The New American Politics thread

[Fuzz]

Shouldn't people with mental disorders be excluded form being President? Surly the founding fathers would have put something like that in the constitution? No? Ugh.

[Caged Great]

Originally Posted by DuffMan

go on....

Okay, take infrastructure. It's a problem all over the USA. Raise the gas tax to the same proportional % that it was the last time it was raised. Additionally, raise income taxes by 2% for two years with the entirety of that $ being flagged for infrastructure. That is a huge amount of $ to fix roads and bridges around the country. That will also create a humongous amount of jobs.

For crappy rundown airports, why not use the same model that has been used recently for building hockey rinks and the like. A ticket tax. The government loans the initial $ for the project, but over the next 10-15 years ticket sales pay it back with interest. That way the government is not really out anything (will make money on the deal actually), it is passed on to the users. With bigger airports like the ones in NY, a $5 surcharge would recoup the funds extremely quickly.

That's an easy fix. Build it and they will come. The economy exploded after the highways were built under Eisenhower. Similar such upgrades with high speed rail and the like would have similar effects.

Coal going out of business is a problem for those areas. Create training programs for those same people to be able to work at green energy jobs of some sort (there are tons of different jobs available in that field). With it being an emerging field that is going to take over things, training programs are going to be necessary regardless. Also boosts the economy. That's just a matter of allocating some $ towards it. A relatively small amount considering the expanding nature of that area anyway.

The middle class has been destroyed over the past 40-50 years. That's due in large part to stagnant wages. Now it requires two people to earn what one person used to back then. All that savings for the corporate bottom line has gone directly to the top 1%. So one way to fix that is to look at the minimum wage and what the actual "value" it was based on it's value, and adjust for inflation over the past 40 years and keep the minimum wage on a sliding scale to adjust for inflation over time. That would mean that the minimum wage will go up to around $23 USD. That sounds ridiculous on the face of it, but that is how much things have gotten screwed up over the last 40 years. That would have a multiple benefit as it would increase the wealth of the lower and low end middle class, but it would also benefit the economy as people will actually have money to spend on things that they didn't before. In certain fields, that will cause automation to become increasingly more common. Things like fast food/cashiers etc will get automated. However, there are a lot of jobs that are not possible, at least at this time to automate. The man power from those jobs could be shifted into other fields. There are always new things being innovated that create jobs. There would be adjustment periods for those people, but that's what training programs are for.

University can be paid for, for everyone in the USA, by a 1 cent per transaction charge for every trade on Wall Street. 1 cent is nothing, but it adds up with the volume of deals that are being made. It won't be "felt" by anyone involved, but it will help get rid of the ridiculous student debt problem.

[Caged Great]

Originally Posted by T@T

If you understood Russian you might not say that.

True.

[Thor]

Originally Posted by Vulcan

Harvard psychologist explains Trump is a narcissistic psychopath.





http://countercurrentnews.com/2016/0...ic-psychopath/

I suggested this some time back and got blasted for making the suggestion.

[sun]

Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan

You and I clearly have different definitions of "masterful." He has been surprisingly successful so far, but his campaign has been a series of bizarre stunts and many glaring missteps that had to be immediately back-pedaled.

I think you are underestimating him and selling him short. Trump knows what he's doing. The way he manipulates interviews, sound bites, twitter, camera angles, debates, the media, etc is remarkable. No one knows what to do with him, because he's operating on a whole 'nother level.

His "bizarre stunts and many glaring missteps"? How has he misstepped? How have they cost him? The guy is the Republican nominee. He can say literally anything he wants and he has. He has "binders full of women" type incidents hourly. To call his success "accidental" is to totally ignore what he is actually doing.

Obviously the guy is a disaster and a db of the highest order, but he is brilliant in his strange, disturbing way. Very hard to imagine him winning the presidency, but it's definitely possible. Landslide democratic win? Maybe. Hopefully. My guess is it'll be closer than we think.

[KootenayFlamesFan]

Don't underestimate how many stupid white people live in the U.S. They don't care if Trump is telling the truth, he's just saying what they want to hear.

[Senator Clay Davis]

Trump could lose the popular vote, maybe by a lot even (5+ million votes), and still win the election. Still for as much as was made of the polls showing Trump close to Hillary, he brings a state like Georgia into play because of the demographics. So it's going to be an interesting election to see where the cash goes for ads and ground game. Of course as the nominee Trump will now take, to quote the man who inspired my handle, "any mother####ers money if he giving it away". I wonder if that's maybe the con here, become nominee to launder the bigger contributions into Trump businesses.

[zamler]

Originally Posted by KootenayFlamesFan

Don't underestimate how many stupid white people live in the U.S.

Hillary Clinton has the non-white smart people vote locked down no doubt.

[Vulcan]

Originally Posted by zamler

Hillary Clinton has the non-white smart people vote locked down no doubt.

At least they understand what side of the bread is buttered on.

[Vulcan]

Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis

Trump could lose the popular vote, maybe by a lot even (5+ million votes), and still win the election. Still for as much as was made of the polls showing Trump close to Hillary, he brings a state like Georgia into play because of the demographics. So it's going to be an interesting election to see where the cash goes for ads and ground game. Of course as the nominee Trump will now take, to quote the man who inspired my handle, "any mother####ers money if he giving it away". I wonder if that's maybe the con here, become nominee to launder the bigger contributions into Trump businesses.

I think like lies, the best cons are closest to the truth. Sure Trump wants to be President even if it started out as a bit of a lark. He likes the power and it's a great ego booster. If it doesn't happen his brand will still get rewarded so he wins either way.

[jayswin]

Yeah, Trump has won big time with this presidential run, no matter the outcome.

Either he wins the presidency (not likely) or he loses and goes on a bunch of egotistical rants about the rigged system denying the people what they want while ensuring himself that he's as good as he thinks, and he becomes a folk hero to the uneducated and profits mightily on their backs.

[BloodFetish]

^ "Winning"

[Looch City]

Want a compact book of all of Trump's mindless rants?

He's got one at Chapters!

Spoiler!

Read one paragraph and it's filled with so much self centered crap. I did this, I did that, my net worth is very high, I'm great, I'm amazing, I, I, I.

[N-E-B]

Its funny that people still think only uneducated white people support Trump.

He has support from everywhere. It's scary.

[killer_carlson]

When i ask educated people who support Trump why they do, the overwhelming issue is the perception that he's the most willing candidate to cut a swath through bureaucracy and BS than any candidate they've seen in decades.

When i ask them about the racism, protectionist trade, civil rights, they are undoubtedly concerned, but believe the US system is entirely broken or crippled by the bureaucracy and establishment. Or that the system only works for insiders. Fix that and you'll have a lot more options to tackle the other issues.

I'm not saying I agree or disagree, but I think the leftists do themselves a disservice by the attempt to portray Trump supporters as backwoods hicks. Many are not that at all. Instead they are entirely pi$$ed with the current situation and want to see it broken down and rebuilt - ironically a request not that different from Sanders supporters.

[RougeUnderoos]

Originally Posted by killer_carlson

When i ask educated people who support Trump why they do, the overwhelming issue is the perception that he's the most willing candidate to cut a swath through bureaucracy and BS than any candidate they've seen in decades.

When i ask them about the racism, protectionist trade, civil rights, they are undoubtedly concerned, but believe the US system is entirely broken or crippled by the bureaucracy and establishment. Or that the system only works for insiders. Fix that and you'll have a lot more options to tackle the other issues.

Do they realize he's running for President, and not King, or Emperor?

Do they think he's not an insider? That's one thing that is confusing about all this to me. He is an insider. He brags about being one. He has said numerous times that he pays politicians for favours and has been doing so for decades.

Some of his supporters may be educated, they may not be backwoods rubes, but they aren't very smart if they refuse to believe him when he tells them that he is exactly what they claim to want to be rid of.

[Caged Great]

We want shady money out of politics

I know, lets vote in a guy that has been shelling out money to buy politicians for decades.

Brilliant.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by killer_carlson

When i ask educated people who support Trump why they do, the overwhelming issue is the perception that he's the most willing candidate to cut a swath through bureaucracy and BS than any candidate they've seen in decades.

Please define "educated people," because most people, including a lot in this thread, don't understand how government works in the United States. They don't understand how the constitution works. Based on what I am hearing and seeing, to do what they suggest would require reconstructing the constitution. I think the vast majority of people should be required to take a civics class so they can learn who is responsible for the many things they complain about. The POTUS does not have much domestic power, especially with how the playing field has changed in congress and at the state level.

When i ask them about the racism, protectionist trade, civil rights, they are undoubtedly concerned, but believe the US system is entirely broken or crippled by the bureaucracy and establishment. Or that the system only works for insiders. Fix that and you'll have a lot more options to tackle the other issues.

Yet Trump is one of those elitist insiders who leverages the system to his own benefit. He is not a politician, but he has leveraged the system to his pwn benefit for decades. He's as big a part of the problem as anyone else. I would be curious to know why he is different?

I would also like for these people to articulate why the system is broken. What is it that makes the system broken? What has changed that has broken the system? The average person doesn't know because they don't understand government or recognize what happens in a federated system when you weaken the central authority or remove functions from it all together. So their complaints many times don't make sense because they don't know how the systems work in the first place.

I'm not saying I agree or disagree, but I think the leftists do themselves a disservice by the attempt to portray Trump supporters as backwoods hicks. Many are not that at all. Instead they are entirely pi$$ed with the current situation and want to see it broken down and rebuilt - ironically a request not that different from Sanders supporters.

This is what has made Trump very effective. His platform is non-existent, but damn he feeds and leverages people's rage more effectively than anyone I've every observed. It is the fear, the anger, and the outrage that people fell that Trump taps into. He's a common shuckster, a con man, and a fraud, but he is very good at what he does. If you can engage your higher brain functions you see right through Trump and his tactics. The problem for most people is his message is designed to leverage those very emotions that inhibit higher brain functions and reasoning. This is why some people that would normally be considered very reasonable people still are duped by Trump.

[killer_carlson]

Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos

Do they realize he's running for President, and not King, or Emperor?

Do they think he's not an insider? That's one thing that is confusing about all this to me. He is an insider. He brags about being one. He has said numerous times that he pays politicians for favours and has been doing so for decades.

Some of his supporters may be educated, they may not be backwoods rubes, but they aren't very smart if they refuse to believe him when he tells them that he is exactly what they claim to want to be rid of.

I think that's very dangerous thinking for a Clinton supporter. You are dismissing what your opponents supporters are saying is the #1 issue.

You can't tell them what is most important to them - you have to listen to what they tell you the issue is. Then you frame a solution and why your solution is better than the opponents.

If you dont, you only reinforce their belief that the system is broken and needs to be overhauled.

i'm not saying i agree or disagree with their opinion. I think Clinton is the best choice by the way. But I see very little upside to framing the Republican supporters as dumb hicks and telling them what the issues are going to be rather than listening to what their issues actually are.

[Matata]

Can't fix something unless you understand how it's broken. I find myself doing mental backflips for Trump because he's the only one i can even begin to be optimistic about, the insiders are making damn sure Bernie will perpetually be on the outside looking in, and Hillary will tell which way the wind blows but will sit, roll over and beg for her big money supporters. Trump has an X factor that may lead to positive change even if he is a complete disaster. The best case scenario i see for this election is being able to pull a couple gems out of a pile of garbage.