Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

assets.donaldjtrump.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 1001 posts

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

#361

Post by exclusiv »

elevenfist wrote: post #144
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…

The longer they are there, the more sold out they become.

Career politicians are the worst.

Completely disconnected from the people because the only thing they know is how to get elected and work the system for personal enrichment and job security.

They help pass laws which affect people and the economy they've never participated in. The bad ones are hard to get rid of. Kind of like tenured professors. So you might lose an exceptional one from time to time but they can switch houses or branches in that case.

If you like no term limits, why do we have one for the President?

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

#362

Post by stevesearer »

mikestew wrote: post #344
stevesearer wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The appeal is that it would make being a career politician impossible The assumption, and I'm not saying that it's necessarily wrong, is that "career politician" is undesirable. How about getting rid of "career software developers"? Get rid of those entrenched JavaScript devs that are only interested in feathering their own nests. "Career doctors"? The medical profession is really just a business, and it should be tr…

I agree that career politicians aren't inherently bad and was more just stating plain reasoning to the parent's question.

"Career politicians" and term limits are an easy thing to point to that don't actually deal with the problem which in my mind has more to do with each individual representative carrying too much importance because there are so few of them. Also one person cannot reasonably represent the views of 1M constituents.

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

#363

Post by [deleted] »

yolesaber wrote: post #209
ainot wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

>High brow smack (condescension) like that and "basket of deplorables" are what America revolted against. Actually, the majority of Americans agreed with Hillary Clinton. She won the popular vote by over a million votes. We just use an outdated system built to appease slaveholders that does not necessarily represent the bulk will of the people. Trump won on a technicality of our (antiquated and frankly awful) system,…

[deleted]

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

#364

Post by nightski »

yolesaber wrote: post #209
ainot wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

>High brow smack (condescension) like that and "basket of deplorables" are what America revolted against. Actually, the majority of Americans agreed with Hillary Clinton. She won the popular vote by over a million votes. We just use an outdated system built to appease slaveholders that does not necessarily represent the bulk will of the people. Trump won on a technicality of our (antiquated and frankly awful) system,…

Every source I can find has her winning by around 200k. When you are talking about 120M votes that is rather insignificant.

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

#365

Post by qq66 »

nkw wrote: post #152
kbenson wrote: 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/…

Most of those laws are very useful and are there for a clear reason. Fingers crossed that Donald Trump and Paul Ryan are more thoughtful about which regulations to throw out.

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

#366

Post by maxmax »

1024core wrote: post #314
elevenfist wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Anecdata time. I was at a conference. During the dinner, a couple sat next to me, and the husband happened to be a lobbyist in Sacramento (CA). We talked about term limits, and he was laughing at how he, having been around so long, was the go-to resource for incoming newbie representatives in the committee he lobbied. With a "trust me", he could get stuff into legislation with ease. This is not to say that term limit…

That, and the delegation of rulemaking by lawmakers to "unaccountable, unelected bureaucrats" within state agencies. Term limits will accomplish the opposite of the stated intent.

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

#367

Post by psyc »

Alupis wrote: post #141
rayiner wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fis…

I'm just shaking my head at all the Hacker News armchair law professors who fervently believe each and every one of these is critical to the functioning of civilized society.

And that's why we have so much red tape. Apparently there's a type of person who can't abide not having all possible minutia of life legislated.

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

#368

Post by finid »

ben174 wrote: post #177
cesarbs wrote: post #95

A lot of what's in there seems pretty reasonable, but: 1) The whole border wall thing is just ridiculous. I thought he had given up on that. Why would Mexico have to pay for that? If the US wants to build a wall, fine, build it and pay for it. It doesn't make sense to demand that Mexico pay for it. It's like building a wall on your property and demanding your neighbors pay for it. 2) The FDA thing is scary. Regulatio…

You can find more detail on how he plans to make Mexico pay for the wall here: https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/Pay_for_the_Wall.pdf Specifically, he will threaten to disallow wire transfer of money from US to Mexico by non-citizens. Since that is a revenue source they greatly depend on, he suggests they'd rather fund the building of the wall. If they agree to fund the wall, then the ban on transfers will go away.

Banks that make money (fees) from such international money transfers are not gonna be very happy with Trump.

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

#369

Post by manicdee »

arcticfox wrote: post #353
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.)

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.

Simple thermodynamics.

We get energy from coal by burning it then extracting some of the heat. The waste products are basically carbon dioxide and heat.

Clean coal is about capturing that carbon dioxide, which means spending energy to separate the CO2 from other gasses, then liquefy it.

This sequestration process costs about 30% of the energy originally extracted from the coal.

I fully support clean coal since it increases the price of coal fired electricity, meaning coal plants will become uneconomical sooner.

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

#370

Post by vidarh »

dharmon wrote: post #114
kbenson wrote: 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.

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.

It will just lead to lawmakers getting more creative about merging laws together into monstrosities that meets the "quota" without actually achieving any real change and/or that uses the oportunity to expand the reach.
Post reply on HN