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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]

#351

Post by blablabla123 »

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.

I think that's the reason Trump becomes president of the US. It may sound ridiculous to you but he is 100% correct with that point. Everybody knows that there are too many government regulations, people across the whole political spectrum agree on that.

And although I'm from Germany, I can tell you rules that can be removed. For instance rules that require you to own a gun in certain counties, there are other actually ridiculous rules. There are YouTube videos about that and as a matter of fact these rules are not enforced.

We need to relax our constrained thinking to start modernizing outdated structures. It's sad that Donald Trump must do this job.

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

#352

Post by stcredzero »

jacobolus wrote: post #293
pfraze wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coal mining and related production is a large employer. It's about propping up small coal-towns.

Except it’s not nearly a large enough employer to single-handedly prop up the places where it dominates. Coal mining has been substantially automated compared to a few decades ago, and the total number of coal jobs is down to a small fraction of its peak. Even if we doubled or tripled coal production, local economies in coal country would still be limping. It’s not like executives/stockholders of coal companies are d…

Except it’s not nearly a large enough employer to single-handedly prop up the places where it dominates.

And the paychecks it generates aren't really enough to justify even just the local impacts to health and the environment.

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

#353

Post by arcticfox »

stcredzero wrote: post #205
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…

The fact that the term "clean coal" can be bandied about with a straight face says something about the state of science education of the general public. (Pretty much the same knowledge needed to instantly realize that various wind/solar operated water-from-air devices and Solar Freakin Roadways aren't viable from back of the envelope calcs.)

I think that's a little harsh. There's no first principle that the average citizen should know that says "clean coal" isn't possible.

In fact, in 5-10 minutes of specifically looking at the topic I still don't see why you're mocking the concept.

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

#355

Post by stcredzero »

leephillips wrote: post #224
stcredzero wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that the term "clean coal" can be bandied about with a straight face says something about the state of science education of the general public. (Pretty much the same knowledge needed to instantly realize that various wind/solar operated water-from-air devices and Solar Freakin Roadways aren't viable from back of the envelope calcs.)

“Sunlight is abundant beyond the energy needs of the entire human race”. (Los Alamos National Laboratory [ http://www.lanl.gov/discover/publications/1663/2015-may/pero... ].) This is their back of the envelope calculation.

The fact that so many people simply stop there is a clear sign that science education has failed.

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

#356

Post by [deleted] »

mr_tristan wrote: post #174
carlob wrote: post #139

Wow did he just take a page directly from Berlusconi's book? Berlusconi did the exact same 100 days contract about ten years ago!

The first 100 days is actually a tradition for new US Presidents to create a plan (and a litmus test), which started with FDR in 1933. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_100_days_of_Franklin_D._...

[deleted]

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

#357

Post by vidarh »

rattray wrote: post #243
nkw wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

One reform that most countries could make, would be for laws and regulations to start with a justification, and a test for outcomes that would see the law or regulation automatically become invalid if it can be proven that the outcomes are not met.

Both because it would help with the problem where people don't understand the intent of a law or regulation and so assumes they are stupid, and because it would make passing genuinely stupid laws and regulations harder if you have figure out ways to set out the intent and an "outcome test" in a way that doesn't xpose how bad it is.

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

#358

Post by pdonis »

gshulegaard wrote: post #259
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…

I don't know: > THIRD, a requirement that for every new federal regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated. Is scariest to me given a Republican controlled Congress. The one sided control makes me nervous.

Congress doesn't write federal regulations. Executive branch agencies do, within very broad guidelines that Congress has put in the statutes empowering those agencies. A lot of what Trump is proposing here can be done without any Congressional action at all; it's just a matter of changing the priorities of the agencies who write the regulations.

Of course, doing that is a much, much bigger job than I think Trump realizes.

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

#359

Post by zeveb »

dragonwriter wrote: post #138
burkaman wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this law actually started in British Columbia as "repeal 2 for every new regulation". It does seem like it could be useful as a short term policy, if Congress can't find any way to agree on directly repealing unnecessary regulations.

> It does seem like it could be useful as a short term policy, if Congress can't find any way to agree on directly repealing unnecessary regulations. Regulations are issued by the executive branch, not Congress (repealing regulations is actually done by issuing regulations specifying the regulations to be repealed, so the process for repeal is the same.) Also, "a regulation" isn't a well-defined unit.

> Regulations are issued by the executive branch

Sounds like the meaning of the executive's order to 'repeal two for every one new' could be decided within the executive branch, then. And since everyone within the executive branch is responsible to the chief executive … maybe it could even work.

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

#360

Post by finid »

Fully-funds the construction of a wall on our southern border with the full understanding that the country of Mexico will be reimbursing the United States for the full cost of such wall; establishes a two-year mandatory minimum federal prison sentence for illegally re-entering the U.S. after a previous deportation, and a five-year mandatory minimum federal prison sentence for illegally re-entering for those with felony convictions

How Mexico will be forced to pay for a wall built by the US will make for a good TV show.

Private prisons are about to make a killing with the 2- and 5-year mandatory prison terms.

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