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

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

#781
post #676

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…

Today we learned that racists and sexists are rebelling against ... being disliked for being racist and sexist. Yes, I supposed we could fix that by not complaining about them being racist and sexist.

No, you've missed the lesson entirely in your zeal to appear clever and correct. That's fine, I'm sure you won't enjoy the trump presidency so the punishment is sort of built-in

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

#782
post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump railed against the system that allowed politicians to be bought. It turns out his solution is to term limit congress. Sounds like treating a symptom not the root cause.

so what, then let's offer solutions and try to get them enacted? why all the armchair bitching on this site as if everyone is an expert just because they write code? what he did is nothing short of monumental and he WANTS to help America. If everyone is so damn smart then get involved and suggest changes. It's not like he's a fucking robot that is going to sit back and count how many marble statues he has in his gard…

Want money out of presidential politics? Make everybody run using only the presidential-campaign fund. You know, that one that you check the box on your tax return to give a couple bucks to?

As for Congress, we also already have a good fix, we just never got around to passing it. Congressional politics are full of money because the districts are too large, on average. The districts are too large because in the 50 states, with 320 million people, we have only 435 voting members in the House of Representatives.

The solution is more Representatives and smaller districts; when you don't have to run a campaign in multiple expensive markets across a broad area, you don't need as much money (and can get to know your constituents better).

And it turns out... there's a constitutional amendment for that.

Way back in 1789 when Congress met for the first time after the Constitution went into effect, they submitted twelve amendments to the states. Ten of them were ratified quickly and became what we know as the Bill of Rights. The other two were not ratified by enough states, and were mostly forgotten.

Today, it's common for Congress to put a time limit on an amendment, saying it has to be ratified within X years or it's dead. But back then they didn't do that. So in 1992 a random university student discovered one of the two "forgotten" amendments and that it was still legislatively "live" -- it would take effect if enough states ratified them. He campaigned hard and got the amendment (which says any increase in salary for members of Congress doesn't take effect until after the next House election) ratified, as the 27th amendment.

The other one is still sitting out there, and would become part of the Constitution if enough states (currently, 27) would ratify it. And it changes the formula for how many Representatives there are, and how they're apportioned. The original text of the Constitution set a cap on the size of the House of Representatives, at one Representative per 30,000 people. The apportionment amendment would raise that to 1 per 50,000, and the version passed by the Senate would require increasing the number of Representatives as the population of the US grows.

So if you want real change in Congress, campaign to get the House of Representatives enlarged. There's even already an amendment available to help you, if you can get it ratified.

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

#783
post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump railed against the system that allowed politicians to be bought. It turns out his solution is to term limit congress. Sounds like treating a symptom not the root cause.

I don't see how elections themselves aren't term limits. You want to end someone's reign, vote them out. Am I missing something?

Incumbents have an advantage and tend to get reelected. Term limits introduce more outsiders by kicking people out after a while.

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

#785

"All vetting of people coming into our country will be considered “extreme vetting.” " I visit the US every year to see friends. Some of whom are Arab-American. I'm seriously worried that I'm going to find myself on the receiving end of 'extreme vetting'.

How about the random Canadian going shopping, or french tourist? The US border is already enough of a hard ass as it is.

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

#786
post #751

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…

This is not unlike how an opposing party will criticize a bill based on its number of typed pages. The thump of a couple of inches of paper on a podium makes for great and reductive theater. It's likewise naïve to consider the number of regulations to be a direct barometer of the goodness or badness of regulation in general. Next we'll see the refactoring of existing regulations into smaller or larger components to a…

Reducing the number, length and complexity of regulation is a valid goal, and that hasn't changed in thousands of years:

"The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government." - Tacitus

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

#787
post #335

propose a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress. Not a bad idea. begin removing the more than two million criminal illegal immigrants from the country and cancel visas to foreign countries that won’t take them back. Only the criminal ones. OK

Bad idea that sounds like a good idea until you discover that it actually leads to greater special interest influence because nobody in Congress knows how to do anything so lobbyists just do it for them. http://prospect.org/article/populist-road-hell-term-limits-c...

Congress is different from state legislatures in that a lot of its laws create agencies, and those agencies preserve institutional knowledge (e.g., the FDA, FBI, etc.). There's a reasonable argument that Congressmen shouldn't need to know any specialized knowledge. If the law is so obscure that only lawyers can interpret it, that's a bug, not a feature.

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

#788

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a lie. Trump courted and accepted money from special interests - there was even a Planet Money podcast on it.

Sure he did - but nearly as much as did Clinton. This election absolutely proved that a candidate can't simple "buy" an election

Adding to your point, he was also hugely successful in the primary despite being massively outspent by Jeb.

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

#789

> FIRST, propose a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress. I've debated this approach with friends in the past. From a game-theory perspective, does this promote or hinder political corruption? I'm inclined to believe that term limits would actually encourage corruption. 1) If senators have to find a job after 8 years, surely that encourages the revolving door between industry and g…

You also get people like Feinstein[1] because of the lack of term limits.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dianne_Feinstein#Mass_surveill...

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

#790

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.

Work on accelerating the price drop of solar and general energy storage. There is still a lot of progress to be made in things like making the tooling cheaper for things that are not silicon.

The fact if a large developed nation supports climate change or not is moot when the developing world does not give a flying shit about it.

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