Live data from Hacker News

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

assets.donaldjtrump.com

911–920 of 1001 posts

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

#912
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…

>> I thought he had given up on that. You did?? He's been personally promising to build it 3-5 times a day to tens of thousands of people in every competitive state in the US. It's kind of hard to miss... >> Why would Mexico have to pay for that? ... It's like building a wall on your property and demanding your neighbors pay for it. Except the neighbors -- to stretch the analogy a bit more -- have their children, pet…

To stretch the analogy even further: your family has become accustomed to having the neighbors' children cook your food and borrowing those spare vehicles whenever you feel like it.

They're not just hanging out in your yard, they're contributing to your household's economy and are friends with your own kids. In fact, your daughter told them to keep the pets in the yard because she loves them so much.

Suddenly asking the neighbors to build a thick fence and stay the hell out will get your other family members very upset, and also means that you'll have to do more cooking from now on. Tough choices for the family dad...

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

#913

Trump should append this contract with "End Internet shills" because it seems there are a lot of them on this thread. Good golly, I thought finally CTR would close up shop after last night. For the first time in generations the USA finally has a president who isn't a puppet. And this contract allows us to keep said President accountable from day one. Nerds rejoice! Fear not the knee-jerk comments from un/mis-informed…

Grow up and realize that not everyone who disagrees with you is a "shill." This goes for you and for every Trump supporter who made the internet an intellectual wasteland during this election.

Trump won the election but lost the popular vote. Half the country finds him personally repulsive. His presidency will be more contentious than any other in memory. Like any other politician, he will not deliver on his promises and he will not fix complex problems just by being willing to "get things done."

There will never ever be any shortage of people genuinely willing to criticize Trump for free.

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

#914
post #751

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…

This is not unlike how an opposing party will criticize a bill based on its number of typed pages. The thump of a couple of inches of paper on a podium makes for great and reductive theater. It's likewise naïve to consider the number of regulations to be a direct barometer of the goodness or badness of regulation in general. Next we'll see the refactoring of existing regulations into smaller or larger components to a…

Then again there were 3,378 new fed regulations totalling 81,611 pages in 2015. It can be counter productive if the new regulations are so voluminous that no one has time to read them.

I ran into problems along those lines in the UK buying some stuff in Spain. Apparently "don't money launder" translates in to a 1 ft high stack of EU regulations that no one understands. I'm not convinced they are hugely better than the three word version.

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

#915
post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live by one of those cities, and there are indeed a lot of visa overstayers living there. The prospect of those people being too scared to call 911 if they witness a crime is something I am decidedly NOT looking forward to.

Hopefully we can crack down on employers so that these visa over-stayers don't stay long enough for that to happen.

Crack down on employers? Yeah, like that's going to happen.

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

#916

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's also the primary reason EpiPen can charge so much for their device. Their competitors' products were blocked / backlogged by the FDA. http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/09/01/49223579...

Isn't that throwing the baby out with the bathwater? Individual data points of a regulation being used for a corrupt end, doesn't mean the regulation is worthless and should be removed.

I didn't intend to suggest throwing out the FDA. I was just making a point that, like everything, it isn't perfect and can be improved.

The point that EpiPen was given temporary monopoly by the FDA was almost completely lost in most of the news stories I read. It's a facet of the story that I think is important, but left out.

To be an informed citizenry, we need to know all the angles and be able to filter the BS. Kudo's to NPR for bothering to get the full story.

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

#917

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…

When people leave Congress they invariably go into lobbying. Term limits has to have some small effect on increasing this because you'll necessarily cycle more people through Congress, and they'll know less. If we are to have lobbyists ( and I think we must ) then let us have knowledgeable ones.

The Gingrich Revolution was founded on term limits, and yet here we are.

"Additional shale/gas" makes no sense at least now because of market conditions. There's an untold huge level of zero-coupon debt hanging because of the last shale revolution. It does nothing to help use market discipline to wean us off hydrocarbons, but it might still be the "bridge fuel" even green people were touting ten years ago.

Myself, I think there was epistemic closure against any hydrocarbon activity in the chattering classes a few years back. This will make the compromises necessary to navigate emerging alt. technology more difficult.

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

#918
post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump railed against the system that allowed politicians to be bought. It turns out his solution is to term limit congress. Sounds like treating a symptom not the root cause.

I don't see how elections themselves aren't term limits. You want to end someone's reign, vote them out. Am I missing something?

Nope.

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

#919
post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Is that true? Regulatory bodies get their authority from congressional legislation. Can a president unilaterally tell the bureaucracy to stop doing what they are mandated to do by law?

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

#920
post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN