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EPA Science Under Scrutiny by Trump Political Staff

nytimes.com

141–150 of 211 posts

Re: EPA Science Under Scrutiny by Trump Political Staff

#141
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Campaign trails are also designed with the electoral vote in mind. Saying Hillary would have won if the election was based on popular vote, is not necessarily true.

This. Trump optimized to win the election, and Hillary ignored a bunch of states she thought she'd easily win (some of which she didn't).

Sort of hard for either of them when the polls turned out to be completely wrong

Re: EPA Science Under Scrutiny by Trump Political Staff

#142
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The electoral college is antiquated and premised on an idea that didn't pan out. Specifically that people would have a primary allegiance to their state and not the federation. This was true since World War I at the latest, and Reconstruction at the earliest. Quite frankly it's asinine that my town has more population and less representation than 6 states.

As a non-American, I have to ask why the large, liberal states don't embrace States' Rights? I know that historically, "States' Rights" has been a codeword for racism, but times change. Why don't liberal states push for a smaller federal government, and more power for their own governments? Mitt Romney introduced a law to that became a blueprint for Obamacare, when he was governor of Massachusetts..if Trump were to a…

It's more of an urban verses rural than a red verses blue states issue.

Re: EPA Science Under Scrutiny by Trump Political Staff

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the staff of any government agency is increased by 1000, will results improve? How about by 10,000 or 100,000? Does it take 1 Million? Is there anything wrong with cutting what isn't helping or is redundant and applying those funds where they are needed more?

No one is talking about staffing. We're talking about the executive gag order and similar policies. The number of employees is irrelevant if they aren't allowed to communicate their findings in a transparent way.

The gag order is a temporary measure until new leaders are in place.

Re: EPA Science Under Scrutiny by Trump Political Staff

#144
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Trump optimized to win the election, and Hillary ignored a bunch of states she thought she'd easily win (some of which she didn't).

Sort of hard for either of them when the polls turned out to be completely wrong

Polls aren't meant to be predictive. They're meant to be influential.

Re: EPA Science Under Scrutiny by Trump Political Staff

#145
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Trump optimized to win the election, and Hillary ignored a bunch of states she thought she'd easily win (some of which she didn't).

Sort of hard for either of them when the polls turned out to be completely wrong

The final national polls turned out to be quite accurate.

Re: EPA Science Under Scrutiny by Trump Political Staff

#146
post #13

It feels like such a strange time to be alive. Even if you disagree with the concept of man-made climate change the distortion of scientific studies seems like something that everybody can agree is wrong. So much of science is funded by govt grants. The idea that everything must conform to the view of the current administration or it is not worth funding seems dangerous and economically limiting.

If you or anybody else cannot imagine succumbing to this sort of blind rejection of scientific studies and would like to experience it firsthand, consider your attitude towards research into the relationship between race and IQ.

Re: EPA Science Under Scrutiny by Trump Political Staff

#147
post #92
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's worth noting that 3 million more people voted for Hillary. She has, in many respects, just as many problems as Trump. If the US used the popular vote, we would just be screwed in a different manner. This is not a "patchable" problem with some implementation detail. It's a fundamental problem with trying to force hundreds of millions of people with dozens of vastly different cultures to live under the same over…

I was 4 when such a system collapsed around me in the Balkans. It was interesting, I don't remember much, but 25 years later a lot of the politics still revolve around it. Arguably the US 2 party system is still better than the Yugoslav 1. And while the multiparty system common in much of EU is crazy inefficient, it sure makes This Current Problem high unlikely.

The situation in the EU is a lot better in many ways because the EU has much less purview than the US federal government. When you do less stuff, you're less likely to piss off people with irreconcilable cultural differences.

Re: EPA Science Under Scrutiny by Trump Political Staff

#148
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ever meet one of these people, their thesis is usually that that "liberals" think climate change is real, therefore climate change must be false.

#alternativeclimatefacts aka #profitdecreasinginconveniences Edit: I'll now include the obligatory "/s" tag that I should have included originally. It's obviously a lot more complex than a hashtag.

What if I were to suggest that blaming climate change denial on "profit" resembles a conspiracy theory in every way? If it were an emergent phenomenon of hyperpartisan craziness instead, would that suggest different efforts in response to it?

Re: EPA Science Under Scrutiny by Trump Political Staff

#149

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/

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...

That has nothing to do with size. When the system worked the federal government was really only concerned with national level things - war and trade, mostly. Over the years more and more power got transferred to the national level, and now we're at the point that states are pretty much satrapies of the federal government. Now the system doesn't work, because the Alabama voters have a big impact on California and vice versa.

Re: EPA Science Under Scrutiny by Trump Political Staff

#150
post #118
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a silly argument. Trump and Clinton competed for the electoral college, not the popular vote. Which means that Trump spent a lot of time campaigning for one electoral vote in Maine and almost none in courting millions of people in California and New York. It's impossible to say what the outcome would have been if the popular vote would have mattered, because both campaigns would be run totally differently.

Actually, no it's not. The electoral college was setup in 1787. What it has to do with politics two centuries later in the age of the internet seems out of date. Yet it's the rules we live by, not the rules we like. Since 2000, it's clear that voter majorities have been underrepresented in presidential elections. And as we claim to be the world's largest democracy, we have been, in fact, the world's largest republic.

It claims to be both a democracy and a republic and is generally accepted as both.
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