Live data from Hacker News

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

assets.donaldjtrump.com

661–670 of 1001 posts

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

#661

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…

I agree the ones trying to stop lobbyist are very good. However, I'm sick to my stomach about the Climate Change ones.

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

#662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of them being at the state and local level sounds more like the recession (and corresponding decrease in tax revenues the following years) catching up with state and local governments that actually have to stick to a budget. I'm not sure what the breakdown of "more recently at the Federal level" is, but it doesn't sound very pro-Obama in terms of your argument, particularly since Trump is talking about the Feder…

Between a quarter to half of California's state budget comes from the federal government [1] and I'm guessing the same is true for most states. With that much money coming from the federal government, it's a muddy distinction. One of the primary argument against the federal government is the disconnect from local needs but most of the money is tied to federal mandates anyway (for example, the feds threatened road inf…

> I'm guessing the same is true for most states.

California is actually one of the lowest (42nd). The irony is that states where people vote for small government and lower taxes tend to receive a larger share per capita of federal money.

https://ballotpedia.org/Federal_aid_to_state_budgets

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

#663
post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is fantastic. That's exactly how it should be. Otherwise over decades you end up with regulations that stifle all forms of entrepreneurship and creativity.

Next time you write a line of code, you have to delete two others.

What would happen if we applied this for 4 years on an existing codebase, such as the Linux Kernel?

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

#664

I am surprised nobody mentioned > cancel all federal funding to sanctuary cities >Some of the 31 American cities are Los Angeles (the first since 1979); Washington, D.C.; New York City (see also Illegal immigration in New York City); Jersey City; Berkeley, California; Coachella, California; Philadelphia; San Francisco; Santa Ana; San Jose; Oakland; Salt Lake City; Dallas; Houston; Detroit; Chicago; Salinas, Californi…

Despite being an independent left leaning liberal, I welcome this proposal, if they can actually implement it. I see wide-spread exploitation of the "Sanctuary City" Law in San Francisco, especially in the Restaurants, Construction site and Janitorial jobs. The Sanctuary Law, for those that don't know, forbids the Feds from asking employers about the immigration status of the employees / workers. This has caused 100s…

I still can't tell _why_ you support the proposal. What are the actual problems with sanctuary laws?

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

#665

> 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…

The fact that the term "clean coal" can be bandied about with a straight face says something about the state of science education of the general public. (Pretty much the same knowledge needed to instantly realize that various wind/solar operated water-from-air devices and Solar Freakin Roadways aren't viable from back of the envelope calcs.)

A significant amount of coal is burned in the world today. Much of it is burned in an inefficient way. Retrofitting coal burning plants to burn cleaner would a large impact on global carbon emissions. Replacing coal with cleaner sources would also have a large impact.

The important thing is: dollar-for-dollar, retrofitting is more effective than replacing.

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

#666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has it become that radical to suggest that smart, well-educated people may in fact see further into the consequences of things (particularly in their areas of expertise, but probably also peripherally), see more cognitive bias, have better critical-thinking skills, remember more mistakes from history, and all around make better long-term decisions? Why is that even offensive to anyone? Just because of someone's perso…

Here, only a few minutes' reading, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Intellectual Yet Idiot (IYI) https://medium.com/@nntaleb/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211... (not aimed at you)

Nassim Taleb is like his own Markov chain text generator now

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

#667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The problem is if West Virginia burns coal that causes air pollution and sea level rise in New York, New York can't pass a law against burning coal in West Virginia. Federal laws are needed when a state is externalizing costs and internalizing profits.

Look we can go back and forward and at the end we are both right. . .example, I can say that we doing something about our environment does not make a difference because of countries like China and India's pollution make it over the pacific into our environment. . .

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

#668
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. IMO this is the best thing in there. The burden of complex legislation is incredible, and there are tens of thousands of pages that could be simplified and/or removed entirely. It'd be a very lon…

I agree that regulations should be simpler, but this sounds like a bad way to achieve that. Are "regulations" strictly countable? It sounds like trying to minimize the number of lines (or characters) in a code base. Fewer lines (or characters) doesn't mean it will be more readable.

It's a nebulous definition as far as I can tell. For what it's worth, I don't deal with these in any sort of legal capacity, but my day job does involve a lot of work with federal legislation and regulations--I'm just not entirely sure where legal terms might differ from my office's colloquial terms.

You can view the text of proposed and implemented regulations in the Federal Register: https://www.federalregister.gov/ particularly under the Proposed Rules and Rules listings.

A rule will add to/amend/repeal some part of the Code of Federal Regulations. This can be anything from clarifying a few words or fixing drafting issues to implementing major regulatory changes.

It doesn't seem clear to me what this proposal would impact--does a minor amendment to an existing paragraph require a repeal of existing regulations? Would it need to meet some threshold of increasing regulatory burden--how would that be determined? What if it decreased burden?

You can look through daily issues and see that they tend to just be handling the daily business of the government. Today's includes changes to fishing zones (restoring access to an area that had been overfished a few years ago), adding more airworthiness checks to certain aircraft parts, reducing restrictions on certain tires for trailers, and adding restrictions against financial institutions processing transactions involving North Korea.

Would each of those need to repeal two prior regulations to take effect? What would quantify a previous regulation? And would they all be able to?

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

#669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is fantastic. That's exactly how it should be. Otherwise over decades you end up with regulations that stifle all forms of entrepreneurship and creativity.

And in this way you end up with 0 regulations, which I assume we are supposed to consider a feature, not a bug?

One regulation, at least you'd still have that.

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

#670
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can find more detail on how he plans to make Mexico pay for the wall here: https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/Pay_for_the_Wall.pdf Specifically, he will threaten to disallow wire transfer of money from US to Mexico by non-citizens. Since that is a revenue source they greatly depend on, he suggests they'd rather fund the building of the wall. If they agree to fund the wall, then the ban on transfers will go away.

This falls prey to the same fallacious thinking as gambling with the house's money. Assuming we can extort billions of dollars from Mexico, that's money we could be spending on anything – why is a wall the best use for it? And if a wall is the best use for it, the government should be prepared to build it with our own tax dollars, regardless of whether we extort money from Mexico.

I believe the idea is that illegal immigrants are causing more than that amount in harm to our society, i.e. through free healthcare
Post reply on HN