation is likely hard to prove, and if the desire is to stop the behavior, preventing dressing up is a useful way to make sure the law is enforcable.
I do agree there is a difference in importance between impersonating a police officer and impersonating a mail carrier, but in both cases I think the base reason is the same. To keep specific expectations and abilities granted to the individual as a government employee from being abused by others.
> Second, it is already illegal to forge correspondence correspondence from the IRS. Why make people who, for whatever reason, want to dress up like Cliff Clavin subject to six months in federal prison? Similarly, I agree mail fraud is real and one can abuse the mail for nefarious means, however again mail fraud is illegal and, in respect to your example, mailing anthrax the people is also already illegal.
Because if something is routed through the mail system we have a record of it, and information regarding it's origin. If someone dresses up as a mail carrier and puts it in your mailbox, not only is that record lost, but likely nobody around will pay any attention. Some random person putting something in your mailbox may attract attention, if only because those around might think they are trying to steal mail. Which takes us to stealing mail It's harder to steal mail when you have no business in anyone else's mailbox because it's illegal. Neighbors seeing a stranger rifling through a mailbox may be likely to call thge person out or even call the police. Preventing people from impersonating a mail carrier is very useful here.
It's worth noting that other carrier services are legally prevented from using your mailbox. Your mailbox/mail slot is considered federal property. There is thus a chain of custody when things are shipped through USPS, unless someone breaks the law.
> I suppose the problem I'm trying to highlight here is a tendency for government, at times, to create laws that are, at best, silly, and, more often, harmfully over-broad in short-sighted attempts to stop behavior that is (or can be) readily addressed by existing laws. It can lead to harmful side effects.
Sure, those exist. I don't think this is a good case of that.
You're describing a fraudulent behavior which is already covered by criminal laws related to fraud.
If the goal is to aggressively double down on every single possible fraud case, where are the laws prohibiting dressing up as a forest ranger, environmental protection agent, President of the United States and various members of Congress (via those realistic-looking masks they sell before Halloween), USDA inspector, SEC controller, four-star Army general or any other government-related position of authority?
A lot of the "Why is X illegal if doing Z, which itself is X & Y, is also illegal" argument reminds me entirely of the software developer's fallacy in code reduction.
I can easily re-engineer a core business application in a couple weeks. It'll do most of what the existing solution does, will be unit tested, and easily extendable. But, it won't cover all those edge cases we've all forgotten exist and that one exception that's required for client 2 who needs red buttons instead of blue buttons and remember that time we ran into the problem where the year-end report took 3 days to run, and locked up the weekly reports because new years eve landed on a Friday which made Justin stay in the office until 2AM trying to get the database back online?
I'm not a law professor, or a lawyer, or in any way involved in law, but the similarities between a 200+ year old set of rules that govern our society and a legacy application that we can't simply turn off for 6 months why we re-engineer it to be "better, but does exactly the same thing" is frightening. We've got a piss poor track record as software developers being able to take on a massive refactor and not introduce more bugs, what the hell makes us think we can consolidate hundreds of thousands of edge cases in law and not miss a bunch of actually useful things?
"In the U.S., responsibility for food safety is divided among fifteen federal agencies. The most important, in addition to the F.S.I.S., is the Food and Drug Administration, in the Department of Health and Human Services. In theory, the line between these two should be simple: the F.S.I.S. inspects meat and poultry; the F.D.A. covers everything else. In practice, that line is hopelessly blurred. Fish are the province of the F.D.A.—except catfish, which falls under the F.S.I.S. Frozen cheese pizza is regulated by the F.D.A., but frozen pizza with slices of pepperoni is monitored by the F.S.I.S. Bagel dogs are F.D.A.; corn dogs, F.S.I.S. The skin of a link sausage is F.D.A., but the meat inside is F.S.I.S.
“The current structure is there not because it’s what serves the consumer best,” Elisabeth Hagen*, a former head of the F.S.I.S., told me. “It’s there because it’s the way the system has grown up.” Mike Taylor, the highest-ranking food-safety official at the F.D.A., said, “Everybody would agree that if you were starting on a blank piece of paper and designing the food-safety system for the future, from scratch, you wouldn’t design it the way it’s designed right now.”
And yet... when you dig into the history you often find a justified reason why the redundancy exists.
For example, the United States has seven uniformed services with commissioned officers. Can you name them? Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, typically people can get immediately. Given a moment to think, most people also come up with the Coast Guard. But what are the other two?
The Public Health Service Commissioned Corps is the sixth. Which most people kind-of get and realize that's why the Surgeon General wears a vice-admiral's uniform (in fact he is a commissioned vice-admiral -- not of the Navy, of the Public Health Service). They have a commissioned corps because part of their job is being deployed -- often alongside combatant officer corps from other services -- into emergency situations. They were organized for that duty along military lines by the first Surgeon General.
How about the seventh? Oh, that's NOAA. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. You know, the people who do the weather forecasts. They have a commissioned officer corps, and the director is a rear-admiral (again, not of the Navy -- a rear-admiral of NOAA). Why do they have a commissioned corps? Because they've historically rendered assistance to the military in situations where land and coast surveys and weather information were necessary, and commissioning them gave them protection under the laws of war (otherwise, if captured, they could be executed as spies).
Similarly, why is it that certain financial crimes get you investigated by the Secret Service and not the FBI? The Secret Service protects the President, after all, and that has nothing to do with finance. But originally they were chartered for the narrow purpose of fighting counterfeiting, back when Congress was reluctant to authorize a general-purpose federal law-enforcement agency. Then, since they had a good intelligence network across the country as a result of the anti-counterfeiting mission, presidential protection got tacked onto their charter (at that time, Congress didn't want to proliferate federal enforcement agencies). Today, they investigate some types of frauds and other financial crimes because it still falls under their original anti-counterfeiting charter.
You can literally write books about this stuff if you dive into the history of it, and you'll often find that there were good, rational, justifiable reasons for why things were set up the way they were.
You say "and yet..." but it sounds like you're just elaborating on what the GP said. Was that a disagreement?
GP's point was that redundancy has been accumulated over the years. Of course there's usually a rational justifiable reason, but that doesn't mean it's still a valid one.
Really interesting stuff on the uniformed services.
Of course there's usually a rational justifiable reason, but that doesn't mean it's still a valid one.
And yet... consider the Secret Service thing. Congress was reluctant to concentrate federal law-enforcement power in one agency. And the history of the FBI shows that may have been the right idea.
I'm not sure what you're saying. Sometimes it's valid, sometimes it's not -- are we disagreeing or does "and yet..." mean something completely different than what I think it implies?
I was speaking in general terms. You gave two very specific (and interesting) examples; among all the examples you can give, plenty of them will "no longer be valid".
How in the world can you apply that to everything on the list though? Using the 4-H logo? How is that not just a special case of trademark law? Presumably there isn't US code specifically saying that you can't use the Twitter logo (except for fair use, of course, which is fine).
Which is why DJT's ideas are terrifying. He wants to take a machete to the forest of legislation that is our government, and he has practically no idea why any of these laws were put in place.
Hmm, I don't know how many of those truly are unneeded, at least without context on why they were created in the first place.
There may have been real problems with the Water Hyacinths as an invasive or endangered species, for example. And we certainly don't want to make it legal for people to change traffic signals at will!
I had actually expected to find oodles of needless cruft and "dead code", but I'm starting to think that it might be possible that most regulation is there for a reason... who'd a thunk it!
One reform that most countries could make, would be for laws and regulations to start with a justification, and a test for outcomes that would see the law or regulation automatically become invalid if it can be proven that the outcomes are not met.
Both because it would help with the problem where people don't understand the intent of a law or regulation and so assumes they are stupid, and because it would make passing genuinely stupid laws and regulations harder if you have figure out ways to set out the intent and an "outcome test" in a way that doesn't xpose how bad it is.
A lot of laws would fall due to having been passed due to ignorance.
A lot of others would fail to pass in the first place because legislators would be forced to use legislators laying bare intent to punish based on morality rather than provable benefits to society - it's hard to get people to oppose laws where someone claims massive harm if a law isn't passed; it'd be easier to get people to oppose laws justified by a view of morality they may not share.
And even if they still pass, it provides a much clearer attack surface for people campaiging for a repeal.
But conversely it also provides a strong defense for laws with good purpose that actually work.
The question is more one of costs and benefits. Anyone can argue a regulation is useful in the abstract.
There's a lot of regulation around internet services and people under the age of 13. The primary effect of these rules has been that American internet services ask for your DoB and then ineffectively try to ban you from signing up if you say you're under 13. Do parents really need this?
To me, this sounds like a quarantine law. All countries have these, e.g. it is not allowed to transport certain meat products or other foods across German borders.
A ban on "drug subs", commonly used on the southern border these days. Gangs actually manufacture high-sea-worthy subs in the jungle.
> Yes the "repeal two regulations before imposing one" is just a gimmick, but there are an insane number of federal laws and regulations that are, at best, unneeded.
Unfortunately, you picked out the worst examples of "unneeded" laws.
Ah. I remember long ago reading an article where someone... pranked public transport with changing the direction of a railroad tramway switch - basically, right before the train would lock the switch by passing over a detector, the prankster would switch the switch, and the train had to reverse in order to switch the switch to the correct direction.
That's the kind of "prank" that's likely to kill people. I am at a loss as to how this is a prank. I understand different people have different senses of humor, but is there a context I'm missing in which it's funny?
Most of those laws are very useful and are there for a clear reason. Fingers crossed that Donald Trump and Paul Ryan are more thoughtful about which regulations to throw out.
The past few Congresses have done a good job of passing large numbers of resolutions, but the President has not been signing them into law.[1] It seems to me that the 'problem' (if you believe there should be more laws) is a disagreement between branches or obstinancy by the President.
It's both comical and sad that I think you're correct in that assessment, but only because it's been so gridlocked already, that it's just the continuation of what we know and what we know it to be pretty shitty.
It will just lead to lawmakers getting more creative about merging laws together into monstrosities that meets the "quota" without actually achieving any real change and/or that uses the oportunity to expand the reach.
I'd actually be surprised if there were many of those. Regulations are constantly being codified into the Code of Federal Regulations. It's about 175,000 pages. It's printed at about 55 lines per page, which makes it about 10 million lines. About the same size as the Linux kernel. That's big, but it's not "we don't even know what's in here" big.
The information density of federal regulations is much much higher though. It's written in a higher level language and even shells out to precedence to interpret a lot of it.
I keep seeing this mistake made over and over again. Regulations are not laws like the above, which are written by the legislature. The vast majority of regulations are written by experts in the relevant fields working for agencies in the executive branch. The legislature grants regulatory agencies jurisdiction and provides general guidance/intent but the most of the specifics are left to the regulatory body to decide.
The job of the SEC, for example, is to provide a framework for the public to safetly invest in and own parts of corporations while providing qualified investors more freedom to invest in riskier ventures. The SEC decides what financial disclosures best fulfill its job requirements and imposes fines on violators. However, the laws that actually punish executives for breaking SEC rules are written by Congress and the courts are the last step that decides whether Congress or the agency are overstepping their bounds.
Regulations as a landscape change much faster than laws and are consolidated all the time so there's a lot less cruft than the rest of our legal code would lead you to believe.
You're right, I read "USC section ..." and skipped to the description. Should have posted my rant elsewhere in the topic :)
Still though, I think it's helpful to point out that the legal nature of regulations allows them to move faster and reduce internal complexity while the legal code is mostly append only.
I'm just shaking my head at all the Hacker News armchair law professors who fervently believe each and every one of these is critical to the functioning of civilized society.
And that's why we have so much red tape. Apparently there's a type of person who can't abide not having all possible minutia of life legislated.
Heh. I'd have thought the armchair law professors are the ones claiming that large portions of US law are mistakes, not the ones saying that things are the way they are for good reason.
Also, I don't think anyone is saying that they're critical to the functioning of civilized society, just that they're not ridiculous and outdated, and that being truthful about the topic of discussion is important in a discussion. We can, and should, debate whether they're needed! But we first need to understand what arguments there are in favor of keeping them.
This is one of a large number of sections of the law that define what food products mean, for every food product on the market, and lead to a consistent UX at markets. It's not like someone passed the Turkey Ham Font Sizes Act of 1947 or something.
Trump has complained about "the FDA Food Police, which dictate how the federal government expects farmers to produce fruits and vegetables and even dictates the nutritional content of dog food."
So, expect to see corn sugar in your sodas as soon as a new federal regulation gets passed. And something else, as soon as people figure out what "corn sugar" is.
I'm not sure why I'm meant to be alarmed by "corn sugar". Sucrose is extremely unhealthy for you in the quantities consumed in naturally sweetened soda. High fructose corn syrup is "high in fructose" relative to corn syrup, not to sugar, which is itself naturally high in fructose.
More important context for the "ham" law is that the criminal penalty statute they're citing is actually meant to pair with this offenses statute:
... it captures a bunch of other regulations by reference, including labeling laws, but that doesn't mean someone passed a law saying it should be a federal crime to use the wrong font for ham.
It's a euphemism for HFCS, which is a name that consumers have slowly come to recognize, independent of the validity of either the phrases "high-fructose corn syrup" or "corn sugar". Without regulation, there's nothing preventing a euphemism treadmill for products that consumers don't want. (Whether consumers are correct to not want HFCS is tangential, since all I'm arguing is that consistent labeling is a good thing for the law to be enforcing in the general case, but for my own edification - I thought that HFCS was strictly worse than sugar, which is pretty bad; is it equal to / better than sugar?)
True. They're both simple sugars. HFCS has a higher fructose/glucose ratio than cane sugar. There are several varieties of HFCS which differ in their fructose percentage. It can be useful to know this distinction as fructose and glucose are metabolized differently.
This is mostly a misconception. Depending on the type of HFCS, it may have slightly more or slightly less fructose than table sugar, which the human body is especially adept at breaking into glucose and fructose.
HFCS is probably not significantly different from table sugar as far as human metabolism goes.
Thanks for pointing that out. The two common forms of HFCS are HFCS-42 (42% fructose) and HFCS-55 (55% fructose); the latter is generally what we find in soda.
The longitudinal nutrition studies in humans necessary to tease out the differences are difficult to perform well. I think it's worthwhile to at least keep in mind that these different sugars do have different effects on the body, especially given the levels of consumption we're seeing in the US.
Table sugar is 50%. HFCS-55 is 55%. This is not a significant difference. There is no evidence that sucrose has a different metabolic impact in humans than HFCS-55 --- any evidence would be surprising, because the human body is a ninja at separating glucose from fructose.
What is dangerous is the suggestion that sucrose is safer than HFCS; it misleads people into believing they are making a healthy choice when they drink sugared soda made with cane sugar. They are not. Sucrose in significant quantities is extraordinarily bad for you, for the same reason HFCS is!
We are in complete agreement that sugar in significant quantities is bad. I also don't see where I'm suggesting that one is worse or better than the other. I've actively worked not to make that suggestion.
The metabolic pathways are different. If you want to argue that this is not a meaningful difference given the evidence we have, that's fine. I can understand that. I clearly stated that doing the kinds of studies that would be able to show such evidence are difficult to do. Do you think this is a fair assessment? I get the impression that you think I'm trying to muddy the waters. That's not the case.
The metabolic pathway for table sugar and HFCS is not significantly different. We have an enzyme specifically designed to liberate the fructose from sucrose, and it acts at the same location --- the small intestine, which is the start of the pathway from your alimentary canal to the liver, where all fructose (whether it came from sucrose or from HFCS) is metabolized.
"The following are prohibited: (c) Cleaning or washing any personal property, fish, animal, or food, or bathing or washing at a hydrant or water faucet not provided for that purpose."
This is the sort of thing that would just be a normal rule, in a contract or something, in a privately-managed park. For a federal park, it's perfectly reasonable for it to just be a federal law.
You could also imagine a world where it's simply illegal to be in a federal park without signing a contract with the government, which would get these sorts of things out of the CFR, but that seems like it would be worse for the American people at zero benefit. And personally, I'd still call things in those contracts "federal regulations".
You could also imagine a world where national parks become privatized.
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic but in case you're not, the question is not whether it should be forbidden (e.g. by park rules) to "wash a fish at a faucet if it's not a fish-washing faucet, in a national forest" but whether there should be a law that makes such thing a federal crime.
Putting "Do not wash fish in faucet" signs up would probably go a long way. If the problem gets completely out of hand, make it a civil offense that carries a fine.
Here's the thing, though: federal lands are administered directly by the federal government. The only avenues they have for rule-making are Congressional statutes and agency regulations. There is nothing else available to them to achieve the goal of making and enforcing a rule, because that's how they're legally set up.
So to forbid washing fish at a faucet in a national park... you literally do have to make a federal law (or a regulation with the force of federal law).
This is also why they have their own law-enforcement agency (the United States Park Police): Congress was, for a very long time, reluctant to authorize a general federal police force, so many agencies have their own specific police force operating solely within that agency's jurisdiction. It also creates fun inter-jurisdictional issues since the U.S Capitol building has its own separate police force, but the Capitol building is on the National Mall, which is Park Police territory.
According to 16 USC 551, a fine is indeed what you're likely to get for violating this regulation.
The issue here is that the statute authorizing criminal penalties covers a whole range of national park regulations, some of which clearly merit stiff penalties, and some of which are just about washing fish safely.
But is it a "crime" (one that gets you a criminal record) as opposed to something like a parking ticket? This is what I thought we were arguing about but IANAL and might have misunderstood what OP meant.
It's a misdemeanor and gets you a criminal record. But so does a speeding ticket in states like Maryland or Georgia where all moving violations are misdemeaors.
> How is that considered feasible by any rational person?
It's something that sounds simple and good to someone who not only isn't aware of the details of what it would mean in practice, but also isn't aware of their own inability to understand the details and nuance, or that there are details and nuance. It was a Dunning-Kruger election.
I'm going to introduce a new concept here, the "Dunning-Kruger effect effect": people who talk about the Dunning-Kruger effect usually haven't read or did not understand the Dunning Kruger effect paper and are only putting their ignorance on display [0]. Furthermore they are also ignorant of follow up studies proving that even the original effect was just a statistical artifact [1].
The Dunning-Kruger effect effect is itself an example of Dunning-Kruger effect but given that the Dunning-Kruger effect does not actually exist in general, the Dunning-Kruger effect effect may be the only instance of Dunning-Kruger effect that actually exists.
Has it become that radical to suggest that smart, well-educated people may in fact see further into the consequences of things (particularly in their areas of expertise, but probably also peripherally), see more cognitive bias, have better critical-thinking skills, remember more mistakes from history, and all around make better long-term decisions?
Why is that even offensive to anyone? Just because of someone's personal insecurity about not having a college degree in anything? I've worked around plenty of people without college degrees (4 year vet, USAF, enlisted), they have nothing to be insecure about... except for uninformed ideas about the world (IMHO).
Is it the subtle "I got this" confident arrogance of the expert? If so, then how is that any worse than a confidence and arrogance NOT based on intelligence/education/experience? (i.e., dunning-kruger)
If the liberal doctor says you have cancer and need an operation and the conservative mechanic says it's just soreness and to take two Advil, are you going to discount the doctor because he is liberal elite, or because he is full of himself and has terrible bedside manner?
If merely getting a college education makes you more liberal (as can be seen in exit polling), does that mean that merely knowing/understanding more things has a liberal bias? Doesn't that mean knowledge itself has a liberal bias? Does that sound like a preposterous conclusion to you? Modus tollens, and all that (not that even using the language of logical discourse is valued at all).
No wonder this "anti-intellectualism spring." Election as proxy-class-war and proxy-culture-war (not to mention proxy-gender-war), that much has been made clear.
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'” ― Isaac Asimov (RIP)
Hofstadter's books on American culture and history are gems.
Broadly, the uneducated US population has historically distrusted experts and competence, preferring uneducated populists with charisma. This has generally led to the US having worse outcomes in many many areas. You can review any particular situation you know something at an expert & educated level about; usually that's in mild disarray to poorly done due to this gap between educated understanding and the electorate's choices.
This urge was understood: hence why the original US constitution had no popular vote provision for the President. It is instructive to read the rationale for the electoral college on Wikipedia.
Consequently, I'm a republic fan, but not a Republican.
I would also note that Fox News & descendants have specifically operated in a post-fact pro-opinion mode for years and years, defining the situation and the worldview of much of the uneducated populace. It lacked only a candidate to run on the Fox News/Drudge Report platform.
One could also remark that technology is inherently a political statement, and that the social media of today inherently promotes poor discourse. Elections 2016 rode in on Twitter, and disinformation campaigns flooded Facebook. It's not on Facebook to censor lies, but it's on Facebook to meditate on the modalites of media.
But, as all good nerds know, code has no politics, and politics is dirty, and politicians are liars, and politics doesn't affect them. So it's better to write code and not think about the consequences. (sarcasm, there)
Well folks, it's time to think about consequences, and ponder the events of the post-WW1 era.
Could be wise to not end up on an anti-Trump list assembled from private Facebook groups and demanded by a thin-skinned egotist.
Well, on that note, I'll be zipping my mouth on this one.
Not the GP but I just read it, and I feel like he hit the nail on the head of the smug style. I happen to identify with many of the things he mentioned. It left me at a loss about where to go forward, though.
I hold it close to my core that critical thinking skills go hand-in-hand with a brighter individual and collective future. What do I say to someone who I think is falling into the trap of a logical fallacy that doesn't sound like I know better? If I think someone is misguided, am I supposed to listen to why they feel the way they do, then ask them to consider something not as wrong? What if they hold it true as their own set of Good Facts and are not open to conversation?
Or is the point of the article that maybe I'm objectively wrong about many policies I hold dear? LGBT equality, gender equality, etc, are causes that I'm actually wrong about and I should look at the other side for inspiration, regardless of where their 'Truth' comes from?
I'm deeply saddened that I not only observe and sometimes identify with the smug left, but I also have many conversations with family and friends who I would describe in a similar article with a different bent as the angry, illogical right. What do I do to reach those folks?
I'm also worried that their way of life is actually dying, because it is dying. Their jobs, their biggest source of pride, are disappearing, and attempting to repatriate them will likely result in big business investing in capital (robots) over labor (rural workers).
I want to support a smart policy that helps them get back on their feet. Is thinking that Donald Trump likely won't be able to bring them what they seek a smug liberal policy? If so, am I supposed to feel bad about thinking it, try to convince people about it, shut up about it, or none of the above?
Additionally, I think this is the type of article that appears when both sides live in an echo chamber. Yes, this is an excoriation of the smug left, but the smug left and this article only exists if we live in our own bubbles. The thing nobody knows and everyone wants to figure out is how to break down those barriers.
When you converse with people don't just listen to tell them where they are wrong. That's the biggest issue. You already have an idea what s/he will say, so you just wait for them to finish so you can explain how wrong they are. There are feelings behind those opinions. And don't dare to tell me (or yourself) that smart people think only logically and are unaffected by their feelings. You are, so don't be so quick to dismiss people with different feelings than yours.
Listen, really listen to them and think why do they have this opinion. What feelings are behind it. This is how you have a conversation with a person and not a lecture.
Thanks for your feedback, but I'm still concerned and would appreciate some more.
I think a difference I've seen this election is between verifiable facts and debate-able opinions. I can listen and probe intently until my partners face is blue but, for example, if they believe the world is flat, there's very little middle ground we can get opinion-wise since we fundamentally disagree about the shape of the earth.
I try to be as open as possible to differences in opinions and try my best to accept conflicting evidence to my world view. But, if someone is trying to convince me of something a couple google searches could easily disprove, I end up exasperated by the discussion. What do I do there? Not trust google?
My knee jerk thought is that these folks have been misinformed by people they trust. I want to help fix that, not lecture them. The tactics dont matter as much as the result.
The biggest eye-opener for me was that I shouldn't try to convince people on the spot. Debating political and similar issues is like challenging people. This means that even if at some point they start doubting their position, they will not admit it, they will just raise their shield and double down. Continuing further will just bring resentment. You cannot teach anything to anybody. We have a saying in my country - "You can only take by force, you can't give anything by force".
This lead to rethinking pretty much everything I do. I think it can be summarized in one word - patience. I have to pick my battles carefully. I shouldn't jump to every opportunity to debate. I have to let some things go. I have to identify the good opportunities - where I can say something truly engaging, touching. Most importantly, I have to be brief. No long answers, at most just 1 reply after that. No battles, they can't be won on the spot but perhaps I will make the other party reflect on what I've said later. This means that I have be efficient, leading to thinking about the other people involved, why they have their position and how to bring to their attention that there are other just as credible positions.
A couple of quotes I find worthy:
Plato: "[...]if you talk to any ordinary Spartan, he seems to be stupid, but eventually, like an expert marksman, he shoots in some brief remark that proves you to be only a child".
Epictetus: "Never call yourself a philosopher, nor talk a great deal among the unlearned about theorems, but act conformably to them. Thus, at an entertainment, don't talk how persons ought to eat, but eat as you ought. [...] So that if ever any talk should happen among the unlearned concerning philosophic theorems, be you, for the most part, silent. For there is great danger in immediately throwing out what you have not digested. And, if anyone tells you that you know nothing, and you are not nettled at it, then you may be sure that you have begun your business. For sheep don't throw up the grass to show the shepherds how much they have eaten; but, inwardly digesting their food, they outwardly produce wool and milk".
I'm with you word for word. And on top of all this self-doubt and soul-searching, I can't help but think that, should the roles have been reversed, we wouldn't be given the same level of credit we're affording to the "angry, illogical right". As long as we're the ones who are trying our best to support all of humanity, I think our heads and hearts are in the right place - Our expression of these ideas could use work.
That's what's already happening for 25 years in my country (Russia). Even worse, liberals are much smaller group (10-20%) than in USA, but they teach everybody how to live with even more condescension.
That's why people like Putin.
So now you taste by yourself what you did to the world with too much left liberalism. Good luck with that and have your own Putin as a result.
I think it's conservatism. And by conservatism I mean not something archaic, stupid and with reliance only on tradition, like leftist think... It's motion to the same goals, only slower. People must have freedom. But too much freedom too fast always creates problems.
Each step must not make revolutions and counterrevolutions. Each step mustn't break people's minds. Each step must consider everything (not "goal for goal"). So conservatism is much more complex because you need to consider everything and with this knowledge make hard decisions, not just run to the sun with some hope that everything will be all right, like drug addicts do. For me, leftism and all modern liberalism is infantile and conservatism is for grownups.
This is a fantastic op-ed that I'm glad you brought my attention to, but I'm most of the way through it and I feel like I can almost sum it up as "Ode to the Backfire Effect"
"Trump capturing the nomination will not dispel the smug style; if anything, it will redouble it. Faced with the prospect of an election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the smug will reach a fever pitch: six straight months of a sure thing, an opportunity to mock and scoff and ask, How could anybody vote for this guy? until a morning in November when they ask, What the fuck happened?"
Wow, considering this was written in April, that ended up being remarkably prescient, eh?
Thanks for posting this great read. I think it belongs on the front page of HN, having witnessed HN's hyperbolic reaction to the election this morning.
It does an excellent job of diagnosing the American Left's political and social ills. It left out the most important part: a solution. It never actually validated either ideology nor proposed a solution beyond "make sure to respect and empathize with the other side."
I feel you never actually addressed the veracity of the parent poster's statement, just the tone. It is a valid criticism, to be sure, but I would like more.
I immediately thought of this article while reading their post. Both sides like demonizing and trivializing the other, but it's important to remember... these political parties are composed of millions of Americans. Both parties have stupid and genius members. Priorities is the only thing that separates us.
great read. one other thing that is apparent is despite this "we know better" mindset, liberals tend to operate on the emotional level (hence the name calling they resort to immediately as soon as they begin to lose an argument), whereas the republican camp typically appeals to logic.
Interesting - This is opposite my experience. The conservative party on social issues has been almost synonymous with Christian beliefs as long as I've been alive. Many discussions around modern social issues (abortion, same-sex marriage) have boiled down to being called a "sinner", which I consider name calling, and a fundamentally impossible to argue with and actually entirely based on emotion (faith). This is not a situation I have faced with all or even most Republicans, but when I have faced the situation, it was with a Republican.
An argument can be made that abortion is a form of murder without resorting to religious arguments.
Things having to do with sexual behavior are in the realm of irrational "out of the box" so to speak, trying to bring logic into the discussion doesn't bode well for either side and can lead down a long and treacherous path deep into the ontology of human psyche.
Things I'm talking about are "simpler" things like:
- gun control. most discussions with liberal anti-gun opponents end up in 2 basic scenarios: "guns are bad mmmk" or "you must be some kind of a gun-toting redneck"
- illegal immigration. this is a huge can of [il]logical blunders from the liberal side. but essentially boils down to "dis rasist".
- global warming or rather it's anthropological component. normally starts and ends by labeling the opponent "a climate change denier" no matter how adamant one is about trying to convey that this is specifically an anthro component of it that is being discussed.
- then there's the ever present "dis rasist" and "h8r" labels used every time there is a racial component to the issue. these are applied at will. don't like Obamacare (or anything Obama)? - "rasist h8r"; think the dude had a gun and not a book when a [black] cop shot him? - "major league racist"... etc ad nauseum.
there are other liberal sacred cows but these are just some of the ones talked about more often esp lately with the election and all.
An argument can be made that if abortion WAS murder, and prosecutable as murder, then every time an innocent woman had a miscarriage or stillbirth (which happens much more often than you realize), there would have to be a murder investigation (due to the possibility of the mom having induced the abortion somehow).
If the prospect of forcing millions of innocent women already suffering from a miscarriage through a trial (not to mention ALL the added cost and effort) doesn't horrify you, it should.
Secondly, over 50% of fertilized eggs never actually implant into the uterus and get washed out. If nature itself is tossing fully half of the fertilized eggs out, then a few more won't make much of an ethical difference.
>> Secondly, over 50% of fertilized eggs never actually implant into the uterus and get washed out. If nature itself is tossing fully half of the fertilized eggs out, then a few more won't make much of an ethical difference.
you saying there's no difference between a fertilized egg and the fetus 2 hrs before childbirth?
I see your point, but, based on your portrayal of your opponents, you appear to be arguing primarily on the internet. Or are you seeing similar short-sighted arguments in person with friends, strangers, family?
To be honest lately its to the point where liberals (or rather their media hate machine) painted themselves a picture of a "big bad republican" which takes any discussion down that path pretty quickly in any setting.
I'm sorry, I wasn't clear - You've had in person arguments with self-proclaimed liberals (strangers, friends, or otherwise) that all resulted in calling you names rather than continuing a civil discussion? And you have additionally not seen self-proclaimed republicans do similar?
I'm making the distinction of in-person discussions only because I do think sweeping negative statements have been made on both sides incessantly for years, but nowhere nearly as toxic or shameless as from the safety of anonymity. If that's the major source of "seeing both sides" for the public majority, seeing venomous Tweets and dismissive Facebook posts, it's no wonder that we're dealing with such a schism of understanding and fundamental respect.
In person arguments tend to be more civil, no doubt, although that also depends on the settings.
Liberal crowds tend to be passive-aggressive in general ("give us our safe space you fn bigots or we'll burn something" :) ) so these in person discussions also only work in "private" settings.
Observing this as we speak - "stupid rural whites ("hicks" from the article we're discussing) are to blame for trump's victory" type vibe in the lib news + street protests.
Right. I think we can agree here that fewer actual /discussions/ take place in support of shouting matches and veiled spite. I don't think that is constructive for anyone and, in my opinion, this is a technique cultivated by the fringes of the political spectrum made popular as well as easier than ever before.
If opinions are voiced in a respectful manner with the goal of achieving an understanding between those who think differently rather than a victory then the responses you receive are absolutely unacceptable, at least to me. I do hope you'll understand how someone can be wary to unquestionably validate generalizations about anyone, including liberals, without being provided much insight to the specific statements or situations that have preceded them. I personally respond well to self-reflection, as I find it important to keep mental context for my own emotions and motivations. From our conversation, allow me to offer some: I don't make the negative statements you've experienced but I have not dismayed them, not seeing them as equal to pain evoked from other derogatory statements like ethnic/gay slurs. Part of this is because my experience includes those derogatory statements coming from the mouths of those rural Americans so there is some "logical" motivation behind the statements being thrown back in their direction. Respect was not received, respect is not provided, and now here we are, worse off than before. Now aware of this, I will not enable a platform for those comments to be made regardless of the situation.
>>> I do hope you'll understand how someone can be wary to unquestionably validate generalizations about anyone, including liberals, without being provided much insight to the specific statements or situations that have preceded them.
Sure. But, as an example, one would have to be [intellectually?] dishonest to turn a blind eye to rampant namecalling and smear campaign tactics "the left" has employed during the elections. Don't think you need to go as deep as to analyze specific situations to see that.
The notion that a college education bestows upon the recipient liberal viewpoints is absolute rubbish. Various universities have different rates of liberalism/conservatism; major programs within universities also have great disparities.
This also fails to address the survivor's bias that perhaps those who actually can enter college may already be predisposed to liberalism due to locality and family circumstances.
To abuse the old HN gripe, correlation doesn't imply causation.
Oh wow. Mr. Taleb sure knows how to put meat on the bone.
My most salient criticism is the slam against GMO's... I've done my own homework there and I haven't found solid evidence that there is something systematically wrong with all GMO's.
I think you are over-generalizing the Dunning-Kruger effect in your strawman argument. Moreover, you might want to consider that its not intellectualism -v- anti-intellectualism but psuedo-intellectualism -v- anti-psuedo-intellectualism behind the Trump win. There is a difference.
If the hallmark of an intellectual is respect for reason, honesty, integrity and the facts then clearly BOTH sides of the political aisle are lacking in these character traits. The "Right" and Reps make no pretense to be advocates of reason since they are the religious party based on faith. The "Left" postures as the reasonable, respectable and intellectual alternative to the Right and yet they feel compelled to shut down any opposition with ad hom, smears, political correctness and, since the govt controls virtually all the scientific research, cutting off your funding if you don't toe the line. The trick is then to say "see, even science supports our positions" and to use that to advance political goals with a rigged system. This is what Ayn Rand called "The Establishing of an Establishment" in her book "Philosophy: Who Needs It" which you should read if your question is honest.
That said, I think there is certainly some anti-intellectualism on the Right and behind Trump's success (no surprise). However, I don't think the nation is awash in irrationality, racism, misogyny, etc (though that is the Left's scary, dishonest spin) and the election was, at least partly, a repudiation of the Left's posturing as the intellectual, reasonable alternative.
I have to say I pretty much agree with most of what you said here.
I am a person who tries very hard to be centrist with the hope of getting closer to some "universal truths" (my Facebook page is practically a monument to political moderation) and this is the most difficult time I've had in years of trying to do this.
Could you give some more background for the scientific research chilling effect you describe? I have heard this idea of climate research science refusing to accept alternate positions, but I haven't seen it substantiated.
I would characterize the political alignment of government employees to be as diverse as the nation's. "The government" as a liberal-partisan force seems a bit inaccurate given that the House and Senate have had Republican majorities since 2012. That said, my exposure with U.S. government employees is limited to Defense/IC; I won't discount a bias --liberal or otherwise-- in NSF or other grants programs.
Two that come to mind are nicotine and marijuana research. To be clear both sides of the political spectrum try to rig or block scientific research for political goals, so neither one has a monopoly on that, which is why I am opposed to ANY govt funding of science. Its not a proper function of govt.
The LEOs blocked research into marijuana use for pain, nauseousness, etc. for decades because they don't want to admit that they dedicated their lives to a pointless "war" on drugs and they still heavily influence what gets studied today.
The anti-tobacco scare-mongering is beyond belief. Researchers admit that nicotine is not the "most addictive drug in the world" per the propaganda, they can't even get rats addicted to it in isolation. It turns out it is nicotine plus chemicals in tobacco smoke that make smoking addictive and the cognitive and physiological benefits of nicotine are just starting to be known. The big problem here is that if research legitimizes nicotine use (even as a pill or whatever) it can threaten the cigarette taxes that many states depend on so it is opposed which is a pretty cynical way to fund your govt in my book. The "second hand smoke" hysteria is statistical non-sense pushed by the anti-tobacco zealots.
I think the climate research is politically tainted as well but I won't go into that.
> why I am opposed to ANY govt funding of science. Its not a proper function of govt.
So who should fund science? Industry? They won't fund any science. They will fund research into engineering and technology. But they won't fund basic science. Furthermore expecting industry funded research to be unbiased is like expecting turkeys to vote for a second Christmas.
How did this property of MAOIs being the addictive component of cigarette smoking become known?
(probably government-funded research)
I see your point about bias being present in grants distribution, but there is no better way that is apparent. Too liberal, and you waste money on useless research. Too conservative, and you stifle important research that has no immediately marketable use. Scientific grant administration is difficult. As to government employees being in charge of grant distribution, who else should perform this function? Where else would the funding come from? The U.S. is a world leader in scientific research due to its generous (in comparison) funding.
I think this is a good think piece about humbly accepting criticism about widely-held beliefs and not blindly believing in academic authority. Although Taleb's characterization of the IYI seems to be as broad as a horoscope, this is his tongue-in-cheek writing style.
I think the point you're making is that credentialed individuals shouldn't be blindly trusted; on the other hand, those that say that all experts are clueless are falling for the very same fallacy decried by Taleb.
That said, I appreciate your posting of this link; it was a good read (I'm not being snarky).
Perhaps you can compare it to intellectualism by considering the difference between offering up your humble opinion, and offering up your humble opinion as an objective truth.
This is true, statistically. But on the level of one person you can't make such predicaments. Software developer or rocket engineer with all their complex knowledge sometimes isn't more successful (and happy) in life than some smart businessman. Knowledge is just a part of whole thing (to be ideal ruler of the USA). May be it is 1/5.
So why people make so much hype about this 20%? Because they don't have much perspective and freedom in their mind to understand that. They just have very simple filters and Trump's lack of knowledge hits them. And now they can condescend to him and feel good.
I happen to agree with you in concept, although I'd put knowledge closer to 30% (guesstimate).
In my line of work I would say that knowledge is a third of what I need, and the rest is a mix of patience, ability to learn things I don't know, humility and ability to work well with others.
Are these the traits you would look for or something else?
And how would you rank Trump on these? (or yours, if you have others)
Yes, like this.
I don't exactly know how to express this in English. In Russian I would say that this is "good pseekheeka" which means combination of man's abilities (like in RPG).
So, it is emotional intelligence, persistence, will, ability to make friends, charisma, luck, fearlessness, high motivation, sensitivity, humility, ironic perception of the world, ability to resolve conflicts, ability to make boundaries, healthy aggression, ability to cope with your own aggression and aggression of others, ability to cope with doubts, deep understanding of other people, ability to learn things, ability to understand, ability not to divide everything to black and white, ability to break patterns in mind, lack of mind problems... etc.
You also not only need to know many complex things. You need to know unique things, and this things must create something like 3D network in mind. They must be linked with each other. The quality of this network and quality and uniqueness of facts are 100 times more important then amount of facts.
So if some liberal know many things like "LGBT is good", "aggression is bad", "people are equal" and usually they just repeat that over and over, this is nothing. They can read books, but reading by itself doesn't create links and facts that they read aren't unique. This is just something like propaganda but more subtle. They install kernel of left liberalism in their mind and that kernel controls them. They don't have ability to control it. They don't even understand that it's exist.
So if we look at this like points in RPG, I rank Trump higher than Clinton. He understands people much better so he has better emotional intelligence and many other things. He is good showman and this means that he has many social abilities. He is funny. He is businessman so he is very adequate in life. He has healthy aggression and this is good. He is more fearless. He doesn't fear to look stupid. He doesn't have much shame and I thinks it's healthy. He has charisma. He has healthy family.
The problem is that liberals sneer at other people regardless of their actual qualifications or education. No on here has presented evidence that they are more educated or qualified than Trump, and yet they are taking it for granted that Trump's view is the view of the uneducated. That is the problem.
As to the wider point that more educated people are more liberal, there is plenty of evidence that liberal views are forced on people in the education system. That doesn't mean people are liberal because they are smart. If all universities were Christian, as they once were, that wouldn't prove that Christians were smarter.
For all the reasons people do/claim to vote for Trump because of, the "he says what's on his mind, he's anti-PC" always stood out the most, when things like this come up.
* Bringing facts to the conversation isn't acceptable.
* Calling Trump out for the things he actually says and does isn't acceptable.
* Insulting Trump by calling him an insecure man-child isn't acceptable, because he'll sue.
Trump was a buffoon 2, 10 and 20 years ago, and he is a buffoon now. That he somehow magically got elected doesn't actually change that, and it amazes me what we're all willing to forget, and how fast.
Merit doesn't actually matter anymore. We'll rather elect a misogynistic, racist, incompetent, inexperienced ill-tempered man than the qualified, boring, moderate woman.
Sorry for hijacking and possibly ruining your eloquent post, but all this honestly baffles me.
> why did they allow the president to run up more national debt than all presidents prior...combined
This isn't true even on the face of it; it went up from ~10 trillion to ~18 trillion. And aside from that; the national debt exploded due to the economic collapse that happened months before Obama was sworn in. The accusation is wrong on the facts and disingenuous.
Yeah, I agree but unfortunately anyone who says that usually isn't going to be swayed in the face of objective fact. People act like the 2008 crash just happened spontaneously because Obama was elected, ignoring the shit show of the prior decade.
Yes the prior decade, starting in 1998 when Bill Clinton signed legislation that opened the financial doors which allowed the housing crisis to start. Bush didn't close that door and so it built momentum but it would not have been possible if Bill had not signed that legislation in the first place.
That actually didn't increase the debt. Most of those loans were repaid.
The money to the banks, I'm not so sure.
Don't forget Obama was handed two active wars that he had to fund. They were spending billions per day on military operations. He wound them down as fast as he could but it still took years.
>High brow smack (condescension) like that and "basket of deplorables" are what America revolted against.
Actually, the majority of Americans agreed with Hillary Clinton. She won the popular vote by over a million votes. We just use an outdated system built to appease slaveholders that does not necessarily represent the bulk will of the people. Trump won on a technicality of our (antiquated and frankly awful) system, not on a mandate.
>If the liberal left was truly smart, why did they allow the president to run up more national debt than all presidents prior...combined?
The president doesn't make the budget or handle the accounting of the US. Congress does. Guess who controls Congress? Hint, not the liberal left.
> Actually, the majority of Americans agreed with Hillary Clinton. She won the popular vote by over a million votes. We just use an outdated system built to appease slaveholders that does not necessarily represent the bulk will of the people. Trump won on a technicality of our (antiquated and frankly awful) system, not on a mandate.
While I agree that the electoral college is not the best system, we can't really know what the results would have been if the popular vote determined the presidency. Campaigns are optimized based on the electoral college and each would have been run differently on a different system. Also, voter turnout may have been different because you no longer have partisan strongholds which may discourage voting.
Not only that don't forget there's 4 million Americans who live in the US territories. They are American but don't get to vote for president because they don't live in a state or (since the 70s) DC. That's more than the population of Connecticut, for example.
> Actually, the majority of Americans agreed with Hillary Clinton
A plurality did, not a majority.
But still more than went with any individual alternative.
> Trump won on a technicality of our (antiquated and frankly awful) system, not on a mandate.
It's not so much antiquated as evil; it's designed specifically to magnify the power of voters in states with people counted for assigning representation that don't vote (primarily to secure slavery, but its continued to reward other forms of disenfranchisement since.)
The Wikipedia article indicates that simple majority may refer to majority, plurality, FPTP, or super majority, indicating no preference as to which might might be the most commonly understood.
> We just use an outdated system built to appease slaveholders that does not necessarily represent the bulk will of the people.
It may have been built with slave/free state "fairness" in mind, but even today the mechanism serves to level out the tyranny of the majority, from the states' perspective.
I fail to see how a tyranny of the minority is better than a tyranny of the majority. The current winner-take-all system must provide one or the other.
A state doesn't have a "perspective". A state is just a line drawn around a collection of people. Mathematically, a majority of states have excess power in proportion to its population. From a state's imagined perspective, it's a tyranny of the majority.
Why do you assume that the poster you're replying to is a liberal (or at least a Hillary-supporter) just because they are against Trump / Trump-supporters. You're complaining about people making condescending assumptions, while making your own.
You beat me to it. Indeed, it was a Dunning-Kruger election but not in the way that the OP meant it.
Also, following on your second point, if the Dems are so smart how could they not see that Clinton was a fatally flawed candidate. We'll never know but I think its likely Sanders would have won versus Trump.
> how could they not see that Clinton was a fatally flawed candidate
All of the people positions of power in the DNC were pro-Hillary. That's why they were blinded. Their mind was made up before the election cycle even started.
> > how could they not see that Clinton was a fatally flawed candidate
> All of the people positions of power in the DNC were pro-Hillary. That's why they were blinded.
Running a campaign vs running a country is very different, no doubt. But many will make a case there. She has dropped the ball on the election, besides other list of things vs someone won against all odds (CNN projecting less than 1% odds of winning).
The interesting thing is much as people like to say Trump is stupid, anti-intellectual, just a TV personality, somehow he had intuition to poll in the right states at the right time, to understand what people want and respond do. All that while the both the Republicans, and Democrats, the media, the DOJ and POTUS where against him.
Taking everything away and just comparing based on those things, it is possible to draw some conclusions perhaps.
I actually think it's unlikely for Sanders, but Biden likely would have won, if he had run. Many many many people saw this coming and begged him to enter the race. Biden has a bond with the blue-collar workers who fled to Trump, he has a compelling life story and is free of any clintonian scandals.
> If the liberal left was truly smart, why did they allow the president to run up more national debt than all presidents prior...combined?
Because the prez doesn't actually get a say. Congress sets the budget and the prez is obligated to pay it. If the taxes that congress sets aren't enough to cover it, the prez has to borrow the money. Given that Congress has been controlled by the Republicans for the past... 6?... years, you're barking at the wrong crowd.
Congress is in a sweet spot here, where they can blame the president for the huge debt that is congress's doing.
Oh man really? They just voted for the obviously bad candidate out of spite because mean Leftist Boogeymen were being condescending on the internet? It turns out after all that Trump supporters didn't have any legs to stand on, or any ideologies, or wishes, they were just like "you know what everyone, I'm tired of being called X, let's revolt" and that's why? Man, that's almost like the ultimate self-discredit of the movement.
> America hasn’t put its demons — including racism, anti-Semitism and misogyny — behind it. White people still make up the vast majority of the electorate, particularly when considering their share of the Electoral College, and their votes usually determine the winner.
By intentionally continuing to attempt to associate support for trump with a litany of unacceptable -isms that are the guilty burden of being white (men), he exposed the attitude that people are revolting against.
I think this is misleading. Certainly he's evidence of those things, but I don't think he won because of it.
His message appealed to people in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Yes, it's pretty sad that people were willing to vote for him despite the racism, sexism, and general demeanor. Did many really vote for that, or did they vote to get out of NAFTA and introduce protectionism under the idea that they might get some of their former glory back. They hear MAGA and think back to when Detroit had the highest average income in the country. When Flint didn't have poison in the water. It's about you first, others second. It's a powerful message, one that people who don't support trump seemed to fail to recognize under all the absolutely horrible awful things constantly coming at us.
Compare that to Hillary basically saying "meh, they'll vote for me". How much extra effort would it have taken to keep those 3 states democrat.
So you're saying that it's perfectly normal for a non-racist person to support a candidate who openly argued for deporting huge swaths of honest workers and enforce by law racial and religious discrimination?
Unless we manage to create a parallel universe where the 11-15 million illegal immigrants are Canadian instead of Mexican, to test against, I don't think you can definitively state that support for enforcement of immigration law constitutes racism.
I don't think a person who's construction job was taken away by an under-the-table worker really cares what color the other person's skin is, the milk and bread he can't afford now leaves the same hole in his pantry.
Same thing for software development offshoring - is it racist for those out-of-work Disney engineers to want their jobs back?
The problem with this argument as stated is that it has a hard time accounting for the millions of Hispanic voters who voted for Trump... unless you think they are actually self-hating anti-Hispanic racists or something. (Yes, I know more hispanics voted for Clinton than for Trump, but the split was nowhere close to 100-0. It wasn't even close to the 88-12 or so that African-American voters split for Clinton.)
Sure. And there are other reasons they might have voted for Trump too. I'm just saying that clearly people can vote for him without endorsing his position on some particular issue, even one that cuts very close to them.
The parent of my comment was saying that this was abnormal, whereas it is (sadly, perhaps?) quite common in voting.
One other thing: Trump got about the same fraction of the Latino vote as Romney in 2012 and McCain in 2008, to within exit poll survey error. The actual cited number for him is between those for McCain and Romney. See http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/hillary-clin...
So apparently he's no more abnormal than McCain and Romney were, to those voters. Or at least they felt their other options this time were a lot worse. Or something. It's hard to draw a hard conclusion from the numbers here.
I'm saying that if you believe you can so trivially comprehend and dismiss the emotional state of tens of millions of people who until today you possibly didn't even want to admit exist, you're fooling yourself badly.
To add on, part of the galvanizing force that created the political block (those tens of millions) was they don't like GP's exact attitude!
People really, really, really, don't like it when you deny or trivialize their experience. I think it was the final straw that led to the Trump victory.
Whatever the emotional state, in the end they supported the candidate openly espousing racist and misogynist opinions, and is on the record saying he sexually assaults women. Maybe the people who voted for him aren't themselves racists and misogynists, but they sure as hell didn't think that stuff was important enough not to vote for him.
> is on the record saying he sexually assaults women
This is a good thing to touch on, because it very handily demonstrates an area where differing opinions became a crux upon which the election turned. Trump was "on the record" joking around in a manner that, despite Clintonian assertion otherwise, is not at all uncommon, amongst men and women. It is, also despite assertion, not universally accepted that offensive words are equivalent to harmful actions. For instance, although I did not vote for Trump, I will never accept this precept as valid.
The racism and sexism are sort of victims of their own overuse. I've said, unto exhaustion, that fighting sexism with sexism and racism with racism is equivalent to fighting a fire with fuel, but political beliefs state that racism against whites and sexism against males is justified and therefore non-existent, so it gets deployed rampantly. This election is one obvious result.
That's exactly the railing against "political correctness" that got so much attention. "Not PC" is code for "freedom to believe and say hateful things about other groups of people."
Do you truthfully believe that you can trivialize and dismiss something you seemingly don't understand and be correct at the same time? That doesn't speak well for the strength of logic underlying your opinions.
No attempt at political correctness will ever impact the freedom to believe anything at all, hateful, loving, or totally rational. That freedom is fundamental to being human. It is not granted by any organization and cannot be revoked using any known mechanism, no matter what your opinion on those thoughts.
We don't need code to believe and express that we are free to say hateful things. Even those on the left believe they are free to say hateful things about people on the right. They've simply fooled themselves into believing that feeling justified about that hate means that they aren't being hateful.
Here's a spoiler alert for being human: everyone feels that exact same justification. It is literally meaningless.
No, you've missed the lesson entirely in your zeal to appear clever and correct. That's fine, I'm sure you won't enjoy the trump presidency so the punishment is sort of built-in
Nate Silver has been wrong in everything he has predicted about Trump.
Again its not about ism although they play a part. Its about establishment vs anti-establishment. Hillary Clinton was the candidate of international finance and military complex.
"Calling people out" is not a technique to help people grow. It's ridiculing them after applying a label from a distance.
The more people insist it was racists and sexists behind the vote, the more they miss the point. Part of the Trump vote was reacting sharply to the labeling + ridicule technique.
There are other options. Learn more about why they feel the way they do, understand them. These are (most of our) countrymen, fellow humans at the very least.
Education, understanding, compassion. Not ridicule.
No, it was a result of desperate people willing to vote for a guy who said "I'll bring back jobs from overseas" and when asked how his response was "I'll tell companies they can't send jobs overseas.
The fact that the average American knows so little about the political process that they think the president can just tell a corporation where they have to employ people makes my head hurt. Badly.
The message of this election was: just lie to people. Even if there's no factual basis in our known reality to back up your statements, if you tell them what they want to hear they'll believe it. And that's really, really sad. I feel for the people who have lots manufacturing jobs, but the way out of that hole isn't voting for a guy who's going to remove any social safety net you previously had available...
Calling racism racism is NOT labeling and ridicule. It's observation, and there's a big difference. I'm not saying everyone who voted for him is racist, but a lot of them are and frankly it's absurd to say we shouldn't address racism for what it is. If calling out someone for clearly being racist is labeling then I think we need to hash out the definitions of these words.
The point that seems to missed here is that it doesn't matter if you feel or even are justified in your beliefs, because literally everyone feels justified in their beliefs too. Turning it into a name-calling contest is emotionally satisfying to an extent, but that's part of why today we have president elect trump, so is the satisfaction worth it?
Two-thirds of Republicans still believe Obama was born outside the US. What possible justification do they have for that belief? Let's stack up our beliefs and see whose match more closely with "facts."
13% think Obama is a Christian. 77% are not sure if he was born in the US.
I agree the "mindset of the people" is more complex than this, and such a belief about Obama may not be the main driver of their voting behavior.
But they are being truthful about saying they believe what they believe, right? They either believe it or they don't. In my eyes this kind of mass susceptibility to conspiracy theories is a huge sociological phenomenon that should be explored.
Your argument is orthogonal to my point, so I don't really have a response to it. Also I'm not sure if you're calling me out, or some set of abstract Republicans, but I'm not really here to do battle in any case, so I don't have any beliefs for the stack.
>Education, understanding, compassion. Not ridicule.
How much did they try to understand Obama voters? Not at all. We got 8 years of racist attacks, "you lie!", and scorched earth tactics. I appreciate your invitation to be magnanimous but I'm not feeling it yet.
The overt reasoning of the most prominent Southern Democratic legislators was that the civil rights focus of the greater Democratic party was the primary reason for their flight into the American Independent and Republican parties.
I assert that it is probably no longer a factor for the majority of Republican voters.
I think this is the source of the narrative, rightly or wrongly. I don't see any evidence it had anything to do with the Reagan or Bush presidencies.
In my lifetime I didn't see the uptick in overt white supremacy until President Obama took office. I think it is a combination of cyclical liberal excuses and some legitimate labelling.
It appears to be the accepted narrative, but it's the explanation coming from people who were caught completely flat-footed. What's the evidence that the narrative isn't a bunch of overwrought bullshit?
Well if we had a sane government, we could try rolling out new policies to randomly selected regions and cities first. We could use prediction markets to predict the effects of policies before implementing them.
To some extent we do this. For example, we rolled out "legal recreational marijuana" to a few states several years ago, then watched what happened. In this election we rolled it out to a few more states and will see what happens.
Not random selection, of course, but better than nothing.
> Now you doing opposite and are so happy with it.
I dunno about _happy_. There are a bunch of people not happy with marijuana legalization, and a bunch more who are not terribly happy with it but are even less happy with the state of things.
Just like there were people who were not happy to end alcohol prohibition, but were even less happy with the state of things when prohibition was in effect.
> Now you like LGBT, in 50 years you will kill them.
Just like the Swiss will repeal women's suffrage and various countries in Europe will go back to murdering Jews, right?
Or perhaps, just possibly, that might not happen? Maybe?
> The problem is that you do all this things to the world.
Really? How, exactly, is "the world" affected by the legality or not of marijuana in the US? There's some interaction with our immediate neighbors due to attempts to eliminate smuggling operations, but other than that, what is this doing to "the world"?
All this countries don't rule the world. You are THE ruler. You must be much much much more aware of what you do with each step (let's for a minute ignore that you don't really care).
>Really? How, exactly, is "the world" affected by the legality or not of marijuana in the US?
It's simple. CA accepts -> other states accept because they look after CA & NY & TX -> UK accepts because in such things they look after USA -> EU accepts because in such things they do what USA & UK do -> Russia accepts because in such things they do what EU do (yes, it is true).
> UK accepts because in such things they look after USA
I really fail to see how this is the "fault" of the US. This is literally one of the first things children are taught: "if all your friends went and jumped off a tall building, that doesn't mean _you_ have to", etc.
In practice, different places may want different approaches for legalization or not of such things, because of cultural or demographic differences. And that's perfectly OK, though may cause friction at borders.
>- term limits on congress, a measure to reduce the revolving door effect of government officials going into lobbying.
Terms limit worsen the revolving door, because the reps focus more on their next job than actually legislating. They become incredibly short term sighted.
The real fix would be to outright ban gerrymandering and force the officials to have to represent a mixture of political views.
And yet if you ask most Americans what "actual political skills" are, they'll likely say venality, corruption and malice, which leads us to having elected a president primarily on the basis of his incompetence.
Good point. Also, the cult of personality or celebrity. Arnold Schwarzenegger, as an ineffectual governor, demonstrated that you need more than just celebrity to get things done.
> Some of it sounds ridiculous - for every new federal regulation, 2 existing regulations must be eliminated. How is that considered feasible by any rational person? It might sound great if you don't think too hard about it.
IMO this is the best thing in there. The burden of complex legislation is incredible, and there are tens of thousands of pages that could be simplified and/or removed entirely. It'd be a very long time before we ran out of stuff to prune and the benefits of doing this would be enormous.
It's hard to overstate the benefits of individuals being able to actually comprehend the legal areas in which they operate.
I agree that regulations should be simpler, but this sounds like a bad way to achieve that.
Are "regulations" strictly countable? It sounds like trying to minimize the number of lines (or characters) in a code base. Fewer lines (or characters) doesn't mean it will be more readable.
It's a nebulous definition as far as I can tell. For what it's worth, I don't deal with these in any sort of legal capacity, but my day job does involve a lot of work with federal legislation and regulations--I'm just not entirely sure where legal terms might differ from my office's colloquial terms.
You can view the text of proposed and implemented regulations in the Federal Register:
https://www.federalregister.gov/
particularly under the Proposed Rules and Rules listings.
A rule will add to/amend/repeal some part of the Code of Federal Regulations. This can be anything from clarifying a few words or fixing drafting issues to implementing major regulatory changes.
It doesn't seem clear to me what this proposal would impact--does a minor amendment to an existing paragraph require a repeal of existing regulations? Would it need to meet some threshold of increasing regulatory burden--how would that be determined? What if it decreased burden?
You can look through daily issues and see that they tend to just be handling the daily business of the government. Today's includes changes to fishing zones (restoring access to an area that had been overfished a few years ago), adding more airworthiness checks to certain aircraft parts, reducing restrictions on certain tires for trailers, and adding restrictions against financial institutions processing transactions involving North Korea.
Would each of those need to repeal two prior regulations to take effect? What would quantify a previous regulation? And would they all be able to?
So we want to add new regulation A. We have removed regulation B and C. Purely by coincidence the new regulation A is roughly the same length as A, B and C combined. But its one regulation.
When people leave Congress they invariably go into lobbying. Term limits has to have some small effect on increasing this because you'll necessarily cycle more people through Congress, and they'll know less. If we are to have lobbyists ( and I think we must ) then let us have knowledgeable ones.
The Gingrich Revolution was founded on term limits, and yet here we are.
"Additional shale/gas" makes no sense at least now because of market conditions. There's an untold huge level of zero-coupon debt hanging because of the last shale revolution. It does nothing to help use market discipline to wean us off hydrocarbons, but it might still be the "bridge fuel" even green people were touting ten years ago.
Myself, I think there was epistemic closure against any hydrocarbon activity in the chattering classes a few years back. This will make the compromises necessary to navigate emerging alt. technology more difficult.
The tariff stuff freaks me out - it's a total idealogical paradigm shift.
Re the point of reducing regulation, Larry page actually recommended a variation of this to the president of South Korea to reduce legal complexity of its government:
"Reducing complexity, in fact, was a theme throughout the talk. Page recounted how when he was trying to simplify things at Google, he suggested the company take all of its rules and regulations and keep them at an easy-to-digest 50 pages. He even suggested a similar idea to the president of South Korea, Park Geun-hye. "I said, 'Hey, why don't you just limit your laws and regulations to some set of pages? And when you add a page, you have to take one away.' She actually wrote this down. She's great."
Larry Page is not a pubic policy expert. He's a CS grad school drop out that got lucky.
This is as stupid as having the president of South Korea say, "You should keep the code to Google to a page and half. It would make it easier to understand."
Seriously, this makes no sense beyond claptrap. Why 50 pages? Why not 1? Why not 5 million? Why an arbitrary limit at all? The whole idea hinges on the idea that somehow this is obvious and an intrinsic good. It's not. It's not even a metric worth optimizing for, because it has zero concern about actual societal effects.
That was one of the hardest things about this election. I really like some of Trump's policies and promises.
And some of them are frightening. Frightening enough to make me want to steer clear, but the DNC did not put forward a candidate that made me feel any better. Calling for a Manhattan project to defeat encryption? Yikes.
America lost this election long before November, I'm sure of that.
I guess you haven't been paying attention. Many people don't believe in Global Warming, or at the very least don't want to even slightly impact the economy. The Democrats weren't going to hold office forever, and neither will the Republicans.
The best thing for everyone would be for market-based solutions that have clear advantages. Solar, wind, electric cars, nuclear, etc.
Republicans, for example, will put solar on their homes and drive electric cars if there are obvious advantages.
I spent a lot of time reading the "Ask Trump Supporters" Reddit this cycle. Climate Change was one issue where almost all of them broke with their candidate, which was pretty interesting to me.
That's good to hear. I've spent a lot of time explaining to people that global warming is real. I even created a wordpress site so I can point people to a "faq"
Agreed. Positioning is everything. If rather than saying people's cars are causing global warming, they said how about we get off our reliance of foreign energy as a matter of security and by the way it's better for the environment and energy will get cheaper, there would be more buy in. But they can't help themselves because they can't get over their disdain for skeptics. They have an agenda and it's a religion for most.
I don't hear anything about the sun when climate change is brought up and it's over 99% of the mass of the solar system. Then you have people talking about feeling how warm it is when we are talking about small changes.
If it was 82 outside and you polled people, you'd get all kinds of results. But suddenly anthro climate pushers are super sensitive thermometers. They talk about weather events when you try to have a climate discussion all the time.
Questioning is science, especially when you can't prove it like the speed of light.
Market based solutions only work if the market is fair i.e. all players are subject to the same conditions. The problem is (a) fossil fuels have large subsidies all up/down the chain and (b) fossil fuels do not have a surcharge for their impact on the environment.
Fossil fuels aren't going to get that surcharge under the Republicans.
You have to play the hand you're dealt, or whine about it, telling everyone how ignorant they are. In another decade, when the Democrats take Presidency or the Senate, maybe you'll get some offsetting charges. Of course, we'll have lost a decade and the problem will be much worse, if no forward progress is made.
Ironic that you are complaining about me whining but in fact you are the one putting your hands up and saying "nothing we can do about the government, best to just leave it to the market". I am more optimistic that change is possible.
There are still numerous opportunities for people to convince Republicans to start believing in climate change and making the energy market fair and equitable to allow renewable technologies to compete. Look at what is happening with solar panels when their subsidies are removed. It's not pretty.
Well, there are many truly crazy and stupid regulations already on the books, plus you could do this by simply empowering the Federal Oversight Committee (which does this anyway) to just do more removals. So that one actually has a relatively simple path to achieve it.
Well, at least that's steady state. If you wanted to keep the current statutes you could make sure to fold them into the new law after reviewing them. That sounds like a same way to force review of older laws to some extent, if you accept that review of older laws won't result in endless arguing. At least there should be real information about the impact the prior law had, positive and negative.
2-for-1 need not be a law, just executive guidance around what Trump will or will not veto. If it doesn't take two substantive--to him--pieces of regulation off the table for each one proposed, he'll send it back for more cutting.
>Some of it sounds ridiculous - for every new federal
>regulation, 2 existing regulations must be eliminated. How is
>that considered feasible by any rational person? It might
>sound great if you don't think too hard about it.
I think that's the reason Trump becomes president of the US. It may sound ridiculous to you but he is 100% correct with that point. Everybody knows that there are too many government regulations, people across the whole political spectrum agree on that.
And although I'm from Germany, I can tell you rules that can be removed. For instance rules that require you to own a gun in certain counties, there are other actually ridiculous rules. There are YouTube videos about that and as a matter of fact these rules are not enforced.
We need to relax our constrained thinking to start modernizing outdated structures. It's sad that Donald Trump must do this job.
Nobody agrees on thet, except in the very narrow definition of everyone knowing at least one regulation they'd personally abolish (the lefty choosing marijuana, the right "all of them")
I've investigated the same complaint for EU law and all you can find is bizarre propaganda making ridiculous claims in bad faith – they make the regs sound absurd, but you can find out the real purpose within half a minute of googling.
Famous example: requiring Cucumbers (bananas etc.) to conform to a certain shape, including curvature for different quality grades. Reasoning: the retail industry wanted it (they couldn't agree on a common standard), it helps trade by establishing standard grades. It's also been repealed as a result of the populist pressure, but by then everyone had been using it and they just continued.
Yeah the cucumbers are an excellent example and within the EU, or at least Germany the most ridiculed one. People here don't care that much about the curvature. In fact imperfect vegetables are considered more organic by many people. On the other hand cucumbers with not so good curvature get thrown away, increasing food prices.
The thing is this: most laws were invented with good intentions and reasoning behind. But that doesn't mean they thought well enough about them.
>Everybody knows that there are too many government regulations, people across the whole political spectrum agree on that
But they don't agree on which ones should be removed. It's why "everybody knows" Congress is terrible but they keep getting re-elected. It's because everyone likes their representatives but hate all the others.
>But they don't agree on which ones should be removed.
So they might want to start a program for that. Or they could start with one type of laws.
>It's why "everybody knows" Congress is terrible but they
>keep getting re-elected.
What would be the alternative? No Congress? ;) I mean it's there and it should certainly be improved.
> It's because everyone likes their representatives but hate all the others.
It seems so in the US, but in Europe there is also a trend towards this highly polarized direction. I hope people would take things easier and maybe try to understand the other politicians as well. For instance one could watch both CNN and Fownews. ;)
Some of these ideas are, I think, able to stand on their own merit. In particular, the revolving door has been identified in a bipartisan fashion to be a real problem.
I defer to actual political experts to discuss the proposed solution and its nuances.
Term limits are an awful idea. They limit my ability to vote for the candidate of my choice while providing no benefit. Term limits already exist for many political offices and in no case have they resulted in any tangible changes in political behavior.
Term limits won't do a damn thing to curtail lobbying. Lobbyists love having lots of fresh blood just looking to make a quick buck flooding the legislature.
The limits create a constantly revolving legislature that is easier to manipulate and will in general do a poorer job. If he really cared, we'd see something on campaign finance reform; but alas, he doesn't actually want to get money out of politics.
In my view, term limits will have no practical effect on the influence of money on politics, so long as the parties can preserve their control of congressional seats through gerrymandering. Money will always find a way to speak louder than voters, so long as voters are suppressed.
I love my party, but in my district, my party's primary is the only election with a meaningful impact on anything. And my party has this district, in order to keep us from ever gaining a majority of our state's legislative caucus.
To drain the swamp, restore democracy. Any effort to decrease voter participation is inherently corrupting. Make it easier to vote. Make sure everybody's vote is counted equally. Of course, "counted equally" should be a matter of debate. Get rid of gerrymandering. Get rid of the electoral college.
Wouldn't pass in a million years. Why would congress pass such a law against themselves? And as a constitutional amendment, it would require a 2/3rds majority.
Trump has made that a key part of his platform. He took that to the electorate and has been given a mandate - presidency, senate, house.
Any Republican member of congress who goes against that is going against a core part of his platform.
Many fervent Trump supporters, including a number of influential ones on social media have stated that any elected Republican that doesn't support Trump's platform will see a challenge from a pro-Trump candidate in the 2018 mid-terms. It will likely be the end of them if they don't go along with it.
I can't imagine many Democratic voters will be happy if their representatives vote against an anti-corruption measure. Especially considering DNC corruptions and cronyism essentially cost them the election.
Trump is the social media president. I'm confident he'll be able to get support for this from the electorate.
As a non-American, this is possibly a stupid question but why are limited terms on congress a good thing? My assumption was that those who wish to progress in government can benefit from lengthier terms in the legistlative branch to gain experience. Doesn't imposing a limit (or at least one shorter than several election cycles more than the executive branch) reduce the amount of experience that one can gain before potentially looking to move on and up?
> As a non-American, this is possibly a stupid question but why are limited terms on congress a good thing?
Term limits are one of those things that Americans always expect to be good before they are implemented, but never actually are more satisfied with the affected institution after they are implemented. They attack a boogeyman (the "career politician" that is supposedly worse than the neophyte politician) that many politicians attack at the start of their careers (and many later, trying to construct themsleves.as outsiders) so often that people have internalized the idea that experience is a negative trait in governing.
Well I'm sure there's still a lot of opportunities to combine and simplify existing regulations. You wouldn't be able to do it forever but I don't think we'll run out this term.
I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of federal regulations but I seriously doubt that anyone posting here does either. Trump's policy is based on the idea (taken as a truism) that the majority of existing federal regulations are bad and should go away. That seems like a pretty bold statement for anyone to make that would be almost impossible to substantiate.
If these statements were made by incredibly scholarly policy wonks who love nothing more than to learn about the government and think about how it could be improved, that'd be one thing (it'd still be a very suspect statement though). However, I can't imagine that this came from any place more scholarly than people assuming that none of this stuff could possibly exist for any good reason. If they want to get rid of specific regulations, they should just get rid of what regulations they think are unnecessary.
The policy also assumes that any new regulation would be equally unnecessary. It would turn any attempt to add a regulation into a political battle to not only add the regulation, but also a political battle to get rid of two others. This could cause needed regulations to not get passed because some vested interest has the political power to defend the two preexisting regulations. So it neither helps necessary regulations get adopted, nor does it help to get rid of unnecessary regulations. Again, if they think there are so many pointless regulations, just get rid of them. No need to bundle everything together like this.
Fair enough. But then shouldn't the process me "Lets sit down and look at these, and take out the ones that are just not applicable nowadays?". This tit-for-tat style bargaining usually just ends up with both sides compromising or making rash decisions which may end up with the baby being thrown out with the bath water...
For a "law and order" candidate it's also curious to propose removing laws. Of course, in his mind the necessary laws are those that constrain personal behavior (drugs, vice, abortion). The laws to repeal will be those that "cost jobs" by protecting worker safety, consumers, or the environment.
The appeal is that it would make being a career politician impossible and that term-limited congress would therefore act out of interest for their constituents rather than themselves. But you're right that it would also prevent good politicians from staying.
Another proposal which could have a similar effect would be to drastically increase the number of representatives so that each one represents a smaller number of people (say 50,000). Having many more reps would reduces the individual power and influence of any one rep in particular and could dissuade them from acting in their own best interest.
The appeal is that it would make being a career politician impossible
The assumption, and I'm not saying that it's necessarily wrong, is that "career politician" is undesirable. How about getting rid of "career software developers"? Get rid of those entrenched JavaScript devs that are only interested in feathering their own nests. "Career doctors"? The medical profession is really just a business, and it should be treated like one. Next time you break a limb, seek out an MBA instead.
Point is, the more I've been involved in politics (including running for office) the more I realize that you're not just going to march in on the first day and get stuff done. Kind of like that first day with that new codebase, eh? Now, I don't know that one out to be "Congress critter for life", but you don't just waltz in an go "my constituents want $THIS" and expect it to just happen. So a little experience might go further than electing the "outsider" who isn't "beholden to special interests".
I agree that career politicians aren't inherently bad and was more just stating plain reasoning to the parent's question.
"Career politicians" and term limits are an easy thing to point to that don't actually deal with the problem which in my mind has more to do with each individual representative carrying too much importance because there are so few of them. Also one person cannot reasonably represent the views of 1M constituents.
In complete agreement; well stated. Since the Constitution was written, the population has increased, what, a couple of orders of magnitude? And yet the same 435 reps?
Most companies avoid having the same person do the same job for a long time. Fresh blood sees things differently and might re-try something that failed in the past. Don't forget that generally speaking a congressman doesn't usually start his political career in congress.
> therefore act out of interest for their constituents rather than themselves.
I don't see how that follows. Wouldn't the limit encourage a congressional rep to cravenly maximize whatever personal benefits they can once they're in their final term? They don't need to fear re-election.
The other appeal (aside from what has already been stated) is that it would eliminate the problem of Congressmen obsessing about the next election as soon as they arrive. Lots of problems in our government are due to legislators wanting to avoid accountability, avoid having to take a position, or kicking the can down the road. But imagine if you only have two years and then go home! You'd be willing to really do something.
Rational? Just an excuse to eliminate logical and valid and societal positive regulations. Nobody is saying that the regulations will be from the same bill or law.
We will exactly be heading in the wrong directions. One regulations for rich Republicans and remove 2 regulations protecting poor minorities.
Its going to require an amendment to the constitution (which takes decades) and from experience a newbie MP Congress man etc will need one entire cycle to get to grips with the system and become effective.
Having inexperienced elected representatives just gives more power to the executive - which is not what I think Trump wanted.
And this is a good thing how? there are technical reforms that could be a good thing ie no unrelated amendments to motions (bills) which would stop pork being added to unrelated bills.
I think the idea is that his stance is not introducing new federal laws.
It probably could have been worded plainly instead of adding a conditional. Federal laws should be considered in their own right, not in comparison towards other federal laws.
I'll bet he doesn't know that the pubic sector shrank more under Obama than the previous presidents:
"The public sector grew during Mr. Carter's term (up 1,304,000), during Mr. Reagan's terms (up 1,414,000), during Mr. G.H.W. Bush's term (up 1,127,000), during Mr. Clinton's terms (up 1,934,000), and during Mr. G.W. Bush's terms (up 1,744,000 jobs).
However the public sector has declined significantly since Mr. Obama took office (down 668,000 jobs). These job losses have mostly been at the state and local level, but more recently at the Federal level. This has been a significant drag on overall employment." [1]
I'll be surprised if he gets half these things done in the next 4 yrs, though most are so vague it's not clear what 'done' would mean.
Most of them being at the state and local level sounds more like the recession (and corresponding decrease in tax revenues the following years) catching up with state and local governments that actually have to stick to a budget.
I'm not sure what the breakdown of "more recently at the Federal level" is, but it doesn't sound very pro-Obama in terms of your argument, particularly since Trump is talking about the Federal government.
Between a quarter to half of California's state budget comes from the federal government [1] and I'm guessing the same is true for most states. With that much money coming from the federal government, it's a muddy distinction.
One of the primary argument against the federal government is the disconnect from local needs but most of the money is tied to federal mandates anyway (for example, the feds threatened road infrastructure funding to get the last few states to pass the 21 year alcohol age limit and DOE funding is tied to CORE). As a result the state/federal distinction isn't very precise.
California is actually one of the lowest (42nd). The irony is that states where people vote for small government and lower taxes tend to receive a larger share per capita of federal money.
So he's going to lower taxes on the wealthy, drop taxes on businesses, increase spending on military, destroy our national parks to extract oil, and lay off federal employees.
This is going to help the middle class and the uneducated who are struggling through... magic. None of the lobbying stuff will ever see the light of day. The term limits won't happen. He's going to repeal the "illegal" Obama executive orders but leave the Bush ones in place because... they're illegal but he likes them?
The immigration thing will happen and result in massive backlash if I had to guess. None of the reforms will ever happen because he doesn't have the power to enact any of it, and the Republicans are NEVER going to agree to that when they're currently in power. His justice choice will never in a million years overturn Citizens United which is literally the only affect he could have on political corruption.
I did some back-of-the-envelope calculation to figure how our taxes could change for various income levels for married joint filers. This does not factor in any deductions.
Nobody is getting a 35% tax cut. Tax rate for middle-class families will go down by around 1% only, and taxes will go up for low-income families by 2%. Single tax filers will also see an increase in taxes.
The biggest tax cuts will actually go the highest income earners, tax rate will go down by 6.42% for someone who makes $10 million. Maybe that is what Trump calls the middle-class?
Virtually nobody making 10 million a year pays a 39% tax rate. They likely take most of their comp as stock and pay the long term capital gains rate. If they're in finance/VC, they are taking full advantage of carried interest. They have financial planners who structure their portfolio to favor low-tax investments. They form S-Corps and trust funds to defer tax liability, get paid in distributions, write off all sorts of business expenses, use real estate to offset gains with depreciation, carry forward every conceivable loss, tax loss harvest etc. etc. etc. This is how Warren Buffett, Mitt Romney and Trump end up paying < 20% effective rates.
The people hit hardest by "tax the wealthy" politicians are folks making large salaries (engineers, doctors, lawyers...). The mega-wealthy like Mark Zuckerberg make $1 a year in salary. If you really want to go after the wealthy, you need to tax wealth, not ordinary income and go after the complexity of the tax code.
> If you really want to go after the wealthy, you need to tax wealth, not ordinary income
Trump has promised several more yuuge tax breaks and loopholes to wealthy:
- Repeal alternative minimum tax
- Repeal estate tax
- Reduce capital gains tax
- Reduce business tax rate to 15% eliminate the corporate alternative minimum tax.
A wealthy individual could just make an LLC, and funnel all his money into it and enjoy the 15% tax rate while working folks pay regular income tax of 33%.
Making an LLC costs a few hundred bucks a year, so there's no reason any benefits would only accrue to wealthy individuals. To the extent that Trump's business tax proposals actually become law (the 15% business tax with no personal tax applied is a massive change from how it currently works), I predict a shift away from salaried employment and towards independent contracting / small business ownership. Tastes may vary on whether this is a good thing.
I haven't done the math (and I'm not a fan of the tax cuts) but trump is also offering bigger tax breaks for families with kids per his policy page(https://www.donaldjtrump.com/policies, I haven't read this pdf yet). Since you didn't take that into account, does that change the numbers at all? It wouldn't surprise me one bit if when a republican says "middle class families" they mean literally "married people with non-adult kids".
You are arguing that he wont do/be-able-to-do things which GOP silent supporters (large corporations) dislike. That is probably a safe bet. However, he can still do crazy things that all his supporters wont care about, such as skewering minorities, Muslims, etc -- I doubt there will be any objection from either his populist support or GOP financial support.
>A middle-class family with two children will get a 35% tax cut.
He's basically Oprah with tax cuts. Kidding aside, I think all politicians promise wide tax cuts, and this "contract" was written prior to him winning. So take most with a grain of salt.
He's (unfortunately) going to have a LOT of leverage over Congress. One word to his minions and he can instantly remove over 50% of any Republican's support. They are terrified of provoking him.
As disliked as Paul Ryan is by Trump followers around the country, his actual seat is very safe. There are plenty of Republicans relying on the Trump coalition, though.
That's the point, he'll get the things passed that are going to hurt the country, and the only things that are actually GOOD ideas will sit on the floor because congress is never going to vote to limit its own power.
He is pushing protectionist trade policies (backing out of NAFTA, punishing China for currency manipulation, backing out of TPP, etc) that will probably have the biggest income on low-skill jobs that will help the lower and middle classes at the expense of profits for businesses.
I thought this was post-election but it's just his propaganda from a few weeks ago. Nothing should really be taken any more seriously than anything else he's talked about
> FIFTH, I will lift the restrictions on the
production of $50 trillion dollars’ worth of
job-producing American energy reserves,
including shale, oil, natural gas and clean coal
This is what I have the biggest problem with. The ONLY WAY we are going to continue making progress towards widespread clean renewable energy is if it is financially beneficial for corporations to continue investing in R&D. Sure, there are some outliers that will stick with it on principal, but the majority will go where the money is. Cheaper fossil fuels == less investment in renewable energy. Period. This is bad timing given the critical point we are at (so far as we know) regarding climate change.
This is pure short-sightedness motivated by the desire to deliver on his promise of creating jobs.
The fact that the term "clean coal" can be bandied about with a straight face says something about the state of science education of the general public. (Pretty much the same knowledge needed to instantly realize that various wind/solar operated water-from-air devices and Solar Freakin Roadways aren't viable from back of the envelope calcs.)
Sure, not ideal, but as long as there's nothing that says "you must spend as much or more energy to separate and sequester harmful by-products than you get from the reaction" we shouldn't mock people for at least entertaining the idea. 30% sounds like a reasonable number, interesting to know.
Whether that's a commercially viable amount or not, I have no idea. And your last point, I agree with. We should certainly make the coal industry include externalities in their price as much as feasible, making for a (more) fair energy market.
Sure, not ideal, but as long as there's nothing that says "you must spend as much or more energy to separate and sequester harmful by-products than you get from the reaction" we shouldn't mock people for at least entertaining the idea.
No, we should mock people for entertaining the idea and being unable to muster enough knowledge and reason to start being very skeptical. It's basically the same sort of estimation that happens when watching Shark Tank and wondering, "Well, that's a nifty product. What are the margins?" Basic Thermodynamics isn't too far off from accounting. There's a big difference between "works technically, in theory" and "would it work in the real world?" Essentially, you're saying it's okay that people can spout basic science, but still can't apply it in their actual lives in a market economy. Shouldn't that be the lower bar?
You said that entertaining the idea of "clean coal" is a referendum on science education in our country.
I'm saying that the idea is completely compatible with science, and at a cursory inspection seems like a completely viable solution. There's no education problem involved in at least discussing it.
Is coal at ~70% efficiency a better solution than nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, etc.? I'm not sure, but that is sure as hell not snake oil.
If it takes you 30% of the initial energy to get to the heat->electricity phase, then the heat->electricity phase receives 70% of the initial energy. From that point, a 35% efficient transfer means 24.5% efficiency from the initial energy.
While capturing and liquifying the CO2 may prevent immediate release into the atmosphere, you still have to do something with it. Where would you sequester a billion gallons of liquified CO2 each year?
That is exactly the issue. If you really want to solidify the carbon for long term storage, you'd have to spend more energy than you gain in the first place. At least I'm not aware of a process that could capture CO2 for long term storage with only a fraction of the Carbon-to-Carbon binding energy (which is what you gain when burning, minus the C-O2 binding.
That's not simple thermodynamics. That's not even appealing to thermodynamic laws at all, other than "it can't be free (unless we can get energy from the captured product)", and that only guarantees that the percentage will be nonzero.
Until you get into the particulars of burning coal and CO2 capture with feasible equipment (which aren't simple), for all you know the loss is 0.1%
> This sequestration process costs about 30% of the energy originally extracted from the coal.
This tells me nothing about economic viability - for a while the solar panel efficiency was rated in single digit percentages, and even today it's low double digits.
With that 30% waste incorporated what is my final cost of a kWh produced by an electric plant that's running 100% on clean coal?
No, carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. The pollutants from coal burning are waste products like CO and NO2. If you can capture those, or find ways to burn the coal "cleaner" to only produce beneficial CO2 and heat, the problem is solved.
I think that's a little harsh. There's no first principle that the average citizen should know that says "clean coal" isn't possible.
The average US citizen probably knows that burning carbon-based fuels re-forms molecular bonds, in such a way that the resulting stuff (CO2 and water) embodies much lower energy. Just start applying that concept to the notion of capturing that carbon. The result is that you're going to wind up with a lot less usable energy, or that the stuff you wind up combining the carbon with embodies even less energy than the oxygen. But since coal is already one of the cheapest chemical fuels around, what in the world will that be?
In other words: Basic Thermodynamics. Unfortunately it's true: The average US citizen doesn't know enough basic thermodynamics to rule out obvious boondoggles. That's about the level of gullibility of a 19th century person who buys snake oil.
> the result is you're going to wind up with a lot less usable energy
Nothing in those "basic thermodynamics" conclusions, which I agree are obviously true, implies that it's commercially nonviable. Yes, it will by necessity be more expensive than dirty coal. Will it be more expensive than anything else? I'm not sure. It would require advanced knowledge of sequestering methods and the energy market. Certainly more than basic thermodynamics.
To be honest, you're the one making the mistake here by assigning "clean coal" to being snake oil with only basic thermodynamics in play. Without more knowledge than that, there's no reason it couldn't be the most viable clean energy option.
That's pretty much the same thing as knowing that solar panels can charge a battery, that battery can run LEDs and heating elements, then stopping there and concluding that Solar Freakin Roadways can be a thing. In other words, that's just enough knowledge to spout science, but not enough to actually apply it to actual life.
I don't think this is a reflection on the amount of usable sunlight on that hits the surface of the earth. It sounds more like a vague, general statement and isn't backed by calculations in the article.
The late Professor McKay (whose book on information theory and ML is neat by the way) published a great book full of climate back of the envelope calculations, Whithout the Hot Air, which is available online[1]. He clearly disagrees with this statement, as seen in the recap figure on page 103[2].
"This theoretical potential represents more energy striking the earth’s surface in one and a half hours (480 EJ) than worldwide energy consumption in the year 2001 from all sources combined (430 EJ)."
Not back of envelope. Energy calculations worked through.
EDIT: Solar is a better investment than the S&P500. If US corporations were looking for some place to invest those trillions of dollars they won't repatriate [1], seems like renewables would be a perfect fit.
"Eight of the biggest U.S. technology companies added a combined $69 billion to their stockpiled offshore profits over the past year, even as some corporations in other industries felt pressure to bring cash back home.
Microsoft Corp., Apple Inc., Google Inc. and five other tech firms now account for more than a fifth of the $2.10 trillion in profits that U.S. companies are holding overseas, according to a Bloomberg News review of the securities filings of 304 corporations. The total amount held outside the U.S. by the companies was up 8 percent from the previous year, though 58 companies reported smaller stockpiles."
McKay uses something very close to this (as you said) theoretical value as the starting point of its calculations for how much can effectively be extracted.
Put out of work coal miners on social security early at their full benefit and fund it with a carbon tax. This doesn't even need to be a carbon tax; simply a transfer from the general fund.
The average coal miner salary is ~$22/hr, or ~$42k/year. 174,000 coal workers in the US @ $31,668k/year (the max SS benefit permitted) = $5.5 billion/year. This is not expensive, nor in perpetuity, only the years from now until they would've hit their full retirement age regardless, not to mention the cost savings from drug addiction and other social negatives currently occurring from the industry collapsing (please, please, please take the 2 minutes to read this footnote) [1].
People should not be harmed by our transition to renewables, and it is laughable that we can't afford to take care of those no longer employed within the economy.
This is not unprecedented. The shipping industry used redundancy payments to transition longshoremen out of the workforce when containerization exploded, funded by profits from the efficiency gains of containerization. I'm simply arguing for the formalization of the process, and administration through the Social Security Administration (one of the most efficient orgs in the US government).
To be clear: I am essentially advocating a bridge basic income for these workers. Not subsidies, not incentives. You quit your job at the coal mine or coal generator today, and you're
retired from the coal industry.
EDIT: @derekdahmer & @ArkyBeagle: I'm not requiring someone to retire if they don't want to. I'm simply ensuring they don't fall into poverty. What more can be done when your job is destroying the environment? Allow it to continue? That is unacceptable. I'm not proposing welfare, I'm proposing financial freedom to explore other options to find purpose and self actualize.
This attitude is why democrats have so much trouble understanding why republicans have so much support from working class voters. People don't want to go on welfare, they want a job.
It's about identity. Free money can keep you fed but it can't give you a sense of pride and self worth.
> People don't want to go on welfare, they want a job.
That right there is pretty much the issue. We could take china's approach and specifically limit the use of heavy equipment to X hours per day, requiring everything else to be done by hand. But that's stupid pointless makework, that takes longer and costs more.
With free money, maybe some people learn a trade, start a band, write a book. Send people to school and maybe we get some value back in 5-10 years.
I understand that people want to take a job on the line at the plant, just like dad did. Well, tough. The world isn't like that anymore.
Policies might "encourage" Apple to do it's manufacturing in the U.S. A U.S. iphone factory would employ about 15 people. the security team that keeps people away from the machines.
The way to stop feeling useless is to stop being useless. Don't want money to help figure out what you can do? Well, ok, best of luck.
edit
This may come off as mean, bitter, heartless, uncaring, vile , reprehensible and whatever other adjectives you want to throw in.
Small towns are dying because there's not much reason to be there. We can subsidize them in a bunch of ways, but it's still just welfare.
The obvious rebuttal to this is that those small towns now control the government. You want progressive policies? Well, tough.
Rural areas are coping with exploding rates of meth, heroin, and opioid abuse, and a lot of that is directly caused by the absolutely shit quality of life they all have.
You're far from the first liberal to regard rural people with contempt, and that's a big part of why we now have President Trump to contend with.
Maybe it's time to start taking other people's problems a little more seriously.
You're right. I grew up in a very small rural town. I have a tendency to not take them seriously. The problem for me is that I've never heard any other group of people spew so much hate and bigotry as people in that small town. The treatment of minorities in that town was heartbreaking. The way I was treated for not blindly accepting the christian faith was terrible. I used to hide physics book under my bed so they would not be taken from me and thrown away.
As an adult, I find it really difficult to care about their problems at all. However, the fact is, unless we do show compassion and take their issues seriously, the current situation will only get worse.
I learned to drive a tractor when i was about 10 years old, and it was a blast. Nearest neighbors were a mile away. Going to the rodeo was a big deal. It was really great.
But the writing was on the wall back then. There's like 4 jobs in the country where horseback riding is useful. It's nothing more than an expensive hobby for the well off.
> The obvious rebuttal to this is that those small towns now control the government.
No, not even remotely. A billionaire city slicker controls the government.
> Maybe it's time to start taking other people's problems a little more seriously.
Eh, maybe. I don't think we need to make it so damn hard for people to get ahead, or even have a chance. But, of course, my guy lost. But maybe not. No election coming up, all there is for me to do is figure out how big my tax cut is going to be, and figure out where that goes in the IRA.
No tariff is going to make my home town thrive. There are no jobs there.
I can't help but think of the duke:
Devlin: I don't know what to say. Never begged before. Turned my stomach. I suppose I should have been grateful that you gave me the job.
McLintock: Gave? Boy, you've got it all wrong. I don't give jobs I hire men.
Drago: You intend to give this man a full day's work, don'tcha boy?
Devlin Warren: You mean you're still hirin' me? Well, yes, sir, I certainly deliver a fair day's work.
McLintock: And for that I'll pay you a fair day's wage. You won't give me anything and I won't give you anything. We both hold up our heads.
But when i tell old friends from high school to come where the work is, they just shake their heads.
My friends that are too fucking hard headed to figure out something better than drinking and bellyaching. Go back to school? Learn a new trade? fuck no.
I'll help people learn to be useful, but i'm not interested in paying someone to make saddles. Sure, it's fun. Turns out they're just not good enough at it to earn a living doing it. Do fucking something else, and make saddles as a fucking hobby. Be a goddamn grownup.
As a, as you put it, "liberal that regards rural people with contempt", i think these three things would improve things for lots of people.
1. Pay police well. Like, double it, and hold police to very high standards.
2. Pay teachers well. Like, double it, and hold teachers to very high standards.
3. Tie tax rates for businesses to local economies. The worse the economy, the bigger the break, the smaller the business, the bigger the break.
But again, i'm a contemptuous liberal that just got told i'm full of shit.
So, seriously, what the fuck am i supposed to do? "take problems seriously?" that's a bullshit rhetorical jab that contains zero useful information.
I'm happy to be proven wrong, but Trump has no chance of helping those workers, except by bussing them to New York to polish his acres of marble and glass.
Then give them jobs in the parks service, pay them to clean up old mine sites, pay them to plant trees, pay them to install fiber optics lines, or anything.
This creates an intractable problem when their job is deemed too dangerous for a civilization to allow to continue.
If someone's job is their identity, and their job harms others, what are some other possible solutions? (Retraining runs into similar issues as you mentioned -- coal miners don't want to become keyboard jockeys, they want their sense of pride and self worth for doing the profession they trained for.)
Not sure about the politics, but yes. And as someone commented below, we're going to have to find socially useful jobs for another swath of blue-collar men soon, when all the trucks go automonomous. This is a BIG problem - any ideas?
Then they may accept their fate of poverty and most likely an early death if they prefer not to accept society's helping hand when their job is obsolete. That does not mean the offer should not be there for them.
Why not, instead of putting them on Social Security, subsidize the installation of solar and wind generation facilities in areas that previously were economically driven by coal mining, and then provide training programs so those displaced miners instead are attractive to employers as workers that can manage and maintain the new electricity generation networks? A single coal-fired power plant can generate far more electricity than a single solar panel or wind turbine, and keeping those up and running will need a lot more hands.
Average coal miner salary is ~$22/hr, or ~$42k/year.
Social security safety net is better than 0, which is where coal is going to regardless, no matter how much we attempt to prop it up. Can't compete against fuels with zero marginal cost. Every coal company in the US is currently bankrupt.
I am open to better ideas if you have them. My proposal removes coal-fired generation and provides for workers at the same time, affordably.
We're talking a difference of $10k/year, that's a lot of money. And you're speaking of miners at the lowest rungs of the ladder: what of those more experienced, or the geologists and mining engineers who are paid 2--3 times more?
Your solution doesn't provide for the workers. I'm sure you're sincere, but a handout from the government is not perceived as a substitute for challenging, meaningful, and respectable work. Basic income proposals don't generally seem to consider pride, other than what I see as nebulous handwaving about how one would be free to pursue their dreams. What dreams are there in coal country when there is no coal? I don't see BI alone as helping to sustain or resurrect a community and associated way of life whose primary industry is one you've eliminated.
I haven't figured out how to make myself happy in life; creating a societal structure that allows for everyone to find what makes them happy is far beyond my limited capabilities. Ensuring that people don't go hungry or die from exposure is within my grasp.
you bull-shiting from your arm chair is your attempt to solve this issue of pride meaningfulness in life. this is pretty meta, but are you really lacking this much self-awareness? Workers want to do productive meaningful work. This is why many flock to startups with all its risk. People want interesting work and yet you do not seem to understand that.
You make good points. We do have to figure out ways to transition out of a particular industry. Open questions (not aimed at parent): Have transitions like these been made successfully in the past? Are there particularly bad examples of what we should make sure we avoid (Detroit)? We can't be the first to have thought about this. Anyone know of studies/histories we can refer to?
But in a society where personal identity is increasingly at risk, you can't pay for that. It's fiction, but you end up with at least a few Boyd Crowder characters from "Justified."
FWIW, this is how Trump voters are made. And at least in the U.S., the coal industry looks done.
Except it’s not nearly a large enough employer to single-handedly prop up the places where it dominates. Coal mining has been substantially automated compared to a few decades ago, and the total number of coal jobs is down to a small fraction of its peak.
Even if we doubled or tripled coal production, local economies in coal country would still be limping. It’s not like executives/stockholders of coal companies are dumping all their profits back into the local economy.
As a country/world we’d be better off paying former coal workers a living wage indefinitely, no strings attached, for nothing in return but keeping the coal in the ground.
The US already employs more people in the solar industry than the coal industry. We could conceivably make a policy like big federal wage subsidies to renewable companies willing to relocate to West Virginia or wherever.
Do you think there isn't any remaining connection between labor and coal's political resilience? Coal-politics could be explained as a lobbied interest, but that doesn't feel like a complete enough picture to me.
I think this is one of the reasons the election went the way it did, and I'm as guilty as anyone.
You can't discount pride. You can't discount being trained and good at a difficult job, and proud at being the one who does it. Money from the government doesn't replace that in the hierarchy of needs. And job retraining is tough when you're 40+.
> We could conceivably make a policy like big federal wage subsidies to renewable companies willing to relocate to West Virginia or wherever
I wonder if the renewables need the labor? If so, I can see that working. If not, then really the only problem is how to handle political dissatisfaction in the short term, and (perhaps) thus our election today.
Brief research suggests there might be a few tens of thousands of new jobs if the industry massively expands using the average level of automation of existing plant (of course the expansion will use higher levels of automation).
I guess from many perspectives that is a lot of jobs, but it isn't that many jobs.
It's enough to help tens of thousands of families and revitalize their communities (they'll be spending most of their earnings somewhere). In Appalachia that could make a huge impact on quality of life.
For what it's worth, I grew up in an Appalachian coal town. Coal development will have minimal impact on quality of life. The future for them is bleak, regardless of a Trump or Clinton presidency.
1) Coal was already in decline in the 90s. This isn't a government problem. This is a supply & demand problem. The demand for coal has declined.
2) Automation has drastically reduced the number of miners needed to actually operate a single mine. The # of jobs needed simply will not materialize.
3) Coal is losing the competition to alternative energy sources. (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-06/wind-and-s... )
4) China has been operating at excess production capacity already (http://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-coal-plant-binge-deepens-... )
This is a problem of a group of people failing to come to terms with the harsh realities of a capitalistic system. While their local and national leaders (I'm looking at you, McConnell) continually tell them that coal can be 'brought back'. It can't. Many of the same leaders know the truth, but to lie to the people is politically advantageous for them.
Four years from now Appalachian coal towns will be in worse shape, and even more pissed off. They need leaders that actually respect them to tell them the truth.
I'm from Kentucky as well. An earmark by Mitch McConnell secured funding for my first job out of university (WKU). He did good work for us in Bowling Green at least.
That said, I don't have any illusion that the future isn't bleak in coal country. My extended family has become substantially poorer over the last two decades -- from middle class to poverty. Still, we're working with what we've got. Every job created changes a life. At the very least it can be a bridge toward more opportunity -- that McConnell funded job was for me.
Honestly, I have no doubt that McConnell is a good and reasonable person. I do feel lots of frustration with him and the area, that can make me a tad irrational. I do recognize the difficult situation he is in. To tell the truth to the people could very well cost him his seat. Perhaps his hope is to keep appeasing until he can bring some other industry to the area. Unfortunately, given the harsh reality of poor infrastructure and poor education....I don't think he can do even that. As far as Eastern Ky is concerned, I would advise everyone to leave.
Our culture is unique. Mass relocation will probably destroy it. My own dream is to invest some of my earnings back home to prevent that from happening.
Our people will probably never become well off, but I still hold out hope that we might be able to get by without deracinating.
For how long can coal be the future and at what cost? The price drop of coal may result in other job losses as investment in sustainable systems drops. Additionally, the waste generated in the form of fly ash contains radioactive and carcinogenic materials. Disposal is worse than for nuclear system due to the large volume of material generated and inadequate regulations.
I was trying to address that with my second paragraph.
The question I think is more important is not whether jobs will be good for Appalachia though (obviously they will do some direct good), it is whether the good that comes out of those jobs is at all in proportion with the harm from expanding our use of coal. It likely is not, the harm will be much greater.
I have the same question for you as I have for jacobolus; even if that's the reality, I can still see a political angle to pushing a coal investment, since it was historically a large employer.
A significant amount of coal is burned in the world today. Much of it is burned in an inefficient way. Retrofitting coal burning plants to burn cleaner would a large impact on global carbon emissions. Replacing coal with cleaner sources would also have a large impact.
The important thing is: dollar-for-dollar, retrofitting is more effective than replacing.
I just came out of an energy company job, and you're outta luck. There's nothing in the energy sector to make me think they'll innovate unless they stumble into it.
Now, certain people might be able to sidle into energy but it'll be pretty rough going.
I was simply trying to buck up '80s-'90s era control systems to stop breaking things and this was perceived as "they're takin' 'er jerbs." Nothing was understood. My interpretation is that there is considerable willful ignorance of how technology might be used in that sector that will never be broken. You're threatening people's identity if you do.
Just thorough testing ( at least to my lights what is thorough - I have 30+ years safety-and-life-crticial realtime embedded experience) was seen with a jaundiced eye. A "real oil guy" does it on a laptop on the jobsite.
The rest of your post is spot on. However, at least natural gas will be deadly cheap for the forseeable future. We had one project to try to capture flare gas, but it cost (much) more than the captured gas will ever be worth.
> I just came out of an energy company job, and you're outta luck. There's nothing in the energy sector to make me think they'll innovate unless they stumble into it.
I don't think it only affects the existing members of the energy sector. Given the necessary financial motivation, there is a realistic opportunity for new competition in the renewable energy market rather than only relying on existing stablished companies to shift focus. Even if a group wants to move in to the renewable energy market on principal, funding will be a lot harder to come by with super cheap fossil fuel prices since investors (who are also motivated by money) won't see as much potential for short term profits.
IN the '60s/70, oil companies were mainly just companies that happened to do things oil-related. After the '84 crash, the character of those companies changed dramatically.
I don't know if that's inherent to that market or just a temporary phenomenon. If it is inherent, then that makes for a barrier to entry.
In addition to that, I'm not sure what the benefit is to energy producers - oil prices are already not far above a 15-year low and domestic crude production is at a 25-year high, currently almost 10% of global consumption.
Even without subsidies or other incentives, I just can't see where the demand comes from to drive significant oil supply increases. I'm genuinely curious what the restrictions are that are throttling our energy industry.
That's my guess too, but large numbers of new drilling sites - especially remote ones - would drive up costs while simultaneously helping to keep per-barrel prices low. Just sounds like a terrible ROI to me.
Well, I don't really expect this to cause oil extraction costs to go up. I don't think companies would waste money choosing more expensive drilling sites. But this could also signal an attack on local regulations too. It would make a big difference if local fracking bans were made illegal. Texas did that.
Yeah, I don't see an effect on extraction costs, I was just talking about the significant up-front capex costs in what looks to be a historically slack market.
Very interesting thought regarding local regulations; hadn't considered something like that at a federal level. It does also occur to me that this could just be a convenient way to make the opening up of large amounts of protected lands more palatable to the general public.
America has enough shale oil to be a net energy exporter, which means no more dealing with Venezuela or need for huge defense spending to protect strategic resources across the world. So I dunno, I can see why developing those resources might be in our interest.
Since oil is a fungible commodity, instabilities in oil prices outside the US will cause instabilities and price rises in the US (since a price rise outside the US is simply an incentive to export). Thus the US military patrols the Persian gulf in order that domestic oil makes it to the refinery.
>> which means no more dealing with Venezuela or need for huge defense spending to protect strategic resources across the world.
The problem is that we HAD energy independence when we discovered oil in the Bakken Peninsula and what happened? Our fearless leaders who wanted to be energy independent had a great chance to tell OPEC to go screw themselves and what happened?
They let them go to war with OPEC. We lost jobs, oil companies shut down in droves as the race to the bottom happened. OPEC said it wanted to put them out of business and for the most part, the people in Washington talking big about energy independence let it happen.
I have no faith they will ever keep their word. We had a wonderful opportunity and they let OPEC drive our companies out of business and cost that region thousands of jobs. And in the process, drive up the cost of oil as well.
If you are energy independent then you can screw the international market. If you can server yourself then you do not have to dance by the music of other producers.
Unless of course you want to play some other game altogether.
So you're suggesting the USA should block (or duty) oil imports, so that Americans have to pay a lot more for their oil just so they can prop up the US oil industry?
Would your own answer to this question be different if you had to pay what oil would actually cost with all externalities included, including but not limited to the gargantuan oil-industry subsidy that is the US defense budget?
Sure, but if the people who own the oil can sell it outside the country for more they will. So the price/demand outside still matters. Unless you're planning on making it illegal to export?
Well, that is not to say that states cannot implement their own environmental laws, take for example California. . .the fact that Trump 'will' lift "$50 trillion dollars’ worth of job-producing American energy reserves, including shale, oil, natural gas and clean coal. . ." does not mean that the states cannot take action; I know it is perceived as for the better if the environmental laws are uniformed throughout the states, but please let us not forget about state rights, 10th Amendment. If you, or whoever reads this comment, is really concerned about the environment than start focusing on individual and local changes; like in California; become a leader, propagate new technology that is good for the environment, and then the rest will follow the example of progressive states, as well as, progressive individuals. Don't sell your self short; Roll up the sleeves and get to work. . .no need for Federal Government Regulations;
Limit The Federal Government Not The People.
The problem is if West Virginia burns coal that causes air pollution and sea level rise in New York, New York can't pass a law against burning coal in West Virginia. Federal laws are needed when a state is externalizing costs and internalizing profits.
Look we can go back and forward and at the end we are both right. . .example, I can say that we doing something about our environment does not make a difference because of countries like China and India's pollution make it over the pacific into our environment. . .
The mechanism for dealing with this between countries is by signing treaties. The mechanism for dealing with this between US states is by passing federal laws.
> If we don't burn the stuff, the price will go down.
Not if the tax is on removing it from the ground to begin with. And we could issue sanctions on anyone who doesn't impose the same tax in their own country.
If I were a country and another country imposed sanctions on me for not following their exceptional laws, I would take that as a sign of aggression; that is essentially what it is; Instrumental Aggression;
Countries rely on different exportation of resources for their economy, the economy their people live off; stop it with this American Exceptionalism approach; be a leader by example not by aggression.
That is an interesting projection of your attitude. I hate to attribute a negative disposition to your comment, but you sound like an environmental extremist. Environmental extremist whom if given the opportunity would indirectly blow the world up, all in the name of the environment! Keep in mind that you have created this slippery slope, I reference to my initial comment; To give context to my reference (if it is not already obvious), I am for progressive laws for which people will adapt to hence given the choice not the forceful option, like sanctions; I am all for change just do not force it on me, and I you believe that a paternalistic government is needed for a positive change than you have already defined paternalist; paternalism through aggressive actions, like sanctions.
Good day sir
Climate change is classic tragedy of the commons. It's the quintessential example of it.
There are two ways out of tragedy of the commons. The first is that everyone recognizes we're all better off not destroying the world with CO2 and everyone stops burning coal. That works perfectly fine if that's what everyone does.
But if you'll notice the comment I was responding to was arguing that not everybody would. Which is possible. In which case only the second option works, which is for the victims of harm to exert power until the perpetrators submit. And that can lead to war -- which is why everyone should stop burning coal now.
This sort of attempt to control the resource usage of Japan (oil, rubber, etc.) is why Pearl Harbor got attacked. Starting the next world war is probably bad for the environment.
You're leaving out the entire purpose of the blockade: preventing Japan from importing oil and other goods to supply their massive invasion of China and Southeast Asia.
The attack on Pearl Harbor wasn't unprovoked, but failing to do anything would likely have ended up with the U.S. being attacked by a stronger set of allied opponents.
Congress doesn't write federal regulations. Executive branch agencies do, within very broad guidelines that Congress has put in the statutes empowering those agencies. A lot of what Trump is proposing here can be done without any Congressional action at all; it's just a matter of changing the priorities of the agencies who write the regulations.
Of course, doing that is a much, much bigger job than I think Trump realizes.
This is fantastic. That's exactly how it should be. Otherwise over decades you end up with regulations that stifle all forms of entrepreneurship and creativity.
What is a unit of "regulation"? I can pack five thousand onerous rules into one document and eliminate two documents that contain guidance with very minor impact. Is that a net gain?
This document contradicts that every other sentence after that. Almost all the bills he proposes are regulations, the executive orders... regulations. He proposes to overturn about a quarter as many things as he wants made law or executive order.
Agreed - this will probably be the Trump administration action that has the worst long-term impact of all. The US might as well not bother turning up to the next global climate change summit (not that Trump will anyway). Unfortunately, though, the whole world will pay the price of increased US environmental contamination during this era.
That and
>FIFTH, suspend immigration from terror-prone regions
where vetting cannot safely occur. All vetting of people
coming into our country will be considered “extreme
vetting.”
are the 2 most scary things on that first page. I really like his limitations on lobbying though. I hope they aren't too ham-fisted and easy to get around.
Wouldn't those lobbying regulations (blocking federal employees from lobbying) violate the first amendment? Wouldn't that deny an entire political class of people from being able to participate in the political process?
Except under Citizens United money is speech. How is this supposed to not conflict with that decision, unless they mean to clarify Citizens United is that only corporate personhood can use money as speech?
obviously I am not a supreme court justice, but its not limiting speech or expression. It is explicitly preventing what many people consider to be a gross conflict of interest. It's post-fact in a way, but its still messed up.
Agreed, this is the definition of short-sightedness. And the difficult part is that it's likely to produce a significant (short-term) boost to the economy.
Subsequent generations will have to pay back the principal on this loan, with interest. And we will lose our opportunity to carve out a leadership position in the energy technologies of the 21st century, as well.
> Cheaper fossil fuels == less investment in renewable energy. Period.
Does it have to be US investment? Some other countries (China, Israel, South Korea) have a greater urgency to diversify into clean energy. Why can't the US ride the coattails of that research the way other countries benefit from cheap solar panels and affordable electric cars developed and produced elsewhere?
But these are global problems, and if the US unilaterally refuses to make money off of oil while the rest of the world keeps pumping, the biggest effect will be income and jobs leaving the country.
I am not sure that makes sense. We dont have to hurt the oil industry to help innovation. We dont have to hurt ordinary cars to help self driving cars popular.
how do we know that "clean energy" hasn't been artificially propped up to begin with? if we can burn coal much cleaner and more efficiently then so what? let's do it if it's cheaper. We can still develop new technologies, that won't stop regardless.
>Some of the 31 American cities are Los Angeles (the first since 1979); Washington, D.C.; New York City (see also Illegal immigration in New York City); Jersey City; Berkeley, California; Coachella, California; Philadelphia; San Francisco; Santa Ana; San Jose; Oakland; Salt Lake City; Dallas; Houston; Detroit; Chicago; Salinas, California; Minneapolis; Miami; Denver; Baltimore; Seattle; Portland, Oregon; New Haven; Somerville; Cambridge; and Portland, Maine.
Despite being an independent left leaning liberal, I welcome this proposal, if they can actually implement it.
I see wide-spread exploitation of the "Sanctuary City" Law in San Francisco, especially in the Restaurants, Construction site and Janitorial jobs.
The Sanctuary Law, for those that don't know, forbids the Feds from asking employers about the immigration status of the employees / workers. This has caused 100s and 1000s of (mostly mexican and hispanic) undocumented immigrants to arrive and live in Sanctuary Cities (like San Francisco, LA, etc) and strain the local public services, while simultaneously being exploited by their employers.
Most get paid less than minimum wage (some even as low as 8$ / hour instead of the $13.75 min wage in SF), women get abused, sexually harassed etc (in restaurant jobs).
The more important aspect is preventing local police from having to act as immigration agents. That has a very real effect on crime: illegal immigrants don't have to be afraid of talking to police. I think we're safer when everyone feels free to report crimes and act as witnesses.
I agree with your message about safety, but it is important to keep in mind that illegal immigrants are inherently breaking the law. We should not encourage keeping them safe from deportation.
There's a long debate to be had about immigration in general. I'd contend, though, that it's in the public interest to look past things like immigration status in certain situations. For example, suppose we're vaccinating against an epidemic. In that case, you definitely don't want anyone to be afraid to come out and get their shot for any reason.
SF doesn't keep illegal immigrants safe from deportation. It says "in these circumstances, we think it's more important that you cooperate with the city than it is for us to try to deport you, so we're going to call a temporary truce".
While your comment sounds like it makes sense at face value, I find it naive and simplistic. I think the logical outcome of a policy like that is that you end up worse off.
We all unwittingly break many laws day. Living in the US is inherently illegal, even if you happen to be a citizen. My point is that there isn't some binary division between people that break the law and those that don't.
If businesses need to be immigration police, they'll just hire illegal immigrants under the table (moreso), and be more exploitive about it.
If people are afraid to talk to the police, they won't. This breeds gangs & protection rackets, which presumably you don't want, because they increase crime.
As these problems will become worse and worse, the more we will try to crack down on illegal immigration, intensifying said problems. The tragic irony is that the solution is the cause of the problem and it is part of a nasty feedback loop.
> Living in the US is inherently illegal, even if you happen to be a citizen
I am guessing you are implying that the White Europeans "stole" America from the Native Americans. By that notion, you can keep going a few 100 years back in history and you'll eventually end up with "Living in the ___ is inherently illegal, even if you happen to be a citizen" for every place in this earth except that place in Africa where the human is supposed to have evolved and migrated.
This is a total straw man. Illegal immigrants pay their taxes. The IRS doesn't care about their immigration status, but they do care about getting paid.
I'm pretty sure San Francisco has no power over Federal agents, and I can't find any evidence that the law attempts to "forbid the Feds from asking employers about the immigration status of the employees". Best I can tell it only forbids _City_ employees from actively assisting or spending city money to assist federal immigration agents. This is entirely reasonable. As for evasion of federal law by employERs, the employers should be the target of enforcement, not the employees.
1) Sanctuary Laws allow undocumented immigrants to live and work in such cities... for CASH. Since the employer - usually labor intensive like at Restaurants, construction sites, janitorial services etc - pays cash, the employer can pay anything, even as low as 5 to 8$ an hour. So the undocumented immigrant is getting exploited.
2) Since they are undocumented, these workers also routinely get harassed, abused by employers. I've seen 1st hand female restaurant workers touched, rubbed, groped etc in the kitchen. They can't go anywhere to complaint cos they'll get identified and deported
3) Lastly, and this is 1 of my major concerns, whenever these undocumented immigrants needs medical assistance, the city's tax payers foot the bill for the ambulance, hospitalization etc since these people (don't mean it to sound like that) also don't have health insurance. 1 Restaurant owner in the edge of the Tenderloin district told me that this population accounted for over 70K of tax payers money in 2015 (not sure how he found that out).
Lastly -- and this is not something I subscribe to, but Trump made it a big deal as it is sensational and brings in the "angry white man" voters to his fold -- undocumented immigrants have committed violent crimes in San Francisco and in 1 such case, a lady was shot point blank range while she was strolling in Fisherman's Wharf (totally unrelated to deranged shooter) and Trump made it a case of "See we allow undocumented immigrants and they come and murder us."
I'm a little torn on #1. I definitely don't think anybody should be allowed to be paid less than minimum wage. But on the other hand, if these people are choosing to come to the United States to work these jobs because it's better than what they could get in their home country, it's hard for me to say they shouldn't be able to do it.
Isn't #2 the whole point of sanctuary cities? In theory, the undocumented immigrants in these cities should have no fear of going to police and other authorities. Whereas in other cities the police might actually be obligated to inform immigration officials.
#3 is interesting. Definitely undocumented immigrants make use of government resources, but they also help the economy by providing cheap labor. As far as I know, there isn't a strong consensus on whether the overall impact is positive or negative. For example, here's a brief article that explores both sides a bit: http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-thorny-economics-of-illegal-...
And what are the repercussions if he does NOT achieve all these within the first 100 days? Will he step down? Come up with yet another plan? Contracts usually stipulate this as well.
[Edit: And the downvote brigade strikes - for merely asking a genuine question. I guess this is an indication of the sort of thing that we can expect 'top down' from now on... Stay silent, never question, just obey the mandates... sigh]
[Edit2: And now plenty of upvotes in support after my last edit, as well as useful replies - thank you for restoring my faith in democracy and the fact the people are willing to discuss and deliberate policies in a fair and rational manner.]
Cool - they do similar things in this country too. Strangely I've never heard it worded as a 'contract' though. 'Plan' and 'Contract' have entirely different connotations.
It is an homage to a 1994 "Contract with America" offered by the Republican Party's campaign for Congress. At that time they had been out of power for 40 years. They knew voters didn't like them, so instead of saying "Like us!", they said, "here, in writing, is what we'll do if you give us your vote". It was a good idea, and they won a major election which permanently changed the balance of power.
Trump similarly faced an electorate that didn't like him or his opponent. She said "Like me!" and he said "Here's what I'll do for you." It was a smart thing to do. A much lower hurdle to have to jump.
Our politicians like to use stupid language that projects confidence beyond what any reasonable person would possess. For example, presidential candidates are constantly referred to as "the next president of the United States," as if the outcome of the election were somehow predetermined.
> And what are the repercussions if he does NOT achieve all these within the first 100 days?
He will claim that he did indeed achieve them despite all evidence to the contrary.
If you manage to corner him on the argument, he will blame you for the failure.
* edit. Not sure what the downvote is for. Trump has used both tactics outlined above. He was always against the Iraq war despite evidence to the contrary. When he was under the impression that he would lose the election he cast blame elsewhere (election rigging).
In France Hollande have been moving goal posts every time these 'N days' plans failed. He's now thinking about a second mandate.
Out of curiosity, in this era of disruption (for better or worse) where are the plans to disrupt politicians ? So many flaws yet we keep believing in the same democratic design every election.
> So many flaws yet we keep believing in the same democratic design every election.
There are two ways of changing the fundamental issues in a constitution: 1) violent revolution, 2) changes getting done in democratic process.
1) obviously works, but rarely (you need a LOT of support in the population in order to stage a coup).
2) I am afraid to say doesn't really work in America (or for that matter any major nation) any more. You have too many people who need the system to be "stable" for personal gain (reelections, in some cases continuing a supply of corruption money like with the private prison scandal, ...). You simply cannot fix issues like gerrymandering because it's too entrenched.
What if some of the super rich elites leveraged their economic might to counteract the effect of gerrymandering -- perhaps an endowment that explicitly offered a geographically sensitive housing subsidy based on a normalized model for how precincts _should_ be shaped could have significant effects if backed by the capital of a Gates or a Zuckerberg foundation?
I believe that mathematically fair models for precinct shape have been described[1] -- such model could provide the basis for estimating the gerrymander induced vote-reflects-voter-will-error -- and the subsidy system could encourage population shift to try and approximate the results that would occur if the precincts had actually been drawn "fairly" ...
Be involved and be informed, locally If not at a state or higher level.
- do note, that politicians (humans) have long since "hacked" the human cortex. They program you, and other humans by finding authority escalations, buffer overruns, Trojans and privileged executions all the time.
Right now, malware itself has become the OS.
To fix this, people need to be aware of how politics and cognition works.
I was thinking about this as well. I just learned about the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact[0], which would at least cover situations (like this election) where electoral vote results that don't jive with the popular vote.
True, very true, too many high tension relationships between agents to evolve deeply and softly. But this is why I asked about weird yet new ideas about politics. For the sake of thought experiments. Should we have complexity dampening sub structure to ensure a form of fluid stability. Limiting group sizes, enforcing a structural clarity that can be communicated to the public in clearer and faster ways so we don't rely in behind the curtain representatives.
Today's politics are black boxes, form people to deal with it, elect some of them, let them do what they want, suffer the consequences. I don't think it's an adequate form of democracy for this century, it was alright before, with different economic structures, pace and technological basis; but today .. maybe it's my CS cursus speaking, maybe a more peer to peer system is needed.
> maybe it's my CS cursus speaking, maybe a more peer to peer system is needed.
Direct democracy can go badly wrong. Very badly wrong, and I don't neccessarily mean Hitler-level wrong. Just look at Switzerland, they are still struggling to implement a referendum from 2014 against freedom of movement in a way that doesn't kick them out of the EU (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_immigration_referendum,_...).
Given the election results, I wonder what 'd happen if there was a US-wide referendum with the simple question "Deport all undocumented persons"...
I'm torn but I kinda see where you're headed. Indirect democracy ensure a certain amount of resistance to the people's will in case they decide to sink the ship. Do I understand you correctly ?
ps: I misread your answer and went into a monologue, I'm rewriting this previous answer.
> Sorry, I should have been clearer. I didn't mean digital. I meant p2p in the abstract sense. Where the system interactions are simpler, less hierarchical and everybody is almost a peer. Right now people, the blood and roots of a nation are, pardon the pun, second class citizen that have to follow representatives out of trust without any direct power beside a vote. I say this democratic design isn't enough anymore. We need more educated people (better education is easily possible) that can organize more, understand and decide more, even if it means move their ass more, but at least they'll have real power, not just a ballot.
> Indirect democracy ensure a certain amount of resistance to the people's will in case they decide to sink the ship. Do I understand you correctly ?
Yep. But, as it can be seen with Trump (with the fact that Republicans control the legislative (Senate, Congress), the judicial (because they have at least one open Supreme Court post to fill, with potential for three more, and they're life-long!) and executive by way of "elected sheriffs, who came up with that nonsense anyway?!) and before with the Obama deadlock!, even a carefully crafted system of checks-and-balances cannot ensure that the ship "democracy" won't sink.
> We need more educated people (better education is easily possible) that can organize more, understand and decide more,
I fully agree with you, however from an outside POV the US education system looks totally broken (homeschooling?! 7-figure-levels of debt upon graduation?! segregated schools?! vastly different quality of education depending on if the public school district has money or not?!). Germany isn't that much better, and a load of other countries also have massive problems in education. When I look at what happened to people in the "poor-ish" hood I grew up, all I can say is that I was fucking lucky. A tiny bit less luck and I'd probably doing drugs now instead of working in IT.
> even if it means move their ass more, but at least they'll have real power, not just a ballot.
That's yet another can of worms. Back when I was young and went to school, we had MASSIVE school strikes to protest an "education reform" (aka clueless politicians listening to elitist "concerned parents"). Fascist marches/demonstrations were met with massive opposition of all kinds - from peaceful demonstrations to open riots in the streets. Most of the opposition were young(ish) people. Today, I'm happy when I'm out on the streets if there are 50 people on the road to oppose fascists. The youth has gone lethargic, and the "middle-aged" mostly spend their time and energy in internal debates instead of progressing society.
1) understood, I'm just realizing that there's a need for balance outside people's will too, not too much, but still. As you said, if possible it has to be crafted in order to avoid too much power into the already existing state, yet stability nonetheless.
2) the education paragraph was mostly daydreaming, I know how crazy it is, but people rarely talk about it as a premium need. So I mentioned it.
3) I have nothing to say here. Maybe the tides will have to be since the people aren't ready to divert them.
They are not an EU member in the strict sense, but they participate in a lot of EU treaties (e.g. Schengen) in order to have access to European markets and labor force - the problem is that these treaties are interlocked, i.e. you can't only pick the parts you want, it's all of the rules or nothing at all.
This New Yorker cartoon seems to sum up your position. [1] I think it is pretty clear that the policies in the document are a more important to most of us than the clarity of their presentation.
Well I'm glad "clear and concise to your eye" is the rubric by which we're grading policy. Or maybe this isn't about the actual policy, you just want complex reality to be boiled down in a way that's easily digestible?
My parents in NC are in that exact situation. My dad is on disability and Medicaid, and insurance for my stepmom would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 50% of their income. She doesn't qualify for any assistance. Apparently, 377,000 other North Carolinians don't either. And there are 19 other states in a similar position.
There are plenty of digestible summaries of the ACA online[0]. I think it has some things that are very beneficial to the American population, like (trying) to raise Medicaid and offering subsidies for those just above the Medicaid cut-off. Also barring insurers from providing coverage for those with pre-existing conditions[1] and barring lifetime limits.
Not saying the ACA is flawless, but I'm not confident that Trump and the GOP are going to improve the situation in the long-term. ("cutting the red tape at the FDA" might help a bit, though) It's still not clear exactly what actions they will take.
A typical quote, and hardly the most disturbing thing he's said on the campaign trail:
""Torture works. OK, folks? You know, I have these guys -- "Torture doesn't work!" -- believe me, it works. And waterboarding is your minor form. Some people say it's not actually torture. Let's assume it is. But they asked me the question, What do you think of waterboarding? Absolutely fine. But we should go much stronger than waterboarding. That's the way I feel. They're chopping off heads. Believe me, we should go much stronger, because our country's in trouble. We're in danger. We have people that want to do really bad things! Remeber the power of weaponry. This isn't 100 years ago where we fight hand to hand combat. This is weapons that are so destructive -- so destructive -- that the world could end. We have to be very strong, we have to be very vigilant, we have to be very tough. Waterboarding is fine, but it's not nearly tough enough, OK?"
"...we are playing by rules, but they have no rules. It's very hard to win when that's the case," Trump said, adding that the United States' ban on waterboarding is a sign of weakness.
"I think we've become very weak and ineffective. I think that's why we're not beating ISIS. It's that mentality," Trump said, adding that ISIS "must think we are a little bit on the weak side."
He has backpedaled on the issue since then, but the fact that he said this stuff in the first place is disturbing enough.
I agree that a disturbing percentage of mainstream USA in on board with it, I don't think it's 100% of them though.
Democrats have generally been opposed to torture. That's half the country right there. For the other half of the country, a huge part of the Republican base are Christian voters, who ought to be at the tip of the spear of the fight against torture, but in practice seem to neither explicitly condone nor condemn it. But I'll be charitable and assume that the evangelical segment of the party is steadfast against torture, meaning that at least 2/3s of Republican voters are against torture. That leaves no more than 1/6th of the US population on board with torture. That's still pretty messed up, but I'm trying to be optimistic. :(
I don't understand the outrage specifically over torture. Yes, it's terrible, but why is there more outrage over waterboarding than over drone strikes? This makes no sense to me. Would you rather be waterboarded or drone striked?
I and many other people would rather be dead than tortured. Torturing doesn't actually accomplish anything either. Anyone will say what you want to hear to get the pain to stop. Torture is more about some sick revenge.
The fact that they "will say what you want to hear" places limits on what you can gain from torture, but the limits don't make it impossible to accomplish anything.
The most obvious case is getting a password. (or lock combo or crypto key, or anything else that you can verify) You torture until you get a password that works. Obviously, there should be good reason to believe that the person knows the password.
Another case is where you know many things but not everything. You ask about all that you want to know, including things you already know. The things you already know are the honesty check. Answers to the unknowns are assumed to be dishonest until you start getting correct answers for all the things you already know.
God, it's 2016 and we're discussing whether we should dispense fates worse than death in brazen and barbaric acts of cruelty, to other human beings. What has happened to my country?
lets just take his first step- what kind of term limits? he could propose a term limit of 50 years, have achieved what he said he'd do, but make no meaningful change.
Low term limits are a double edged sword. On the one hand, you want to get new blood in the system. On the other, you don't want to throw away all the experience the representative has accumulated. how effective do you think someone really is in the first 2-4 years?
A middle ground might be to make those the term limits, but require the representatives to not fill that position that 3rd or 4th term, but able to fill other positions and come back later. E.g.
senate (6) -> senate (6) -> congress (2) -> congress (2) -> congress (2) -> senate (6)
This would force representatives into other positions, while allowing them to capitalize on (and us to benefit from) their experience. We have a little of this already in advancement from congress to senate.
I'm not sure how it's any worse than current term limits in some states or the proposed term limits here? And I'm not saying they can't be elected, just not for the same position in perpetuity. If they were popular and want to run again for that position when next possible, so be it.
> To which similar documents are you comparing it?
They are comparing it to Newt Gingrich's 1994 "Contract with America" [1]. It brought Republicans control of both the House and Senate, partly as a reaction to Clinton's 1993 healthcare plan [2].
That's exactly the point. No one has ever offered such a document, so say what you want about Trump, he's taking a step towards transparency and accountability.
The contract with America is notable for being highly, highly unusual to broadcast your actual plans. Nobody did this before or after the contract with america until now.
HAHAHA come on dude, this is just a "first 100 days in office" plan, it's used by presidential candidates all the time. You can't be serious.
Transparency? Accountability? Are you kidding me? This is the guy that brags about molesting women and won't even release his tax returns. Did you see who is going to be in his cabinet? Some of the slimiest and shameless career politicians of all time. Christie? Gingrich? When have these people been accountable ever?
I have a feeling you were not alive for the "Contract with America".
On a side note this is one of the most naive things I have ever seen. I was a bit agnostic before, but wow this is literally handing Russia and China the keys to the global economy while thinking he is doing the opposite. Yikes, I really did not realize he was this under qualified.
Hmm totally not being a Trump supporter how does this empower China exactly? Russia's economy is the size of NYC so that is even stranger point especially given Trumps position on " I will lift the restrictions on the
production of $50 trillion dollars’ worth of
job-producing American energy reserves,
including shale, oil, natural gas and clean coal"
The TPP (and other trade agreements) is largely about establishing key US companies into foreign markets. The US can, unsurprisingly, command the upper-hand in most negotiations due to our massive economic influence. These laws include protections for IP rights, financial regulation, and food/drug safety standards that allow US companies to operate and establish dominance in foreign markets.
If the US refuses to build trade relations, or becomes known for breaking agreements, then that gives China the opportunity to come in and instead establish their entertainment, technology, banking, and consumer goods companies. This would be clearly at the expense of the US and would gradually erode our economic influence around the world.
People around the world drink Coke, eat McDonalds, search on Google, get loans from Wells Fargo, buy stuff on their Visas, etc, largely due to these agreements. This money funnels back to the US to pay salaries, taxes and dividends.
So, short-term, US sheep farmers benefit from not having to compete on fair terms with New Zealand wool. But long-term, all other Americans lose as the income streams from established American companies are transferred to their non-US counterparts.
In particular case of China given the trade imbalance and the currency peg doesn't really look like US has a net gain from current setup. US position in most categories in China is very modest.
Because China wants a piece of this amazing pie the US has cooked up. The US gave up the hard-to-automate, labor intensive industries while keeping a lot of the high-margin, highly-automated industries. So while Chinese companies compete for razor thin margins on smart phone components, American companies sell flavored sugar water all over the world for 500% markup (and gobble up any competition).
That's why the TPP is so important, it specifically excludes China because the goal is to further entrench US companies in SE Asia/Oceania. If the US backs out, then that gives China the opportunity to come in and sell the low-cost smart phones AND overpriced sugar water.
We are competing with China for trade partners and it seems backwards to me to forfeit.
US companies may sell the overpriced sugar water, but are the proceeds really flowing back to the US? Coca-Cola has done the whole tax haven and transfer pricing game for many years now.
Yet somehow they have built up more infrastructure in a year then we did in decades while running a huge trade surplus.
We get back disposable crap that does not create any lasting assets.
The Beijing subway system is already better than NY's: more lines, better quality, clean, safe...
That's just one example but I was impressed when I saw it. And they have been adding 1 new LINE per year in Beijing, wheras we don't even add 1 new station per year in most US cities.
Not exactly related, but being in Tokyo, I now see that Toronto's subway system is a joke. I think it hasn't really been updated since I was born. There's like, three lines in total.
Having dominant military is a key component is having USD as world's dominant currency which in turn drives about 30-40% of our GDP, so even aside from security aspect it's a very good investment.
> This money funnels back to the US to pay salaries, taxes and dividends.
Or rather to Bermuda, to fill the 0.5% tax-free accounts. So the sheep farmers are screwed and everyone else is screwed too. This is why people reject free trade (or think they do that by voting someone like Trump, which is another topic).
Maybe in some part, but there are also people at Visa who have to run the servers, create business agreements, manage people, etc whose jobs are at risk in a shrinking company.
It's good to hear that Germans are so happy. They would have been even happier to learn that TPP is a proposed trade deal between twelve Pacific Rim countries. It never included Germany.
> Hmm totally not being a Trump supporter how does this empower China exactly?
China's actively seeking trade deals all over the world. The US taking a strongly antitrade position could improve their relative position. The devil is really in the details, though.
Actively is putting it lightly. They are aggressively seeking trade deals and investment opportunities. Especially since they use those to further their foreign policy aims.
The geopolitical implications of Trump's isolationist position is going to be significant.
Do you have an example where China implemented a trade agreements that resulted in significant trade balance surplus for the trading partner? (aside from energy)
New Zealand has a trade surplus with China. NZ was in the TPPA, but already have a FTA with China. They were trying for one with the US, but the US preferred the TPPA. [1][2]
Since the China FTA came into effect, China has replaced the US as NZ's number 1 trading partner. The US is 4th on that list.[3]
OK I stand corrected Energy and Food but New Zealand is definitely more an exception then a norm. We are running close to 400b trade deficit with China.
China has been doing some pretty complex deals with countries all across Africa - financing and building hydroelectric dams and other massive infrastructure buildouts. These are long-term deals that often include concessions for oil or other natural resources, so it's difficult to pin them down to a clear surplus/deficit.
Generally in such deals Chinese companies are the contractors doing the work and suppliers of goods, so again outside of energy I don't think China implemented any agreements that provided surplus for the trading partner.
The TPP had very specific political goals - it created a common market for the US, a couple of Latin American countries, and most of the major East Asian and South Pacific economies... but NOT China. The idea being to both bind American allies in Asia more closely to it, and to ensure that if/when China wanted expanded trade with TPP members it would have to deal with rules that had originally been set by the US and its allies.
I'm fine with words gaining additional definitions due to how they are popular used, but when a word is defined as one thing, and the exact opposite of that same thing, and both definitions can be equally valid within the context of the same sentence, then that's literally the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
I will not claim it is intelligent. But, I also do not believe in language is made of intelligent design. Things evolve. Sometimes in clever ways. Sometimes in odd ways.
That said, most contronyms give absolutely no cognitive dissonance. That "to dust" something can mean to remove or to add something has rarely caused confusion. Only place I have ever seen it was in some old children's books, to be honest. Which is half the reason they are fun. Teaching kids contradictions is what keeps some of it interesting.
A lot of what's in there seems pretty reasonable, but:
1) The whole border wall thing is just ridiculous. I thought he had given up on that. Why would Mexico have to pay for that? If the US wants to build a wall, fine, build it and pay for it. It doesn't make sense to demand that Mexico pay for it. It's like building a wall on your property and demanding your neighbors pay for it.
2) The FDA thing is scary. Regulations and processes are there for a reason. I'll be very wary if this goes through and I ever have to take any medication that's not established in the market.
Specifically, he will threaten to disallow wire transfer of money from US to Mexico by non-citizens. Since that is a revenue source they greatly depend on, he suggests they'd rather fund the building of the wall. If they agree to fund the wall, then the ban on transfers will go away.
So Mexicans start using bitcoin, amazon gift cards, or something like that. Or we end up with "underground banks" that can effectively transfer money across the border without actually doing so, i.e., you buy a digital good at a physical location in the US, transfer it to a relative in Mexico, who then sells it back to the company at a slight discount for cash (which, as a side-effect, would be a great way to launder drug money).
Or I guess, you bounce money through Belize or something.
You realize this same logic could seemingly dismiss any regulation (assault weapons, child labor, tax evasion), right?
"People will smuggle illegal guns from abroad. Or buy the parts and assemble them. Or get a machine shop and make them."
A regulation, no matter its aim, does not require 100% compliance to be an effective deterrent. I'm not saying this plan will work, but a generic "people will get around it" argument is not illuminating.
Sure; some rules are easier to circumvent than others. The real question is whether it's onerous enough to act as a deterrent, not whether some people will circumvent it.
In this thread someone said it's like trying to stop the import of illegal drugs. Regulations seem to work for Singapore.
> The real question is whether it's onerous enough to act as a deterrent, not whether some people will circumvent it.
Deterring what? "Illegal immigration" or "people walking across the border"? If it is the former, then that plan is just so stupid to be of any value. Banning transfer of money from US to Mexico to make Mexico pay for "building a 10 ft high border-wall" is ... wow, just saying that out loud feels weird.
From Trump's perspective, Mexico benefits by having illegal immigrants in the US send money back to Mexico. There is no real reason for Mexico to enforce the border. Trump wants to deter this behavior (not enforcing the border) by assigning a cost (no more wire transfers back).
I'm not making a judgment here, just trying to clarify the worldview.
Operating a monetary transmittal service in the United States without implementing KYC-AML (which is what he is basing this on) is practically suicide. Even retailers will send you to customer service to complete a form for buying too many gift cards.
And you will go to jail really fast for operating unlicensed money transfer service. They will also add something about facilitating terrorism to add a few more years to your sentence.
This falls prey to the same fallacious thinking as gambling with the house's money. Assuming we can extort billions of dollars from Mexico, that's money we could be spending on anything – why is a wall the best use for it? And if a wall is the best use for it, the government should be prepared to build it with our own tax dollars, regardless of whether we extort money from Mexico.
Candidate: "We're going to build a wall between us and Mexico. It'll cost us $7 billion."
Electorate: "Umm. That's a lot of money. Let's do something else with it."
If that's how people would react, they should react the same way even if we're getting the money from Mexico. Money is fungible, and as much as our hearts enjoy poetic justice, it shouldn't matter where it's coming from.
There are a couple of situations where we would still want it built, even if its cost exceeded what we were willing to pay ourselves. One is if this is a cooperative, non-zero-sum situation: if Mexico were getting some value from the wall, they might be willing to pay some of the cost, beyond what we can extract via tariffs and seized remittances. The other is if Mexico is terrible at negotiations, which is likely what Trump is assuming.
The Big Bend area is just one natural area like that. Consider the Amistad Reservoir (http://cdn.onlyinyourstate.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/33...) for instance. Water levels there are about 1100 feet. Kind of hard to put a fence in the middle there. :)
Obviously I'm "sticking to the metaphor", but legitimately that Big Bend area is one of those reminders that this "wall" concept is ridiculous for other reasons. That area and others along the border awfully remote, which will make managing the infrastructure and obtaining people to work there a headache. It will also make building the actual infrastructure extremely challenging and probably quite expensive. Not that Trump would care, but it's certainly not an environmentally friendly proposal either.
If the economy is such where Mexicans still want to migrate, there's other possibilities. No wall will secure the sea for instance, unless you build that "wall" around the entire Gulf of Mexico and Pacific Ocean. (Beachgoers won't be happy about that.) The wall does not stop exploitation methods such as visa overstays or smuggling in the heavier trafficked borders. Even the Berlin Wall -- well more fortified than any 2,000 mile could ever be -- was breached 5,000 times in its history, so there's a good chance that even these remote areas might get some activity.
How much is America willing to pay for "a wall" to stop the immigrants? Enough to wreck the economy? Well, that's one sure way to prevent Mexicans from crossing over. :)
I do not support building a wall, nor building a wall and getting Mexico to pay for it. However, if I was trying to get Mexico to pay for the wall, gosh darn it this document explains coherently how to do it! You can't deny that the administration is goal-oriented.
Not to sound like a "bleeding heart" liberal, but understand that the $24b per year in money that flows into Mexico from individuals living in the U.S. is money that goes to their families. The document even goes so far as to remind the reader that there is no social safety net in Mexico, which will compound the effect of cutting off income from family members living in the U.S.
It's weird that you prefer the people who have broken your own laws to enter your country, to the ones who have tried to go through your lawful process and failed. Where is your bleeding heart for all the would-be immigrants who tried to go were rejected by your legal immigration officers, who similarly might have no social safety net?
You cannot treat all of the world's ills as your own. You may have decided that illegal immigrants are part of the American identity, but a lot of the voters for Trump have not, and are rallying against that. Unless you convince them to treat illegal immigrants as part of their own, it's unlikely you'll find a "bleeding heart" argument to persuade them.
My heart bleeds for the women and children living off wired money in Mexico, not for the men working illegally in the U.S sending them money. The families back in Mexico with no safety net are the ones who will suffer if we cut off Western Union as a bargaining chip. That is an argument made in that document in favor of the plan. People will suffer in Mexico, so Mexico will be more inclined to make a payment for the wall. The people suffering in Mexico - what law have they broken?
I haven't decided that illegal immigrants are part of the American identity, but I do consider the people not in America who are receiving money to be innocent bystanders (with the exception of drug money, but the cartels wouldn't be stopped by these sanctions anyway).
I see your point, and I see your concern. However, I don't think that concern alone is a stopping factor for implementing such a decision. That would mean that you cannot make progress in many bad situations, when people have begun to rely on them. As an example, I think Obama was right to pull out of Iraq, but he was criticized for increasing the instability there and the return of terrorist groups to it. The Republican support from the Rust belt is a similar example(moving from cheap to intellectual labor has been great for the USA's overall GDP, but has destroyed the livelihood of blue-collar workers).
That was the heart of my point - with a limited budget of resources, you simply cannot help anyone. At that point, you are faced with some philosophical questions - should I be maximizing some global 'goodness' factor, or should I be working for the local group that I am supposed to represent? In the end, the leaders of democratic countries are elected to represent the will of their voters, not to better mankind(unless that is what the voters want!).
If Trump and his supporters believe that a wall will improve the situation for the US and American citizens, then I don't think arguments about the welfare of others(whom they might even view antagonistically) will sway them.
I found different arguments much more persuasive - arguments that removing illegal immigrants would not bring jobs back to American citizens, because they were a net economic positive and creating demand as well as supply.
However, these arguments seemed to be drowned out by the loud, resonating narrative on how evil and racist the supporters of Trump's policy were, which I can only imagine hardened their resolve to get it through. An especially easy angle that Trump could pursue was the disregard of rule of law by illegal immigrant supporters, which I feel could have received a lot more attention and understanding from Trump's opposition.
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This actually makes sense as a policy. Though I don't understand why he still thinks Mexico should pay for it. It just seems a bit dickish. Simply increasing the federal prison time for illegal immigrants (as suggested) would probably eliminate a lot of the traffic.
Why would you pay to imprison illegal immigrants? Also there's some amount of evidence that says increasing punishment doesn't necessarily act as increased deterrent to some crimes past a certain point.
They'll just run their cash over the border to Mexico, instead of sending it via electronic means. This has already been happening for years, although the vast majority of such cash running has consisted of illicit drug money. No reason why it couldn't expand to become the main way for illegal workers to get their cash heading south to their families, if there really were no other option.
How would they convert USD to Bitcoin? And before that, and before that, etc. at some point someone who's paying taxes is gonna have to engage in something that the IRS is gonna ask questions about.
Because it would enact legislation that would require ID before wire transfer? I'm not sure if this is currently done, but it may upend laws (in CA) re: getting a driver's license if you are an illegal citizen. I can't imagine that it would be required to submit a birth certificate or social security card for wire transfer.
In retaliation, Mexico files a complaint through NAFTA and the WTO, and starts taking retaliatory action. A 10% immediate surtax on the value of US owned property would be a good start.
And eventually the trade war turns into a shooting war. We've seen the script before.
FWIW this document isn't dated that I can see but it does refer to election day like so:
"On November 8th, Americans will be voting for this 100-day plan to restore prosperity to our economy, security to our communities and honesty to our government"
Meantime significantly more potent (and possibly effective) drugs are in clinical trials, eg: Hu-3F8 at MSKCC. But... given the cost and enormous amount of red tape needed to get the drug approved (combined with very small market) odds of them getting approved in the next 10 years are not that high.
Something needs to change, but I am not sure exactly what.
You did?? He's been personally promising to build it 3-5 times a day to tens of thousands of people in every competitive state in the US. It's kind of hard to miss...
>> Why would Mexico have to pay for that? ... It's like building a wall on your property and demanding your neighbors pay for it.
Except the neighbors -- to stretch the analogy a bit more -- have their children, pets and a few spare vehicles in your yard and have become accustomed to browbeating you into not complaining about it. Trump et al. plan on altering this dynamic.
To stretch the analogy even further: your family has become accustomed to having the neighbors' children cook your food and borrowing those spare vehicles whenever you feel like it.
They're not just hanging out in your yard, they're contributing to your household's economy and are friends with your own kids. In fact, your daughter told them to keep the pets in the yard because she loves them so much.
Suddenly asking the neighbors to build a thick fence and stay the hell out will get your other family members very upset, and also means that you'll have to do more cooking from now on. Tough choices for the family dad...
> It doesn't make sense to demand that Mexico pay for it. It's like building a wall on your property and demanding your neighbors pay for it.
When buying a house, wouldnt you try to negotiate for seller concessions like paying for repairs?
Trumps wall comments were always in conjunction with discussing the massive trade deficit with Mexico. If we are in a stronger position to negotiate with Mexico, why wouldnt we negotiate the best deal we can get?
If you really think about it. We only need this wall because of Mexico, so why should we pay if we dont have to?
> If you really think about it. We only need this wall because of Mexico, so why should we pay if we dont have to?
People flee Mexico because it's an extremely poor country with a horrible government and is controlled by drug cartels. Screwing the country over further economically sounds like the worst way to solve this problem. In fact, it seems like a very good way to exacerbate the problem.
Perhaps that's why private prison stocks are up so much on Trump's election. His actions are clearly going to increase the flow of illegal immigrants into the US, and now that these people can be tossed into federal prison for mandatory minimum sentences. So the end result is, the federal government will be on the hook for something like a quarter million dollars for each one of the people caught crossing the border.
Trump just created a (12 million illegal immigrants * $250k/yr each * 5yr minimum sentences = $15 trillion) market.
> Screwing the country over further economically sounds like the worst way to solve this problem.
First, I am just a random uneducated and ignorant American, so take my two cents for what it is...only two cents.
From my vantage point, cutting off the drug cartels access to the US market could potentially do wonders to shifting the balance of power and helping Mexico in the long run.
Also, as unpopular as it is, the US governments first mandate is to protect it's citizens. Sometimes that means making tough choices that doesn't help everybody, but responsibility takes maturity and a willingness to consider unpopular options.
>His actions are clearly going to increase the flow of illegal immigrants into the US, and now that these people can be tossed into federal prison...
I think missed the key word in his contract "CRIMINAL". He is not talking about people who broke the law by illegally imigrating. He is talking about FELONS who ALSO came here illegally. They certainly don't belong roaming our streets unchecked.
Contributing illegal immigrants is a different discussion, but convicted felons, rapists, murderers, etc... who come here illegally belong in Mexican prisons and should be mexico's problem...if they can't do it, than yes, well put them in prison...to KEEP YOUR AND YOUR FAMILY SAFE.
You're not going to cut off the drug cartels. Sorry, it just isn't going to happen, and I say that as someone who lives in an area they use as a common smuggling route and have encountered groups of smugglers multiple times in the past few years. They walk through the desert and climb mountains with 60+ lb bales of marijuana on their back for days to a week at a time, going into terrain Border Patrol agents won't even try following them through most of the time. Even if a wall somehow gets built across the mountains and canyons all along the border, which it won't, they'll tunnel under, fire bales over, etc. They are very incentivized to get through, and they are very skilled at doing so and will find a way.
As for the use of the word "criminal", I think you may be the one misunderstanding in this instance. That word is used to refer to those Trump plans to deport, but on the second page you'll note:
> establishes a two-year mandatory minimum federal prison sentence for illegally re-entering the U.S. after a previous deportation
No mention of criminal there—if you get caught more than once you would go to federal prison in the U.S. for a mandatory minimum of 2 years.
> I think you may be the one misunderstanding in this instance.
He states very clearly he is only deporting the 2 million Criminals...not the 11 million Illegals.
I really think you are the one who misunderstood his intent.
Edit: I relooked at the contract and I see where we are both coming from. There are two sections that address illegal immigration.
The first, which I was focusing on addresses WHO WE WILL DEPORT. The second section, discussing the wall, mentions jail penalties for people who are deported and re-enter.
In short, if we only deport the people trump says hell deport in this agreement, than I am right. If he deports all illegal immigrants, than you are right. Personally, I think the belief he will deport more than the dangerous criminals is not really reality based, despite his campaign rhetoric...(but, I've been wrong before.)
Here is the quote:
" FOURTH, begin removing the more than two million
criminal illegal immigrants from the country and cancel
visas to foreign countries that won’t take them back."
You're still misunderstanding. All illegal immigrants who cross the border and get caught in the process get deported. That's how it is now. Trump's jail time proposal isn't specifically for those with criminal records who he wants to deport, though they would be included as well, it would also apply to anyone who enters, gets caught, gets sent back, reenters a second time, and gets caught again.
I didn't consider that scenario, but I still feel it's a totally reasonable proposal.
It's one thing if you are already here, a functioning and contributing member of society where relatives are citizens, etc... IN that case, I can appreciate policies that give a path to citizenship...
But, at some point we need to stop the flow of illegal immigrants. Not just to keep out the bad actors, but also to protect the integrity of our legal immigration process. Someone, somewhere has to be too late...
So, if you come across the border and we catch you and deport you, and you try to come across again, Jail sounds like a reasonable deterrent to encourage you to try the legal routes.
One thing that people don't seem to get is that some things are zero sum, and empathy with the little guy isn't always the right side. As individuals, we have the freedom to decide who we want to be, and how we feel about these sad stories...but as the American Government, they have a different value system and priorities that they need to filter these policies through.
Immigration is a tough issue. There is a sincerely held and reasonable position on both sides.
Do I think we should throw people whose only crime is illegal immigration into Jail? No. I am not even sure that Jail works and shouldn't just be completely abolished...But, we have to draw the line somewhere...
Trump is drawing that line at convicted criminals and people who aren't yet across the border. I think thats a fair stance that isn't unreasonable.
> From my vantage point, cutting off the drug cartels access to the US market could potentially do wonders to shifting the balance of power and helping Mexico in the long run.
If you think a wall is going to do this, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I want to sell you. A physical wall is going to slow the cartels down for a week while they round up a bunch of Mexican citizens at gunpoint and force them to dig tunnels into the US, build submersibles to get here via waterways, and just go buy a dozen ladders. There are literally people that can climb a 10 foot wall without a ladder.
> If you think a wall is going to do this, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I want to sell you.
Maybe you are right, but whats the alternative. The status quo of doing nothing?
I will almost always side with action vs. inaction. (not to say I'm right, just to say I would rather try and fail than not try because some random naysayers have more faith in the cartels than our ability to secure a border.)
Edit: I copied and pasted the wrong quote, so I fixed it.
>> People flee Mexico because it's an extremely poor country with a horrible government and is controlled by drug cartels. Screwing the country over further economically sounds like the worst way to solve this problem. In fact, it seems like a very good way to exacerbate the problem.
Mexico can't ever improve while the US continues to steal their despondent youth for low cost landscaping, house painting and wait staff. The very people with the courage and energy to leave their home countries to improve their lot are precisely the people needed to effect change against a corrupt regime. Our tolerance of mass illegal immigration is actually immoral; their are tens of millions of victims left to suffer bandit republics and kleptocracies because that small fraction of their populations that would otherwise have had the motivation to pick up a weapon and do something about it are instead occupied hanging drywall somewhere in the US.
>Mexico can't ever improve while the US continues to steal their despondent youth for low cost landscaping, house painting and wait staff.
Their options are working with the cartels or terrible local economy in Mexico, or going to the US to earn drastically more valuable dollars to send home to their families. I mean, we are being immoral by letting them stay here, but they are only so desperate because of how unimaginably damaging the US has been to Mexico. We mess with their government, incentivize them to sell us drugs by having so much demand for them, and exploit their natural resources. If anything, this is why I don't get anyone who thinks its JUST the immigrants fault - why do you think people commit suicide, or would think it's worth it to cross a border where they could be jailed or shot? Hint, it's because the alternative is so much worse. And anyone who is aware of even the tiniest bit of history knows exactly why the alternative is bad.
> earn drastically more valuable dollars to send home to their families.
I've had that remittances argument thrown at me so many times; do you honestly believe ---- I mean actually and genuinely believe ---- that transferring money back home is somehow equivalent to participating in the fate of your nation personally as a worker, parent, voter, dissident, etc.? Citing remittances is just another lame attempt to rationalize tolerating illegal immigration because admitting that there might actually be a great benefit to these countries if the US stopped stealing their youth is abhorrent to the leftist mind. You're so wrapped up in your SJW views you won't allow yourself to see the real damage.
Remittances don't fix anything. None of these nations that export their youth and collect remittances ever get better; Mexico, Haiti, so many Middle Eastern and North African nations, former Soviet republics exporting their youth to the EU... they fester on as failed states forever because the people they need to deal with the fail just leave for greener pastures. Individually you can't blame them, but the collective outcome is tragic. All remittances do is allow origin nations to subsist on a trickle of hard currency and continue feeding wealthy nations with more young.
> We mess with their government, incentivize [sic] them to sell us drugs by having so much demand for them, and exploit their natural resources.
All of these same conditions apply to Canada yet, somehow, Canada isn't a third world kleptocracy.
> If anything, this is why I don't get anyone who thinks its JUST the immigrants fault
Your 'anyone' that blames only immigrants is a mostly a strawman; there are despicable people in the world but that's not who elected Trump, despite what you think. We know employers create demand by employing illegals, and we know those employers buy politicians to oppose securing the border. We know drug abusers in the US create demand for narcotics, and we know securing the border will hinder their supply from Mexico, dealing a great blow to Mexican drug cartels; yet another important benefit of securing the border.
Is the fact that Mexican women can cross the border, pop out babies, and have them be FULL FUCKING CITIZENS so "DAMAGING" to you? Poor fucking Mexicans, give me a break. Charity starts at home.
What about the natives (Mexican or US)? They're gone and people don't care. Why should ALIVE US citizens support something leading to THEIR poverty and death?
Before the US was a country, Mexico was poor. It's still poor now. It'll still be poor 3000 years from now. It's not the US's job to help them.
> When buying a house, wouldnt you try to negotiate for seller concessions like paying for repairs?
Yes; but you typically do that before you buy the property, we've had texas for a while now.
All the talk about trade deficit with Mexico makes it sound like people think we just cut Mexico a check every year. As a nation, we receive goods and services for that deficit. It isn't money on the table.
I'm not going to pretend to understand the nuances of these issues, but it seems to me that governments are artificially creating these trade deficits with tax and import/export tariff schemes. I don't understand them, but I don't see how it's a bad idea to at least explore how Chinas currency manipulation and various trade deficits/ tariffs can better reflect the true market and not be artificially manipulated by various governments.
If the trade deficit with Mexico has to do with import/export inbalances to favor that deficit, I see no reason not to try to renegotiate it.
Again, I have no real working knowledge of these issues, just a cursory and uninformed opinion.
>If you really think about it. We only need this wall because of Mexico, so why should we pay if we dont have to?
If you really think about it, we don't need the wall at all because people will just dig holes underneath it, like they have with all the other walls and fencing we have built.
Indeed. And I'm sure they'll be happy to provide both. That's what allies are supposed to do. Sure will be a nice change from the past eight years of barely contained hostility.
The problem with your argument is that it presumes that a border can't be protected. As far as I could discover in my brief searches for information during the election, the border is fairly secure.
So, really the wall is more of a symbol than actual border security. Sadly, it's a symbol that resonates with a disturbingly large percent of the population.
People filmed at Florida HQ were still very awaiting for that wall.
ps: their enthusiasm got to me. Somehow, no matter how low Trump's speeches were, if he manages to spin calmer, safer, leaner lives for people in America I'd be happy. If. Because if it goes as I imagine, grand but failing plans, hope backpressure, the disillusion will be grandiosely sad.
Isn't that throwing the baby out with the bathwater? Individual data points of a regulation being used for a corrupt end, doesn't mean the regulation is worthless and should be removed.
I didn't intend to suggest throwing out the FDA. I was just making a point that, like everything, it isn't perfect and can be improved.
The point that EpiPen was given temporary monopoly by the FDA was almost completely lost in most of the news stories I read. It's a facet of the story that I think is important, but left out.
To be an informed citizenry, we need to know all the angles and be able to filter the BS. Kudo's to NPR for bothering to get the full story.
drug cartels are a problem in Mexico, they might lose substantial amounts of business due to the wall (lots of drugs are sold in the US), which would be good for Mexico
The hiring freeze for federal employees is concerning as well.
One of the major issues is that we've had several hiring freezes in the US civil service in recent decades. It causes a bathtub effect. You do reduce the workforce through attrition, but eventually you have to hire again and hire almost exclusively junior people (< 25 or 30). So you end up with a massive gap spanning around 15-20 years of age and experience.
You lose a great deal of institutional knowledge (particularly critical for civil service which has many long running programs (for various reasons both good and bad)). Contractors don't really suffice in this regard because they (the employees, not necessarily the companies) tend to move much more frequently. It's going to be a problem.
> You lose a great deal of institutional knowledge (particularly critical for civil service which has many long running programs (for various reasons both good and bad)).
NASA and DoD research labs are still dealing with the experience and cultural gaps from the hiring freezes of the 90s. I think for a lot of Americans it's easy to think of the "lazy bureaucrats" of the federal government (which definitely exist) and see a freeze or Reduction in Force as an overall good thing. However, every freeze and RIF has long lasting damage in the federal scientific community.
Yep. I've worked on projects that were clearly impeded by a lack of understanding of how things were done (by the new people, myself included at times), and how things needed to be updated (primarily by the older people, strong resistance to changing processes (sometimes a good thing, often bad when done as a blanket policy)).
> You do reduce the workforce through attrition, but eventually you have to hire again and hire almost exclusively junior people (< 25 or 30).
This wouldn't be true if government pay was competitive (low pay partially offset by, particularly, pension benefits means entering government mid-career except as a box-checking thing to move to a private position leveraging the knowledge of government is discouraged, but entering at a junior level for a full career is less discouraged.)
Of course, the kind of people embracing starve the beast aren't going to mitigate the skill impact by improving pay.
Low pay and hiring freezes are two sides of the same coin though -- these processes both transfer employees into contractor roles where private companies can charge double for the same worker and pocket the difference.
Contract workers are actually much cheaper. When I worked on a government contract we were loaded at 1.85 and the civil servants (who made more money to start with) were loaded at 2.25.
Total compensation for civil servants is quite a bit higher.
Not necessarily. And even if just in raw pay/year, the institutional effect of outsourcing is still incredibly costly in the end. And this neglects the bonus payouts negotiated into most contracts that don't occur in organic projects.
There isn't much institutional effect of outsourcing if you keep outsourcing. Where I worked there were people who'd been in the same job for decades, even though they'd technically worked for a half dozen different employers during that time. And all the contract payouts were built into the load - if I made $10/hr the government paid $18.50 for each hour.
Working as a civil servant is much nicer, but it's not cheaper for the government.
Not a chance in hell this is true for engineering / computer science / tech type positions. If you are talking about janitorial staff or something that doesn't require an advanced degree like basic clerical work then you maybe correct but it isn't a private sector vs. government efficiency issue it is a matter of the government overpaying employees in low skill jobs.
I'm not sure where you worked or what gave you the impression that contractors are "cheaper" but among the EE/CS people I know that work in that industry it is common knowledge that government contractors make about double what a government civilian employee makes for the same work role even if you include the value of benefits. In other words they are making more than even the highest paid civil servant is allowed to by law.
Well, there's "common knowledge" and then there's what you experience when you actually try to get a job at the salary you thought you could get. I agree for software developers you can make more money in a commercial setting at Google or wherever.
But unless things have changed drastically you're not going to make more money working a government contract.
That's one of the things that would help. Particularly for scientists and engineers. The salaries are way below what they could achieve in the private sector (often doing the same or similar work with contractors, in the defense industry).
Depends on your area of the country. In tech-dense areas with high costs of livings, the adjusted cost of living to federal civilian salary doesn't nearly catch up. However, there are many, many bases in suburban and rural areas where an early career income is over twice the median income and you get a lot for the money.
I'm all green peace and pro-nature, but is it really such a bad thing? I have no idea, what that money is actually spent on, and UN seems to be pretty... well, pretty useless organization, to be honest. To what extent do these billions prevent/slow down melting of ice caps and drough? If they don't, then what's the matter? It seems to be better to spend money ob the lesser something, than on greater nothing.
On the flip side, Trump is putting a Climate Change-denier in charge of the EPA, and has promised to 'gut' the EPA... so I wouldn't necessarily trust judgement there on how effective the UN climate change projects are (instead of them just being opposed to them on principal, "Climate change is a hoax, so all climate change spending is wasted").
- Cancel UN climate payments, use money instead on America water and environmental issues. Sounds good to me. Let China and India clean up their own mess, while we clean up our messes.
- Yes. Too many regulations by unelected bureaucrats. Sounds good to me. I'd rather have one clear and meaningful regulation than two "up for random interpretation."
- Yes. Tax cuts for all working people. Let people decide what to do with their own money (spend, save, donate, etc.). The bigger the government, the smaller the individual.
- Massive immigration changes? Not really. The pamphlet seems to enforce existing laws regarding criminal illegals.
> Tax cuts for all working people. Let people decide what to do with their own money (spend, save, donate, etc.). The bigger the government, the smaller the individual.
Tax cuts are all well and good in a vacuum, but how are we realistically going to pay down the national debt when we enact a massive tax cut on top of a tax rate that is already at historically low levels?
Some people say we can cut all of this government bureaucracy to make up for tax cuts but we'd have to take a figurative axe to all of our federal agencies to get to a point where we can afford a massive tax cut and pay down the national debt.
Otherwise we'd have to enact big cuts to Medicare/Medicaid, defense, and Social Security as well, which people seem loathe to stomach.
> but how are we realistically going to pay down the national debt when we enact a massive tax cut on top of a tax rate that is already at historically low levels?
Here's a hint: we're not going to pay down the debt anytime soon. I would expect the debt to increase by $8-$12 trillion over the next decade if Trump gets all the tax cuts and programs in his agenda.
The electorate hates taxes. At the same time it loves government spending. There is no political will to cut spending in any meaningful way. The last Republican vice president declared that "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter" - a line that Trump has echoed.
>how are we realistically going to pay down the national debt
We don't want to pay down the national debt. Each treasury note is a promise to provide the holder with real goods and services later, and we need to make those promises to our aging citizenry. We do this in part with the intra-governmental debt that the Social Security Trust Fund holds. Regular citizens also save for retirement, and they hold and demand Treasury bonds as well.
Yes, we should pay down the national debt. Why would we want to pay interest on outstanding debt when we could lower taxes or increase services instead?
You don't have to buy Treasuries to save for retirement. There are all sorts of bonds, foreign and domestic.
If people need to save, someone has to borrow. So where should all that money saved in USD go? The high risk stock market? The reason the US dollar is so powerful in the world is that there is always a safe place to park a large amount of them (the US gov) when you need to use them later. Take that away, and the dollar becomes much less appealing internationally. Treasury rates (what you call interest) are actually negative ATM when inflation is considered (we make money by borrowing it).
We should be spending more wisely, but debt economics is not as simple as it seems.
The government is buying treasuries to push down rates, not because they are doing QE at the moment. Now pushing down rates means there is more money to borrow (the gov buys from owners of bonds, they get cash in return), but it doesn't necessarily mean the government is printing money (you can tell by he inflation rate, which is still quite reasonable).
The corporate bond market cannot soak up trillions of dollars in safe investments. In fact, low interest rates can simply result from high demand for treasury bonds because they are a "sure thing."
>The government is buying treasuries to push down rates, not because they are doing QE at the moment. Now pushing down rates means there is more money to borrow (the gov buys from owners of bonds, they get cash in return), but it doesn't necessarily mean the government is printing money (you can tell by he inflation rate, which is still quite reasonable).
We've had quite a bit of asset inflation. Sure, the consumer products you buy that were made in China aren't going up, but Zillow says my house is worth more than double what I paid five years ago. You can't tell someone looking for housing there's no inflation.
Did you ever stop and wonder why infrastructure costs so damn much in the US? Why a rail segment going from nowhere to nowhere in California costs seventy billion dollars, or a new bridge ten billion?
>The corporate bond market cannot soak up trillions of dollars in safe investments. In fact, low interest rates can simply result from high demand for treasury bonds because they are a "sure thing."
Low interest rates are the result of artificial demand for bonds. If the government would stop monkeying with the bond markets they could "soak up" enough to cover domestic savings. Foreign governments would have to find somewhere else to park their money, but that's not the end of the world.
Environmental regulation, high labor costs; I.e., we aren't a shithole like china.
Housing bubbles come and go, they don't impact real inflation.
Unfortunately, libertarians would throw away all of our influence in global finance for an isolationalist paradise, but it won't work. If Russia and China aren't economically dependent on us, do you think that would actually mean less military tension?
Wait, you want to raise taxes or reduce services now so that we can pay down the debt so that we can lower taxes or increase services later? At near-zero interest rates?
Medicare and Social Security are funded through their own dedicated payroll tax, not the general income tax. Roosevelt intentionally did it this way to make it impossible to repeal.
My working assumption is that the military is mismanaged, and spends trillions of dollars on wasteful projects. I think you can get a pretty big tax cut by just managing the military better.
> I think you can get a pretty big tax cut by just managing the military better.
I find it interesting that in the US people are comfortable discussing improving military efficiency, yet its taboo to discuss reducing the size of the military.
With a concerted effort it would be a major accomplishment to improve military efficiency by 5-10%. Or you could cut the military budget by 40% and still outspend every other nation's military. Yet, I don't recall ever hearing a candidate suggest reducing the military's budget. Hell even after the cold war didn't spending go up after a brief decline?
You're right. A small percentage of a massive industrial complex is actually a ton of money.
There are some situations where US aircraft will fire half-million-dollar heatseeking missiles at empty sky, just in case enemies fire SAMs. That's an expensive habit.
The military doesn't constrain itself financially unless it's forced to. They care more about the mission and the warfighter, as they should. But the guys in Congress who are tasked with constraining the military are too chicken to endanger their support from active duty, veterans, and their friends and families.
The US is a superpower because of our military might. A lot of the technological achievements were due to military research. If we reduce our military size to be `reasonable` we loose our status as a super power.
> The US is a superpower because of our military might.
IMO, the causality is Economic might --> military might + "soft power" --> superpower (look at how China's trajectory). Prioritising military over economy in peace times seems short-sighted
I didn't miss it, but here are some things I've heard him say on that issue:
The first method is to control costs on military projects, and audit their finances. I think he'll do fine on this boring executive work, though I don't think better project management alone is going to get a 35% tax cut on the middle-class.
Second, there are foreign members of NATO that are supposed to pay 2% of GDP for a defense pool that are not doing this. He wants to pressure them into paying their share for protection. Since he's mentioned this, supposedly some countries have started paying into it.
Third, he doesn't actually want to go to war. War is pretty expensive, so building up a military to project strength without actually using it could be cheaper if we pull out of all on-going wars.
> Third, he doesn't actually want to go to war. War is pretty expensive, so building up a military to project strength without actually using it could be cheaper if we pull out of all on-going wars.
But... it's already by far the most well funded and advanced military in the world with a navy that ensures the US can deploy strength anywhere quickly.
And building our stuff without our EPA regs. I'm not sure how they can "clean up their own mess" while basically being an outsourcing arm for all our emissions. It's like we have this magical factory with a really long smokestack. Don't shut down the factory just tell someone else to fix the smoke.
"Cancel UN climate payments, use money instead on America water and environmental issues. Sounds good to me. Let China and India clean up their own mess, while we clean up our messes.
-"
The issue with climate change is that the people making the bess are not the same ones who suffer from the mess. So our mess isn't just ours. And their mess isn;t just theirs.
> - Yes. Tax cuts for all working people. Let people decide what to do with their own money (spend, save, donate, etc.). The bigger the government, the smaller the individual.
A family of 4 with a median household income of $50k/yr pays close to nothing in federal taxes. Tax cuts don't help the people that need it.
Tax cuts for all means reducing government resources, which means increasing the power of huge corporations. This is a hostile takeover of the American government.
Let China and India clean up their own mess, while we clean up our messes.
Near-zero chance that Trump will clean up any of America's environmental mess. Near-certain chance that he will significantly add to America's environmental mess.
> Cancel UN climate payments, use money instead on America water and environmental issues. Sounds good to me. Let China and India clean up their own mess, while we clean up our messes.
He didn't make a point, just an ignorant statement. Which I responded to by pointing out that it was very ignorant.
If you care to make a point worth replying to about 'china and India cleaning up their own messes' (despite the US having the highest CO2 emissions per capita in the world by a huge margin, over 2x that of China's and nearly 10x that of India's, and for a far far far longer time) then be my guest.
If you care to make a point worth replying to about 'china and India cleaning up their own messes' (despite the US having the highest CO2 emissions per capita in the world by a huge margin, over 2x that of China's and nearly 10x that of India's, and for a far far far longer time) then be my guest.
Wait, so you agree with him then, that US has a waaaay bigger mess than china(1/2) and india(1/10), and that the US should clean up its own (biggest) mess first, before the other two?
Nobody is going to clean up anything. Trump's a climate septic, hes got another one in line to head the EPA. Hes stopping these payments whilst simultaneously wanting to increase production of domestic "clean coal", natural gas and shale oil.
Your country has historically contributed far more than its fair share of greenhouse gasses, and these small payments (from the richest country in the world) help other countries reduce emissions and show that you recognise that.
But nope. Let's drop all that so we can prop up some failing coal towns for a while longer.
or for ballooning the size and complexity of each regulation, as each new regulation has to fold into itself two existing regulations that need to be removed for the sake of this plan.
That's been happening forever. Have you ever wondered why the law that says you can keep your healthcare when you leave your job is called the Combined Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA)?
It's not cheaper for your employer. Your employer will typically cover some of the cost of health care then leave the rest for you to cover. When you leave a job, you have to pay both the premium you've been paying plus the premium your former employer had been paying. COBRA is not a free lunch. It just means you're allowed to order off of the same menu as your former employer.
Maybe I just don't understand how light touch government works, but wouldn't removing two regulations per new regulation help special interest groups in a lot of cases?
Hopefully Trump will not be able to bankrupt the government in 4 years. Filibuster in the Senate is an option for 2 years and maybe there will be some shift in 2018.
The bad news is that the filibuster is very likely to be done away with because it is the only thing stopping the Republicans from doing literally anything they want. And the map in 2018 doesn't look good for the Democrats.
No, they won't do away with the filibuster. Filibusters are theater - they allow Senators in the majority party to kill a bill and support it at the same time. Conversely, they allow people in the minority party to insure a bill passes and vote against it.
We've seen this over and over from Senators in both parties. The filibuster is dumb as a procedural tool, but as a political tool it's invaluable for Senators who want to make a career out of the Senate.
Just so everyone is aware: selling insurance across state lines is code for "gut all insurance regulations". Why did most credit card banks relocate their paper headquarters to SD? Because SD had no usury laws and federal law said laws of your headquarters was all that mattered. It gutted all state regulation of credit cards in one fell swoop.
This is the same approach DJT and the Republicans want to take for health care. Think about that race to the bottom for a minute. Denied and dropped for making a single claim? Good luck, totally legal in [insert small state here].
Without the individual mandate insurance marketplaces don't work so I assume repealing Obamacare will immediately lead to millions of people being thrown off health insurance.
Is the current system working? My insurance rate has gone from $66 per month for a HDHP to $277 per month 3 years later under the healthcare law for the essentially the same HDHP plan. At that rate of increase I wouldn't be able to afford it at all any more in a few short years so what does it matter?
It isn't, but that doesn't mean that any random change will fix it. Your argument is then as follows:
1-We must do something
2-{This} is something
3-Therefore, me must do {This}
You won't find many of us arguing against the first assertion, but I don't think real numbers say that it's insurance regulation that made the prices go up: It's the fact that the risk pools are full of very sick people. While deregulation would separate the sick from the non sick, it would make sure the sick would not be able to afford insurance at all.
The ACA is working great for people that make so little they get subsidies. It's also not a problem for those of use that work at places that compensate us with well over a thousand a month worth insurance. It's the people in the middle that are in trouble: They either access the ACA unsubsidized, or work for employers that hire a lot of low paid labor, leading to godawful health insurance. I worked at places where the insurance we got was so flimsy, the ACA made it illegal: Huge deductibles, coinsurance along with lifetime maximums that made sure that if you got something bad, insurance would cut you off.
Health insurance in this country has been in an awful trend since at least the Clinton years. the ACA only helped some. We don't need a repeal, but something that subsidizes you too. Health savings accounts and insurance across state lines ain't going to help, but it's going to give us sicker people that just have access to the emergency room and go bankrupt, like in the last of the Bush years.
> The ACA is working great for people that make so little they get subsidies.
Not everyone. In NC alone, there are 377,000 people who make too little to qualify for ACA subsidies yet are not covered by Medicaid. That's a lot of people, and that's just one state. There are 19 other states that also don't have expanded Medicaid.
Even with subsidized ACA, the Bronze plans are pretty shit. Average family deductibles in 2017 will be $12,393, with the average monthly premium for a 40-year-old costing $350. Other than 1 checkup per year and female care, these families get to pay $1,000+ per month in premiums (assuming 2 adults and 2 kids) and another $12,000+ on top of that before their plan does much of anything for them.
Even with a subsidy I don't think it makes sense for a lower middle class family to pay $5,000-10,000 for 3-5 checkups, and $20,000+ if they actually need to use that coverage. Yet they'll be hit with a tax penalty if they don't do that.
That's because the system you're now paying into is saving the lives of people who would have had no healthcare otherwise. Like it or not, you live in a society with other people. If you want your society to be fair and just, you have to make some sacrifices.
If you are a healthy and/or young person, your rate will always go up in any social system. There no way around this.
Germany has universal healthcare, but high income citizens can (could?) opt out to private insurance. It's good when you're young and single as it's way cheaper. But for most people it becomes more expensive than the goverment system by the time they're married and get kids.
That will be awful. I've generally been fine with insurance companies selling in multiple states, but I always picture it with regulation - because of such a situation.
"All vetting of people
coming into our country will be considered “extreme vetting.” "
I visit the US every year to see friends. Some of whom are Arab-American. I'm seriously worried that I'm going to find myself on the receiving end of 'extreme vetting'.
Excuse my ignorance, but why is that a bad thing? From what I remember, visa holders staying longer than they are allotted is the number 1 source of illegal immigration.
> FIRST, propose a constitutional amendment to
impose term limits on all members of Congress.
I've debated this approach with friends in the past. From a game-theory perspective, does this promote or hinder political corruption?
I'm inclined to believe that term limits would actually encourage corruption.
1) If senators have to find a job after 8 years, surely that encourages the revolving door between industry and government, as they need to find another job .
2) If excellent and popular politicians have to be replaced before they fall from popularity, and it still costs a lot of money to get elected, then candidates will become more beholden to special interests (as they can't campaign on their track record or political capital). This would also dilute the overall quality of legislators.
3) If the average candidate has little or no political record, then how can we root out those who are beholden to special interests? At least currently we can look at who they have taken money from over the years in the public records that are available. If every candidate is a blank slate, who hasn't been subjected to oversight, it will be much easier for a candidate to be secretly bought without the public having a chance to spot it.
The real problem is not that there exists career politicians, it's that they experience extreme conflicts of interest due to being permitted to engage in insider trading [1], that they are not restricted from taking jobs in the industries they regulated while in government [2], and that there is a massive flow of money into politician's campaigns from special interests [3].
The thing I worry about more here (amazingly) is the answer to the question "If representatives don't have enough experience to write new laws then who will write them?"
I approve of many Dems, and disapprove strongly of Feinstein, so I'm sympathetic to the thrust of that argument... but I fear that might be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If the only result of enacting term limits was Feinstein getting kicked out, I'd be all for it. But it affects far more politicians than her.
The natural counterargument is that there are probably other ways of dealing with the Feinstein problem without the nuclear option of term limits.
Specifically, the party doesn't field a credible contender to her, as she's right up in the core of the party elite. "Top 2" was supposed to encourage challenges from contenders similar to the party incumbents, but I think we'd be better served by a proportional representation system (STV or similar).
And if the core problem is that the party parachutes in stooges and backs them with the full weight of the party's campaign funding and infrastructure, then I don't see how term limits solve the problem; out with Feinstein, in with another party-blessed elitist who only cares about surveillance when it is used on fellow members of the elite [1]. I'm sure they can find someone who has not served a day in public service to carry on her agenda.
I'm a non american who is talking on the internet who has no power over this stuff. Feinstien came to mind because she in long term and I saw her stance in the Snowden issue. There are probably plenty of senators and congresscritters you can point out in the same way.
It's not clear to me why there is a magic time that someone suddenly becomes ineligible for public service. I'm sure many politicians keep getting better at their job, even between year 16 and year 32.
Or even if we assume an asymptote of quality improvement over time, surely we want to have more politician-years spent during the peak of their quality, rather than in their first 4/8/16 when their output is less?
The idea of term limits implies that politician's utility becomes negative at some point in time, and that just doesn't fit with my understanding of how negotiating and learning how to build consensus works.
I'd love to see some hard data either way on this one.
It's scary really. Industry has the profits to pay for the marketing anyone needs to get elected, however it could take a 'lifetime' for someone who's educated and aware enough to be naturally get into power.
I'm confused about this regulation thing. Many people hate regulations because they think of it as limiting for businesses. But I think, you couldn't work as a business if there were no regulations.
An example, Nevada voted to open its electricity market this week. Everybody should be able to choose the provider they want.
But to do this, there need to be regulations in place. Independent companies need to know how they can use the grid, the company who owns the grid needs to know what it can charge for the usage of the grid.
If you let such a market without any regulation, there won't be a market, because the grid owner won't let anyone use its grid.
So removing regulations is not always a good thing. Most of the time regulations were put there for a reason.
anyone meaning mostly competitors. If you want to distribute electricity, you need a way to reach your customers. Since it is unrealistic to build your own grid.
And if there are no regulations about it, the grid owner doesn't have to give you access to its grid. So you can't supply your electricity. So the customers can't exercise their right to choose.
The climate change one scares me the most as well. We should be focused on renewable energy more than anything right now. It's a much bigger threat than terrorism.
And building a wall and kicking out immigrants is so backwards. We need to be more united as humans and work together, not put up more barriers.
What's wrong with making people come through a door in a wall? You realize some people have homes with walls around them and they actually prefer visitors to ring the doorbell and wait for you to let them in. It's the exact same principle. If you lose sight of this very simple concept then you need to go back and see where you overcomplicated it. You don't see people like Richard Feynman going "oh this quantum mechanics, it's just too complicated, you can never explain in simply. Forget it." That's being intellectually lazy. The concept of borders, walls, immigration, visas must be simple to explain. There's a wall, there's a door. You want to come in, you go through the door. Done. If you think this is backward, then just remove the locks on the doors to your house while you're at it.
He's specifically talking about ILLEGAL immigrants. People that did not come in through the door. If you fail to prefix the word immigrant with illegal in any immigration discussion you're deliberately distorting Trumpian policies.
I'm guessing he's going to make it difficult and monitor it. Maybe they'll start blowing it up in places. But hey Mexico is gonna pay for it, so they'll be forced to pay for the fixes too (a guess). Maybe after a while Mexico starts realizing that this wall is fucking expensive if they're not stopping people from getting over it. So maybe they'll start patrolling it themselves and trying to keep people from illegally scaling it. Right now it costs them nothing, so they have no incentive to do anything about it.
Work on accelerating the price drop of solar and general energy storage. There is still a lot of progress to be made in things like making the tooling cheaper for things that are not silicon.
The fact if a large developed nation supports climate change or not is moot when the developing world does not give a flying shit about it.
How did I not see this before the election (even if it came out 102316 as evidenced in the file name)? Why did NYT/Guardian/all of the news sites that I regularly visit not report this?
This is a clear policy proposal, contrary to everything I had read that said he had no clear plan.
I'm asking the questions honestly. I did know of Trump's contract (though I don't remember how I came across it), and didn't look at the Clinton campaign site. I don't recall anything in the news about either.
I did look at both candidate's websites. Though a link to this .pdf was not easy to find. This is exactly the sort of thing that I expect the media to link me to, rather than an (after-the-fact) HN post.
I read news websites every single day and never saw anything close to the clarity of his positions presented here.
NYT, for one, often reiterated that Trump has no policy proposals despite many of these (e.g. https://www.donaldjtrump.com/policies) being out for awhile.
To be fair, is it the media's responsibility to make sure an important policy document is easy to find? What does it say about the Trump campaign that the document was hard to find on their own campaign website?
That's fair. But it does seem like there's some suppression here. I always thought the "mainstream media bias" thing was just a soundbite for conservatives. But tarrifs for companies wanting to move factories overseas? Term limits for Congress people? Those are legitimate proposals that I never heard about (except in the debates).
I don't have time to look for documents on candidates websites. I rely on (and pay) the media to present information because I'm busy. This should have been reported fairly, though maybe that bias is actually true.
Specifically, what policies of Clinton's did you hear the media report on? All that comes to mind to me is the drivel on both sides regarding rumors and supposed scandal. Not much policy analysis at all. (Then again I'm pretty exhausted after this campaign season, so my memory may not be what it should.)
I do remember reports from within the Trump campaign that they had a difficult time keeping him on message. One of the benefits of message discipline is that it limits the opportunities for the media to report on things other than what you think is important for your campaign.
I think the media in general has fallen down on the job (which I have my own reasons for that I'm not going to bring up here), but I think a lot of that has been due to what they find gets people to view their ads as subscription numbers have fallen and they've needed to rely on online ad revenue. This is a serious problem. We've gotten to the point where we no longer have a generally accepted shared source of trust. If Trump were hammering home his Contract with the American Voter, I think you would have heard about it, regardless of media bias.
I do think relying on the media in this day and age (and thank you for paying for it, as do I) to present the information you require is a little bit foolish. If you find it's lacking something you need, unfortunately I think we need to dig for ourselves.
If you've got ideas on how to figure out how we can once again get to some shared, trusted sources, I'm all ears :)
Bookmark some more news sites so you get a wider spectrum. Smaller independent operations (ex: Breitbart, Drudge Report) are less vulnerable to being co-opted or politically motivated.
Also, r/The_Donald is has been an excellent aggregate for all things related to the campaign.
Also, see Wikileaks to get an idea of how bad the bias/corruption has been in the media (ex: CNN giving HRC questions in advance of debates [0], CNN asking HRC campaign for input regarding questions for Donald in exclusive interview [1]); this should help you understand the scope of the situation and why you haven't been getting good reporting from mainstream news.
Fair point, thank-you. That taken into consideration, would you say there is no harm in at least adding Breitbart to the basket of news media sources? Which could also include CNN, who's anchors also could all very well have been candidates for chairman of Clinton's campaign.
I agree with you that much of the mainstream media showed a bias against Trump through this election. (I feel they had very good reasons to be biased against him, but regardless, should have done a better job of keeping the reporting neutral.) That said, Breitbart and Drudge Report are probably the two most well known right-biased sources in existence (aside from the obviously much larger, but less biased, Fox News). Describing them as not politically motivated seems misleading at best.
Thanks for your insights. It seems where we disagree is on your point of Breitbart and Drudge being 'right-biased'. To me they come across as simply more dedicated to reporting the truth and principled in their commitment to reporting said truth regardless of implications or contradictions to the status quo who are often downright misleading and deceitful; this most recent election campaign serving as a magnification of that.
Thank you for your reasonable reply. As I see it, there are a few ways bias can manifest. The most obvious is in reporting things that aren't true. One step down from that is reporting things that are technically true, but in a misleading way. (You definitely saw a lot of anti-Trump bias manifest in that way.) The next level from there is choosing which truths to report, in order to paint a picture. That's the level that I personally have seen most often on Breitbart/Drudge. You may well be right that they dig up uncomfortable truths that are ignored by other sources. But how often does one of those uncomfortable truths lean toward painting liberals in a better light than conservatives? It's like when negative results of scientific studies are thrown out; we can end up seeing a pattern in the resulting aggregate data that doesn't really exist.
Then you also have to look at the tone in which things are presented. For example, at the top of Breitbart right now: "At Last: The Lena Dunham Meltdown You’ve Been Waiting For ‘I ached in the places that make me a woman’" There may not be anything factually inaccurate in that article, although I haven't checked all the quotations myself. But it seems pretty clear that this is a pretty shameless gloat. I mean, they acknowledge it as such in the headline. I agree with you that there's nothing wrong with looking at varied sources, if you do so critically. I would suggest looking at an article in Breitbart, then finding reporting on the same thing from a more mainstream (call it left-leaning if you want) outlet - say the Washington Post or the NY Times. Compare the statements of fact, sure, but mostly compare the tone of the articles and ask yourself what picture they're trying to paint. Obviously what comes off as neutral and what biased would depend on where you yourself sit on the spectrum, but regardless I think it's a valuable exercise.
To take it further, where the two sources differ significantly, check facts. And it doesn't mean just find a source to corroborate them, as there will always be an echo chamber of sources repeating the same things on both sides. Instead you need to dig a bit deeper.
The easiest example is a quote. It's amazing how often people are misquoted, or the quotation is interpreted differently than I would view it. Very often these days you can find video of the original quote, and interpret it for yourself.
Now, the veracity of a statement is a bit more difficult than just whether or not someone said something. Often you can start by checking wikipedia, then look to the sources it references, for a good start.
Described very well - and I like the analogy. And great tips.
Also, as you elude to, consider what is not being reported.
I would add, look for neutral sources too. Wikileaks for example.
At the end of the day, we should hopefully arrive at an accurate picture of the reality of a given situation. Ie: to figure out what the hell is going on. To call a spade a spade.
Sure but given there's no proof, this argument doesn't hold much water; these leaks not to mention other damning revelations that showed an offensive targeted smear/deception/disruption campaign against Trump is rather extreme and unlikely matched in it's criminality let alone the weight of the evidence itself. For example, there is video evidence [0] of DNC operatives taking claim for causing violence at Trump rallies. Was there even any violence that happened at Clinton campaigns? And do you really think the RNC would have gone that far in their so called 'support' of Trump which saw record-low investment in advertising and endorsements from fellow Republicans? Do you really think Wolf Blitzer got any questions from the RNC or Trump Campaign in advance of town hall debates or interviews with Hillary Clinton?
For corporations, there's an odd mix of sticks and carrots. For example these two promises:
"... trillions of dollars of American corporate money overseas can now be brought back at a 10% rate."
"Establishes tariffs to discourage companies from laying off their workers ..."
So a company can more easily bring back offshore billions to the US, but at the same time, new tariffs are put in place that make it harder to lay off people, thus effectively discouraging the company from spending that money on creating jobs in the country?
Seems like the net effect of these seemingly bold new rules could be practically zero.
It's odd that Trump is a businessman, yet his list of solutions includes all kinds of tariffs and trade restrictions to rein in business. There's a reason Western countries don't use tariffs much anymore: they're counterproductive if you want to stimulate growth. But I guess that old economics lesson is about to be put to another test.
> It's odd that Trump is a businessman, yet his list of solutions includes all kinds of tariffs and trade restrictions to rein in business. There's a reason Western countries don't use tariffs much anymore: they're counterproductive if you want to stimulate growth. But I guess that old economics lesson is about to be put to another test.
It's pretty clear he was never a good businessman. He was good at finding loopholes and exploiting people and policies. Now I imagine we'll start to see that kind of shoddy policy making at a national level. And "shoddy" is giving him a large benefit of the doubt. It feels like an intentional attempt to maximize short-term benefits with complete disregard for long-term consequences.
> "It's pretty clear he was never a good businessman."
Don't you find it silly to call a person with a net worth of $4 billion "not a good businessman" keeping in mind that he made this money doing business
Had he taken the money he was lent or given at the start of his business career, and invested it into an index fund instead of doing his attempts at business, he would now have a net worth of $12 billion instead of $4 billion.
He did far, far worse as a businessman than he would have had he done nothing.
Based on that alone, I can call him not a good businessman.
> Had he taken the money he was lent or given at the start of his business career, and invested it into an index fund instead of doing his attempts at business, he would now have a net worth of $12 billion instead of $4 billion.
Maybe the best line: "For one thing, if he put all his money in index funds and reinvested all the dividends for 41 years, he'd be dead, because you can't buy food with reinvested dividends."
- My definition of "good businessman" is more than just maximizing one person's profits over all other considerations.
- It's clear that Trump has achieved a significant portion of his gains through legal threats. He has underpaid contractors, and his main response has been "Sue me if you want the rest of your money. But it will cost you more than it's worth to sue me." This is not my idea of a "good businessman".
- I don't have any faith in his stated net worth. I wonder what his actual worth is, if you could get an accurate assessment of his assets. I also have no idea how his election affects his actual net worth.
Leave nafta? There doesn't seem to be a very thorough analysis on the effect of this.... You can't just make changes to economic policy and hope for the best - there are far and wide impacts to making changes like this.
There are several drastic terms like that, e.g. "Cancel visas to foreign countries that won’t take them back.". When entering negotiations with such a threat you will get what you want, he will be able to easily dictate changes to NAFTA and every country will take their people back. I am not even sure this is such a bad strategy.
I hate Trump, but some of this isn't actually that bad sounding. I have some doubts though if such a divisive and hated guy can manage to get stuff through though. He has not made himself into a person people want to cooperate with.
For some things though, he makes the problem sound way simpler than it is. E.g. removing existing regulations when introducing an new one and reducing government employees.
We got a right wing government in Norway thinking much along these lines promising removal of red tape, fewer public sector employees etc.
They failed. Reality is just a lot more complicated. Instead they have resorted to stupid tricks to make it look as if they are reducing public sector employees. They more some employees to other organizations which are not technically part of government. They they can make the statistics look pretty. But they are still paying for the services of these people.
The problem with e.g. reducing public sector employees is that every new government has big ambitions they want to happen YESTERDAY. That can only happen by public sector employees making it happen. The more ambitious your changes, the more new bureaucrats you frequently need to hire to get this done.
New ambitions typically also means a lot more rules and regulations have to be added.
I know this problem well from Software development. We want to reduce the number of useless lines of code. Except from users and managers there is a tremendous pressure and incentive for new functionality to be added. That means more lines of code not less.
Laws and regulations will be the same. People want the new stuff. They don't want to hear that you spent all this time removing stuff which doesn't really give anybody anything new, except a nice refactored law book.
Likely you are going to need to hire lots of people to actually start cutting down on regulation. Identifying what can be removed and figuring out how the rephrase things requires actual work, which somebody has to do. And if they are doing that they are not implementing the new policies of the administration.
I thing the idea behind the removing existing regulations rule works better for software than it does for laws.
It basically boils down to Leave things tidier than when you arrived.
No massive refactor projects, just fix up little things when you're in the area. Sure you never end up with a particularly nice codebase but it's not getting worse and it's not costing the business massive amounts to make something prettier for little benefit.
Also works well with backlogs, especially for client projects, you want a new feature? what are you willing to drop off the backlog to get it?
It's generally well known that most products contain a crap tonne of unused features and removing them reduces technical debt (eg potential bugs, overweight/slow apps).
I don't see it as a hard rule to sell in software.
It is fascinating to read all these comments (594 as I write this) analyzing this is a policy document. This is a marketing document. What will the actual policies be? Who knows. Perhaps some of them will be somewhat like some of the words in this document. Perhaps others will not. We are headed very far into uncharted territory, and all these pundits writing so many words confident about exactly what will happen, seems obviously silly given what has happened recently.
I agree there's an element of silliness :) Another way to think about it is we're trying to determine what might happen given what we know and understanding what we consider acceptable as part of the process. And hopefully figuring out how to discuss these issues with each other without increasing our polarization, and finding some common ground.
> FOURTH, a five-year ban on White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave government service.
> FIFTH, a lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government.
> SIXTH, a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections.
Can't see a reason to complain about any of these (though I've posted objections in other threads about other measures, mainly here [1]). Can anyone spot issues on these measures?
Any time you enact a ban on potential employment of a person, your run into a bunch of hairy issues. Not to mention the required governmental oversight to ensure this is enforced
Can you elaborate your first sentence? Not really well-versed in the hairy issues you raise.
This will (necessarily) require more oversight. But I think we should be prepared to accept some regulation/oversight of the political process itself, given how critical it is to the functioning of society.
Even though Republicans have House and Senate majority, I still don't see any of this getting through. Those politicians won't self-destruct their careers.
Fully-funds the construction of a wall on our southern
border with the full understanding that the country of
Mexico will be reimbursing the United States for the full cost of such wall; establishes a two-year mandatory minimum federal prison sentence for illegally re-entering the U.S. after a previous deportation, and a five-year mandatory minimum federal prison sentence for illegally re-entering for those with felony convictions
How Mexico will be forced to pay for a wall built by the US will make for a good TV show.
Private prisons are about to make a killing with the 2- and 5-year mandatory prison terms.
Seriously, prison sentences for illegally entering the country is grade-A nuts. There's other stuff on there that at least sounds good, but this sounds like "we'll solve a $$ problem with $$$".
Yeah, this is just confusing. The supposed economic impact of having illegal immigrants work for less than minimum wage is not going to be worse than the impact of housing, clothing, and feeding them for 2-5 years.
Private prison operators are not worried about that. It's money, your money, in their pocket.
By the way, the scheme is already in place. It's part of the limited immigration "reform" that Obama managed to get from the Republicans. There's a minimum guaranteed prison time before deportation.
I don't usually read campaign documents like this... is this normal? Is it normal to simplify things so much so to say Day 1 do X, Day 2 do Y, Day 3 resolved.
In one sense I would suspect typical high level political speak. On the other hand, if you are going to go into detail, do you make it seem as easy as 3 days of action?
It is hard. And a little bit more hard without good Internet connectivity. And maybe even a little bit very illegal to perform the transaction. Not that it can't be done. It just cannot be done by the gen pop.
And us tax payers picking up the bill for those stays in Federal prison is interesting as well. If the argument is they are costing taxpayers money in the form of jobs, isn't costing taxpayers money from paying for prison similar?
>Trump and Myron talking
>Trump: "Hey Myron, thoughts on climate change?"
>Myron: "Oh it's nothing, the polar bears are just brown and cities are going underwater, but your ozone-damaging hairspray won't escape your dressing room (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU2p6YakNJg) while you grope a supermodel"
Please Elon Musk, if you're reading this, make Tesla and SolarCity come faster so we can still experience snow no matter who runs this country
If it works out to impeding trade with China in anyway it just acts to slow our economy. We are not going to become more competitive with 1+ billion people who are willing to work without any labor protections by saying we won't do business with them. We're just sanctioning ourselves from essentially the world's manufacturing depot.
> He promises to label China a currency manipulator, but the only consequence of that would be that America would have to engage China in talks on the currency’s value, which would have no practical effect.
The downside is pissing off China, which the US needs to get along. There is no upside -- China won't change its behavior because of a label.
> Chinese officials won't be pissed off. They understand politics.
Whether or not they are genuinely pissed off, they act offended at the bargaining table and make negotiations more difficult than they might have been. They have been known for doing that kind of thing in the past because it plays very well with the people at home.
China had that label before but it was stated in public hence the previous private monetary talks between US, China, NK, etc..its just now out in the open
This can't be good for Tesla and a lot of other green companies. My hope is that despite this "contract" he won't do much... I believe the price of the energy is not longer only about the production and distribution but also its long term effects(i.e health, sustainability, climate change).
This is actually pretty good and what I was expecting of him once he got to stop the smear campaigns that are U.S. elections. Now, let me cross-reference a few that might be good against what he's said or done in the past where I think he might try to make them happen with a possibility they will.
1. Renegotiate NAFTA and TPP. I opposed both as they were mainly just for the richest to get richer moving jobs & playing games behind peoples' backs. He might clean them up a bit or make them favor U.S. more.
2. Foreign trading abuses. He griped about that on the Oprah show especially pointing out how the Japanese make it nearly impossible for him to do business in their country. He said many of the countries supposedly have trade agreements to make it easy but they trip us up with little obstacles. He'll probably stand by that.
3. Shift from UN to American infrastructure. I have doubts climate change strategies will work at all given how they're partial with lots of noncompliance. Meanwhile, those infrastructure aren't getting much support. Lesser of two evils.
4. Cancel unconstitutional EO's of Obama. I'm for doing that for all Presidents. He should start at Bush by vetoing Patriot Act, mass surveillance, etc. We know he said Obama for a reason, though. (sighs)
5. My family and many local businesses were affected heavily by illegal immigrants where lots of people lost jobs. We've also been hit with the fine letter of the law repeatedly. I'm for tight immigration policies & fair enforcement of law. Opposite of this coin is he should start arresting or fining any business owners that knowingly hired illegal immigrants just to be fair. There are two sides to that problem.
6. Tax Simplification. Often good.
7. Discourage offshoring. Should've been doing that along with maintaining a strong industrial base domestically. A huge chunk of our economy is financial engineering. Need more real stuff.
8. Child and elderly care. Sounds good.
9. Help veterans part of the National Security Act. They've been getting dogged by the system pretty bad that I've seen.
> I have doubts climate change strategies will work at all given how they're partial with lots of noncompliance. Meanwhile, those infrastructure aren't getting much support. Lesser of two evils.
Sorry, but once the worst effects of climate change kick in, your infrastructure won't last terribly long at all.
That's my point. I don't think it will. So, let's be comfortable while we can. Also encourage people to try to do something about it but self-interest in short-term seems to prevail on this issue.
That's a mere dismissal. What's the best science we have today? Much of what I saw showed there was a point of no return. Some of it thought we passed it. All of them were clear humanity would have to massively work together to sacrifice most of the CO2 and methane-producing stuff they love to turn it around. Stuff that so much of the economy and politicians' elections depend on.
The evidence I've seen is solidly in the "we're screwed no matter what a few companies or countries do" territory.
"7.Discourage offshoring. Should've been doing that along with maintaining a strong industrial base domestically. A huge chunk of our economy is financial engineering. Need more real stuff."
I am from India, and here is my observation. Why do American voters expect their "politicians"(be it democrat/republican) to stop offshoring, when these guys seem to have absolutely have no control over individual companies doing that ? Isnt offshoring an individual company/corp's prerogative ? The voter expectations and the laws, look mutually exclusive to me.
" Why do American voters expect their "politicians"(be it democrat/republican) to stop offshoring, when these guys seem to have absolutely have no control over individual companies doing that"
They do have quite a bit of control. The companies are doing it primarily because they lobbied politicians to pass laws and treaties to make it easier for them in the first place. Such things can be reversed although the consequences will be huge. Shouldn't be done suddenly which is what I don't like about what he'll probably do.
Far as voter expectations, those against globalization see the government there to meet their needs. This includes protecting their jobs and wages. The offshoring has been negative for those here while positive for them elsewhere (eg India). Incentivizing companies to hire Americans and pay them well increases quality of life here plus gives us stronger, internal economy.
Yeah, you get child and elder care if you make enough money to owe enough taxes to cover those bills. Poor? Working minimum wage? Sorry, I guess your kid gets to stay at home with gramma to kill two birds with one stone.
I'm kind of realizing that my wife and I are in a decent financial position and have good jobs and that things like
* Killing Obamacare and leaving millions without health insurance (but lowering premiums!)
* Lowering taxes on high earners
* Child care credits for high earners and not for the poor
Would all benefit us. The angry cynical part of my brain kind of urges me towards a "you know what, all those white-no-education-economic-malaise people who voted for him are going to get just what they deserve.".
But there's also all the fascist stuff about deportations and walls and I don't want to live in a me me me society anyway, so I'll do what I can to fight this garbage.
Counteracting a me me me society with authoritarian mandates forcing people to give to the poor cannot be morally justified in my opinion.
The just use of the law is to punish those who violate the rights of others, not those who don't meet our personal moral standards on acting altruistically. The latter is treading on theocratic ideology.
WTF, America? How could anyone trust an alleged narcissist, extremist, sexist, racist, self-righteous and nationalist who paid nothing in income tax for the last 20 years to do what he says?
A significant percentage of voters in the US came to that conclusion, given the choices they had. I think it's likely pretty easy to find one of them to ask, if you're willing to listen.
Yes, they do. Click my link, and click "Popular Vote" tab. They are projecting him as the winner. She is winning currently, but he is the projected winner.
On both sides, how much does this matter at this point? The vote was pretty evenly split. How is this going to affect how you act going forward? There's no mandate on either side, nor was there likely to have been if Clinton had won the election.
It matters insofar as one side is asserting that the results are less valid because the people did not choose Trump. It's the same electoral/popular argument that happens every election that there's a split. The argument does not apply if it did not happen here this time.
No candidate received a majority. Clinton (last I checked) is on pace to win a plurality of the popular vote — and that by a pretty slim margin. But that's beside the point. None of this justifies dismissing or insulting or generalizing the opinions of nearly half of the voting population. It's just not constructive. Like it or not, you live in a society with other people. We need to be able to live and work with each other.
> you live in a society with other people. We need to be able to live and work with each other.
I agree. But it appalls me to think why any rational person would support an openly racist and sexist to lead a nation who doesn't pay tax? Even illegal immigrates pay taxes - http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-03-01/study-undocum.... I find it ironic.
How are you going to live and work with them if you don't think they're rational? I don't want to put words in your mouth but I'm afraid that's how some might interpret what you've said. Am I being unfair?
It's a reasonably fair argument I believe. Yes, I can still live with them fine, but that's beside the point, isn't it? It's a fair question and deserve a fair answer. People must've gone through some sort of thinking, pros and cons before cast their vote unless they already made up their mind and turning a blind eye on troulbed personal traits. Are you not agree? Do you offer any explanation or answer that would enlighten us?
First off, thanks for continuing this discussion in a thoughtful way.
The very short answer is that I'm not going to presume how others voted how they did, on either side, at least without asking them. I know that I don't subscribe to all of the views of the candidate I voted for, so I'll grant others the benefit of the doubt they didn't either. There are a lot of different issues, and people hold different positions of those issues, and prioritize the issues differently as well. There are some single-issue voters out there. I'm not. I'm not going to assume you are, either. I may not agree with the positions that someone else holds, or their prioritization of them.
I know I'm not perfect or have all of the answers. I also know that I've changed my positions on issues over the course of my life. I have hope that we can figure out what issues we have in common and work on those together. I also hope that by talking with one another we can come to agreements and be willing to change our minds.
At this point, the election is over. We have choices on how we move forward. My hope is that we can move forward together, and given how split the country is and how unhappy people were even with the candidates they supported, I think this is possible. I hope you do, too!
Thanks again for reading through this and sticking with it.
> The very short answer is that I'm not going to presume how others voted how they did, on either side, at least without asking them. I know that I don't subscribe to all of the views of the candidate I voted for, so I'll grant others the benefit of the doubt they didn't either. There are a lot of different issues, and people hold different positions of those issues, and prioritize the issues differently as well. There are some single-issue voters out there. I'm not. I'm not going to assume you are, either. I may not agree with the positions that someone else holds, or their prioritization of them.
Thanks you. You response is somewhat similar to what a politician would say, equivocal and indirect. Basically, you avoided my question and did not say anything meaningful unfortunately.
> I know I'm not perfect or have all of the answers. I also know that I've changed my positions on issues over the course of my life. I have hope that we can figure out what issues we have in common and work on those together. I also hope that by talking with one another we can come to agreements and be willing to change our minds.
That's why I'm asking the question and hope you would have the answer. But sadly like many others, you are not forthcoming to share but instead wanted us to talk to others for answers. Why is it so hard to share? Why can we get a straight answer to a simple question?
> At this point, the election is over. We have choices on how we move forward. My hope is that we can move forward together, and given how split the country is and how unhappy people were even with the candidates they supported, I think this is possible. I hope you do, too!
Again, not exactly the answers I was hoping for. But thank you for the positive attitude. We all need it.
But Trump's entire campaign was based on demonizing the other side with lies and disinformation and making unfair generalization about huge groups of people. And don't turn around and try to tell me that Clinton engaged in those kinds of tactics to the same degree. Are we just supposed to turn around and forget all of that, like none of it happened? No! That's like hoping your abusive father or husband will just suddenly start being more nice if you give him what he wants. When has that ever happened?
No. We're not supposed to forget what happened, or just lay down and stop working for what we believe. We need to hold each other and ourselves accountable. We need to figure out a way to constructively move forward together. I don't know about you, but when someone continues to insult me, it makes it very hard for me to want to work with them in an earnest way. I think most people react the same way. We're human. I also admit that I'm not perfect, so it's unfair to expect others to be perfect. I also hope that I can be better, which means that I can change. If I think other people should change, it's fair that I expect change of myself.
The vote was pretty evently split, and voters had an effectively binary choice. Both candidates had record low favorability numbers. I don't believe that people wholly subscribe to every position held by the candidate they chose. (Hell, I don't believe the candidates even wholly subscribe to every position they publicly held. Politics in democracy is about compromise, which unfortunately has apparently become a disparaged trait.)
I also think it's worth recognizing that the people that are expressing the most vitriol are not representative of the population as a whole. The anonymity and distance on the internet can bring out the worst in some people. As can the actions of crowds.
That also means that there are very likely things that we can agree on, things we think are worthwhile. It would be a massive failure on all of our parts if we can't figure out a way to accomplish those goals we have in common. I'm not ready to give up on us yet. You've been participating in the discussion as well, so I hope you're not giving up either.
Who put this list together and how? a night of heavy "thinking"? Who did they consult on how realistic and achievable these goals are? Does budget allow for any of this?
Is this all made up BS plan that could never be achieved?
Bad idea that sounds like a good idea until you discover that it actually leads to greater special interest influence because nobody in Congress knows how to do anything so lobbyists just do it for them. http://prospect.org/article/populist-road-hell-term-limits-c...
A reasonable term limit has to be in place. A person who has been in the Senate since 1986, like John McCain, should have been out of there if term limits were in place.
Thirty years is a long time to be elected, re-elected and re-elected and ...
I don't see what the problem is with that? The term limits on the president are in place because he has such an inordinate amount of power. I am concerned about a president trying to seize non-democratic power. Not so for a Senator. Can you explain more about why you think reps need term limits?
Basically, without term limits, politics turns into a game of power plays and re-election campaigns, instead of actually representing the constituents.
Interesting. I definitely hear that, and I find that argument somewhat convincing. On the other hand, I worry a wholeee lot about term limits encouraging a revolving door between public and private work. I guess the ideal solution would be an appropriately-sized term limit: not too short and not too long? Or perhaps shorter term limits & some other way of protecting against revolving door behavior. Thanks for sharing the article!
Well, I'm certainly not worried about some specific senator trying to seize more power than they already have— there are too many other powerful (& more powerful) people in the government who would stop them. If term limits for reps/senators were instituted, I would be very worried about that supporting a "revolving door" between public & private work. I would much prefer to have career politicians in those positions than to have people serving short times and then getting a big payout from private sector depending on how well they served those private interests.
How are you going to pickup who to run as a president, since usually most presidents candidates (except Trump, obviously) comes from senators and congress?
Where would candidates like Bernie Sanders be if he is not in congress for so long?
Congress is different from state legislatures in that a lot of its laws create agencies, and those agencies preserve institutional knowledge (e.g., the FDA, FBI, etc.). There's a reasonable argument that Congressmen shouldn't need to know any specialized knowledge. If the law is so obscure that only lawyers can interpret it, that's a bug, not a feature.
Basically the federal government says "Round these people up, an oh by the way do it on your own dime." These cities basically say no, we're not going to pay for that.
From Google: "A sanctuary city is a city in the United States or Canada that adopts local policies designed to not prosecute people solely for being an undocumented individual in the country in which they are currently living. These practices can be by law (de jure) or they can be in fact (de facto)."
I can’t believe that he is really going to go through with:
THIRD, I will direct the Secretary of the Treasury to label China a currency manipulator.
Has nobody told him what this is going to do to the economy? The rest of his proposals he will have to get past congress and the courts, but this is one he can do all on his own.
There's nothing to discuss here. A reaction along the lines of "Well, that doesn't sound so bad, but maybe he ought to think about..." means you're now playing by his rules. This is just Reagan++.
No, it's describing the actions he's going to repeal. "Repeal those actions which were unconstitutional", not "repeal the actions, which are unconstitutional".
Executive actions are obviously not per se unconstitutional. The President is the CEO of the executive branch--many executive actions are simply him telling his subordinates what to do.
Not exactly. He's just saying he will reverse those Executive Orders which are considered unconstitutional by many (at least many of those who voted for him in my community).
If it really becomes a big deal, Apple can move the factory back state-side. They are getting to the point where Chinese labor is getting expensive enough that they are automating manufacturing and replacing people with robots over there anyway.
I spoke with a business owner during a real "Going Out Of Business Sale". They had a unfinished furniture store (buy a wood table that hasn't been finished, and finish it yourself etc). They had been making everything in Canada (where the store was located) using Canadian labour and paying Canadian wages. He said he could no longer compete with the companies that would send raw wood to Vietnam, have citizens build the products for $0.17/hour and ship it back. He also didn't want to go through the incredible logistics of all that, so he just closed down his business.
So, this is NOT new, it's been around for a while (see the footer of the document). Important to recognize that this may not be his actual first 100 day plan now he has actually won.
The bigger problem is that since the Democrats and media took the "Literally Hitler" approach, no policies got discussed even though they were available in plain sight. Now whether you like them or not, he's won, and people had no opportunity to understand the policy differences between the candidates.
It's a horrible start and a huge step backwards. A blanket ban on hiring new government workers or replacing existing ones is the stupidest idea ever for cutting the government workforce. Among other things, we as Americans have a wonderful collective resource in the form of public land, which is already poorly funded and hard to maintain because of the low workforce. Preventing the hiring of any more people to work and maintain trails, campgrounds and other resources is going to lead to them falling into further disrepair, getting shut down and abandoned. Even the volunteers who spend considerable time and money of their own to do much of the supplemental work currently won't be enough.
I'm worried about 18F/USDS/etc. because of the freeze on federal hiring. Partly I have friends there, but mostly, those organizations need to exist if government is going to be effective. They're getting things done, and they're also taking business away from government contractors who don't get things done (i.e., saving significant taxpayer money).
USDS, in its current form, is probably toast. It was a special initiative of Obama and is housed directly within his executive office. To my knowledge it exists solely at the President's discretion. Trump is not a digital guy, and not likely to want to hold over Obama folks (and vice versa).
18F is housed within GSA and so is somewhat isolated from political interference. That said, private contractors don't like it and will seek to label it as a wasteful project (already started--there was an attack article on HN last week).
The U.S. federal government under Obama had started to take some small steps toward modern digital competency. My expectation for a Trump administration is a complete reversal of that. Who's going to champion technology? Trump?? Mike Pence? Giuliani? And how many young talented developers are going to want to take a pay cut to eat bureaucratic shit in DC for Donald Trump? The allure for USDS was Obama himself.
I disagree on USDS. My understanding is that the money to fund USDS is already appropriated through the end of 2017, and there is bipartisan support to extend that money. A bill was introduced to do just that, actually (though nothing has been done with it since it was referred to committee). Lots of people like USDS on both sides of the aisle because it actually does make things more efficient.
Not saying it will survive an entire Trump presidency, but I think it's not on the chopping block immediately. I do worry that they won't be able to expand as planned though to have mini-USDS people in each Agency because of the hiring freeze.
Mikey Dickerson, the head of USDS, spoke at Velocity Conf in NYC this Sept and he was hinting that the organization was done for after this administration comes to a close. It will be a shame if this is true, as his group is a shining example of great work being done for the people and something to be proud of and continued.
From my understanding, a lot of the USDS effectiveness has been made possible because of the implicit mandate from the president. Everyone knows that Obama wants USDS to succeed, so they listen up when the USDS folks speak.
Without that sort of personal investment from the president (or someone else very high up), I don't know how effective the USDS can be, even if it is funded. In my experience the main ingredient in organizational change is will, not technological know-how.
And again, the question is who in technology wants to be associated with a Trump administration. Even the tech-savvy Republicans I know cannot stand Trump. Maybe that will change as the reality sinks in.
They're fucked. They likely won't lose their jobs, but they won't be able to expand or replace attrition. We've seen this movie before, during the downturn, and evidence points to 4 years (or more) of this crap.
Trump has expressed a preference for private industry to do things for the government, because they do it better. Accenture, Deloitte and KPMG are prolly the federal IT of the future
That's not awful, btw. The one upside of a large consulting firm is you can retain decent talent for boring projects by bouncing them around between assignments.... but you still have a single entity to hold accountable afterwards.
Plus a certain percentage of these people take the diverse base of experience and go start something useful. Teaching a bunch of smart, ambitious people about how the process actually works and then letting them go start their own operation seems like a recipe for job creation.... (and finding better ways to replace the status quo)
The trouble is that the government systems that are created are typically something only the government can/wants to do. Like "a system for issuing a permit" or "a system for quantifying the impact of permits issued". I think there is a more limited chance at job creation than you might think.
Also, in practice, contractors build a thing as fast as they can, then leave and never come back. Agencies that lean heavily on contractors generally don't have a deep bench of technical talent, so they get stuck with a maintenance nightmare that they didn't build and have a hard time understanding.
My feeling is that contractors tend to build differently than people who will have to support the system for however long the law it is enacting exists...
"... The business rate will be lowered from 35%
to 15%, and the trillions of dollars of American corporate
money overseas can now be brought back at a 10% rate."
15% seems like a lofty goal, even 25% would be drastic. Unless a corporation can be confident that there will be significant growth in the economy, they are likely to hoard the savings than reinvest them.
The TV show created many jobs (producers, editors, filmers, the 'assistant' (spokesperson...) position being fought for) and those who were "fired" (never really hired to begin with, were they?) failed to meet the job requirement. Which was to be the best business-person. A meritocracy, as things should be, rather than being based on race/gender/filling some sort of diversity quota.
In reality they became spokespeople when they won. But that wasn't what the show was about or portrayed. Trump was portrayed as the "hard/rough" sort of boss and the "You're fired." was just the slogan/catchphrase which worked wonderfully as a TV catchphrase/slogan. It was short, memorable, and people knew where it was from.
There was a whole lot more creation than destruction....
You're right, my comment was hyperbolic and too tongue-in-cheek to not be called out. TV shows do employ people, that's certainly inarguable and, the season ends with employment of the winner, regardless of how inaccurate the job description. I personally don't find any reality TV shows constructive other than propping up their own market.
"A meritocracy, as things should be, rather than being based on race/gender/filling some sort of diversity quota".. wonder when AI beats humans at chess and go, where does meritocracy stand ? Are Japanese/european cars better than US' ? Is protectionism, which rust belt states voted for, bad ? Looks like at the end of the day, people matter and there should be a place for educated and un/undereducated.
>Looks like at the end of the day, people matter and there should be a place for educated and un/undereducated.
So what makes a white or asian person the "better choice" than the black or latino person? Why should their race be a deciding factor in whether or not they are hired for a position? Education opens opportunities - especially in knowledge-based fields.
I'll take a strong, uneducated worker for a manual labor job over an intelligent toothpick because the stronger worker will be better for the job.
At the end of the day, why should [x] be chosen over [y] if [x] is better suited for the job? Is [x] not a person? Does [x] not matter? The only reason to select [y] is to pay a lower wage, they are easier to take advantage of, racism, or sexism.
The Republicans have a majority in the Senate, but just barely; it certainly isn't even close to being filibuster proof. And given how polarized the parties are now, I would expect the Senate Democrats to simply stonewall anything they don't like.
Let's pay Damien Gregory for the Real Lockdown phone gas you president speech and Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube Lockdown and Trump towers contact him for your shit back needs to be Paid for everything 509-945-4338
Screw it. Let's go all in with "clean coal". Fund NASA with the additional tax revenue from all the new oil money going around. Let's get off the planet before it matters.
"Six measures to clean up the corruption and special interest collusion in Washington, DC"
Ok, I'm on board with all of those... Then, besides a few other points, it just gets worse and worse the further into it you go.
If he accomplishes all 6, or even half, that's great. I just hope he won't have enough time to ruin everything else. At least now (especially after Dubya) we know we need outsiders vigilantly watching every move (and non-move) he makes.
What's funny about this is that health savings accounts are really just a discount program based on your tax bracket. The higher your tax bracket the bigger the discount. So in other words, the richer you are the more you'll save with a health savings account.
So if Trump pulls off his "huge tax cuts" he'll be undermining his plan for health savings accounts. Classic Trump cognitive dissonance.
So what if someone in the 33% bracket can potentially save up to 8% more than someone in the 25% bracket, they're paying much higher on AGI! And when the rates are reduced so there's a lower incentive to use the accounts, it still can be saved/invested and grow tax-free and gains can even be spent tax free if used on qualified medical expenses. That's the bigger incentive IMO.
Hey do you have another working link for Public penetration test results: https://ptr.iot.nist.gov/A2L7P9D23345 you posted
a month ago. I had to send a message here because Hackernews does not allow direct messages.
As it's currently structured, HSA's are usually a part of a health insurance plan with high deductibles. It's not an either/or thing, it's a both/and thing.
I am very surprised that I am just reading this now. I wonder, if I had read it before (and I read NYT obsessively), that I would have re-considered by opinion.
"Restoring National Security Act" The Federalization of law enforcement has the potential for fascism. Also lowering the repatriation of corporate abroad profit makes it more tax efficient to move jobs overseas. A 10% repatriation below the 15% cap gains rate is a massive tax loophole.
I'm not convinced Trump fully understands what NAFTA entails. He talks a lot about the importing of goods manufactured in Mexico and the export of American jobs to Mexico, but to my knowledge he hasn't talked about any other aspect of it. Surely the tech sector would freak out and raise a stink if all their TN employees had to leave overnight.
Its not a clean cut procedure that Trump could execute and bang, all TN visas holders are out. There is a significant work force on TN visas working at stat ups and major Fortune 500 companies, holding positions that are critical to those organizations. To have these people leave would not be cheap for these organizations and Trump will have to consider this.
He's trying to play off of his "I'm a business man" persona. By calling it a "contract" people are more likely to believe that he will honour it. Time will tell if that actually happens or not.
no carried interest talk, which is alright by me, that actually makes sense in giving an incentive for risk. would be interested to see if the 10% hit on monetary repatriation works, that could have some serious effects if that much multinational money gets sucked out of europe and abroad.
Two words: industrial policy. Without it any likelihood of creating substantially more jobs than the the current trend goes out the window. The problem? Industrial policy is hard and requires some attention span. You can't just tweet it out.
"SIXTH, a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising
money for American elections." -- sounds rather Russian, don't they have a law now forcing Amnesty International and others to register as "foreign agents"?
I think it's weird how very few people on HN seem to be worried about his promise to initiate pogroms against minorities in the first 100 days, like it doesn't even warrant a mention for most of you
Get real, this is an amazing boon for lobbyists. Members of congress would not be able to gain experience at crafting legislation and dealing with the entire shitshow process at the federal level. Lobbyists can still be lobbyists for life.
On top of that, this significantly weakens congress's position when raising funds for elections. They've got to dance to the right tune quickly, they can't slowly ramp up a career and build a brand. With their bargaining power lowered...ugh.
America is probably going to get totally fucked now.
And no, not necessarily because of this. But this policy proposal is the best Trump could come up with? This isn't even half-baked, it's fucking flour in a pot and he's calling it cookies. How can this be called a contract.
Anecdata time. I was at a conference. During the dinner, a couple sat next to me, and the husband happened to be a lobbyist in Sacramento (CA). We talked about term limits, and he was laughing at how he, having been around so long, was the go-to resource for incoming newbie representatives in the committee he lobbied. With a "trust me", he could get stuff into legislation with ease.
This is not to say that term limits are bad. But just term limits alone may not be enough to curb corruption.
That, and the delegation of rulemaking by lawmakers to "unaccountable, unelected bureaucrats" within state agencies. Term limits will accomplish the opposite of the stated intent.
The longer they are there, the more sold out they become.
Career politicians are the worst.
Completely disconnected from the people because the only thing they know is how to get elected and work the system for personal enrichment and job security.
They help pass laws which affect people and the economy they've never participated in. The bad ones are hard to get rid of. Kind of like tenured professors. So you might lose an exceptional one from time to time but they can switch houses or branches in that case.
If you like no term limits, why do we have one for the President?
You can still be a career politician without being elected. Most business owners, lobbyists, CEOs, and board members are just that. They just don't have to take any oaths.
I'm not sure that Congressional term limits are necessarily a good thing. Lobbyists and other special interests don't have term limits. It seems to me that if we impose term limits on Congress members, then the lobbyists will be the ones with the most experience drafting and passing legislation. I'm all for limiting the influence of money in politics and making more Congress seats "vulnerable" (something like 90% of incumbents get re-elected), but when we find a good legislator I think we should be allowed to keep them.
moral of the story, you can't make these changes without some sort of analysis to show that they will have the intended effect. He's pulling the trigger w/o understanding the end effect imo.
> when we find a good legislator I think we should be allowed to keep them.
It's a fair point. I guess we'll have to wait and see what the 'term limits' mean, whether they are similar to presidential term limits (my original assumption) or not.
The question I find myself wondering is:
Is the range of possible upside equivalent to the range of possible downside?
My intuition is that there's a limited amount marginal improvements except in special cases but the potential downside goes from bad to worse to flat out catastrophic.
Maybe it is like how most programmers can improve a code base, but a single bad actor could fuck it to hell and back with greater ease.
I'm looking at you Dianne Feinstein. Evil bat-witch.
Constitutional amendments need a 2/3 majority in the House and Senate to officially be proposed (except when proposed through a constitutional convention, which hasn't happened since the original constitution was written), and must be ratified by 3/4 of states to take effect. So, this won't happen unless there's suddenly a bi-partisan consensus that term limits are needed. (Also, congresspeople are unlikely to be willing to vote themselves out of a job.)
Reality doesn't seem to be a relevant factor here, unfortunately. Hopefully this will get clearer sometime into his presidency, when most likely nothing will happen, but otherwise a downward spiral.
> If he does this alone, then he's made a huge impact
No single action could increase the power of lobbyists and unelected officials not directly accountable to voters more than this, it's true. It would be an enormous impact.
I think corruption is like a weed. It grows when you become acclimatized to your environment and start to exploit it.
Term limits get us closer to a part-sortition. From the wiki:
Author James Wycliffe Headlam explains that the Athenian Council (500 administrators randomly selected), would commit occasional mistakes such as levying taxes that were too high. Additionally, from time to time, some in the Council would improperly make small quantities of money from their civic positions. However, "systematic oppression and organized fraud were impossible". These Greeks recognized that sortition broke up factions, diluted power, and gave positions to such a large number of disparate people that they would all keep an eye on each other making collusion fairly rare.
There are three key groups at work in the legislation: legislators, the professional staff on whom legislators rely, and lobbyists.
Reducing the average level of experience in the particular legislative institution, and in legislative affairs generally, of the first group increase the relative advantage in systematic knowledge and effectiveness of the latter two groups compared to the first.
Term limits aren't sortition (it's not random, and political parties and the donor class are actively involved in choosing who stands for seats and how much support they have, so, the effects you point to in sortition of breaking up factionsome and reducing corruption simply aren't present.) And, in any case, the level of complexity of a modern nation of 300+ million people different considerably from that of ancient Athens.
> Reducing the average level of experience in the particular legislative institution, and in legislative affairs generally, of the first group increase the relative advantage in systematic knowledge and effectiveness of the latter two groups compared to the first.
That's a good point. How would you solve for X here?
> Term limits aren't sortition (it's not random, and political parties and the donor class are actively involved in choosing who stands for seats and how much support they have, so, the effects you point to in sortition of breaking up factionsome and reducing corruption simply aren't present.)
I was thinking broadly of the system being more or less organized and how in some way incompetence may be less truly dangerous than a bad actor abusing the system.
How about we simply put restrictions on politicians and their interaction with mass media? This many minutes on television, paid for by the State so you don't have to scrounge around for cash? That is just a half-baked example, I take it you understand what I mean by it.
Corruption is a problem in every country but I don't think lobbying and donors exert such an influence in my country Ireland (could be naive here!).
> in any case, the level of complexity of a modern nation of 300+ million people different considerably from that of ancient Athens.
Ha! True. We need a new OS, that is for sure. That is why Patri Friedman (seasteading) has so many of my sympathies.
A president's power to propose a constitutional amendment is only greater than a presidential candidate's power to propose a constitutional amendment because of his symbolic authority. The states need to vote on it.
There's other stuff he can do on his own authority (e.g., a hiring freeze), or that requires the power of the presidency (e.g., nominating a justice).
Mixed opinion on this because it seems there is nothing wrong with no term limits on GOOD politicians. It would have been a shame if Ron Paul would have been prevented from his hugely successful 22+ years service in office. And Americans should really have no qualms about letting folks like Trey Gowdy and Jason Chaffez serve indefinitely.
It does nothing to stop corruption in government. The same forces that have a 20 year Senator begging for campaign money and being in the pocket of various special interests will continue against the freshman Senator that replaces him. Its feel-good nonsense for the most part. It barely addressed the symptoms of Washington corruption, let alone the cause.
>I'm really concerned he might be assassinated.
Over a toothless regulation that affects only a small percentage of Congress and mostly guys ready to retire anyway?
I honestly don't believe there's any chance of that passing. However, if Donald Trump actually can make that happen, I will forgive everything I hold against him, because it would clear out most of our government rot within the next two elections.
I doubt it would make much of a difference - money is like water in politics, it will find its way in. Instead of the money coming in as donations for future elections it will be about promises of huge salary for the job after you hit your term limit, unless of course you only want those who don't need to work hold our elective offices.
Ah, but the fourth item on his list is to forbid outgoing Congresscritters from those jobs for half a decade. At the least, he (or someone working for him) seems to have considered that.
My biggest fear of term limits would be the deep state respecting legislative oversight even less than it already does. A 2 term congressman can be waited out, but a 5-10 term congressman can really dig in.
Maybe, but it would also be a huge blow against the power of congress, which could only strengthen the executive. Without consistent leadership, congress would be even more feckless than ever.
wow. alot of these would be amazing if he got them to go through. maybe the "world is ending" rehtoric of 2008 when pres. obama was elected is similar to the current talk?
why would mexico pay for the wall? 9 out of 10 times when someone asks this question they are not aware of the fact that we had a $58 billion trade deficit with mexico in 2015. trumps proposal is to use this and all the other leverage we have over mexico to get them to pay for the wall. at first glance it seems that it would be very much in mexicos best financial interest to cooperate, actually. most liberals think he just says that mexico will build the wall and that he does not offer any kind of plan or explanation. this is because they never actually confirm their presumptions. im not saying that his plan is great or will even work. but it is a plan and although it is unconventional, it is also plausible.
the most concerning aspect of trumps policies is that regarding climate. but thankfully renewable energy is now well on its way. its not a fragile infant anymore -- it will survive trump if not explode into popularity under trump despite his stance on the environment.
the trump movement was a grass roots movement. People voted for him because he said that he will stop companies from outsourcing their work with simple tax implementations. they lifted him from obscurity and into the presidency. take a look at the other times he ran and you can see what his campaign would have been like without the grass roots element: nothing. trump would not be president if people in the mid-west had good employment and a sense of financial security.
and as for the sexual assault thing, i would rather have trump be elected than see bill clinton back in the white house because bill clinton is literally a rapist. i know it may come as a huge shock for liberals -- being a liberal it was a huge shock to me -- but its true. i know this is not the most reputable source but before you disagree with me i would like you to watch this video of a woman recounting the event.
i very much doubt that someone who could easily make a nice living in hollywood as one of the best actors in the world would instead decide to publicly accuse one of the most powerful men in the world of one of the worst crimes possible.
heres an article from npr (one of the most liberal new organizations on the planet) addressing the issue and offering absolutely no evidence to contradict it.
Why is this flagged ? The Outsourcing act itself has repercussions to tech industry. This is not political opinion, its a policy pamphlet. Its fine, you hate the man with all your guts out, but it would be a sign of maturity, to argue for or against them, sharing your insights, rather than flagging the message and flogging the messenger.
Why does this post show up as flagged, but there's no vouch button which I normally see for flagged posts? I voted for Hillary, but this post shouldn't be flagged.
The vouch button appears when a story is flagged to the extent that it's killed, but [flagged] can appear before then. Since vouches saved this one and it's on the front page, we've removed the [flagged] label. Edit: and now the upvotes have countered the flags.
I wasn't saying that I literally or intentionally post garbage comments. That was rhetoric, to prove a point. I'd assumed HN readers and moderators would understand that.
we already had a "trump won the election" thread. Isn't that enough US politics on HN for the day? This is not new, it was published weeks ago. If i wanted to see more election stuff i'd go to reddit. or just about anywhere else on the internet today.
I sympathize with the pain of being called 'ignorant', but we need to get away from the fear of calling things as they are.
The response could have been started differently - 'that statement does not recognize the substantial subsidies in...' - but pundits have begun to bristle at being called wrong. The proliferation of misinformation/lies has been a huge issue this campaign, and we would do well to limit it whenever possible.
It is by definition ignorant which means "lacking knowledge or awareness of a specific issue".
It was not a personal slight. It was not intended to be insulting not repulsive. And I am confused why on earth you would bring basket of deplorables into this.
It is quite clear though that you are looking at everything as an attack against Trump and conservatism which it isn't.
Yes, but i am well aware of the problem. You seem to be unaware of the fact the oil/gas advantage doesn't matter with many Republicans. Would that qualify as ignorant?
You are screaming that we need to "level the playing field", while I'm pointing out that we currently need to make progress in the current political environment.
Trump should append this contract with "End Internet shills" because it seems there are a lot of them on this thread. Good golly, I thought finally CTR would close up shop after last night.
For the first time in generations the USA finally has a president who isn't a puppet. And this contract allows us to keep said President accountable from day one. Nerds rejoice! Fear not the knee-jerk comments from un/mis-informed trendies and especially ignore the talking-point bots still hating on Trump via whatever is left in the Soros/CF payroll account. After years of trying they ultimately failed and clearly cannot impact the will of the people at the end of the day. MAGA.
Grow up and realize that not everyone who disagrees with you is a "shill." This goes for you and for every Trump supporter who made the internet an intellectual wasteland during this election.
Trump won the election but lost the popular vote. Half the country finds him personally repulsive. His presidency will be more contentious than any other in memory. Like any other politician, he will not deliver on his promises and he will not fix complex problems just by being willing to "get things done."
There will never ever be any shortage of people genuinely willing to criticize Trump for free.
You say to grow up but in the following sentence you lob a totally unnecessary insult, shifting blame as if there is none to fall on those who supported the Clinton campaign.
You say Trump won the election but lost the popular vote; ok I'll give you that (ignoring for a moment the culture of criminality of the Clinton campaign and the possibility for election fraud ) but the margin of that popular vote is only by a 0.2 to 0.7% lead [0]. Hardly more than 50% if even.
Regardless, if I'm not mistaken, the popular vote doesn't determine who becomes President so this argument is flawed because if popular vote did determine who became President then the Trump campaign could very well have optimized their campaign to win said popular vote; requiring a different strategy but one that could very well have been successful just as they were at winning the battleground states as they did, and as so few predicted.
You say that half the country finds him personally repulsive. Why is that? I just laid out some facts about the media collusion and attempts to smear and disrupt his character and campaign. Why is your angst not directed at the sell-out mainstream media for helping to coordinate the propaganda which is now so deeply rooted in people's opinions towards the now President to be?
Finally, maybe it would be better to give the new President a chance to implement his promises before judging him on that regard. Maybe he is not like any other politician, after all he's the only President to ever take office who has no prior position in politics or military.
Some of it sounds ridiculous - for every new federal regulation, 2 existing regulations must be eliminated. How is that considered feasible by any rational person? It might sound great if you don't think too hard about it.
The scariest things for me are the backing out of climate change accords and the opening up of additional shale/gas/etc resources. We really don't need to be heading in that direction, energy-wise.