US Politics Mega-thread - Page 4681

On August 09 2016 23:17 ticklishmusic wrote:


didnt the phillipines elect their own donald trump?

On August 09 2016 21:24 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:

~ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/08/08/donald-trump-iran-scientist-hillary-clinton-manypeoplearesaying/88432610/

This hashtag makes me so happy, to know that plenty of other people aren't convinced by Donald Trump's passive aggressive "I can say anything because I'm pretending to cite a group of non-existent people and not take ownership of my own statements because hey I didn't say I meant them but I'm just repeating what other people said." It's been like this since Trump was a birther, insisting that "some people" were asking questions about Obama's birth certificate. Sigh.

On August 09 2016 23:36 Plansix wrote:
Apparently the Republicans are now pushing to have redacted emails that had Bill Clinton’s schedule as a private citizen un-redacted because they happened to come across them in that state department investigation. Their argument is because he is a former president and the Clinton Foundation is corrupt, his schedule is not private.

I don’t know which is sadder, the fact this is still going on or the Republicans believe anyone will give a fuck. They are the boy who cried wolf and they refuse to accept it.

On August 10 2016 01:13 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


Do these percentages account for those who are likely to vote third party? Or is this only a hypothetical head to head?

On August 10 2016 01:22 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


Gotcha. It seems that Stein will have no effect whatsoever on the election, but perhaps there's a small chance that Johnson takes enough Trump votes away in a swing state for it to help Clinton a tiny bit.

Donald Trump said on Monday that he wanted to usher in “economic renewal,” but most of his proposals would hurt the economy, rack up huge deficits, accelerate climate change and leave the country isolated from the world.

In a speech billed as a blueprint for stimulating growth and creating jobs, Mr. Trump offered a grab bag of ideas that borrow from discredited supply-side economics, the fossil fuel industry’s wish list and “America First” isolationism. He also criticized Hillary Clinton and President Obama for what he called their “job-killing, tax-raising, poverty-inducing” agenda. It was vintage Trump, full of promises of greatness and victories backed by fantastical proposals.

Mr. Trump told the Detroit Economic Club that he would cut taxes to an extent not seen since Ronald Reagan was in the White House. He said he would slash the corporate tax rate to 15 percent, arguing that the current statutory 35 percent is one of the highest among developed countries. He did not mention that the average effective corporate tax rate was 18.1 percent in 2015, including state and local taxes, according to the White House and the Treasury Department. He claims he would help workers by getting rid of the estate tax, though repealing it would have almost no effect on working families. Under current law, that tax doesn’t touch 99.8 percent of all estates because it applies only to that portion of an estate that exceeds $5.4 million for an individual or $10.9 million for a married couple.

The big problem with Mr. Trump’s tax ideas is that they would leave a multitrillion-dollar deficit for no benefit. Proponents of supply-side economics argue that cutting tax rates encourages people to work and businesses to invest. But the gains are much more modest than proponents claim because many businesses won’t invest unless demand for their products is growing and many people are not motivated by lower tax rates to work more.

Sign Up for the Opinion Today Newsletter
Every weekday, get thought-provoking commentary from Op-Ed columnists, The Times editorial board and contributing writers from around the world.


On the other hand, significant tax cuts exact very real costs. Mr. Trump’s previous tax plan, released last year, would have reduced federal revenue by $9.5 trillion over 10 years, according to the Tax Policy Center, meaning that Mr. Trump would have to slash government spending or increase borrowing substantially. George W. Bush pushed big tax cuts through Congress in 2001 and 2003 with the promises of strong growth that never materialized.

Mr. Trump also promises to take a machete to existing federal regulations and put a moratorium on new rules. He wants to get rid of environmental policies that he says are driving up the cost of electricity by restricting the production and use of coal and other fossil fuels. In fact, electricity rates, adjusted for inflation, have increased just 2.2 percent, to 12.82 cents per kilowatt-hour, from 2008 to 2015 and are expected to decline to 12.64 cents this year, according to the federal Energy Information Administration.

Increasing fossil fuel production, and the carbon dioxide emissions associated with it, is exactly the wrong strategy at a time when the world has become increasingly concerned about global warming and its disastrous consequences. But this is of little concern to Mr. Trump, who has dismissed climate change as a hoax and whose “energy revolution,” as he outlined it on Monday, made no mention of carbon-free renewable energy sources.

On trade, Mr. Trump renewed his pledge to kill the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an agreement that Mr. Obama negotiated with 11 countries. Mr. Trump claims he can bring back millions of manufacturing jobs to the United States by slapping retaliatory tariffs against China for manipulating its currency, offering illegal subsidies to its exporters and stealing intellectual property from American companies. But such actions would do nothing to recreate jobs that have been replaced by automation, and companies could move production to other developing countries. Mr. Trump’s earlier pledge to put a 45 percent tariff on all Chinese goods would almost certainly start a trade war that would harm American industries that export goods to China.

Mr. Trump considers himself a businessman, uniquely capable of improving the economy. But this list of misguided and risky proposals would reduce economic growth while showering the rich with tax breaks.