Donald Trump running for President.

[Hype]

Bernie's pretty progressive, and doesn't shy away from the term 'democratic socialist', but by Canadian or rest-of-the-world standards, he's mostly centre-left. I struggle to understand why people who aren't billionaires in the United States are supportive of policies that only help the rich (and against policies that wouldn't harm anyone but would help the vast majority). Is Reagan's idiotic legacy really that powerful?

[mockbee]

Bernie's pretty progressive, and doesn't shy away from the term 'democratic socialist', but by Canadian or rest-of-the-world standards, he's mostly centre-left. I struggle to understand why people who aren't billionaires in the United States are supportive of policies that only help the rich (and against policies that wouldn't harm anyone but would help the vast majority). Is Reagan's idiotic legacy really that powerful?

If you pointed to Reagan's policies and actions as President to today's Republicans, he would be considered an out of touch liberal. We are far gone.

[Pandemonium]

It's a totally feasible policy, and it has been done in other places and other times with no problems. The only thing that makes it difficult is stubborn ideology and lack of political will (probably because voters like you believe without evidence that progressive policies are "pipe dreams", even when they're perfectly reasonable.)

That's a typically broad statement. Perhaps you can enlighten a "voter like (me)" how subsidizing the massive US college system via corporate taxes translates to anything similar being done in the past on anything remotely close to the same scale and the attendant hurdles. Surely you can't compare smaller countries like Norway and Brazil (who have certain strings attached to earning degrees) who offer basically "free" tuition? And what would keep foreign graduates seeing this great deal who would flood the education system even moreso then today from returning to their respective countries and working for foreign employers?

[Pandemonium]

Bernie's pretty progressive, and doesn't shy away from the term 'democratic socialist', but by Canadian or rest-of-the-world standards, he's mostly centre-left. I struggle to understand why people who aren't billionaires in the United States are supportive of policies that only help the rich (and against policies that wouldn't harm anyone but would help the vast majority). Is Reagan's idiotic legacy really that powerful?

If you pointed to Reagan's policies and actions as President to today's Republicans, he would be considered an out of touch liberal. We are far gone.

Reagan had his hard right leanings. His willful ignorance of the AIDS epidemic in the 80's as a "homosexual/drug user problem" is one example.

[mockbee]

Bernie's pretty progressive, and doesn't shy away from the term 'democratic socialist', but by Canadian or rest-of-the-world standards, he's mostly centre-left. I struggle to understand why people who aren't billionaires in the United States are supportive of policies that only help the rich (and against policies that wouldn't harm anyone but would help the vast majority). Is Reagan's idiotic legacy really that powerful?

If you pointed to Reagan's policies and actions as President to today's Republicans, he would be considered an out of touch liberal. We are far gone.

Reagan had his hard right leanings. His willful ignorance of the AIDS epidemic in the 80's as a "homosexual/drug user problem" is one example.

Oh, don't get me wrong, Reagan was a complete right wing guy on all issues. Even foreign policy was wonky with star wars and Iran-Contra and the massive military industrial complex spending, but somehow he did manage to break up the Soviet Union, through diplomacy, a bad word with today's republicans, and he raised taxes, another huge no-no, to partially offset his massive deficit spending.

[Hype]

It's a totally feasible policy, and it has been done in other places and other times with no problems. The only thing that makes it difficult is stubborn ideology and lack of political will (probably because voters like you believe without evidence that progressive policies are "pipe dreams", even when they're perfectly reasonable.)

That's a typically broad statement. Perhaps you can enlighten a "voter like (me)" how subsidizing the massive US college system via corporate taxes translates to anything similar being done in the past on anything remotely close to the same scale and the attendant hurdles. Surely you can't compare smaller countries like Norway and Brazil (who have certain strings attached to earning degrees) who offer basically "free" tuition? And what would keep foreign graduates seeing this great deal who would flood the education system even moreso then today from returning to their respective countries and working for foreign employers?

Tuition-free education at (already) public institutions in the US would almost certainly ONLY apply to citizens. In Canada, all universities are "public", though they still charge tuition. But tuition for international students is considerably higher. Some federal grant money is also only accessible to citizens. This is a huge problem for foreign students who are trying to pursue graduate work, as they need to either be independently wealthy or find private scholarships, which eats a huge amount of time and energy. It's a double-edged sword: maybe we want to avoid people getting an education here and then leaving, but if we don't attract ANYONE, we're ensuring that many smart people go elsewhere and maybe never come here.

You've also jumped to conclusions about how difficult it would be to pay for something like this, and how feasibility would be affected by scope. It's not just small Scandinavian countries, but also GERMANY, which has 80 million people.

Here's the actual plan: http://www.sanders.senate.gov/download/ ... nline=file

Here's one of the key claims (not the only point, since you have to take into account the other restrictions on the use of federal funds -- no administrator salaries, no stadiums, etc):

Fully Paid for by Imposing a Robin Hood Tax on Wall Street. This legislation is offset by
imposing a Wall Street speculation fee on investment houses, hedge funds, and other speculators of
0.5% on stock trades (50 cents for every $100 worth of stock), a 0.1% fee on bonds, and a 0.005%
fee on derivatives. It has been estimated that this provision could raise hundreds of billions a year
which could be used not only to make tuition free at public colleges and universities in this country,
it could also be used to create millions of jobs and rebuild the middle class of this country

How does the math work? Well,

This legislation
would provide $47 billion per year to states to eliminate undergraduate tuition and fees at public
colleges and universities.
Today, total tuition at public colleges and universities amounts to about $70 billion per year. Under
the College for All Act, the federal government would cover 67% of this cost, while the states would
be responsible for the remaining 33% of the cost.

So what's being proposed is that the feds spend 67% of $70 billion a year on this project. This is extremely simple math: $46.9 billion. See the first figure.

$46.9 billion dollars is peanuts. Okay, it's slightly more than peanuts (Americans spend $800 million a year just on peanut butter; I couldn't find clear numbers for all peanut products).

There are some strong objections to Sanders' legislation, and his viewpoint, on places like Forbes and even Daily Kos (a liberal rag), but they seem to be intentionally assuming that the "robin hood tax" (excise tax on transactions) would NEED to generate the full amount. This isn't the way government spending works. Specific tax revenues needn't be spent on specific expenditures. $47 billion dollars is such a small figure in the scheme of the overall budget that there's really no dire need to go looking for a new tax. It's literally 1% of the 2016 US Budget, for a program that would create MASSIVE social changes and a huge wave of productivity and debt-avoidance. The focus on whether or not some tax or other will "pay for it" is a red herring, albeit one that Sanders appears to have brought on himself. I suspect he fully understands that individual taxes aren't "paying" for specific programs, but put it that way to try to give a simple answer to the dumb question: "How will we pay for that?!"

I'd have to spend more time than I have doing some number crunching to give a definitive answer, but I suspect cutting the Pell Grant program would provide significant wiggle room here.

[Matz]

Bush is still the danish bookmakers favorite on the republican side

[Pandemonium]

You've also jumped to conclusions about how difficult it would be to pay for something like this, and how feasibility would be affected by scope. It's not just small Scandinavian countries, but also GERMANY, which has 80 million people.

We have way over 300 million in this country. Germany's higher education system is radically different than the US. There's far more students per class, you have to know what degree you're going for when you enter, facilities and courses are infinitely more streamlined.... you go to learn a trade or profession from day one, not explore the young adult lifestyle and eventually decide after a year or two what you wanna do with your life.

To come anywhere close to what Germany offers, the entire concept of the US college experience would need a drastic reworking from the ground up before even approaching the thought of a fully subsidized college tuition on the scale of this country. Think about it - books, materials, housing, class pricing, staff salaries, extra-curricular activities (reform college sports?!?). IMO, a relatively easy, good place to start fixing the system is reducing student loan interest rates to near zero, including retroactively. That's the immediate problem. Reform the education system costs is next. Fully subsidizing tuition in whatever fashion once costs are down is third.

[Hype]

I don't have time or energy to keep pushing this... but as someone who has been in post-secondary education for over a decade, and will have three degrees, and have spent time at multiple Canadian and American institutions (I was at the University of Wisconsin while Walker was fucking it over and watched profs get worried and one leave)... You're simply mistaken about the difficulty of offering tuition-free education to undergraduates, and it's not a matter of radically different systems in Germany vs. the United States, or of the size difference. The idea that 320 million people is sufficiently different from 80 million... is a joke. There are 5,000+ universities and colleges in the United States. Not all of them are public. But for the public ones to offer tuition wavers, it's a simple procedural matter. You copy the system they ALREADY USE for graduate degrees. Most graduate programs (aside from professional degrees like MBAs) offer funding through grants, teaching assistantships or fellowships, and tuition wavers. At Yale (a private institution), for example, a graduate student in Philosophy might receive funding of $26,000 a year, and have their tuition waved. It's a checkbox in a database and a matter of budget-organization. Why are you even talking about books or sports or housing? These things can remain exactly as they are. Tuition doesn't pay for them.

By the way, student loan interest rates are already near zero for many people. Mine, for example, are sitting at prime+1 (or 3.5% or so...). Sure, it might help a bit to drop that to 1%, or .75% or whatever. But it doesn't solve the problem of needing to have CREDIT in the first place to receive a bank loan to be able to go to school to a level that would allow a comfortable living.

This isn't 1970. The loans aren't for $4,000. They're 20, 30, 40, 100 thousand dollars. They're literal mortgages on people's futures. There's no reason to capitalize on this.

[Angry Canine]

I struggle to understand why people who aren't billionaires in the United States are supportive of policies that only help the rich (and against policies that wouldn't harm anyone but would help the vast majority). Is Reagan's idiotic legacy really that powerful?

Because they are kept convinced that they will win the lottery, or become a reality TV star, or win some massive lawsuit settlement, and they don't want to pay taxes on it, when "they finally get rich." And then there are the religious nuts that only care that abortion be made illegal again, and that they can discriminate against gays, Muslims and immigrants, and vote on that alone.

[Artemis]

[perkana]

Funny Or Die Presents Donald Trump's The Art Of The Deal: The Movie

With Johnny Depp, Ron Howard, Alfred Molina, Robert Morse, Patton Oswalt, Jack McBrayer, Michaela Watkins, Henry Winkler, Stephen Merchant, Christopher Lloyd, Kristen Schaal, Andy Richter, Paul Scheer, Rob Huebel, Tymberlee Hill, Alf, Jordan Coleman, Joe Nuñez, Jeremy Konner, Kenny Loggins, Funny Or Die, more »
Donald Trump has it all. Money, power, respect, and an Eastern European bride. But all his success didn’t come for nothing. First, he inherited millions of dollars from his rich father, then he grabbed New York City by the balls. Now you can learn the art of negotiation, real estate, and high-quality brass in this illuminating made-for-TV special feature, Funny Or Die Presents Donald Trump’s The Art Of The Deal: The Movie.
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/ad3808 ... deal-movie

[mockbee]

I have come to the conclusion that America wants an Authoritarian Socialist.

(a la South America)

We will get Clinton this time, but the next time around we'll find somebody that is half Bernie, and half Trump.





https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism ... st_century

Authoritarianism[edit]

Critics claim that democratic socialism in Latin America acts as a façade for authoritarianism. The charisma of figures like Hugo Chávez and mottoes like "Country, Socialism, or Death!" have drawn comparisons to the Latin American dictators and caudillos of the past.[8] According to Steven Levitsky of Harvard University, "Only under the dictatorships of the past ... were presidents reelected for life", with Levitsky further stating that while Latin America experienced democracy, citizens opposed "indefinite reelection, because of the dictatorships of the past".[9] Levitsky then noted that "In Nicaragua, Venezuela and Ecuador, reelection is associated with the same problems of 100 years ago".[9] The Washington Post also stated in 2014 "Bolivia’s Evo Morales, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez ... used the ballot box to weaken or eliminate term limits".[10] In 2015, The Economist stated that the "bolivarian revolution" in Venezuela was devolving from authoritatianism to dictatorship; opposition politicians are jailed for plotting to undermine the government, violence is widespread, and opposition media are shut down.[11]

Western media coverage of Chávez and other Latin American leaders from the 21st century socialist movement has been criticized as unfair by their supporters and leftist media critics.[12][13][14]

[Artemis]

Donald Trump vs The Pope.

[mockbee]

If Trump sails through Super Tuesday (March 1) with victories (likely) after saying George W was a failure, didn't keep us safe and that it was a mistake going to Iraq.....I am going to venture to say he will more than likely be the republican nominee and that I would NOT be surprised if he is subsequently elected president.

That's a game changer.

Bernie currently polls much better vs Trump than Clinton.

[Pandemonium]

It's almost impossible to comprehend Trump crushed the Bush dynasty tonight and will almost certainly be the Republican nomination for POTUS.

[Bandit72]

[SR]

Only slavery and the Japanese internment are more horrifying than this display of support.

I am more ashamed now than ever to be an American.

[Hype]

To be perfectly honest, Trump still feels like a distraction. It's so easy to call out his open quasi-fascism and idiotic statements. But it's not like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio aren't also saying similar things. That's not to say that it wouldn't be disastrous if Trump were elected Prez, but I'm not convinced that it wouldn't be equally bad with pretty much any of the remaining Republican candidates. The Tea Party movement broke that party. It's the Palestine of political parties -- all the educated, reasonable, well-meaning people who could actually make a difference in the leadership left a long time ago, and the innocent ones that are left are being stomped on by radical idiots.

[mockbee]

You're right that all three republican candidates are equally bad in their own way. I'm not worried about Cruz, he can't even win the evangelical vote, it's already going to Trump, and the establishment can't stand him, he's done. But I don't see the math working for Rubio, people like winners and I don't even see him winning a state on Super Tuesday. That's an impossible hole.

The Republican Party is broken. And the only way I see Trump not being the nominee is with a brokered convention where the elites band together and nominate Rubio. Get your popcorn ready for the end of July. That would be a shitstorm I'd love to see.


However, the Democrats are verging on being broken as well. Sure, people will generally band behind Hillary, but not much excitement there.

Trump is going full populist, he has said raise taxes on the rich, Bush sucked, health care mandate is okay, war was a sham, etc, etc and still yields the most support from Republicans. All he needs to do is get nominated then promise to flip the table on all of Washington, no one is safe and maybe add in $500 for every man, woman and child and you have a full on Populist movement making no distinctions between Republican or Democrats.

Who knows who's out there, maybe they'd eat it up ........

But, yeah, I don't see Trump making a dent in the minority vote and many staunch republicans have stated they would vote for Hillary over Trump. So he is a distraction, but, who would have imagined that Trump could get this far.

US politics are broken and it's getting worse.

Trump will be the Republican nominee based on popular support, unless he is excluded by the party elites.

[Artemis]

I think Trump will get the nomination. I think Ted Cruz is scarier than Trump, and Rubio is like a pesky little dog that is too small to play in the yard with the big dogs. As scary Trump comes across and the people he attracts, I don't think he will do any of the things he says he's going to do. The wall will never be built, nor will all muslims be banned. I think he just says whatever he thinks will get him attention and votes. Also, his simple message of making America great again seems to be sticking with people. Reminds me of the former mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford, who kept repeating that he will stop the gravy train. Anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens. I never thought Trump would get this far either.

[mockbee]

get ready for trump people.


we are fucked.

[nausearockpig]

get ready for trump people.


we are fucked.

If trump gets in, can you guys seal yourselves off from the rest of us for a few years? I'm talking physically, economically, electronically.... You know, COMPLETELY?

[kv]

Wtf is wrong with you people? he isn't winning... Running yes..nom sure..winning? fuck no

[mockbee]

Repubs/independents don't have a monopoly on stupid.

The majority of americans are not interested in issues.

We are the least politically informed industrial nation, next to Italy.

Things are getting weird.....