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

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

#141

Post by Alupis » Wed, Nov 09, 2016, 10:27 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #105

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Who knows how many outdated regulations are still on the books?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

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.

> I'd actually be surprised if there were many of those.

There are entire books written filled with silly, outdated, or absurd laws and regulations (both federal and state).

Here's just a taste[1]:

> 18 USC §1382 & 32 CFR §636.28(g)(iv) make it a federal crime to ride a moped into Fort Stewart without wearing long trousers.

> 16 USC §551 & 36 CFR §261.16(c) make it a crime to wash a fish at a faucet if it's not a fish-washing faucet, in a national forest.

> 21 USC §461 & 9 CFR §381.171(d) make it a crime to sell "Turkey Ham" as "Ham Turkey" or with the words "Turkey" and "Ham" in different fonts

> 18 USC §1865 & 36 CFR §7.96(b)(3) make it a federal crime to harass a golfer in any national park in Washington, DC.

[1] http://www.freedomworks.org/content/19-ridiculous-federal-cr...

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

#142

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Nov 09, 2016, 10:27 PM UTC

semiel wrote: post #101

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-...

[deleted]

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

#143

Post by b_emery » Wed, Nov 09, 2016, 10:27 PM UTC

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.

[1] http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2014/10/public-and-private...

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

#144

Post by elevenfist » Wed, Nov 09, 2016, 10:27 PM UTC

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.

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.

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

#145

Post by cyberferret » Wed, Nov 09, 2016, 10:27 PM UTC

sushid wrote: post #117

cyberferret wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

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

#146

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Nov 09, 2016, 10:27 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.

[deleted]

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

#147

Post by facetube » Wed, Nov 09, 2016, 10:28 PM UTC

natmaster wrote: post #85

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.

Really? Can you explain what this means then? "All vetting of people coming into our country will be considered “extreme vetting""

This shouldn't be downvoted. This is a critical question for a candidate who's pledged to expand religious discrimination and torture.

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

#148

Post by krick » Wed, Nov 09, 2016, 10:28 PM UTC

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 payments to U.N. climate change projects

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.

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

#149

Post by Jtsummers » Wed, Nov 09, 2016, 10:28 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #115

Jtsummers wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 j…

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).

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

#150

Post by internaut » Wed, Nov 09, 2016, 10:29 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #98

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.

> 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.

Can you provide a supporting line of reasoning?

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.