3891 replies to this topic

[SportsGuy]

During the time period Republicans often fondly look back on, the government did subsidize college much more than it does now.

Good for them.

Different time now.

College is a privilege, not a right. That fact is lost on people.

[RShack]

Shh, don't let the Republicans know that most establishment Democrats aren't even that liberal.

And yes, a split could happen. A true multi-party (4+) system would be better anyway imo.

 

We'll never have more than 2 major parties... it's an accidental effect of the Constitution... to have more parties requires a parliamentary system... given how we do presidents, and how we have checks and balances, etc., there's no way that we can have more than 2... (AFAIK, the framers didn't realize they were doing this, it was mainly an accident, they weren't thinking about political parties... but it's still very real...)

 

The precedent we have for change in our political history is for the right-wing party is to die from self-inflicted wounds... it's already happened twice... both the Federalists and Whigs... meanwhile, the Democratic Party is the world's oldest political party...

 

IMO, the best thing that could happen is if the Republican Party self-destructs like it's predecessors did... like it's very much trying to do... after which, we'd see the Dem party splitting in two... and then we'd be back to a 2-party system, only with them both being uncrazy... one in the liberal Left-40's and one in the conservative Right-40's, which is what it takes for the country to work OK...

 

I think that would naturally occur... except that TV won't let it happen... they'll keep the existing 2 parties propped up for TV long after change would otherwise have occurred...

[Dupin]

During the time period Republicans often fondly look back on, the government did subsidize college much more than it does now.

 

I know you know this, but it must be said that it's the idea of that time period that they look back fondly on more than the reality.

[BSLChrisStoner]

One of the more interesting things I've seen in recent months was video of the 1980 GOP debates with Reagan and Bush Sr.

Both would be run out of the Republican party today.  In-fact, Hillary really isn't that far removed from either.

The Republican party has spent the better part of the last 3 decades running further to the right, and courting extremists.  Having Trump, and Cruz as the leaders is the result of that. 

 

Rob is right about why Trump has appeal to some. Might have gone to Wharton, and be a Billionaire... but he speaks in cliches and with a vitriol which some like.

 

Obama and now Hillary have been crushed from the far left for being centrists... or in Hillary's case maybe even center-right.

 

It really is a fascinating election.

 

As others have said, you have Hillary / Trump / Cruz with crazy unfavorable numbers.

 

 

Rob,  Trump gets killed ultimately because of the current population trends.... because he won't appeal to women... and because of the electoral college.... but do agree, he got out people that others haven't...   he also did well in states which had general primaries... where Democrats and Independents could vote...   if he gets out some Blue Democrats, wins some Independents, and the Republican party gets behind him....   maybe it's closer than I currently think.

 

It's been hilarious seeing the establishment Republicans try and line up behind Cruz....  another guy they all hate.

[mweb08]

During the time period Republicans often fondly look back on, the government did subsidize college much more than it does now.

Good for them.


Different time now.


College is a privilege, not a right. That fact is lost on people.

So basically you're ignoring what worked so well in this country?

And in the ways it is a different time, cheap college is even more important as America is falling behind in education and our level of inequality escalates to Gilded Age levels.

[mweb08]

During the time period Republicans often fondly look back on, the government did subsidize college much more than it does now.

 
I know you know this, but it must be said that it's the idea of that time period that they look back fondly on more than the reality.

True. You're talking about the much higher taxes right?

[Dupin]

One of the more interesting things I've seen in recent months was video of the 1980 GOP debates with Reagan and Bush Sr.

Both would be run out of the Republican party today.  In-fact, Hillary really isn't that far removed from either.

The Republican party has spent the better part of the last 3 decades running further to the right, and courting extremists.  Having Trump, and Cruz as the leaders is the result of that. 

 

Rob is right about why Trump has appeal to some. Might have gone to Wharton, and be a Billionaire... but he speaks in cliches and with a vitriol which some like.

 

Obama and now Hillary have been crushed from the far left for being centrists... or in Hillary's case maybe even center-right.

 

It really is a fascinating election.

 

As others have said, you have Hillary / Trump / Cruz with crazy unfavorable numbers.

 

 

Rob,  Trump gets killed ultimately because of the current population trends.... because he won't appeal to women... and because of the electoral college.... but do agree, he got out people that others haven't...   he also did well in states which had general primaries... where Democrats and Independents could vote...   if he gets out some Blue Democrats, wins some Independents, and the Republican party gets behind him....   maybe it's closer than I currently think.

 

It's been hilarious seeing the establishment Republicans try and line up behind Cruz....  another guy they all hate.

 

He is truly a candidate that represents drunk uncles and internet comment sections.

[mweb08]

One of the more interesting things I've seen in recent months was video of the 1980 GOP debates with Reagan and Bush Sr.


Both would be run out of the Republican party today.  In-fact, Hillary really isn't that far removed from either.


The Republican party has spent the better part of the last 3 decades running further to the right, and courting extremists.  Having Trump, and Cruz as the leaders is the result of that. 
 
Rob is right about why Trump has appeal to some. Might have gone to Wharton, and be a Billionaire... but he speaks in cliches and with a vitriol which some like.
 
Obama and now Hillary have been crushed from the far left for being centrists... or in Hillary's case maybe even center-right.

Many Republicans see an alternate reality.

[Dupin]

True. You're talking about the much higher taxes right?

 

Among other things.  One must not forget the racism, the legitimate threats of the Cold War, and the male chauvinism of the era.  Even among extremely nostalgic conservatives, I'd like to think the prevalent "women belong in the house" attitude of the era wouldn't have an overwhelming majority of support anymore.

[BSLChrisStoner]

How many years away are we from discussing full drug legalization?

 

My thought process on this for years has been....  90% of the violent crime in the country is tied to drugs. If you legalize everything, violent crime should be reduced.  (Nobody gets killed for a bottle of Jack.)

Also, by decriminalization of possession... we will incarcerate less people.  (Same for distribution... who is going to distribute if now legal?)

 

Of course you (the Gov't) would get the tax benefits.... which at the minimum imo would off-set any costs that arise from the need for more social programs, etc.  (and of course, by not paying the prison costs and for the ineffective war on drugs... there would be additional funds available there as well.)

 

Perhaps if heroin was available tomorrow at 7-11, we would find that a lot of people that previously did not take heroin would now do so... but I would be surprised.  Mainly because I think if you want to use heroin, meth, coke, etc now... you will find a way. Drugs are accessible. It's not lack of access which prevents usage imo.

 

I'm all about following Portugal's model, and I'm disappointed this isn't an issue that's apparently even worthy of the candidates to discuss (yes, I know pot continues to be a discussion point).

[RShack]

One of the more interesting things I've seen in recent months was video of the 1980 GOP debates with Regan and Bush Sr.

Both would be run out of the Republican party today.  In-fact, Hillary really isn't that far removed from either.

The Republican party has spent the better part of the last 3 decades running further to the right, and courting extremists.  Having Trump, and Cruz as the leaders is the result of that. 

 

This happened because Reagan took the Republican party to the Right of the Right-40 yard line, and into Corporatist territory... once you do that, it's hard to sell regular people on being a Republican unless you distract them away from economic issues by making a huge deal of emotion-triggering issues... so, that's what they did... they created a coalition of folks who have no real abiding commonalities except that they've been convinced that Democrats are bad... that's the main thing that has united religious Social Conservatives and traditional Fiscal Conservatives and big money Corporatists... they really have nothing else in common except for dissing the Dem's and idea of gov't...

 

This worked until the Dem's started also moving to the Right... which happened with Bill Clinton... he managed to talk like a liberal even though everything he did was implementing Republican policies... which is the big reason they hated him... once the Dem's adopted Republican policies, the Republicans had to move further to the Right because their unifying identity was not about being for anything, it was all about being against Dem's and against gov't... so they had to distance themselves from the very things they wanted, simply because the Dem's adopted those things...

 

Then with Obama it happened again... Obamacare is the Republican healthcare plan... it was the Republican answer to Hillarycare... it was devised by the Heritage Foundation... and it was implemented at the state level by a Republican governor... but Obama adopted it hook, line and sinker... and as soon as he did that, since the Republicans were committed to opposing whatever he wanted, they had to oppose their very own policy and move even further to the Right... which is how they wound up in fascist territory, because that's the only further-Right place remaining...

 

So, because of all that, we have Republicans acting like the John Birch Society... Democrats acting like Reagan Republicans... and nobody acting like Democrats... which is the essence of Bernie's point even though he didn't say it that way...

 

Meanwhile, the dang media keeps calling the Democrats "liberal" which they haven't been for decades on economic issues... and they keep calling Republicans "conservative" even though they quit honoring the central idea of conservatism with Reagan... *that* misrepresentation by the media is the Big Lie...  so, liberals vote Democratic and are PO'd because they get Republican policy from them...and conservatives vote Republican and are PO'd because they get radical policies from them...  when in reality, if you want conservative policy you'd vote Democrat and if you wanted liberal economic policy then you wouldn't vote at all because neither party is in favor of it...

[RShack]

So basically you're ignoring what worked so well in this country?

 

The great irony is that "sticking with what works" is the essential idea of being conservative... at least it was until "conservative" got twisted into meaning anti-gov't ...

[RShack]

True. You're talking about the much higher taxes right?

 

If you don't want bubbles and stock market crashes based on the flipping of iffy assets, then you need a MAX capital gains rate over 50%... how much over is matter of debate... but less than 50%, then flipping, bubbles, and crashes is what you get...

 

This happens because when the MAX rates are less than 50%, it encourages flipping... when the rates are higher, that discourages flipping and encourages long-term investment to delay the tax bite... 

 

It's only since low capital gains that Wall St has emphasized short-term performance instead of valuing companies that are solid long term... this is directly traceable to the tax code encouraging flipping instead of long-term investment... so, companies cut R&D to the bone and lay off employees when they don't want to, but they do it so they'll meet analysts' estimates and thereby avoid having their stock hammered... in other words, they cut important long-term things in order to meet very-short-term quarterly-profit demands from Wall St... which is crazy, but it's true anyway...

[RShack]

The main obstacle is the Fear Machine....

 

Both the guy who wrote the Declaration of Independence and the guy who was the primary author of the Constitution thought it was essential to have a free press to keep the citizens informed...  but what we have now is a press that's motivated to scare people, not inform them...  

 

So, what we have now is a citizenry that's increasingly scared of an ever-growing number of things...

[BSLMikeLowe]

Meanwhile, Oregon has added nearly $7 million to the state coffers from recreational pot taxes (and that's just from Jan-Feb).

 

http://www.oregonliv...million_in.html

 

Happy 4/20, dudes.

[BSLMikeLowe]

It's been hilarious seeing the establishment Republicans try and line up behind Cruz....  another guy they all hate.

 

It's pretty transparent, but Cruz is just a means to an end (brokered convention) and the big names that jumped on his bandwagon will jump off well before it pulls in to Cleveland. In fact, considering the demos of the remaining primary states, the anti-Trump crowd would probably be better served throwing their support behind Kasich right now.

[RShack]

The price of college is stupid but that doesn't mean it should be paid for by a group of people or that govt needs to step in. We need less govt, not more.

 

The entire reason college costs have gone up at normal colleges is because the gov't quit subsidizing them like they always did before... the only reason they were cheap before is because of how much they were subsidized, primarily by the states... and the reason they cost crazy amounts now is because we've had 30+ years of the idea that gov't is bad, taxes should be cut, yada yada... so, we've set the world on fire when it comes to tax cuts, but the result has been that states have dramatically cut their funding of public colleges...

 

They've done this for 2 reasons:

 

1.  The endless pressure for even-more-tax-cuts at the federal level has meant that the feds figured out ways to shift the cost of things to the states... which means the states have less money to fund higher education, and...

 

2.  The endless pressure for even-more-tax-cuts has also been pressuring the states to cut state taxes for decades now, and this alone has also caused states to cut support for higher education.

 

So, bottom line, the overwhelmingly-main reason public college costs are crazy is because of the whole "we need less government" fad that's been dominant for the last 30 years.   If you want even less government, that means you want public colleges to cost even more than the crazy amount they cost now.

 

EDIT:  I don't think college should be free, simply because they tried that in CA decades ago and it makes it impossible to schedule things properly... but I do think it should be very cheap... just enough to ensure the student has some skin in it... maybe $800-$1000 per semester... with an ample supply of both dirt cheap student loans and on-campus part-time work....  paying off a student loan should be like making the payments on a cheap used car for 3 or 4 years and then it's over...

[RShack]

During the time period Republicans often fondly look back on, the government did subsidize college much more than it does now.

 

That's because everybody agreed about it... it was taken as a given that we had a responsibility to society to ensure affordable higher education... so, while the 2 parties might have argued about the exact amount, they agreed on the basic idea... people from both parties supported it because they wanted to be able to send their kids to college for cheap... messing with that goal was unthinkable...

 

But then we got the unfounded idea that public-anything is bad, that the private sector can do everything better... and this brought in a whole truckload of radical bad ideas... one of which is the notion that we should cut public higher education while we encourage for-profit schools instead... because the private sector would do it so much better...  and, naturally, they couldn't be regulated because that would be more tyrannical gov't regulation interfering with the free market that would solve everything... and, lo and behold, what happens is that it's for-profit colleges that have been ripping off people left and right, with their big paws grabbing megabucks via the federally-guaranteed student loan windfall... 

[RShack]

I agree it's bullshit if they go another direction in a contested convention.

 

Are you sure?

 

We don't have direct-democracy, the framers wanted no part of that... what we have is representative democracy... 

 

The nomination requires a majority, not just a plurality... the same thing is true of the Presidency... if nobody gets a majority of Electoral Votes, then it goes to the House of Representative... it's always been that way...  the parties basically copied that idea for their conventions... if the vote at the level of each state doesn't resolve it by providing a majority, then it goes to the delegates elected at the state level to decide... the main diff is that the Presidency is a function of gov't while the party nominations aren't... but they use pretty much the same method when faced with nobody having a majority....

 

The fact that Trump is getting his ass kicked when it comes to the selection of state delegates is because Cruz did his homework while Trump did not.  Now, you would think that somebody who claims to be an expert on making deals would know something about reading the fine print, wouldn't you?  Yet, wonder of wonders, Trump never read the fine print.  What the hell is that from a guy who's promising to fix everything single-handedly, based solely on his great skill at making good deals?  He's gonna fix everything because he knows about contracts, but he didn't even read the fine print on what he was getting into?  I think this part is pretty funny.  You'd think his opponents would use this to embarrass him, but they aren't.  I dunno why...

 

I think the main opportunity for BS shenanigans at the convention is when they write the convention rules... with the Constitution, you know what the rules are... but they make up fresh rules for each convention...  lots of times, they just copy the rules from the previous convention, but not always... they can invent any rules they want... including fresh rules designed to screw somebody in particular... and the way their rules work, any delegates who are bound to Trump for the first 1 or 2 ballots, but who personally favor Cruz or Romney or whoever, can vote for whatever kind of rules they want... so you could see delegates who are officially Trump delegates voting for rules that would screw him... not saying they will, but they can.  Now, you can certainly say that's crooked, but it's also true that Trump was asleep at the switch about this... other candidates in both parties are on top of this, but Trump wasn't...

[DJ MC]

The main obstacle is the Fear Machine....

Both the guy who wrote the Declaration of Independence and the guy who was the primary author of the Constitution thought it was essential to have a free press to keep the citizens informed... but what we have now is a press that's motivated to scare people, not inform them...

So, what we have now is a citizenry that's increasingly scared of an ever-growing number of things...

And the funny thing is that the press back then was even worse.