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EPA Science Under Scrutiny by Trump Political Staff

nytimes.com

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Re: EPA Science Under Scrutiny by Trump Political Staff

#131

Post by jmcdiesel »

RKoutnik wrote: post #12
_m8fo wrote: post #3

All of these changes that Trump is making in his first week are making me wonder: what's the population limit, really, for a well functioning democracy? I'm no historian, but didn't the United States go around saying how great democracy is? I don't know about you, but to me it definitely feels like it doesn't work quite as intended. As for the article at hand, all I can offer is this" Trump's blatant distrust for cli…

It's worth noting that 3 million more people voted for Hillary. I wouldn't chalk this one up to a design issue, rather implementation (in this case, weighting votes by geographic region). We've submitted a patch and are waiting for enough reviewers to approve: http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/

A true popular vote would be just as horrible... minority interest gets buried...

But honestly, its the size of the nation thats the problem. People in the northeast have fundamentally different beliefs than those in, say, Alabama and california... and trying to rule over all of them as a single government is only going to cause pain...

Re: EPA Science Under Scrutiny by Trump Political Staff

#132

Post by Diederich »

a13n wrote: post #121

Wow this is getting ugly. What are some actionable things we can do as US citizens to actually have some kind of an impact on this situation? Not just specifically environment, but in general.

Expand your perspective. Try very hard to get into the heads of the 40+% of the population that voted for Trump. Do this with a completely open mind.

There are reasons why all of this is happening. People like us (I guess...I don't want to define your personal echo chamber) look at those tens of millions of people and just can't understand why they voted for Trump, or why they seem to believe what they seem to believe.

But they are people, just like us, but with different and diverse backgrounds.

That's really the answer. If most or all of us can break out of our echo chambers, we might start to develop a path out of this mess.

Re: EPA Science Under Scrutiny by Trump Political Staff

#133

Post by sytelus »

pizza wrote: post #74
RKoutnik wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting that 3 million more people voted for Hillary. I wouldn't chalk this one up to a design issue, rather implementation (in this case, weighting votes by geographic region). We've submitted a patch and are waiting for enough reviewers to approve: http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/

What do you think of range voting? http://rangevoting.org

More likely it might make it worse. In US political scene, people are divided strongly and therefore moderates gets to chose in the end. This is better and keeps extremist grabbing the power (well, most of the time). With range voting, power of moderates would diminish and it would be matter of which side has slightly higher number of extremists.

I think what would improve US elections is rather this:

Publish results in real time. Most people don't seem to realize consequence of not voting . If results comes in real time then people who are lazy might get extra prode. If 95% of the population votes, there is less likelyhood of nasty surprises as opposed to say only 60%.

Re: EPA Science Under Scrutiny by Trump Political Staff

#134

Post by Joakal »

simonh wrote: post #99
Joakal wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also worth noting the first past the post system encourages duopolistic government (Almost China and NK's monopolistic government ;) ) People vote against their sincere choice by voting for one of the two most popular candidates instead. Some other systems: http://www.aec.gov.au/Voting/How_to_Vote/Voting_HOR.htm http://www.elections.org.nz/voting-system/mmp-voting-system

> Almost China and NK's monopolistic government That's one of the most perniciously false equivalence I've seen in a while, and that's saying something. The US has elected congressmen, elected senators, elected governors and an elected president. Even the top two presidential candidates are chosen from a wide field in primary elections. Portraying that as a stark choice between only two options and saying it's practi…

You do realise that in USA, people mostly vote for republicans or democrats despite some hating them?

Rest of world have multi-party governments. Many more choices.

So much for an example that puts people on defensive instead of raising awareness of how distorted the electoral system in USA is.

Re: EPA Science Under Scrutiny by Trump Political Staff

#135

Post by mynameisvlad »

throwaway91111 wrote: post #127
serge2k wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not mutually exclusive. The united states is a democracy.

Err, how so? There is no direct vote on any governance; certainly not at the federal level.

So it's not a direct democracy but is still a democracy, specifically a representative democracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_democracy

"Republic" is just a term to refer to a nation that is ruled without a monarch: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/republic

Therefore, the two are not mutually exclusive.

Re: EPA Science Under Scrutiny by Trump Political Staff

#137

Post by epistasis »

daenz wrote: post #86
twr wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/26589529219124838... Edit: https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/40897761692683059... https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/41854213789949132...

Didn't he admit in an interview that this was a joke? Edit>> Found the source http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-china-created-cl...

>Trump has for years used words like "hoax," "canard," "mythical," "con job," "nonexistent," and "bulls---" to reject mainstream climate science:

[long string of anti-science tweets]

I'm not sure what your point is exactly? That it was a "joke" but he also believed it? Because he says in that "admission":

>And I often joke that this is done for the benefit of China — obviously I joke — but this done for the benefit of China.

So is he saying its for the benefit of China or not? At best it seems that he's trying to say it but weasel out of any accountability for saying it.

Re: EPA Science Under Scrutiny by Trump Political Staff

#138

Post by Mtinie »

ArkyBeagle wrote: post #63
_m8fo wrote: post #3

All of these changes that Trump is making in his first week are making me wonder: what's the population limit, really, for a well functioning democracy? I'm no historian, but didn't the United States go around saying how great democracy is? I don't know about you, but to me it definitely feels like it doesn't work quite as intended. As for the article at hand, all I can offer is this" Trump's blatant distrust for cli…

The United States isn't a democracy. It's a Republic. A lot of the apparent jingoism was first WWII propaganda, then cold War propaganda. Prior to that, Americans simply considered the rest of the world to be mostly irredeemably corrupt. I don't know if we can determine Trump's actual opinion on climate change. He's opportunistically jumping on a bandwagon.

Pedantic correction, just because we are dealing with a topic where specificity matters and nuance can mean the difference between "acceptable" and "not allowed".

The United States of America is formally a constitutional republic.

http://www.conservapedia.com/Constitutional_Republic

Re: EPA Science Under Scrutiny by Trump Political Staff

#139

Post by burkaman »

notpc wrote: post #5

Like it or not, increasing fossil fuel extraction and cutting environmental regulations is now the policy of the President of the United States. The public communications of the executive branch are under his authority and he's not just going to let the EPA run its public relations and releases contrary to his agenda. Like others have pointed out, there are other ways the public can get the information. But it won't…

> Like it or not

I don't like it. I don't really understand the point of your comment, you seem to just be summarizing some of the article. Do you have something substantial to add?

Re: EPA Science Under Scrutiny by Trump Political Staff

#140

Post by maxxxxx »

nikdaheratik wrote: post #31

This is very worrying as it's starting to look like the same BS that Harper tried to push in Canada. Which was just bad policy and the kind of thing that can keep scientists away from doing valuable research for years.

This worries me a little. You can destroy an organization quickly but building it back up takes much, much longer.
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