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

assets.donaldjtrump.com

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

#611
post #3

Does anyone have an idea about the expected global response to the Secretary of the Treasury labeling China a currency manipulator?

http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21709923-there-risk-trade... : > He promises to label China a currency manipulator, but the only consequence of that would be that America would have to engage China in talks on the currency’s value, which would have no practical effect. The downside is pissing off China, which the US needs to get along. There is no upside -- China won't change its behavior because of a label.

Chinese officials won't be pissed off. They understand politics.

The difficulty will be in keeping a straight face during talks designed to go nowhere.

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

#612
post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, prison sentences for illegally entering the country is grade-A nuts. There's other stuff on there that at least sounds good, but this sounds like "we'll solve a $$ problem with $$$".

Yeah, this is just confusing. The supposed economic impact of having illegal immigrants work for less than minimum wage is not going to be worse than the impact of housing, clothing, and feeding them for 2-5 years.

I feel like deporting them over and over again would be cheaper than housing/feeding/clothing them for 5 years.

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

#613

> 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…

Well, that is not to say that states cannot implement their own environmental laws, take for example California. . .the fact that Trump 'will' lift "$50 trillion dollars’ worth of job-producing American energy reserves, including shale, oil, natural gas and clean coal. . ." does not mean that the states cannot take action; I know it is perceived as for the better if the environmental laws are uniformed throughout the states, but please let us not forget about state rights, 10th Amendment. If you, or whoever reads this comment, is really concerned about the environment than start focusing on individual and local changes; like in California; become a leader, propagate new technology that is good for the environment, and then the rest will follow the example of progressive states, as well as, progressive individuals. Don't sell your self short; Roll up the sleeves and get to work. . .no need for Federal Government Regulations; Limit The Federal Government Not The People.

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

#614

His stand on climate change scares me. What can the public do to prevent him from opening energy reserves and backing out of climate change agreements? Are there efforts going on to prevent this? Building a wall along the Mexican border...I don't see the thinking behind the decision.

The climate change one scares me the most as well. We should be focused on renewable energy more than anything right now. It's a much bigger threat than terrorism.

And building a wall and kicking out immigrants is so backwards. We need to be more united as humans and work together, not put up more barriers.

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

#615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple thermodynamics. We get energy from coal by burning it then extracting some of the heat. The waste products are basically carbon dioxide and heat. Clean coal is about capturing that carbon dioxide, which means spending energy to separate the CO2 from other gasses, then liquefy it. This sequestration process costs about 30% of the energy originally extracted from the coal. I fully support clean coal since it inc…

What you said implies that "clean coal" is indeed possible. It's just less efficient due to the capture. The GP implied that it's not a thing.

The technology exists and has been proven. It is just hideously expensive to install and run!

The only way that Clean Coal will work is by applying massive subsidies.

I, for one, support these massive subsidies as long as they are applied by MWh produced and are available to all producers, not just the coal burners.

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

#616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's Nate Silver today trying to explain trump: > America hasn’t put its demons — including racism, anti-Semitism and misogyny — behind it. White people still make up the vast majority of the electorate, particularly when considering their share of the Electoral College, and their votes usually determine the winner. By intentionally continuing to attempt to associate support for trump with a litany of unacceptable…

So you're saying that it's perfectly normal for a non-racist person to support a candidate who openly argued for deporting huge swaths of honest workers and enforce by law racial and religious discrimination?

The problem with this argument as stated is that it has a hard time accounting for the millions of Hispanic voters who voted for Trump... unless you think they are actually self-hating anti-Hispanic racists or something. (Yes, I know more hispanics voted for Clinton than for Trump, but the split was nowhere close to 100-0. It wasn't even close to the 88-12 or so that African-American voters split for Clinton.)

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

#617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This attitude is why democrats have so much trouble understanding why republicans have so much support from working class voters. People don't want to go on welfare, they want a job. It's about identity. Free money can keep you fed but it can't give you a sense of pride and self worth.

> People don't want to go on welfare, they want a job.

That right there is pretty much the issue. We could take china's approach and specifically limit the use of heavy equipment to X hours per day, requiring everything else to be done by hand. But that's stupid pointless makework, that takes longer and costs more.

With free money, maybe some people learn a trade, start a band, write a book. Send people to school and maybe we get some value back in 5-10 years.

I understand that people want to take a job on the line at the plant, just like dad did. Well, tough. The world isn't like that anymore.

Policies might "encourage" Apple to do it's manufacturing in the U.S. A U.S. iphone factory would employ about 15 people. the security team that keeps people away from the machines.

The way to stop feeling useless is to stop being useless. Don't want money to help figure out what you can do? Well, ok, best of luck.

edit

This may come off as mean, bitter, heartless, uncaring, vile , reprehensible and whatever other adjectives you want to throw in.

Small towns are dying because there's not much reason to be there. We can subsidize them in a bunch of ways, but it's still just welfare.

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

#618
post #360

Fully-funds the construction of a wall on our southern border with the full understanding that the country of Mexico will be reimbursing the United States for the full cost of such wall; establishes a two-year mandatory minimum federal prison sentence for illegally re-entering the U.S. after a previous deportation, and a five-year mandatory minimum federal prison sentence for illegally re-entering for those with felo…

Ban Western Union "send money back to family in Mexico" payments until Mexico agrees to pay for the wall: https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/Pay_for_the_Wall.pdf

I don't usually read campaign documents like this... is this normal? Is it normal to simplify things so much so to say Day 1 do X, Day 2 do Y, Day 3 resolved.

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

#619
post #595

So he's going to lower taxes on the wealthy, drop taxes on businesses, increase spending on military, destroy our national parks to extract oil, and lay off federal employees. This is going to help the middle class and the uneducated who are struggling through... magic. None of the lobbying stuff will ever see the light of day. The term limits won't happen. He's going to repeal the "illegal" Obama executive orders bu…

The president doesn't make the tax plan congress does, but given he has a republican congress he can get a lot of those things passed.

That's the point, he'll get the things passed that are going to hurt the country, and the only things that are actually GOOD ideas will sit on the floor because congress is never going to vote to limit its own power.

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

#620
post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And for all the jokes about testing in production, that's literally all we can do.

Well if we had a sane government, we could try rolling out new policies to randomly selected regions and cities first. We could use prediction markets to predict the effects of policies before implementing them.

To some extent we do this. For example, we rolled out "legal recreational marijuana" to a few states several years ago, then watched what happened. In this election we rolled it out to a few more states and will see what happens.

Not random selection, of course, but better than nothing.

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