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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]

#211

Post by stevesearer »

mozumder wrote: post #165
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 don't get the appeal of term limits on Congress. Why would you vote for an amateur politician instead of a professional career politician? Aren't career politicians better than amateur politicians? If a politician is doing a good job, why would you artificially limit their term? The branch of government with the highest approval rate is the Judicial branch, where Supreme Court Justices are appointed for life.

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.

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

#212

Post by trav4225 »

cyberferret wrote: post #68
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…

That one popped out at me too - 1 in 2 out?? It's not like decluttering a house - these are the fundamental building blocks of society...

No offense, but the overwhelming majority of them are not (IMO).

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

#213

Post by loeber »

skywhopper wrote: post #172

"THIRD, cancel all federal funding to sanctuary cities." Is this explained anywhere?

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)."

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

#214

Post by olalonde »

ccallebs wrote: post #151
Alupis wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 fis…

> 16 USC §551 & 36 CFR §261.16(c) That should absolutely still be on the books. You'd have people cleaning fish in bathrooms.

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.

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

#215

Post by albinofrenchy »

ainot wrote: post #168
gdulli wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which low-ability individuals suffer from illusory superiority High brow smack (condescension) like that and "basket of deplorables" are what America revolted against. If the liberal left was truly smart, why did they allow the president to run up more national debt than all presidents prior...combined?

> 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.

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

#216

Post by thatfrenchguy »

b_emery wrote: post #143

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…

Classic, you never make conservatives accountable for this kind of things.

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

#217

Post by icambron »

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.

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.

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

#218

Post by danblick »

jdc0589 wrote: post #122

> 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 s…

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.

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

#219

Post by chris11 »

fisherjeff wrote: post #179
jdc0589 wrote: post #122

> 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 s…

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 throttli…

I don't know exactly, but there are probably oil reserves in places like Alaska that would be cheaper to extract if it were allowed.

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

#220

Post by ejstronge »

ainot wrote: post #176

> Completely ignorant position. Completely insulting and repulsive. Perhaps you were searching for "basket of deplorables"?

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.

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