US Politics Mega-thread - Page 7267

On April 05 2017 22:28 Plansix wrote:
There were plenty of founding fathers that did not believe in Jefferson’s naïve idea that the Constitution should be rewritten every 20 years. There was an entire party of them called the Federalist. And of course his party protested anyone but Jefferson being able to speak to the meaning of the Constitution.

Americans’ attitudes towards President Trump and Republicans are at a new low, according to a new poll from Quinnipiac University.

Overall, voters give Trump a 35 percent job approval rating, with 57 percent disapproving. That’s down from the 37 percent Quinnipiac reported just two weeks ago, and worse than Obama’s lowest rating in the poll of 38 percent back in 2013.

Tim Malloy, the assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, points out that President Bush had a lower rating in 2008, but that, “it took eight years, two unpopular wars and a staggering economy to get there.” Bush was viewed favorably by 28 percent of Americans at the time.

Fifty-two percent of voters feel embarrassed that Trump is their president. Only 27 percent say they are proud.

Mr. Trump isn’t doing well with women (63 percent disapprove), Democrats (91 percent), and non-white voters (77 percent). Even among his base, his numbers continue to slip; only 39 percent of men approve of President Trump’s performance, while 51 percent disapprove. White voters now disapprove of him 48 percent to 43 percent, and while a majority of Republicans (79 percent) still approve of him, that’s down from 81 percent two weeks ago.

Independents are the only group of voters that hold a slightly improved view of Mr. Trump, with disapproval decreasing by three points to 57 percent and approval rising one point to 32 percent.

Voters’ opinions of the president remain mainly negative when it comes to his personal qualities. Mr. Trump receives the worst scores on honesty (61 percent don’t think he is), level-headedness (66 percent), and on shared values with voters (61 percent). Fifty-five percent of voters do not believe that the president has good leadership skills, and a similar number of voters, 57 percent, think that he does not care about average Americans.

However, 64 percent of those surveyed believe that President Trump is a strong person, and 60 percent think that he is intelligent.

Fifty-five percent of voters believe that he is keeping his campaign promises, but voters disapprove of Mr. Trump’s handling of every issue measured in this survey. Sixty-four percent disapprove of the way he handled healthcare, 61 percent on his environmental stewardship, and 58 percent on his foreign policy.

On issues perceived as strengths for him—terrorism, immigration, and the economy—voters are still disappointed with the president. Almost half -- (49 percent -- disapprove of the way Mr. Trump is dealing with terrorism. On immigration, he receives a 57 percent disapproval rating. Only 41 percent approve of the way he is handling the economy versus the 48 percent who don’t, despite the fact that 52 percent of Americans believe the economy is in “excellent” or “good” shape.

That may be due to the fact that a majority of voters -- 66 percent -- believe President Obama deserves more credit than the current president when it comes to the current state of the economy. Sixty-four percent of Republicans agree.

“President Donald Trump continues to struggle, even among his most loyal supports,” says Malloy. “Many of them would be hard pressed to see even a sliver of a silver lining in this troubling downward spiral.”

Meanwhile, 70 percent of Americans disapprove of how Republicans in Congress are doing, up six points from two weeks ago, and 57 percent disapprove of the Democrats’ performance.

On April 05 2017 22:40 LightSpectra wrote:


I don't think the federalists expected that the Constitution would be eternal, either. They wanted to prolong its usage as long as they could because they were getting a pretty good deal out of it, but they never anticipated the existence of mass surveillance, the welfare state, e-democracy, etc.

President Donald Trump's proposed border wall has drawn the interest of hundreds of companies, but the larger, more experienced firms might not be on board.

The deadline to submit proposals for the wall was Tuesday at 4 p.m. ET, and many of the biggest construction and engineering companies are steering clear of bidding for the project altogether.

Several companies who otherwise possess the resources and experience to manage and deliver such a large and complex project are staying away from it largely due to concerns about political backlash, according to Dave Raymond, President and CEO of the American Council on Engineering Companies. He told CNN, "in my lifetime, I can't think of a similar experience."

One senior official from a construction firm told CNN via email that "there are many hurdles associated with the wall, ranging from political ones to financing to the very real human aspect. There are also concerns about how working on the wall would affect a construction company's ability to work in other countries, given that the Trump plan has received a great deal of international criticism."

As of Tuesday afternoon, the three largest recipients of federal government contracts, as ranked by the Engineering News-Record's most recent Top 400 Contractors list -- Bechtel, Fluor Corp., and Turner Corp. (no relation to CNN parent company Turner Broadcasting) -- are not listed as interested vendors for the US Customs and Border Protection's two requests for proposals (RFPs) that closed Tuesday at 4 p.m.

When asked about their respective plans, Bechtel previously noted that it has not expressed interest in the wall, Fluor told CNN it "does not publicly discuss whether or not the company is pursuing or will pursue specific contract opportunities," and Turner told CNN it would not be pursuing the project, saying they are focused on other projects such as building stadiums and airports.

In fact, only three of the top 20 ranked contractors were listed as interested vendors on those RFPs. More than 200 companies have expressed interest in each RFP.

Some firms are worried about potentially losing future business with the nation's largest cities and states, according to Raymond, whose organization represents more than 5,000 engineering firms throughout the country.

State lawmakers in both California and New York have introduced bills that would effectively blacklist any company involved in building the border wall from future state business. Neither of the bills has passed into law, but the possibility alone has turned off many potential bidders.

"The state initiatives have really had a chilling effect on companies which otherwise would have sought involvement on these projects," Raymond told CNN. "While these companies, generally speaking, think these state initiatives are grossly unfair, they are not going to presumably risk their standing in those states by getting involved in these projects."

Raymond said companies could stand to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in potential business with these states should the laws pass.

Last week the president of Mexican cement giant Cemex said, "I want to be very clear on this topic: Cemex will not participate in the construction of the wall."

Cemex previously said it would provide building materials for the wall to clients if asked. Their recent clarification came in the wake of Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray telling Mexican companies to "examine their conscience" when considering bidding for the wall, a possible sign of the political pressure some of these companies are weighing.

With some of the largest players likely sitting out the bidding process, the work may end up being awarded to smaller firms with fewer resources, although that process is still months away.

One industry insider who works for a larger firm that is not competing for the wall told CNN that he was concerned that the firms currently listed as interested vendors may not be capable of completing the project. These small-to-medium sized firms could have issues with bonding and hiring workers to build the wall, the source said. This insider also worries about these small firms' ability to scale up and manage a project of this size.

CNN has reached out to US Customs and Border Protection for comment on this concern, but has yet to hear back.

On April 05 2017 23:45 LightSpectra wrote:
it would be hilarious if Trump couldn't get the wall built. My perception is that "I will build a great, great wall on our southern border. And I will have Mexico pay for that wall" is the #1 reason he won the Republican primary.

Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch copied the structure and language used by several authors and failed to cite source material in his book and an academic article, according to documents provided to POLITICO.

The documents show that several passages from the tenth chapter of his 2006 book, “The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia,” read nearly verbatim to a 1984 article in the Indiana Law Journal. In several other instances in that book and an academic article published in 2000, Gorsuch borrowed from the ideas, quotes and structures of scholarly and legal works without citing them.

On April 05 2017 23:45 LightSpectra wrote:
it would be hilarious if Trump couldn't get the wall built. My perception is that "I will build a great, great wall on our southern border. And I will have Mexico pay for that wall" is the #1 reason he won the Republican primary.

On April 06 2017 00:07 WolfintheSheep wrote:

Trump could not logistically build a wall in half a century, let alone a single (or god forbid, two) terms.

He was never going to get the wall built.

On April 05 2017 23:27 LightSpectra wrote:
So what's your argument, the fact that some Founding Fathers had evolving opinions on some particular issues is proof that the US Constitution can be adapted by interpretation to fit the modern age? I just don't see the point in even having a written constitution if that's the case. The point of the Constitution is not only to lay out the fundamental structure of the government, it's also to impose limitations on its power by strictly defining the parameters of what the government is permitted to do. But if we're going to say that some of those limitations are archaic and fungible (e.g. the Commerce Clause taking precedence over the Tenth Amendment to justify Medicare), then that also means that means that all of those limitations can potentially be fungible, even some of those good limitations like the ones required by the First Amendment.

On April 06 2017 00:11 LegalLord wrote:
Start with a barbed wire fence then wait out the stupid and claim victory. Spend the rest on security for the Trump estates.

On April 05 2017 23:27 LightSpectra wrote:
So what's your argument, the fact that some Founding Fathers had evolving opinions on some particular issues is proof that the US Constitution can be adapted by interpretation to fit the modern age? I just don't see the point in even having a written constitution if that's the case. The point of the Constitution is not only to lay out the fundamental structure of the government, it's also to impose limitations on its power by strictly defining the parameters of what the government is permitted to do. But if we're going to say that some of those limitations are archaic and fungible (e.g. the Commerce Clause taking precedence over the Tenth Amendment to justify Medicare), then that also means that means that all of those limitations can potentially be fungible, even some of those good limitations like the ones required by the First Amendment.