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Utopia Talk / Politics / "I never really supported Trump" Thread
jergul
large member
Fri Jun 26 03:36:46
Latest polls are in - and its a massacre.

Why wait for the rush in November? Feel free to expound upon how you never really suppported Trump now.

Start with "I will vote independent if only I lived in a different State with a more viable candidate".

http://fiv...college-advantage-is-slipping/
Hot Dud
Member
Fri Jun 26 04:01:49
I'm a libertarian and really want to vote for the libertarian candidate. But I may vote for Trump as Biden would be much worse.
Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Fri Jun 26 04:16:44
I have heard a lot of intelligent people and public intellectuals say "there is nothing I can find out about Biden at this point that would make me not vote for him". Anyone is better than Trump they say andmaybe this true, but it is another level of democratic degeneration. First it was, it is the lesser of two evil and that elected some form of evil that has now led to, any other evil is better than this evil.

I am not convinced that Biden will solve the things that started to unravel under his 8 years as VP. And Trump has only managed to unravel things further and faster and I have a hunch that Joe "you aint black" Biden will as well.

Too many people competing for the same positions has created a destructive form of competition. We need to exile 80% of the political elite to Mars.
kargen
Member
Fri Jun 26 04:52:00
One poll that has been getting mentioned a lot only had 23% Republicans as respondents. Others have different biases.
That aside right now in the US one of the most discriminated against demographics in the US is a Trump supporter. Just wearing a hat or t-shirt into a cafe can cause you to be attacked. If you support President Trump in some areas and the nuts find out they will damage your property and in some cases worse.
A lot of Trump supporters are choosing not to participate in polls because of the current climate. A very radical minority makes openly supporting the president a risk.

That aside I will wait until closer to election day. I will choose three or four issues I think the president could influence that are important to me and I will pick the candidate on the ballot in Colorado that best fits my beliefs on those issues.
I know it will not be Biden. Beyond that who knows at this point.

Remember Hillary led by thirteen points going into 2016 a week before the election in some polls.
Dukhat
Member
Fri Jun 26 04:58:13
"Both sides are the same" is a part of the trolling strategy employed by oligarchs (both in US and Russia) to turn off young left-leaning voters. It's especially powerful with young men who don't have relationships with women because they tend not to be deeply immature and not see the benefits of compromise.

The world is a grey and granular place. Getting 60%, even only 30% of what you want is far better than getting 0% or -100% as Trump is doing through his rampant destruction of our institutions.

But rampant black-and-white thinking predominates especiall in the online world where most people are just fucking idiots to begin with in the first place and seek only to confirm what they already believe.
jergul
large member
Fri Jun 26 05:04:00
Kargen
As the article states, Biden is doing far better than Hillary as the same juncture in time before the election.

rofl@most discriminated against group. Being marginalized is a symbol of marginal views.

Polsters have generally corrected the way they conduct polls to avoid a repeat of 2016 underreporting.

All of this stands to reason. Trump could have swept in on a wave of good economic data. But that is gone. He half-assed way of leading is otherwise simply not appropriate when the country is in crisis. Most voters see that. Even you seem to as you desperately search for someone you can pretend you are going to vote for.

Nimi
Thing is, it matters. Biden will at worst be a meh president, but for as long as the GOP holds the senate, he will in practical terms represent a unity government if he wants to get anything done at all.

The senate holds a lot of key powers a president cannot bypass with executive orders.

A post trump era should see the GOP trying to reinvent itself as it seeks to innocculate the party from a new power grab attempt by Trump in 2024.
Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Fri Jun 26 05:46:58
Jergul
Obama was the centrist and he attempted to repair the Bush mess. He was rebuked. The tea party stuff, it all started during Obama. I am not blaming Obama for that, but it is a trend in the break down of co-operation in US politics.

Did you read the 2020 prediction thread I made about Peter Turchin?
Pillz
Member
Fri Jun 26 05:51:25
4 more years faggots
Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Fri Jun 26 05:52:17
Also kargen could have a point. Here in Sweden the Sweden Democrats were for several election cycles under polled, because of stigma.
jergul
large member
Fri Jun 26 07:02:55
Nimi
It depends on how you think the spectre of Trump looming in the background will play out.

Will the GOP opt form more of the same and rally around Trump's next election scheming, or will they consider that era over and attempt to shift towards the centre.

It is not even close to centre now. As a conservative supreme court is showing by shooting down cases with wide GOP support.

Kargen could have a point, but polsters have corrected considerably after the 2016 debacle. Current method would have got that within the margins of error.

Nothing is certain, as analysts are careful to point out, but Biden's position is much stronger than Clinton's at the same juncture in time.
TJ
Member
Fri Jun 26 09:47:57
I'm a little curious to see what the October surprise will be and there normally is one. Illinois has voted for a Democratic President in the last seven elections. Voting for Trump would simply be a formality of voting right. Playing with words sort of speaking.

I'm also curious to see if Joe Biden sounds like a broken robot in the debates.
Rugian
Member
Fri Jun 26 09:52:17
Joe Biden has just announced that 120,000,000 Americans have died of Covid. Hes clearly on the senility train at this point.

Joe can't stay in his basement forever. Eventually he has to come out and campaign, and when he does it will be brutal.
jergul
large member
Fri Jun 26 11:06:04
TJ
Why curious? Trump will look at the polls and try to cancel the election due to *stuff*, then back down when the backlash threatens to blow his hair off.

He is very fond of his hair. Every strand of it.
jergul
large member
Fri Jun 26 11:07:21
Ruggy
You really should try competing with tw on things the candidates say.

I am sure you will get a mathematically measurable fraction of tw's quotes.
Habebe
Member
Fri Jun 26 11:14:41
I heard Biden agreed to 3 debates with Trump. That should be interesting.

But if Trump plans to win he needs to get Biden to engage publicly as much as possible.
TJ
Member
Fri Jun 26 11:14:42
jergul:

Nice try at humor. Curious, because there is always one or more.

Even unforced errors late in a campaign can derail a candidate’s electoral aspirations. Just one can do the trick. No candidate is immune and there is a long history of it happening.
kargen
Member
Fri Jun 26 13:49:42
"Kargen could have a point, but polsters have corrected considerably after the 2016 debacle."

Corrections like Republicans being only 23% of those polled compared to 34%.
They also have decided instead of polling likely voters they will poll registered voters.
Habebe
Member
Fri Jun 26 14:03:25
The moat accurate polls are normally likely voters by state to guess the EC.

But this round is so different that Im not sure the traditional likley voter is who is really going to vote.
tumbleweed
the wanderer
Fri Jun 26 14:13:04
I never really supported Trump
patom
Member
Fri Jun 26 14:34:03
I recognized Trump for what he is at an early stage of the campaign. Long before he was nominated.
When he won the election is was really disappointed but I held out some hope that he may grow into the office. IMO he has failed and has done a lot more harm than good.
patom
Member
Fri Jun 26 14:34:24
I recognized Trump for what he is at an early stage of the campaign. Long before he was nominated.
When he won the election is was really disappointed but I held out some hope that he may grow into the office. IMO he has failed and has done a lot more harm than good.
Habebe
Member
Fri Jun 26 14:38:10
I recognized Trump for an unapologetic asshole who wouldn't tip toe aroumd bs to lie to me, his lies are right out in the open.
Wrath of Orion
Member
Fri Jun 26 14:41:47
Hi Retard Rod 2.0! It's good that you recognize those things in the person you support. Good job.
Forwyn
Member
Fri Jun 26 15:25:10
Supported Rand in 2016. He dropped out before he hit my state. Voted Cruz just to keep Trump from winning. Voted GJ in the general. Will vote Jo this fall.

But making fun of leftist screeching still makes you a Trump supporter /shrug
Rugian
Member
Fri Jun 26 15:32:36
As an aside, it's hilarious how the media has pretty much treated third parties as completely nonexistent this election cycle. Guess we cant run the risk of having Biden get Jill Steined.
kargen
Member
Fri Jun 26 15:57:12
People always claim Jill Stein cost Hillary votes. First they were not Hillary's votes. She wasn't entitled to them and didn't earn them. 2nd the same people that mention Jill Stein seem to ignore that Gary Johnson received three times the votes that Stein received. Who knows where those votes would have gone had he not been in the race.

I was convinced going right into the convention the only reason President Trump was running was to make sure Hillary won. Was the only thing that could explain what he was saying. Turns out I was wrong.
patom
Member
Fri Jun 26 16:37:28
Trump won because too many sat on their asses and didn't bother to vote because they thought Clinton had it in the bag.
Y2A
Member
Fri Jun 26 20:02:04
the "both sides" media will start to hurt Biden as we get closer to November by elevating his occasional verbal slip ups to the clown's countless disasters.
Y2A
Member
Fri Jun 26 20:06:12
look at those polls, in the swing states Biden is at near 50% in all of them. The gap is caused by the clown being so low. Fact is that a lot of the Repubs that are now not answering about supporting the clown will def be voting for him in Nov.
Rugian
Member
Fri Jun 26 20:06:18
Lmao at Y2A openly advocating for the deplatforming of an entire political party.
Habebe
Member
Fri Jun 26 20:22:51
http://www...biden-trump-debates/index.html

He openly admits he wants to be out of the picture ad much ad possible. Will only do 3 debates and dismisses anymore as a " distraction"
Pillz
Member
Fri Jun 26 21:09:33
3 debates via hologram?
jergul
large member
Sat Jun 27 03:29:53
Never interrupt an enemy while he is making mistakes. Not Biden's fault trump is a total fuckup.
kargen
Member
Sat Jun 27 04:24:55
Nothing is Biden's fault because he has done nothing. he hasn't even offered up an opinion really other than he thinks Trump sucks.
kargen
Member
Sat Jun 27 04:26:11
Hit the submit reply button before I wanted to.

I'm not Trump really isn't much of a campaign.
jergul
large member
Sat Jun 27 05:36:07
Kargen
Its a fine campaign. Approaching brilliance.

Sometimes saying as little as possible is by far the best option. In life, as in politics.

Trump will probably learn this in his post presidential criminal trials.
Rugian
Member
Sat Jun 27 07:35:30
kargen

Biden has offered up plenty. He has made it clear that his presidency would be the most radical and anti-American in this country's history.

No one can possibly say otherwise of an administration that would include the likes of AOC and Beto. His VP pick is an affirmative action hire and will almost certainly be a far-left progressive. Hell, apparently he's now even floating someone who has praised Fidel Castro for the job.

In effect, he has told us all that his administration would be the greatest threat to America since the British occupation of NYC.
jergul
large member
Sat Jun 27 10:01:42
^Drama queen.

Bidens presidency will be meh at worst and will likely play out as a unity (bipartisan) government facing multiple crises.

That might change if and only if the Democrats sweep Congress and the presidency.
Rugian
Member
Sat Jun 27 10:03:27
"Bidens presidency will be meh at worst and will likely play out as a unity (bipartisan) government facing multiple crises."

You literally have no basis for this. What are they telling you over there in Norway?
jergul
large member
Sat Jun 27 10:17:53
Ruggy
Biden can't do shit domestically without the Senate. That legislature controls key functions that cannot be bypassed by executive orders.

The multiple crises are self-evident.
jergul
large member
Sat Jun 27 10:19:55
Biden can still do stuff abroad. Your electoral college elects a tyrant every four years from the perspective of international affairs. Some benign, some orange haired crazy persons.

We are often quite interested in what tyrant the college will chose for us next.
Rugian
Member
Sat Jun 27 10:26:11
"Biden can't do shit domestically without the Senate."

*laughs in DACA*
jergul
large member
Sat Jun 27 10:35:30
Ruggy
DACA is chickenshit stuff. The executive branch can of course set its own enforcement policies because it is the executive branch.

The current administration could have easily changed course if it had not been so fucking incompetent.

See the court reasoning on its recent ruling for details.
Rugian
Member
Sat Jun 27 10:47:32
Jergul

Weak argument. I don't think you understand just how extensive administrative law is.
Rugian
Member
Sat Jun 27 10:47:37
Once Skeptical of Executive Power, Obama Has Come to Embrace It

Mr. Obama will leave the White House as one of the most prolific authors of major regulations in presidential history.

By Binyamin Appelbaum and Michael D. Shear
Aug. 13, 2016

WASHINGTON — In nearly eight years in office, President Obama has sought to reshape the nation with a sweeping assertion of executive authority and a canon of regulations that have inserted the United States government more deeply into American life.

Once a presidential candidate with deep misgivings about executive power, Mr. Obama will leave the White House as one of the most prolific authors of major regulations in presidential history.

Blocked for most of his presidency by Congress, Mr. Obama has sought to act however he could. In the process he created the kind of government neither he nor the Republicans wanted — one that depended on bureaucratic bulldozing rather than legislative transparency. But once Mr. Obama got the taste for it, he pursued his executive power without apology, and in ways that will shape the presidency for decades to come.

The Obama administration in its first seven years finalized 560 major regulations — those classified by the Congressional Budget Office as having particularly significant economic or social impacts. That was nearly 50 percent more than the George W. Bush administration during the comparable period, according to data kept by the regulatory studies center at George Washington University.

An army of lawyers working under Mr. Obama’s authority has sought to restructure the nation’s health care and financial industries, limit pollution, bolster workplace protections and extend equal rights to minorities. Under Mr. Obama, the government has literally placed a higher value on human life.

And it has imposed billions of dollars in new costs on businesses and consumers.

Many of the new rules are little known, even as they affect the way Americans eat, love and die. People can dine on genetically engineered salmon. Women can buy emergency contraceptive pills without prescriptions. Military veterans can design their own headstones.

In its final year, the administration is enacting some of its most ambitious rules, including limits on airborne silica at job sites, an overhaul of food labels to clarify nutritional information, and a measure making millions of workers eligible for overtime pay.

The administration’s regulatory legacy has become an issue in the campaign to replace Mr. Obama, as Donald J. Trump has sharply criticized regulatory overreach and promised to undo many of the new rules. But executive power has expanded steadily under both Republican and Democratic presidents in recent decades, and both Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton have promised to act in the service of their own goals.

The new rules built on the legislative victories Mr. Obama won during his first two years in office. Those laws — the Affordable Care Act, the Dodd-Frank Act and the $800 billion economic stimulus package — transformed the nation’s health care system, curbed the ambitions of the big banks and injected financial support into a creaky economy. But as Republicans increased their control of Capitol Hill, Mr. Obama’s deep frustration with congressional opposition led to a new approach: He gradually embraced a president’s power to act unilaterally.

History may now judge the regulations to be one of Mr. Obama’s most enduring legacies. At the least, his exercise of administrative power expanded and cemented a domestic legacy that now rivals Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society in reach and scope.

In May, Mr. Obama was asked by a farmer in Elkhart, Ind., to justify the “dramatic increase” in government regulations that affected his business. “I’m not interested in regulating just for the sake of regulating,” Mr. Obama responded. “But there are some things like making sure we’ve got clean air and clean water, making sure that folks have health insurance, making sure that worker safety is a priority — that, I do think, is part of our overall obligation.”

Infuriated Republicans describe many of the new rules as unwarranted, resulting in “less jobs, less businesses, less prosperity, lower take-home pay,” in the words of the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan. Business groups, also incensed, have challenged a number of new regulations in court, delaying them or preventing them from taking effect. Some economic experts worry that the accumulation of regulation is contributing to the economy’s persistent sluggishness.

“The big issue that I grapple with is that the regulatory state keeps growing,” said Robert Hahn, an economist and a regulatory expert at the Smith School at the University of Oxford. “And as it keeps growing, when does it become too much?”

Not Inherently a Regulator

Mr. Obama entered office in January 2009 determined to make his mark by passing bold new laws, not by tinkering with rules. Rahm Emanuel, his first chief of staff, and other top aides mapped out an ambitious two-year agenda that included a health care overhaul, new banking laws, a remake of the federal student loan program, infrastructure spending and stricter limits on pollution.

The new president had a skeptical streak when it came to the value of regulation, influenced by his friend Cass R. Sunstein, a Harvard Law professor who had long argued that the government should more rigorously assess the benefits of new regulations. Mr. Obama liked that idea so much that he named Mr. Sunstein to lead the White House office that oversees rule-making.

“The president is not somebody who is intuitively or inherently a regulator,” said Howard Shelanski, who followed Mr. Sunstein in that role in mid-2013. He said Mr. Obama conveyed a simple message: “‘If we can get a good result without regulating, let’s do that.’”

But after eight years of a Republican administration, many Democrats were eager for the government to lean more forcefully on the levers of regulatory power, and officials within the federal bureaucracy felt emboldened.

The White House did resist some ideas. It shut down efforts by Lisa Jackson, Mr. Obama’s first administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, to increase the regulation of ozone, a decision that environmentalists viewed as a betrayal.

But other rules were allowed to proceed. Kate Hanni, an advocate from Napa, Calif., for the rights of airline passengers, had tried for years to persuade the government to address a series of incidents in which flight delays left passengers trapped for hours on planes that had already left the gate, often in cabins with stinking toilets, weak air-conditioning and no food. The Bush administration put Ms. Hanni on a task force consisting mostly of airline executives, which concluded in the fall of 2008 — over her forceful and repeated objections — that the public was best served by allowing the airlines to make their own decisions.

Weeks after the task force released its report, Ms. Hanni was invited to Washington in December 2008 to meet with Robert S. Rivkin, the head of Mr. Obama’s transportation transition team. Democrats in Congress had introduced legislation to address the issue, but Mr. Rivkin asked Ms. Hanni if she would support new regulations instead. She would back anything enforceable, Ms. Hanni said.

“Right answer,” he replied.

Over the course of the next nine months, Mr. Rivkin and his team of career regulators at the Department of Transportation developed rules prohibiting planes loaded with passengers from sitting on the tarmac for more than three hours.

In meetings with Ray LaHood, Mr. Obama’s first transportation secretary, and his staff, airline representatives argued for flexibility, saying rigid timelines would only increase flight cancellations. They chafed at the regulators’ willingness to see the benefits but not the costs.

Sharon L. Pinkerton, an executive at Airlines for America, the industry’s main trade group, recalled Transportation Department regulators suggesting that “unquantifiable, unidentifiable benefits” would “outweigh the costs” of new rules for the airlines.

“What are we supposed to do with that?” she asked later in an interview.

But Mr. LaHood had himself experienced long waits on the runway during frequent trips home to Illinois. Just days before Christmas in 2009, he announced a Passenger Bill of Rights, which for the first time levied fines of up to $27,500 per passenger on airlines that leave domestic flights stranded for more than three hours. He challenged the major carriers to provide their service “in a way that is halfway convenient” for their customers.

His department, Mr. LaHood said in a recent interview, had a new sense of purpose, independent of any specific directive from the White House.

“They had other fish to fry,” Mr. LaHood said of senior officials at the White House. “We didn’t want to wait around for Congress to take five, 10 years to do this. We could do this by rule and regulation, so we were pretty much off to the races.”

Other agencies were moving too. In its second year, bureaucrats working across the government completed 96 major rules, more than in any subsequent year.

Equal Rights for Everyone

The White House soon began to take a greater interest in regulation.

In May 2009, Mr. Emanuel raised concerns about Janice Langbehn, a social worker featured in The New York Times who was barred from visiting her hospitalized same-sex partner.

Passing legislation to address the problem was unlikely, Mr. Emanuel knew, given entrenched ideological opposition and the White House’s focus on overhauling the health insurance system. But Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the newly created Office of Health Reform, suggested an alternative: The administration had the power to impose conditions on hospitals that got federal Medicare funding.

A year later, the president directed the Department of Health and Human Services to develop regulations requiring hospitals to extend visitation rights to same-sex partners.

“All too often, people are made to suffer or even to pass away alone, denied the comfort of companionship in their final moments while a loved one is left worrying and pacing down the hall,” Mr. Obama wrote in an April 2010 memo.

A focus on similar issues produced more than 100 executive actions and regulatory changes intended to improve the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, particularly after the Supreme Court in 2013 struck down the federal law that defined marriage as between a man and a woman.

People with H.I.V. were no longer barred from entry into the country; federal housing rules recognized lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender families; health insurance companies were barred from discriminating against gay people; labor protections applied to gay couples; married same-sex couples could take family and medical leave; and the Internal Revenue Service started treating same-sex couples no differently.

“These are really lasting things,” said David Stacy, the government affairs director for the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy organization. “They affect people in their everyday lives.”

The Value of Regulation

As the Obama administration turned toward regulation, it sought to strengthen its hand by changing the estimates of what a life is worth. Those estimates allowed the administration to argue that the benefits of many regulations were greater than previously appreciated. This push was particularly important as a justification for stronger environmental protections.

A White House push to pass a sweeping climate change bill in 2009 failed to pass in Congress, but almost from the outset some of Mr. Obama’s aides were working on a Plan B. Mr. Sunstein and Michael Greenstone, the first chief economist of Mr. Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, created an internal task force to put a dollar figure on the cost of carbon emissions.

The government does not try to quantify all the benefits of proposed regulations. When it came to environmental regulations, the calculation was particularly limited. Analysts often assigned a dollar figure to just one kind of damage — emissions of “small particles” — and then stacked up the costs of the proposal against the benefits of fewer particles.

Quantifying a second kind of damage, from carbon emissions, would broaden the assessed benefits of new regulations — potentially justifying new and stronger restrictions. In 2010, the administration issued a report that estimated the economic impact of global warming, including agricultural disruptions, increased flooding and health problems. It pegged the cost of carbon emissions at $21 per ton. An updated assessment in 2013 raised the price tag to $33.

When the administration announced stricter standards for automobile fuel efficiency in 2011, it cited the reduction in carbon emissions as a key benefit. Those benefits have since been cited in several dozen new regulations, including the hotly debated 2015 rule seeking to restrict emissions from new power plants.

Regulators also revisited a more fundamental concept: the value of life. Not just a theological or philosophical abstraction, that figure is used to assess how much spending the government should require to prevent death or injury.

The Department of Transportation, for example, increased the estimated value of preventing one death from $6.6 million in 2009 to $9.4 million last year, adjusting for inflation. The department made an even larger adjustment for preventing injuries, for example raising the value of averting a broken arm from $103,000 in 2009 to $442,000 in 2015, also adjusting for inflation. The increases have helped to justify new requirements for stronger roofs and rearview cameras on automobiles and seatbelts on buses.

The new carbon cost estimate, in particular, has drawn fire from industry groups who regard it as an arbitrary assessment intended to further an environmental agenda.

Environmentalists, however, argue that the government is still significantly understating the actual impact. A 2014 analysis by economists at Stanford University, published in the science journal Nature, estimated that the cost of carbon was actually $220 per ton, far above the government’s official estimate.

Mr. Greenstone, in a recent interview, defended the government’s number as a result of a technocratic process that was not influenced by political pressures.

“Our job as faceless bureaucrats sitting in windowless rooms was not to do science but to summarize the frontier of science,” he said. “ And I feel that we were faithful to that.”

The Room Where It Happens

By the fall of 2011, after a summer standoff between the two political parties nearly caused a government shutdown, it was clear to Mr. Obama that little hope remained for moving his agenda forward in a Congress controlled by Republicans.

Speaking in Las Vegas that October, Mr. Obama expressed disdain for “an increasingly dysfunctional Congress” and pledged: “Where they won’t act, I will.”

That sentiment kicked off a slow-moving realignment as White House officials held a series of strategy meetings that fall in the Roosevelt Room, first with Mr. Obama on Saturdays and later with agency and policy experts, usually on Tuesdays and Fridays. Led by Ms. DeParle, who had become deputy chief of staff, and Dan Pfeiffer, the communications director, they asked: What can we do without Congress?

“It’s certainly true that we learned by about the third year that the answer to every challenge isn’t going to be legislative,” said Cecilia Muñoz, now director of Mr. Obama’s Domestic Policy Council.

The pace of regulation stalled somewhat in 2012, amid political concerns about announcing sweeping new regulations during the campaign. In 2013, Mr. Obama’s team briefly hoped his victory would lead to legislative progress, but Republicans blocked gun control measures and an immigration overhaul, and partisan gridlock shut the government down for 15 days that October.

In early 2014, the moment was finally ripe. Mr. Obama recruited John D. Podesta, then the head of the Center for American Progress, a liberal research and policy institution, to be his counselor in the White House

“The weight, if you will, changed with a very recalcitrant Republican House, and with both the House and the Senate being part of the ‘Nyet!’ caucus,” Mr. Podesta said. “It meant that you had to be seriously concerned with trying to make change happen with the tools that you had available.”

A Year of Action

In January 2014 a frustrated president stood before Congress and declared “a year of action” — with or without the help of the Republicans arrayed before him.

“Whenever I can take steps without legislation to expand opportunity for more American families, that’s what I’m going to do,” Mr. Obama said in his State of the Union address.

Mr. Obama announced an executive order raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour for several hundred thousand cooks, janitors and other federal contract workers. In subsequent orders, each resulting in a new regulation, the president required contractors to let their workers take paid sick days and banned discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender workers. He also increased workplace protections for all workers at businesses that held federal contracts — an umbrella covering roughly 29 million workers.

“What the president was ultimately doing was holding up the United States government as a model employer,” said Joseph Geevarghese, director of Good Jobs Nation, a union-backed advocacy group that pressed the administration to embrace its regulatory power. “And it created a ripple effect. Within months of the president acting you had private C.E.O.s — Ikea, Gap, Disney, airlines — saying they too were going to boost minimum pay.”

The new regulations again required the White House to broaden its assessment of regulatory benefits. During Mr. Obama’s first term, administration officials told Mr. Geevarghese and other activists that the government did not have the power to make such changes. But after Mr. Obama’s re-election, they found a way: White House lawyers concluded that the president could impose requirements on contractors in the interest of taxpayers.

Betsey Stevenson, a member of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, took the lead in building a case that contractors who paid higher wages would attract and retain better workers, increasing their productivity.

The theory holds, for example, that if the lunch lines at a federal office building moved a little more quickly because of more competent, motivated cafeteria workers, every employee in those lines would save a few minutes a day and have more time to work, thus increasing productivity.

The idea has its roots in work by George Akerlof, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, and his wife, Janet Yellen, now chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, who decided in the early 1980s to pay their babysitter above-market wages as motivation.

With the president’s blessing, the E.P.A. also became more aggressive. The agency asserted federal authority to protect thousands of waterways and wetlands, proposed to cap carbon emissions at new and existing power plants, raised emissions standards for trucks and airplanes, and called for new limits on methane, mercury and ozone.

“He has been much more ambitious and aggressive on environmental regulation than any other president we’ve had,” said Jeffrey Holmstead, a lawyer pursuing legal challenges to some of Mr. Obama’s signature environmental rules.

Courts have now temporarily blocked the administration’s water rules and delayed the power plant limits on carbon dioxide emissions. The next administration will also have considerable leeway to determine how quickly new rules are carried out, and how strictly enforced.

The Next White House

Every president promises to prune the federal rule book.

Mr. Obama has tried to formalize the process for reviewing existing regulations, and the two candidates vying to take his place, Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump, have nodded at the need to ease the burdens of regulation.

But the scope of federal regulation has continued to grow, and the trend is likely to continue. Presidents, both Democratic and Republican, have asserted greater power in recent decades to dictate the shape of regulations, while Congress has become less specific in its instructions.

“We live in an era of presidential administration,” Elena Kagan, a Harvard law professor since appointed by Mr. Obama to the Supreme Court, wrote in a 2001 paper that reviewed the expansion of the regulatory state.

Both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump would most likely face significant congressional opposition to their major campaign promises. To sidestep Congress, they now have the legacy of Mr. Obama. Mr. Podesta, now Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman, said the appeal of taking action without Congress is hard to resist.

“You come in with a strategy of going to the Hill, certainly where you can find some cooperation,” Mr. Podesta said. But when that fails, writing regulations “is a way to get much more substantial throw-weight behind solving the problem.”

Correction: Aug. 15, 2016

An earlier version of this article misstated the role of Michael Greenstone on the Council of Economic Advisers. He was its first chief economist under President Obama, not its first head.

http://www...ama-era-legacy-regulation.html
jergul
large member
Sat Jun 27 10:56:14
Ruggy
Still chickenshit stuff based on existing legislation.
Rugian
Member
Sat Jun 27 10:57:19
You're an idiot.
Rugian
Member
Sat Jun 27 11:01:05
I swear half the people on here have the memories of goldfish. We had Democratic candidates openly talking about Day 1 executive actions they would take. They were not minor "chickenshit" by any means of the imagination.

A Biden presidency would he a "unity government" only in the sense that progressives and moderate Democrats would be working together. There is nothing - zero - that would make it palatable to conservative voters.
jergul
large member
Sat Jun 27 11:08:21
Ruggy
Tweaking regulations are by definition chickenshit. A president can do a lot abroad (our chosen tyrant for 4 years) where executive orders actually have heavy weight.

Trump's election proves that absolutely anything is palatable to conservative voters.

The GOP has a pretty stark choice. Either re-invent itself, or wait in the sidelines as Trump immediately begins his 2024 relelection campaign.

Fact is. the southern strategy has played itself out. The GOP can count on conservative voters no matter what, so may as well make a proper play for independents and minorities.

Not only is it the tactical thing to do, it is also the right thing to do.
Rugian
Member
Sat Jun 27 11:09:37
You think things like Daca are chickenshit? Lmao. What *isnt* chickenshit in your mind, short of abolishing the entire American government altogether?
Habebe
Member
Sat Jun 27 11:14:49
Is Biden running on anything other than he is not Trump?

Tbh, My day to day life wont be effected either way very much.But yeah, Id prefer Trump.
tumbleweed
the wanderer
Sat Jun 27 11:56:10
Is Trump running on anything other than he is not Biden?

(& being 'not Trump' is a HUGE selling point for normal-thinking people)
Habebe
Member
Sat Jun 27 12:13:07
Tw, Trump is running on being Trump, a rather unique individual.

Seriously what is he running on? Maybe healthcare?
jergul
large member
Sat Jun 27 12:52:48
Ruggy
DACA is chickenshit. 640 000 people.

You could almost forgive Trump for half-assed trying to revoke it. Thats how chickenshit daca is.

Right up there with 6 miles of new border wall.
jergul
large member
Sat Jun 27 12:54:39
So Trump is running on being trump and Biden is running on not being Trump.

Mkay. That about covers all of the options.
Rugian
Member
Sat Jun 27 13:31:02
640,000 is chickenshit? Rofl. Okay Wiggins, whatever you say.
jergul
large member
Sat Jun 27 13:41:11
Ruggy
What % is 640000 of your current number of unemployed?

Chickenshit.
Rugian
Member
Sat Jun 27 13:56:44
jergul

640,000 is a pretty significantly significant number. Far higher than the 10,000 or so deaths per year that your side routinely uses to write off the Second Amendment as some existential evil.
tumbleweed
the wanderer
Sat Jun 27 14:12:36
you know Trump supports DACA, right?

(he even claimed all R's do)
Rugian
Member
Sat Jun 27 14:15:26
I know that Trump has advocated for something akin to daca THROUGH LEGISLATION.

Beyond that, no. I have no idea what you're talking about.
Habebe
Member
Sat Jun 27 14:15:53
http://www...views-on-the-issues/joe-biden/


Well actually he ismt half bad.

I like the ending cash bail and private jails.

A nationwide gun registry?! Lets be honest and just admit he want to take peoples guns.

Meh , ther thsm bejmg wraker on China I could be ok with a Biden presidency under these terms.
Habebe
Member
Sat Jun 27 14:18:02
Except him being weaker on China* Id be ok with a Biden presidency.
Habebe
Member
Sat Jun 27 14:24:33
Rural broadband-Both support, in reality Elon Musk has and will end up doing more.
tumbleweed
the wanderer
Sat Jun 27 14:30:06
Trump is not strong on China...

Trump is a lil child w/ a one-track mind wanting a trade deal badly & will rollover & do whatever they want to get just a promise of one that they won't even stick to

he just wants the press reports more than the actual deal (just like w/ North Korea... or w/ Ukraine announcing investigations rather than them turning anything up... or basically anything ever)
Habebe
Member
Sat Jun 27 15:40:39
He definitley has hurt there pocketbook and reach.

Sanctioning Huawei and getting them partly kicked put of many allies nations.

He has levied more sanctions on companies.

These have had tangible economic impacts.

He has helped the current anti China sentiment worldwide.

Even helping to pass bipaetisan legislation in support.of HK. Which Biden likley would jabe as well though.
kargen
Member
Sat Jun 27 21:58:50
DACA was poorly designed and needs a fix one way or the other. The people that qualify for DACA status have to reapply every year. It costs almost $500 for the application fee. The judge can decide to revoke their status and send them home. This fear of a judge sending them home has a lot of people eligible for DACA deciding not to go through the process.
The program has raised wages and improved living conditions for those that are accepted so that is a positive. The problem is the uncertainty.
I think we should use the qualification process that was in place before President Obama tried to make changes and if they qualify put them on track to becoming citizens. Set a date the program will end far enough out all the applicants can be properly screened then end the program. The intent was good but the program was designed with major flaws.
Dukhat
Member
Sat Jun 27 22:07:43
Trump's approaching 40-60 Approval/Disapproval rating.

Texas and Georgia will flip at this rate. Too bad it took hundreds of thousands of Americans dying and a depression to knock off this human piece of shit.
jergul
large member
Sun Jun 28 17:10:43
http://www.270towin.com/maps/biden-trump-polling-map

Electorate spread if current polling is the end result in November.

301 Democrat
113 Republican
123 To close to call
270 needed to win


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