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

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

#111

Post by qaq »

hiou wrote: post #41
jobu wrote: post #6

Whatever you think about Trump or the policies in that document, it's clearer and more concise than anything I've seen from an elected official.

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"

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

#113

Post by noobermin »

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…

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.

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

#114

Post by dharmon »

kbenson wrote: post #96
dharmon wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who knows how many outdated regulations are still on the books?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.

That's the important question. If the answer is, "not that many", then this would probably lead to gridlock. Not the worst outcome, I guess.

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

#115

Post by dragonwriter »

Jtsummers wrote: post #73
thetrb wrote: post #32

There's a lot of really scary stuff in there: - Cancel payments to U.N. climate change projects - Remove two existing regulations for every new regulation - Drastic tax cuts - Massive immigration changes

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 ( You lose a great deal of institutional knowledge (particularly critical for civil service wh…

> You do reduce the workforce through attrition, but eventually you have to hire again and hire almost exclusively junior people (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.

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

#116

Post by internaut »

dloose wrote: post #42
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.

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…

> 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.

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

#117

Post by sushid »

cyberferret wrote: post #75
jobu wrote: post #6

Whatever you think about Trump or the policies in that document, it's clearer and more concise than anything I've seen from an elected official.

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]…

100 day plans are nothing new. [0] It's a way of saying that the new administration will hit the ground running.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_hundred_days

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

#118

Post by GVIrish »

dragthor wrote: post #77
thetrb wrote: post #32

There's a lot of really scary stuff in there: - Cancel payments to U.N. climate change projects - Remove two existing regulations for every new regulation - Drastic tax cuts - Massive immigration changes

- 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…

> 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.

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

#119

Post by teemwerk »

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.

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

#120

Post by CountSessine »

hiou wrote: post #41
jobu wrote: post #6

Whatever you think about Trump or the policies in that document, it's clearer and more concise than anything I've seen from an elected official.

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.

this is literally handing Russia and China the keys to the global economy

Well, ok. Aside from the misuse of literally, that's certainly a metaphor I haven't heard being applied to this problem domain before...

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