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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]

#371

Post by busyant »

cyberferret wrote: post #75
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.

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]…

> And what are the repercussions if he does NOT achieve all these within the first 100 days?

He will claim that he did indeed achieve them despite all evidence to the contrary.

If you manage to corner him on the argument, he will blame you for the failure.

* edit. Not sure what the downvote is for. Trump has used both tactics outlined above. He was always against the Iraq war despite evidence to the contrary. When he was under the impression that he would lose the election he cast blame elsewhere (election rigging).

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

#372

Post by patrickg_zill »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #343
supergarfield wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is a reflection on the amount of usable sunlight on that hits the surface of the earth. It sounds more like a vague, general statement and isn't backed by calculations in the article. The late Professor McKay (whose book on information theory and ML is neat by the way) published a great book full of climate back of the envelope calculations, Whithout the Hot Air , which is available online[1]. He c…

http://www.sandia.gov/~jytsao/Solar%20FAQs.pdf "This theoretical potential represents more energy striking the earth’s surface in one and a half hours (480 EJ) than worldwide energy consumption in the year 2001 from all sources combined (430 EJ)." Not back of envelope. Energy calculations worked through.

Isn't 70% or more of the Earth's surface covered in water and thus, quite difficult to build a terrestrial structure upon?

Asking for a friend.

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

#373

Post by chadgeidel »

burkaman wrote: post #134
dragthor wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Cancel UN climate payments, use money instead on America water and environmental issues. Sounds good to me. Let China and India clean up their own mess, while we clean up our messes. - Yes. Too many regulations by unelected bureaucrats. Sounds good to me. I'd rather have one clear and meaningful regulation than two "up for random interpretation." - Yes. Tax cuts for all working people. Let people decide what to do…

> Let China and India clean up their own mess, while we clean up our messes. But China and India are on the same planet as us.

And building our stuff without our EPA regs. I'm not sure how they can "clean up their own mess" while basically being an outsourcing arm for all our emissions. It's like we have this magical factory with a really long smokestack. Don't shut down the factory just tell someone else to fix the smoke.

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

#374

Post by ocschwar »

pfraze wrote: post #229
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.)

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

Actually, even that's not true. Mountaintop removal mining is mechanized and automated.

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

#375

Post by Retra »

ainot wrote: post #235

Why is it when I post garbage comments, they get downvoted. But when people post garbage comments that slam one or more of: 1) Republican 2) Christian 3) Conservative 4) Anyone from Texas except Austin 5) Anyone who works in the energy industry outside solar They don't get downvoted?

Because they disagree. Seems obvious enough.

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

#376

Post by riskable »

SolarUpNote wrote: post #208

Replace health insurance with health savings accounts?

What's funny about this is that health savings accounts are really just a discount program based on your tax bracket. The higher your tax bracket the bigger the discount. So in other words, the richer you are the more you'll save with a health savings account.

So if Trump pulls off his "huge tax cuts" he'll be undermining his plan for health savings accounts. Classic Trump cognitive dissonance.

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

#377

Post by mywittyname »

cowardlydragon wrote: post #86
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

What happens when the world stops buying our debt

The Fed buys it instead -- they have infinity money.

The Treasury doesn't care if other banks won't lend them money, so long as the Fed will, and the Fed always will.

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

#378

Post by toyg »

mywittyname wrote: post #246
qaq wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 buil…

> This money funnels back to the US to pay salaries, taxes and dividends.

Or rather to Bermuda, to fill the 0.5% tax-free accounts. So the sheep farmers are screwed and everyone else is screwed too. This is why people reject free trade (or think they do that by voting someone like Trump, which is another topic).

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

#380

Post by jernfrost »

I hate Trump, but some of this isn't actually that bad sounding. I have some doubts though if such a divisive and hated guy can manage to get stuff through though. He has not made himself into a person people want to cooperate with.

For some things though, he makes the problem sound way simpler than it is. E.g. removing existing regulations when introducing an new one and reducing government employees.

We got a right wing government in Norway thinking much along these lines promising removal of red tape, fewer public sector employees etc.

They failed. Reality is just a lot more complicated. Instead they have resorted to stupid tricks to make it look as if they are reducing public sector employees. They more some employees to other organizations which are not technically part of government. They they can make the statistics look pretty. But they are still paying for the services of these people.

The problem with e.g. reducing public sector employees is that every new government has big ambitions they want to happen YESTERDAY. That can only happen by public sector employees making it happen. The more ambitious your changes, the more new bureaucrats you frequently need to hire to get this done.

New ambitions typically also means a lot more rules and regulations have to be added.

I know this problem well from Software development. We want to reduce the number of useless lines of code. Except from users and managers there is a tremendous pressure and incentive for new functionality to be added. That means more lines of code not less.

Laws and regulations will be the same. People want the new stuff. They don't want to hear that you spent all this time removing stuff which doesn't really give anybody anything new, except a nice refactored law book.

Likely you are going to need to hire lots of people to actually start cutting down on regulation. Identifying what can be removed and figuring out how the rephrase things requires actual work, which somebody has to do. And if they are doing that they are not implementing the new policies of the administration.

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