Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#101

Post by semiel » Wed, Nov 09, 2016, 10:15 PM UTC

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #43

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 cli…

> 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.

Canada has a variation on this law.

http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/R-4.5/page-1.html#h-...

Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#102

Post by ohyoutravel » Wed, Nov 09, 2016, 10:16 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #82

geofft wrote: post #31

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…

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.

Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#103

Post by melling » Wed, Nov 09, 2016, 10:16 PM UTC

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #43

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 cli…

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.

Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#104

Post by waterphone » Wed, Nov 09, 2016, 10:16 PM UTC

beachstartup wrote: post #27

this is laid out like an actual memorandum of understanding as used in business. many contracts start out this way then turn into actual contracts full of legalese. in government context that would be legislation. this isn't a bad start at all if a reasonable amount of it actually happens.

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.

Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#105

Post by rayiner » Wed, Nov 09, 2016, 10:17 PM UTC

dharmon wrote: post #79

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #43

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 cli…

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.

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.

Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#106

Post by mudil » Wed, Nov 09, 2016, 10:17 PM UTC

cesarbs wrote: post #95

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. Regulatio…

The FDA thing is really really scary if you are sick. This situation is clearly illustrated in the movie Dallas Buyer's Club.

Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#107

Post by mr_spothawk » Wed, Nov 09, 2016, 10:17 PM UTC

shaftoe wrote: post #67

CPLX wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I will light our capital city on fire" is even more clear and concise. Perhaps you're optimizing for the wrong metric.

That would certainly go a long way to cutting bureacracy and restoring efficiency.

let the snark fly!

(seriously, though... you're probably right)

Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#108

Post by kbenson » Wed, Nov 09, 2016, 10:17 PM UTC

elchief wrote: post #87

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #43

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 cli…

I suggested dropping a law for every new law on here a year or so back and it was surprisingly popular Here's the link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9740748

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.

Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#109

Post by meddlepal » Wed, Nov 09, 2016, 10:18 PM UTC

incompatible wrote: post #24

internaut wrote: post #4

> FIRST propose a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress. If he does this alone, then he's made a huge impact. I'm really concerned he might be assassinated.

A proposal alone doesn't do anything. What is that chance that it gets a two-thirds vote of approval in Congress?

Almost no chance since career politicians would be giving up their cushy career jobs.

Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#110

Post by ianai » Wed, Nov 09, 2016, 10:18 PM UTC

adt2bt wrote: post #3

Does anyone have an idea about the expected global response to the Secretary of the Treasury labeling China a currency manipulator?

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.