Election 2016

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Fri Aug 28, 2015 4:54 am

Free frogurt.

The election is a long way off, and I have already ceased to care about GOP shenanigans. I almost think they planned it that way. Trump spouting economic populism is lipstick on a pig. I've already spent all my fucks and we're not at the second of umpteen GOP debates yet, much less the convention. Right now the question is who will drop out, and that is only a matter of money...and there's a lot of money yet at play. The clown car can milk billionaires for weeks and months yet, and nothing they say really seems to have much of an impact, because the amount of bullshit overwhelms any specific soundbite. Unless we have a rape-a-goat moment, everybody is going to stay in the campaign exactly as long as they can afford to. And that includes Trump.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Aug 30, 2015 5:26 am

MGuy wrote: Not because I believe Trump isn't an absolute scumbag but because he is bringing up "we should up taxes on the rich!" to a party that has been very pointedly trying to say that they shouldn't. IF he can make it a big enough deal that their constituency starts demanding just that it'll be win FUCKING win right?

I don't think Trump has any intention on fulfilling any of his non-insane promises. Even if he is absolutely sincere, there's the fact that there's no way in hell the GOP Congressmen will vote for higher taxes on the rich. Even if Trump brought in a new batch of Tea People to collect the scalps of everyone in said Congress.

The danger is that I also think that he's willing to go all-in on white supremacy. And unlike regulating Wall Street or raising taxes on the wealthy, I could see the GOP deciding to support a new round of American fascism. I mean, shit, they do have all three branches of government and they managed to win despite demographic headwinds, so why not go all-in?

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sun Aug 30, 2015 5:48 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Even if he is absolutely sincere, there's the fact that there's no way in hell the GOP Congressmen will vote for higher taxes on the rich. Even if Trump brought in a new batch of Tea People to collect the scalps of everyone in said Congress.

Especially if he brings them in. They claimed TEA stood for Taxed Enough Already way back, no idea if that's still the case, but they are definitely "leave my personal money, which is all mine and I owe to nobody, alone! Also keep building roads, but only the ones I use."

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Sun Aug 30, 2015 9:22 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:
MGuy wrote: Not because I believe Trump isn't an absolute scumbag but because he is bringing up "we should up taxes on the rich!" to a party that has been very pointedly trying to say that they shouldn't. IF he can make it a big enough deal that their constituency starts demanding just that it'll be win FUCKING win right?
I don't think Trump has any intention on fulfilling any of his non-insane promises. Even if he is absolutely sincere, there's the fact that there's no way in hell the GOP Congressmen will vote for higher taxes on the rich. Even if Trump brought in a new batch of Tea People to collect the scalps of everyone in said Congress.

The danger is that I also think that he's willing to go all-in on white supremacy. And unlike regulating Wall Street or raising taxes on the wealthy, I could see the GOP deciding to support a new round of American fascism. I mean, shit, they do have all three branches of government and they managed to win despite demographic headwinds, so why not go all-in?

I don't believe that he'll come through, or even be close to elected. What I like is that he's planting the idea into their minds. I would like for the GOP's constituents to start ranting and raving about raising taxes on the rich.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Aug 30, 2015 2:48 pm

Who gives a fuck about planting the idea? The GOP base already wants lots of shit that the establishment has no wherewithal or intention of bringing forward. That might change in the future if economic progressivism takes root, but there's already a long list of stuff that the base cares more strongly about that they can't get enacted counter to the wishes of the establishment.

The base has won exactly two battles in the 21st century against the establishment since Reagan: scuttling immigration reform and derailing Bowles-Simpson. The latter of which was more the Tea People taking advantage of the crisis atmosphere in a delicate negotiation than any real organized strength.

Occluded Sun · Post by **Occluded Sun** » Mon Aug 31, 2015 1:03 am

In addition to raising taxes on the rich, can we cut out all the wastes of taxpayer money?

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Mon Aug 31, 2015 1:22 am

Occluded Sun wrote:In addition to raising taxes on the rich, can we cut out all the wastes of taxpayer money?

This is a bullshit statement.

For one, government spending is very efficient - even with the many apparently needless layers of bureaucracy. Those layers of bureaucracy aren't just there for show, they enforce processes like getting multiple bids on purchases, evaluating the total lifetime cost of a purchase (including disposal), etc. So even though it looks like the government pisses away vast amounts of money, if you compare them to major corporations or charities with huge administrative overheads, they are usually much more efficient per dollar spent.

Part of this is because it is not the goal of government agencies to achieve a profit. Processes are in place to control costs and the like, but our bosses don't get bonuses if they have a positive balance left in their budget at the end of the year, they get yelled at. Government agencies want to achieve their goals, first and foremost - and that is important, because they do things that support everybody.

Now, you could make the argument that there are plenty of pork-barrel projects that the government pisses money away on - but remember, government finances are not like state or household finances. The US controls its own money supply; it can't go bankrupt, and all the money it spends is money earned by the population. So even building a bridge to nowhere can be a positive economic activity as far as employing construction crews and cement makers and whatnot. Yes, it would be better if the end product had some tangible benefit to infrastructure, but even the most frivolous government expense tends to pay for somebody to eat.

You could also make the argument that the money is going for things you think are wasteful - military spending, healthcare, social security, education and arts grants, national parks - but those are all things that the United States kinda needs, and however you feel about one aspect of spending ("We spend more on military than education!" "Why the fuck are we giving money to liberal arts majors instead of making them go out and get real jobs?"), unless you have objective goals/arguments ("We could save $1 trillion over twenty years by making a smaller, non-nuclear aircraft carrier." "Art and cultural products are a major growth industry for the US, and we need to invest in our future, and the best way to do that is to encourage formal art education through grants.") then your argument is purely subjective. Also, like an asshole: everyone has one, it probably stinks, and only you and your intimate friends are concerned about it.

Which isn't to say that there isn't waste in government - there's waste in every human action and agency. But people assume there are vast savings to be had in reducing government waste, and that is both untrue and ignores the large multiplier government spending has on the economy. Sometimes being wasteful is a good thing, on the macro level.

Shady314 · Post by **Shady314** » Mon Aug 31, 2015 2:38 am

Ancient History wrote:Now, you could make the argument that there are plenty of pork-barrel projects that the government pisses money away on

They are also a miniscule amount of total spending and you would just end up arguing over which earmarks are actually bad. Bobby Jindal criticized spending money on volcano monitoring only to be viciously mocked because it turned out people want the government to watch volcanoes.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Mon Aug 31, 2015 3:59 am

Shady314 wrote:
Ancient History wrote:Now, you could make the argument that there are plenty of pork-barrel projects that the government pisses money away on
They are also a miniscule amount of total spending and you would just end up arguing over which earmarks are actually bad. Bobby Jindal criticized spending money on volcano monitoring only to be viciously mocked because it turned out people want the government to watch volcanoes.

Watching volcanos is actually kind of important for commercial aviation. It turns out, flying through clouds of volcanic ash is not good for jet engines.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Aug 31, 2015 8:54 pm

So hey. Willie Horton* 2.0 happened.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/d ... -attack-ad

A new Instagram video from GOP frontrunner Donald Trump posted Monday attempts to draw a connection between former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's "thoughts on illegal immigrants" and murders allegedly committed by undocumented immigrants in the U.S.

The short rehashes Bush's much-maligned "act of love" remark from April about undocumented immigrants entering the U.S. illegally as a means of providing for their children.

The ad cuts between Bush and mugshots of Francisco Sanchez, Santana Ganona, and Brian Omar Hyde, all of whom are undocumented immigrants linked to high profile murders in recent months.

"LOVE? FORGET LOVE [sic] IT'S TIME TO GET TOUGH!" the ad booms.

If the GOP establishment doesn't get their shit together right now and tear Trump down, then short of an implosion of the Democratic nominee campaign or Obama's administration then they're completely fucked in 2016. Hell, they might still be fucked even if Obama suffers a grievous economic setback or foreign policy debacle. They might still be fucked even if Trump does get taken down.

Has the party not internalized yet that A.) the GOP's record-high number of white voters is being driven by the Rockies and South, which are already heavily-GOP state and B.) Romney won over 60% of the white vote in 2012 and still lost?

* Willie Horton was a heavily racialized campaign ad ran in the US Presidential Election of 1988. Willie, a furloughed 'life without possibility for parole' prisoner by Mike Dukakis committed assault, robbery, and Precious White Woman rape was used to slam said candidate. You can watch it here if you're curious about race-baiting drivel.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Aug 31, 2015 10:00 pm

Ancient History wrote: The US controls its own money supply; it can't go bankrupt, and all the money it spends is money earned by the population.

That's very much not true. That little misstep has huge implications.

As of August 15, 1971 the United States' federal government is monetarily sovereign. It no longer has to collect taxes or borrow money in order to fund its expenditures. There are very good reasons to do those things still but if the United States never collected another dollar in tax or loans and cut spending so that it deficit-spends the same amount as it did while under the fiction of 'tax and spending', it could do so indefinitely.

Some people might say that the taxes 'pre-destroys' an amount of money such that the effect is the same... but the problem is that there's no clear relationship between the size of the economy, the amount of monetarily sovereign deficit spending, and inflation.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Mon Aug 31, 2015 11:27 pm

Well yes, some of the money the US spends goes to other countries, but usually to some benefit to those stateside. Money that the government pumps into the economy (like, for example, paying my salary) is then spent (probably within its borders, like for example buying books an comics on ebay), and that money is spent...and so on and so forth. There's a multiplier to government spending.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Tue Sep 01, 2015 12:08 am

I apologize, I misread your post. I thought by 'all the money it spends is earned by the population' you meant that it spends money from taxes and the taxes come from money earned by the population.

My mistake.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Tue Sep 01, 2015 12:43 am

Depending on how you read the economics, taxes at the national level - that is, federal taxes - act as a way to "destroy" money (or perhaps more accurately to remove it from circulation). This can fight inflation, maybe, by reducing the money supply, but that doesn't really apply when the interest rate is already near the zero lower bound. More realistically it helps to influence economic patterns of behavior - incentivizing or de-centivizing certain purchases or activities - and to redistribute wealth.

State and local taxes are a different beast, natch.

In other news, Kanye West claims he's running for president in 2020, and Scott Walker wants to build The Great Wall of Canada.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Tue Sep 01, 2015 1:00 am

Ancient History wrote:This can fight inflation, maybe, by reducing the money supply, but that doesn't really apply when the interest rate is already near the zero lower bound.

I don't follow.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Tue Sep 01, 2015 1:09 am

One of Krugman's favorite macroeconomic reminders. The basic idea that most people grok is that as the supply of money increases, the relative value of each piece of money decreases - hence, inflation. It was a particularly big problem back when we had precious metal coins, because importing massive amounts of precious metal - as Spain did when they mined a mountain of silver from the New World - can lead to rampant inflation.

But this sort of directly linear relationship is overly simplistic and not accurate in certain situations, particularly when the interest rate drops near zero (the aforementioned zero lower bound. When that happens, you can increase the money supply substantially - as the Fed has been doing with Quantitative Easing throughout this recession - without really budging the interest rate.

And this is in part why anybody with even a vaguely sound footing in macroeconomics - and I'm sure as hell no expert - is derisive of GOP politics that emphasize austerity measures, "trickle-down economics," and/or the reinstatement of the gold standard. Like this crap: http://www.alternet.org/economy/8-stupi ... ir-experts

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Tue Sep 01, 2015 1:30 am

Well, yes, but I don't see why the existence of the zero lower bound means that destroying the money supply through taxes doesn't mean curbing inflation (or creating deflation, but lol price stickiness).

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Tue Sep 01, 2015 1:54 am

When you're at the zero lower bound, a lot of the tools that would be used to affect inflation don't work. Printing more money doesn't really affect inflation, because you're at the zero lower bound; cutting taxes doesn't really do much, because there's too much money to begin with; taxing more usually just causes people to spend less*, so again, you're not seeing the movement of money that you want to escape the liquidity trap.

* Exception: taxing rich people and corporations can still work, because they tend to be the ones with large piles of money sitting around doing nothing, and they spend a smaller percentage of their income maintaining their basic necessities of life. But you'd still have to tax a lot to escape the liquidity trap, and I don't think taxing rich people alone is enough to cut it.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Thu Sep 03, 2015 10:35 pm

http://www.salon.com/2015/09/03/run_mit ... ica_needs/

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Sep 06, 2015 3:10 am

All right. I think that it's time to take Donald Trump a bit more seriously. Here's a scenario in which he would win the Presidency:

Trump wins all of Romney's states plus: Iowa, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio, and Michigan. I'd consider this scenario impossible for an establishment Republican like Jeb or Romney, but it's kind of difficult to gauge the impact of a white nationalist + economically liberal campaign on these states. These states don't have a large enough racial minority population to counter Trump, so it'd come down to just how large of an appeal that kind of campaign would have on whites.

I guess we'll see. Hillary and Obama had better not hope for any economic calamity or foreign policy calamity between now and 2016.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sun Sep 06, 2015 3:26 am

Lago, have you ever been right about anything in politics that wasn't already predicted by everyone else a year earlier?

Like, you are basically always wrong. It is kind of amazing.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Sep 06, 2015 3:55 am

How's this?

In other words, Donald Trump is going to be ascendant or at least remarkably resilient until a new culture warrior appears and/or Fox News goes all-in on painting him as a fake culture warrior. The problem is, of course, is that doing so is the equivalent of calling upon Mechagodzilla to take care of your King Kong problem.

A lot of pundits at the time were predicting that Trump was 'obviously' going to go down once silly season ended or the establishment regrouped or whatever the fuck. Considering that Trump has only gained strength since then, I think that my prediction has been vindicated for the time being. Granted, a lot can happen, but I think I predicted Trump's resiliency -- and what would needed to be done to take him down, which never ended up happening -- in a way that a lot of (though certainly not all) people didn't.

That said, what about my post did you find initially objectionable? That Trump isn't running a campaign of white nationalism + a surprising amount of economic liberalism? That Jeb or Romney 2016 couldn't win those states in 2016? That the racial minority population isn't enough in those states to punish a campaign of hardcore white nationalism? What?

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Tue Sep 08, 2015 10:09 pm

Scott Walker, Jeb! and most of the others are falling in the polls as Carson surges, and Trump continues to be an amazing human being.

https://www.yahoo.com/politics/trump-al ... 28576.html

Shrapnel · Post by **Shrapnel** » Wed Sep 09, 2015 2:19 pm

Holy Jesus fuck. Just when you think he can't get any lower, he goes there.

Also, excuse the possible ignorance, but why is there a ! after Jeb? I'm not totally hip on all the lingo.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Wed Sep 09, 2015 2:53 pm

That's his campaign logo. It is thoroughly mockable and has been and is thoroughly mocked.

Jeb! actually engaged in something indistinguishable from self-parody on the Late Show when he explained how the exclamation point "connotes excitement"... in a dreadfully non-excited sounding way.