Senate The US Politics discussion

They did. It's literally in Federalist 68:

The Founding Fathers absolutely feared someone like, at the time, England would get a friend of theirs as president and they'd simply be reabsorbed as a part of England.

So why is it suddenly ok with Russia?

The Electoral College was conceived as the ultimate check against the wrong person being president. In our 200+ year history it has never been as needed as now. And this isn't hyperbole with Trump.

 

The RNC had there chance at the convention to say no you will not be our nominee, I doubt Electors who are mostly Republican will not cast there vote for him. we can only be so lucky...

 

John Bolton was just picked to be the #2 at the State Department, according to reports.

And the congresswoman who wants to sell our public lands for profit was picked to be Interior Secretary (which oversees public lands).

 

My favorite part of the CIA assessment leak:

Huh... that's a coincidence!

 

Not sure about that.

Nixon sabotaging the 68 peace talks got people killed. Trump is corrupt, but we haven't reached a life/death moment with him yet.

 

Trump-branded projects in the Arabian peninsula, for which he is getting paid, have absolutely killed workers. Not to mention most of the work is done by slave labor. Vice had an investigative report about this that was good. Of course, this didn't get picked up by other media, because who cares if brown slaves are killed?

 

The U.S. government has exchanged and sold parcels of land, either through the BLM or other agencies, for years to private corporate interests for mineral extraction or housing development or states for development and mineral extraction so you will have to be more specific about how this pick is going to change what is fairly common practice.

 

There's two schools of thought.

1. Trump is that stupid that he doesn't know and is being played a fool by Putin, which is his specialty. Hence his team's efforts to deny this. Made worse by Sean Spicer saying it's not true and that it only an attempt to de-legitimize the election results.

2. Trump isn't that stupid, which is why he said that Russia should find the e-mails. Which was code for, "Help me".

Doubtful. They'll go along with Trump because they don't want to be the first to buck the trend of voting against the declared winner in such a way. Even if the thirty six don't do it, I would assume the House would just take over and put Trump into place.

 

I'm sure climate change denial as the default position of the US government won't kill anyone or anything...

 

darth-sinister
This whole gambit of defecting electors is forgetting the end game: it goes to the House. Of course, there are people who thinks that would somehow be a victory. I think it would be a pyrric victory. The sooner they move beyond this election and work towards building an actual national party, the better positioned they will be to actually effectively oppose the GOP. But it is now a local and state party in a shambles and severely weakened nationally at the worst level in generations. It really isn't even a national party right now. What happens in the next two to four years is pivotal. This would simply defer the self reckoning that must occur for the party.

 

I agree.

Russia wins either way if Trump takes the oath of office or if electors deflect. Their goal is to delegitimize American democracy. D's need to swallow this one and focus on 2018, they have a real chance of making in-roads in 2018 in the gubernatorial races and even the senate races(poor map doesn't mean much if Trump's approval ratings are in the tank).

 

Assuming the House gets to choose between Kasich or Trump, do you really think they will willingly choose Trump?


Let me be clear: I know it won't happen. But in the hypothetical sense, if it did, my feeling is Kasich is someone they can still get what they want from without being destroyed in the process by Trump. Still bad for Democrats and progressives, but less nuclear world war end of the world scenario.

 

I know, but she's been particularly vocal about it, trying to sponsor bills to sell off huge chunks (literally millions of acres) of public lands, wanting oil drilling in the Arctic, and a bill to make it harder to declare a national monument.
http://scorecard.lcv.org/moc/cathy-mcmorris-rodgers

 

They basically have to.

 

Either way it looks bad, Trump Is hiring crooks to be in his cabinet, He Is hiring crooks to run the country, and If middle class Americans who voted for Trump think these Elite Rich guys are looking out for our best interests then they are mistaken.

Hillary might have been rich herself but she didn't flaunt it, and She wouldn't give tax breaks to the super rich and Tax hikes for the middle class, that is exactly what Trump plans on doing and so was Romney had he beaten Obama. most Americans are middle class not supper rich so I don't get why anyone would want this. Hillary also wouldn't have wanted a cabinet of all rich CEO's who are so out of touch with the average American It Is really scary and unfortunate.

 

And if/when the ACA is dismantled? Medicare?

 

Lowering the tax burden will leave everyone with more net income in the short term. But won't that sudden hike in purchasing power just lead to an accompanying inflation in the medium term?

I.e. what I'm asking is, if you think tax cuts to the middle class will make middle class households' lives easier financially, are you deluding yourself? I'm going by the assumption that the largest population group is middle class, but maybe the largest group is actually working class. Or are they about the same number of people?

This is a genuine question, by the way, not rhetorical.

 

Frankly, it's unlikely to do anything at all. Imagine we reduce everyone's net tax burden by 1%. If the average worker makes about $50k salary, that's an increase in his check of only $41.67 per month. That's not even an extra trip to grocery store. How does that meaningfully affect his standard of living? That's going to unlock some explosion of untapped growth? Many people wouldn't even notice.

 

If the Russians did indeed also hack the RNC (anyone have legit evidence on this), then that too would be part of the plan for Putin. Not only was he instrumental in getting Trump elected, something we already know... But it would mean that he now has blackmail over the Republicans as well.

 

Well, I must confess that after writing it, it occurred to me that I was writing it with a Norwegian context in mind. As you know, we have a heavier tax burden here in exchange for broader government services. Our rightest-most party in parliament argues in favour of privatisation of a number of these services in exchange for lowering taxes. What I'm wondering is whether the value of the tax break will be felt consistently over time, and yield as much value over time as paying in to those services would have yielded.