341–350 of 1001 posts
He's calling executive actions unconstitutional. Let's hope he sticks to that.
Doesn't he mean executive orders? I believe those are considered law, while executive actions are simply directional. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/11/20/365467914/... EDIT: Never mind, he said ...cancel every unconstitutional executive action, memorandum and order issued by President Obama.
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Coal mining and related production is a large employer. It's about propping up small coal-towns.
Put out of work coal miners on social security early at their full benefit and fund it with a carbon tax. This doesn't even need to be a carbon tax; simply a transfer from the general fund. The average coal miner salary is ~$22/hr, or ~$42k/year. 174,000 coal workers in the US @ $31,668k/year (the max SS benefit permitted) = $5.5 billion/year. This is not expensive, nor in perpetuity, only the years from now until th…
e: the salary info wasn't in the comment when I replied.
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“Sunlight is abundant beyond the energy needs of the entire human race”. (Los Alamos National Laboratory [ http://www.lanl.gov/discover/publications/1663/2015-may/pero... ].) This is their back of the envelope calculation.
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…
"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.
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I don't get the appeal of term limits on Congress. Why would you vote for an amateur politician instead of a professional career politician? Aren't career politicians better than amateur politicians? If a politician is doing a good job, why would you artificially limit their term? The branch of government with the highest approval rate is the Judicial branch, where Supreme Court Justices are appointed for life.
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 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 treated like one. Next time you break a limb, seek out an MBA instead.
Point is, the more I've been involved in politics (including running for office) the more I realize that you're not just going to march in on the first day and get stuff done. Kind of like that first day with that new codebase, eh? Now, I don't know that one out to be "Congress critter for life", but you don't just waltz in an go "my constituents want $THIS" and expect it to just happen. So a little experience might go further than electing the "outsider" who isn't "beholden to special interests".
Replace health insurance with health savings accounts?
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> 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,…
It may have been built with slave/free state "fairness" in mind, but even today the mechanism serves to level out the tyranny of the majority, from the states' perspective.
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The hiring freeze for federal employees is concerning as well. One of the major issues is that we've had several hiring freezes in the US civil service in recent decades. It causes a bathtub effect. You do reduce the workforce through attrition, but eventually you have to hire again and hire almost exclusively junior people ( You lose a great deal of institutional knowledge (particularly critical for civil service wh…
> You do reduce the workforce through attrition, but eventually you have to hire again and hire almost exclusively junior people ( This wouldn't be true if government pay was competitive (low pay partially offset by, particularly, pension benefits means entering government mid-career except as a box-checking thing to move to a private position leveraging the knowledge of government is discouraged, but entering at a j…
> FIFTH, 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 This is what I have the biggest problem with. The ONLY WAY we are going to continue making progress towards widespread clean renewable energy is if it is financially beneficial for corporations to continue investing in R&D. Sure, there are s…
This is a declaration of war.