Presidential Race 2016

[mdl]

On 3/24/2016 at 5:13 PM, jbishop15 said:

This is all categorically untrue, but okay. 

Sanders is my preferred candidate (and I voted for him in the poll), but if Clinton wins the nomination, she has my vote all the way. 

+1

Cinton's putting out some reasonable policy papers now, but it's pretty obvious she's basically captured by Wall Street at heart and would just declare real transformation unachievable and let us continue our creep into plutocracy.

[Lihu]

9 minutes ago, pumaAttack said:

You realize the amount of "terrorism" especially form immigrants is FAR FAR FAR below that of domestic gun violence.  Violence from gangs, mental health issues, disputes, etc.

It's not even close.  Yet we are more concerned with immigrants than fixing our own domestic issues...

I'm all for stopping that too.

[Fourputt]

59 minutes ago, pumaAttack said:

You realize the amount of "terrorism" especially form immigrants is FAR FAR FAR below that of domestic gun violence.  Violence from gangs, mental health issues, disputes, etc.

It's not even close.  Yet we are more concerned with immigrants than fixing our own domestic issues...

So why invite a change in that number.  We don't have an immediate foreign terrorist problem here, and we should do all we can to keep it that way.  If we allow unrestricted immigration, we are just asking for the same sort of trouble that is plaguing Europe right now.  After all, we are "The Great Satan", and if we open the door, they will come.  I'd rather provide assistance helping Europe track them down over there than to have to do more than we already do over here.

[rkim291968]

... without immigrants, US economy may face big issues.   For example, nearer to my heart (and area), without H1Bs and Indian immigrants, Sillicon Valley will collapse and US will lose its edge in high tech.   That's just one of many examples.

[Braivo]

3 minutes ago, rkim291968 said:

... without immigrants, US economy may face big issues.   For example, nearer to my heart (and area), without H1Bs and Indian immigrants, Sillicon Valley will collapse and US will lose its edge in high tech.   That's just one of many examples.

Doesn't his mean that India actually has the edge in high tech?

[Ernest Jones]

3 hours ago, Fourputt said:

Well, obviously @Ernest Jones isn't voting for anyone, since he's 
Canadian, but he sure likes to stir the pot.

@Fourputt

 

Sorry, Rick, the thread didn't mention the US citizens only requirement. My bad. I suppose if the best Canada could come up with was Clinton, Sanders, Trump and Cruz, I'd be a little sensitive too.   

FWIW, if had the misfortune of having to make a choice in the 2016 Presidential election, I would probably vote Sanders because I do agree with the "enough of the status quo" sentiment, but I'd rather vote for someone who is ready to help the average Joe and not just the elite. As for Trump, you gotta be ****ing kidding me, he is hate and greed personified. If you elect that guy as President, your terrorist issues have just magnified to the nth degree and that will affect the rest of us too, so smarten the **** up. 

[rkim291968]

12 minutes ago, Braivo said:

Doesn't his mean that India actually has the edge in high tech?

No.  It just means that not enough American kids are getting into high tech.  And India & China have tons more young kids majoring in high tech areas.   

[iacas]

2 hours ago, Elmer said:

Trump will have a difficult time when he starts trying to randomly fire a lowly clerk in the VA or cleaning house in some agency on a whim.
This will open him up to lawsuits.

Don't you think a super-rich guy would have already been hit with a bunch of lawsuits?

Yet from what I've seen, very, very, very few of his former co-workers or employees have much bad to say about him except old jokes about how much damn gold he puts everywhere, about how everything is "the best ever," his hair, etc.

So educate me: where are the massive lawsuits and the seriously discontented former employees that you'd expect to find if there was a massively mean but super wealthy guy firing people left and right and leaving a trail of crap in his wake?

[Dave2512]

Yeah he says some nutty dickish stuff but he seems like he could be fun to hang with. I'm not totally turned off by him but I've done a fair share of seedy stuff. 

[Elmer]

14 hours ago, iacas said:

Don't you think a super-rich guy would have already been hit with a bunch of lawsuits?

Yet from what I've seen, very, very, very few of his former co-workers or employees have much bad to say about him except old jokes about how much damn gold he puts everywhere, about how everything is "the best ever," his hair, etc.

So educate me: where are the massive lawsuits and the seriously discontented former employees that you'd expect to find if there was a massively mean but super wealthy guy firing people left and right and leaving a trail of crap in his wake?

The lawsuits would not be directly against him, but the administration and most likely termination related, or violation of contract.

Government work is not like the private sector. In the private sector if your customer complains and does not like your golf course you can apologize or not and the customer can go to another course.
Govt agencies do not have such options. Govt is about providing services to the tax payers. If some one complains through the proper channels heck rains down upon that dept to correct the action. 

Now I could be wrong, but when the press approaches Pres Trump about a an issue with a govt agency I can see him spouting off and demanding the person be fired.
Now the problem is that many of the govt workers are unionized along with the Post Office and you can not simply remove them because a tax payer was unhappy with the result (remember there is always 2 sides to a story).
So if they fire a clerk or worker, they will have an issue with the union.
Alot of govt contractors work on contracts. And while you can remove the worker, you still have to pay the firm for contracts. Unless you break the contract in which case it is contract law and the employment firm can sue.
Simply put Trump is not walking into your local Post office and firing your mail carrier because your issue of Golf Magazine showed up 2 days late.
He is also not going to just slash a bunch of military contracts or govt worker contracts because they are bloated, unneeded contracts or the workers are inept.

on another note, I got to listen to a bulk of Bernie's speech from the Bronx last night.
I have to say I do not disagree with a lot of what he said.
I paraphrase:
Decriminalize marijuana, rebuild infrastructure of crumbling inner city, stop mass incarceration, raise the minimum wage so people can earn a living and not have rely on public assistance, make sure seniors can continue to receive the SS, make the govt work for the people not just benefit the few etc.....

 

[iacas]

4 minutes ago, Elmer said:

The lawsuits would not be directly against him, but the administration and most likely termination related, or violation of contract.

In other words, you have no proof that Trump treats his employees poorly.

Make no mistake: given the press and the GOP's distaste for Trump, if there were stories about what a terrible "boss" or leader or businessman or whatever out there, they'd have found them and made a big deal.

That doesn't appear to have happened, though.

[Slice of Life]

The fact that Donald Trump is a serious candidate for President shows the sad state that our Country is in right now. 

The fact that Hillary Clinton is a serious candidate is even sadder. 

 

I'm not gonna say much more on it...but if it's Clinton vs. Trump, that's the worst case scenario I can ever imagine. 

[Elmer]

30 minutes ago, iacas said:

In other words, you have no proof that Trump treats his employees poorly.

Make no mistake: given the press and the GOP's distaste for Trump, if there were stories about what a terrible "boss" or leader or businessman or whatever out there, they'd have found them and made a big deal.

That doesn't appear to have happened, though.

I never indicated he was a "terrible boss", you are simply inferring incorrectly.
 Someone had stated "As POTUS he can't just fire people who disagree with them or call them names.", which is kind of what I think he thinks he will be able to do.
If you look at the rhetoric from his campaign and the perception of his followers, they are under the impression he is going to "run the bums out of DC" and "clean up Washington".
institutionally he has the power to do neither as POTUS with out the help of the "bums" in DC everyone wants out!

Once again people like Trump because he will run DC as a business, except he can not fire people simply because he is fed up or feels like it.

But please find where I implied that Trump "treats his employees poorly"?
I said he would be a bad president!

Edited April 1, 2016 by Elmer

[RandallT]

12 minutes ago, Elmer said:

I got to listen to a bulk of Bernie's speech from the Bronx last night.
I have to say I do not disagree with a lot of what he said.
I paraphrase:
Decriminalize marijuana, rebuild infrastructure of crumbling inner city, stop mass incarceration, raise the minimum wage so people can earn a living and not have rely on public assistance, make sure seniors can continue to receive the SS, make the govt work for the people not just benefit the few etc.....

 

Decriminalize marijuana- states should do that, as they please. The federal laws on marijuana seem to be ignored, and neighboring states can't even get the federal courts to want to enforce federal bans on marijuana. So it seems states are free to do whatever each one wants: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/supreme-court-rejects-states-challenge-colorado-pot-law-37810092.  That's federalism for you, and overall a good thing, in my mind. The federal government might as well just quietly rid itself of its marijuana laws and devolve all that to the states.  

No way Bernie could push through a commandment that all states must decriminalize, so each state would be left to its own- but perhaps he could remove the existing federal criminalization laws. Either way, not a huge issue to me. Won't drastically change our country.

rebuild infrastructure of crumbling inner city- states and cities are welcome to do that. The federal government should maintain its interstate systems (road, rail, etc). If they haven't done so to date- why the F not??? We had a frigging massive stimulus program on top of its annual budgets. We've had a transportation system for decades and decades. So we admit we've been inept so far at maintaining it and it is underfunded? 

In my mind, we should be angry about the ridiculous inefficiencies in the bureaucracy and insist they be better stewards of our money. The government serves us. Until they clearly demonstrate that they are using their money effectively, I'm not convinced I want to give them more. It's too easy to clamor for more, and I want to see where it has been going, and where the new money would go- very specifically.  It had better not be going to needless levels of management and bureaucracy.

stop mass incarceration. Each state can set its own criminal rules, right? Each state should decide how it wants to best handle incarceration. If the federal government is incarcerating way too many people, then Bernie can help with that I suppose, but I doubt he can dictate to a state how they punish its people.

raise the minimum wage so people can earn a living and not have rely on public assistance. Cities and states are free to do this at any time. I think this is a great example of using the states as "laboratories," as our federal model encourages. Let's see a good case study where raising the minimum wage across a state does great things for the state. Let's see how CA and NY do: http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-california-minimum-wage-increase-20160331-story.html.  Then other states will follow because of the overwhelming success.  I suspect there are pros and cons that somewhat cancel each other out, but one thing is certain, government cannot repeal the law of supply and demand (which is mostly what sets wages).

make sure seniors can continue to receive the SS. Fair enough. Not sure any politician is wanting to pull SS from anyone, but there's at least concern that we may need to tweak benefits to ensure it doesn't run out sooner rather than later.

make the govt work for the people not just benefit the few. I'd think state and local governments will serve their people far better than bureaucrats in DC. I'm not sure what this one really means. In my mind, the federal government is exactly the wrong group of people you want to be tasking with "working for the people," given their track record of ineptitude, inefficiency, corruption, partisan bickering, inability to achieve much.  The argument of "they have been horrible and we are angry....so let's give them even more power and rely on them even more" seems off to me.  Let's get back to being more self-sufficient as states, and we'll be able to get our politicians able to respond better to our needs.  At the federal level, it's just too vast with too many competing interests to get anything too effective done.

I doubt Bernie would do too much harm as president, but I don't see how he'd be much of a force for anything good to result. 

Regarding income inequality, I think we start with specific industries. Say sports. All basketball players should make the same amount, regardless of their popularity. The team relies on every one of them, so it's not fair that one player makes more.  

Or Hollywood. All actors on every production should make the same, and share equally with the producers and technicians. Those actors who are out front "didn't build that." They rely on a team of players who should share equally in the bounty of the work.  Start there on a small scale, and then we shall see how that works. I'm sure it'll be a whopping success and other industries will gladly follow suit.

Does morale improve? Does quality go up? Is there resentment that certain people who are not as productive or efficient get the same? Do the top performers slack off, since they don't get any more than everyone else?  All I'll say is: good luck with that. Human nature is what it is.

That was a bit tongue-in-cheek, of course, about inequality, but I'm not clear where exactly Bernie going with all that. It sounds very populist, but not sure where or how we will coerce equality. Obviously, there is anger to coerce bad actors on Wall Street (and I'm no fan of those sleazeballs, whoever they are) into behaving better, but that's a tricky business to regulate effectively. Create a rule, and people adjust around that rule. Again, human nature.

But I'm willing to see what exactly he has in mind on fixing those fat cats- just not too optimistic it'll do much. But that's not exactly an uplifting message to me: "Let's get those guys, so that we can get our fair share." It feels vindictive, rather then inspirational.

 

22 minutes ago, Slice of Life said:

I'm not gonna say much more on it...but if it's Clinton vs. Trump, that's the worst case scenario I can ever imagine. 

Agreed. This is sad election cycle. Quite depressing.

[iacas]

38 minutes ago, Elmer said:

I never indicated he was a "terrible boss", you are simply inferring incorrectly.
 Someone had stated "As POTUS he can't just fire people who disagree with them or call them names.", which is kind of what I think he thinks he will be able to do.
…
But please find where I implied that Trump "treats his employees poorly"?

That's what I'm talking about:

16 hours ago, iacas said:

Don't you think a super-rich guy would have already been hit with a bunch of lawsuits?

Yet from what I've seen, very, very, very few of his former co-workers or employees have much bad to say about him except old jokes about how much damn gold he puts everywhere, about how everything is "the best ever," his hair, etc.

So educate me: where are the massive lawsuits and the seriously discontented former employees that you'd expect to find if there was a massively mean but super wealthy guy firing people left and right and leaving a trail of crap in his wake?

If Trump were a bad leader - the type who would just "fire" people for the heck of it, or whatever you want to go on about - we'd have heard stories by now.

We haven't really, even with the GOP and the media looking for them.

[GolfLug]

14 minutes ago, RandallT said:

Decriminalize marijuana- states should do that, as they please. The federal laws on marijuana seem to be ignored, and neighboring states can't even get the federal courts to want to enforce federal bans on marijuana. So it seems states are free to do whatever each one wants: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/supreme-court-rejects-states-challenge-colorado-pot-law-37810092.  That's federalism for you, and overall a good thing, in my mind. The federal government might as well just quietly rid itself of its marijuana laws and devolve all that to the states.  

No way Bernie could push through a commandment that all states must decriminalize, so each state would be left to its own- but perhaps he could remove the existing federal criminalization laws. Either way, not a huge issue to me. Won't drastically change our country.

rebuild infrastructure of crumbling inner city- states and cities are welcome to do that. The federal government should maintain its interstate systems (road, rail, etc). If they haven't done so to date- why the F not??? We had a frigging massive stimulus program on top of its annual budgets. We've had a transportation system for decades and decades. So we admit we've been inept so far at maintaining it and it is underfunded? 

In my mind, we should be angry about the ridiculous inefficiencies in the bureaucracy and insist they be better stewards of our money. The government serves us. Until they clearly demonstrate that they are using their money effectively, I'm not convinced I want to give them more. It's too easy to clamor for more, and I want to see where it has been going, and where the new money would go- very specifically.  It had better not be going to needless levels of management and bureaucracy.

stop mass incarceration. Each state can set its own criminal rules, right? Each state should decide how it wants to best handle incarceration. If the federal government is incarcerating way too many people, then Bernie can help with that I suppose, but I doubt he can dictate to a state how they punish its people.

raise the minimum wage so people can earn a living and not have rely on public assistance. Cities and states are free to do this at any time. I think this is a great example of using the states as "laboratories," as our federal model encourages. Let's see a good case study where raising the minimum wage across a state does great things for the state. Let's see how CA and NY do: http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-california-minimum-wage-increase-20160331-story.html.  Then other states will follow because of the overwhelming success.  I suspect there are pros and cons that somewhat cancel each other out, but one thing is certain, government cannot repeal the law of supply and demand (which is mostly what sets wages).

make sure seniors can continue to receive the SS. Fair enough. Not sure any politician is wanting to pull SS from anyone, but there's at least concern that we may need to tweak benefits to ensure it doesn't run out sooner rather than later.

make the govt work for the people not just benefit the few. I'd think state and local governments will serve their people far better than bureaucrats in DC. I'm not sure what this one really means. In my mind, the federal government is exactly the wrong group of people you want to be tasking with "working for the people," given their track record of ineptitude, inefficiency, corruption, partisan bickering, inability to achieve much.  The argument of "they have been horrible and we are angry....so let's give them even more power and rely on them even more" seems off to me.  Let's get back to being more self-sufficient as states, and we'll be able to get our politicians able to respond better to our needs.  At the federal level, it's just too vast with too many competing interests to get anything too effective done.

I doubt Bernie would do too much harm as president, but I don't see how he'd be much of a force for anything good to result. 

Regarding income inequality, I think we start with specific industries. Say sports. All basketball players should make the same amount, regardless of their popularity. The team relies on every one of them, so it's not fair that one player makes more.  

Or Hollywood. All actors on every production should make the same, and share equally with the producers and technicians. Those actors who are out front "didn't build that." They rely on a team of players who should share equally in the bounty of the work.  Start there on a small scale, and then we shall see how that works. I'm sure it'll be a whopping success and other industries will gladly follow suit.

Does morale improve? Does quality go up? Is there resentment that certain people who are not as productive or efficient get the same? Do the top performers slack off, since they don't get any more than everyone else?  All I'll say is: good luck with that. Human nature is what it is.

That was a bit tongue-in-cheek, of course, about inequality, but I'm not clear where exactly Bernie going with all that. It sounds very populist, but not sure where or how we will coerce equality. Obviously, there is anger to coerce bad actors on Wall Street (and I'm no fan of those sleazeballs, whoever they are) into behaving better, but that's a tricky business to regulate effectively. Create a rule, and people adjust around that rule. Again, human nature.

But I'm willing to see what exactly he has in mind on fixing those fat cats- just not too optimistic it'll do much. But that's not exactly an uplifting message to me: "Let's get those guys, so that we can get our fair share." It feels vindictive, rather then inspirational.

 

Agreed. This is sad election cycle. Quite depressing.

An outstanding post. We will all eventually have to pick least of all evils. As of today, I honestly don't know who that is. You have provided some serious food for thought here. Thanks. Really. 

[newtogolf]

43 minutes ago, Elmer said:

I never indicated he was a "terrible boss", you are simply inferring incorrectly.
 Someone had stated "As POTUS he can't just fire people who disagree with them or call them names.", which is kind of what I think he thinks he will be able to do.
If you look at the rhetoric from his campaign and the perception of his followers, they are under the impression he is going to "run the bums out of DC" and "clean up Washington".
institutionally he has the power to do neither as POTUS with out the help of the "bums" in DC everyone wants out!

Once again people like Trump because he will run DC as a business, except he can not fire people simply because he is fed up or feels like it.

But please find where I implied that Trump "treats his employees poorly"?
I said he would be a bad president!

The statement about firing people was made by me.  I wasn't making a statement about his management techniques or whether or not he's a good boss but about the method of management he's accustomed to.  When I was owner and CEO of my company I had complete control over how my business ran, how we handled our customers and competition.  

As CEO (especially of a privately owned business) you can make decisions and take actions that are not available to you as POTUS.  If North Korea pisses off Trump he can't just declare war, he has to work with Congress and get support of the people.  If Congress refuses to pass legislature he wants passed he can't fire them or strong arm them.  As POTUS he needs to find ways to work constructively with people who oppose him.   

To date he has demonstrated limited ability in his campaign to professionally engage with people who oppose his views or him as a person.  

While I am not excited about Trumps actions to date, I'll vote for whoever the GOP candidate is unless their are other options beyond Hillary or Bernie.  

[Elmer]

5 minutes ago, newtogolf said:

The statement about firing people was made by me.  I wasn't making a statement about his management techniques or whether or not he's a good boss but about the method of management he's accustomed to.  When I was owner and CEO of my company I had complete control over how my business ran, how we handled our customers and competition.  

As CEO (especially of a privately owned business) you can make decisions and take actions that are not available to you as POTUS.  If North Korea pisses off Trump he can't just declare war, he has to work with Congress and get support of the people.  If Congress refuses to pass legislature he wants passed he can't fire them or strong arm them.  As CEO he needs to find ways to work constructively with people who oppose him.   

To date he has demonstrated limited ability in his campaign to professionally engage with people who oppose his views or him as a person.  

 

Completely agree with your assessment
@iacas This!