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

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241–250 of 1001 posts

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

#241

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

A sanctuary city is one that obstructs (directly or indirectly) the enforcement of federal immigration laws.

http://www.apsanlaw.com/law-246.List-of-Sanctuary-cities.htm...

Since this list is most of your bigger more liberal cities (LA, SF, NYC), I do wonder what it means to cut off all federal funding to those cities.

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

#242

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…

It's not as crazy as it sounds. Studies show that Government has a "liberal bias". That even during Republican administrations, more liberal policies are passed than conservative ones: http://www.vox.com/2014/9/19/6532489/chart-policymaking-has-... The reason is because it's much much harder to repeal laws than to add new ones, so they tend to increase over time. Regulation bloats.

Like technical debt. We are long overdue for a good refactoring push.

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

#243
post #152
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/711 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/707 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/710 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/46 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2285 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1716E https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1730 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1762 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/…

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!

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

#245
post #62
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.

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?

Could you explain Obamacare? That would be cool. Thanks.

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

#246
post #111
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

#247
post #148
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 l…

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").

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

#248

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…

>- 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.

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

#249
post #176

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

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.

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ainot

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

#250
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'm genuinely curious what the restrictions are that are throttling our energy industry. "Environmental regulation". Who needs clean air or water. Superfunds Sites are cheap to clean up right?

Superfund sites are expensive, and that's exactly why they're great for the economy.
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