Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[Toxxus]

I believe there was a small surplus for 1 or 2 years under Clinton (with a conservative congress) and long before and long since it has all been varying degrees of impending bankruptcy.

[Starlord]

Where's Andrew Jackson when you need him?

[Sociotard]

Certainly, there is almost always a deficit. Divided governments usually have deficits.

 

The question is whether the deficit grows or not. Is the situation getting worse or not. Is the villain viciously beating me or is he getting board and just kind of tapping on my knees?

 

And the deficit does not always grow, and when it grows it does not always grow so quickly. I can't vote for a government that will pay down the debt. I can vote for a government that will grow the debt less quickly.

[Old Man]

31 minutes ago, Sociotard said:

The data show that when Democrats control both branches they increase spending, and increase taxes to try to pay for it. But, the increased revenues don't quite cut it and the deficit grows. When Republicans control both branches, they increase spending and lower taxes to pay for it. But, that does even worse and the deficit grows.

 

 

 

This.  Democrats deficit-spend to improve social programs.  Republicans deficit-spend so billionaires can get richer and corporations can buy their stock back.  We might actually benefit from the former.  I personally got nothing from the end-of-2017 tax cuts.

[Sociotard]

4 minutes ago, Starlord said:

Where's Andrew Jackson when you need him?

 

Yep, he paid off the national debt. It led directly to the 1837 depression, our second longest. No thank you.

 

Of course, that doesn't mean our current debt level is fine. Just that paying it all off isn't great either.

[Old Man]

Some level of national debt is actually necessary for modern economies to run.  The only question is whether the debt-to-GDP ratio is high enough to trigger inflation and/or a currency crash, and the US' ratio is... pretty average at the moment compared to most developed economies.  It's high enough that it's probably slowing economic growth, but it's nowhere near a crisis.  The recent tax giveaway might make it a crisis in a decade or two though.

[Sociotard]

My big complaint is that we're approaching the next recession. Ideally, we'd pay down the debt a bit (again, not all the way) during good years, then increase the debt for stimulus during bad years. When the recession hits, we won't have much to stimulate with.

[archer]

41 minutes ago, Toxxus said:

I believe there was a small surplus for 1 or 2 years under Clinton (with a conservative congress) and long before and long since it has all been varying degrees of impending bankruptcy.

 

The deficit certainly shrank during the last years of the Clinton administration, due in large part to there being a Republican-controlled House of Representatives for the first time since 1958.

 

But the actual difference between the reality of "the government running a small deficit" and "showing a surplus to the public" came from changes in accounting procedures so that both sides could claim a political victory, rather than coming from an increase in tax revenue or a decrease in spending to actually completely close the gap.

[Sociotard]

There was still a Republican Congress in the early aughts, but then they had a Republican President to work with, and deficits grew.

 

Democrat. Republican. They're all just politicians.

[archer]

7 minutes ago, Sociotard said:

There was still a Republican Congress in the early aughts, but then they had a Republican President to work with, and deficits grew.

 

Democrat. Republican. They're all just politicians.

 

There's not many small-government Constitutionalist Republicans in the party anymore (at the national level). I can count them on the fingers on one hand.

 

I fought like hell to keep W. Bush from getting the nomination but people kept telling me that "he's a conservative" despite the fact that he openly ran for governor of Texas as a moderate who could work across the aisle because he wasn't ideological.

 

Looking back, I wonder why I dedicated so much of my life to the attempt to save the party from itself and its repeated bad decisions.

[Old Man]

You're not the first Republican voter who figured out the hard way that they stand for little more than tax cuts for the wealthy.  Any other planks in their platform rank a distant second to this one overarching goal.

 

Speaking of which, anyone buy one of these $750M lottery tickets?

[wcw43921]

Not yet, but I will.  One draw only, two bucks.  I have no plans to become a Trumpist or vote Republican should I actually happen to win.

[wcw43921]

Not quite political, but appropriate for the times, I think.

[wcw43921]

Meet Pete Buttigieg

[Cygnia]

The hubby, on Buttigieg:  "If I wrote this guy in a story, I'd be accused of creating a Marty Stu!"

[Sociotard]

In fiction, I don't think you'd be allowed to write a gay man whose name looks like it could be pronounced "Booty Gig"

[Cygnia]

1 minute ago, Sociotard said:

In fiction, I don't think you'd be allowed to write a gay man whose name looks like it could be pronounced "Booty Gig"

Not familiar with Chuck Tingle's work, I see?

[Pariah]

A surprisingly plausible explanation of the whole Mueller investigation from our old pal Bunneh:

 

Quote

Bunneh's Hot Take:

 

I don't think Trump personally colluded with the Russian government to win the election, because I don't believe Trump wanted to win the election. He didn't give any indication that he expected to win, and he certainly had no plan of what to do if he won. I think he and his team were hoping to parlay his unsuccessful run into a new outrage-media empire, where they could rake in millions by screaming incoherently about socialists and Marxists, without having any actual responsibilities. 

 

I'm not even 100% convinced the Russian government wanted him to win. They wanted (and still want) to stoke resentment, distrust in our government and our electoral system, to destabilize the polity of America. They could do that just as easily (perhaps more easily) with a Trump loss than a Trump win. 

 

So depending on how narrowly you define your terms, Trump (as an individual) did not collude with the Russian government (agents of the government, yes; but not the government itself) to win the election (as winning was never the goal of either group).

 

[Badger]

Basically R vs D is  Less Taxes vs More Spending

[Badger]

7 hours ago, archer said:

 

There's not many small-government Constitutionalist Republicans in the party anymore (at the national level). I can count them on the fingers on one hand.

 

I fought like hell to keep W. Bush from getting the nomination but people kept telling me that "he's a conservative" despite the fact that he openly ran for governor of Texas as a moderate who could work across the aisle because he wasn't ideological.

 

Looking back, I wonder why I dedicated so much of my life to the attempt to save the party from itself and its repeated bad decisions.

 

Yeah, I don't know if I will ever vote for President again.  The GOP has pretty much given up on fiscal responsibility*.  And the Dems aren't even an option for me.

 

*I thought the Tea Party was crazy, but they at least brought stuff like that.  Though just because I am pro-small government, they were a bridge too far.

 

Small government and fiscal conservativism is dead until we hit the Weimar Republic.

[archer]

3 hours ago, Badger said:

 

Yeah, I don't know if I will ever vote for President again.  The GOP has pretty much given up on fiscal responsibility*.  And the Dems aren't even an option for me.

 

*I thought the Tea Party was crazy, but they at least brought stuff like that.  Though just because I am pro-small government, they were a bridge too far.

 

Small government and fiscal conservativism is dead until we hit the Weimar Republic.

 

Until there's a political party that promotes my beliefs, I still think it's important to hand Republicans defeats in elections until they get the concept that I don't want either Trumpism or Democrat-lite.

 

I used to be able to point to 20-40 Republican politicians at the national level that espoused my ideals when I got into party politics 40 years ago. Now after working for decades to increase my faction's tiny share of the party, that number of politicians has shrunk to less than five and I no longer have the health to campaign, run for local office, run the county convention, or be a delegate to the state or national conventions. But I'd still rather the party be a force for good rather than evil.

 

And that's not going to happen unless the party loses at the ballot box consistently enough to get the idea that they're doing the wrong thing and changes what they're doing.

 

I don't really care about the next election. I worry about where the country will be 40 years from now if there continues to be two major political parties, each doing the wrong thing.

 

We've threatened a couple of different times to have a presidential nominee who would move the party back toward limited government and fiscal conservatism. So I don't think it's completely out of the question that it could happen. The party is pretty much conditioned to give a president whatever he wants, as we've seen with Trump. So it isn't out of the question that the right president for eight years followed by a worthy successor for another eight years could completely change the trajectory of the party.

[Ternaugh]

I still get emails from various local Republican sources, which usually break down into one of the following categories:

 

1. They're gonna take your guns

2. Abortion bad

3. Don't let "them" turn "us" into California

4. Democratic politician x hates [freedom|puppies|religion|little flag lapel pins]

 

The latest ones feature how evil the Democrats are for trying to take away bump stocks after the Las Vegas attack, which completely ignores that Trump signed an executive order to regulate them.

[Toxxus]

7 hours ago, archer said:

And that's not going to happen unless the party loses at the ballot box consistently enough to get the idea that they're doing the wrong thing and changes what they're doing.

 

This lead to me wanting Obama to win on his first run.  Republicans had failed to even TRY to deliver on their promises for so long I wanted them to lose.

 

The only problem was that the alternative was even worse.  There hasn't been a winning vote option for President in the last 16-20 years.

 

1 hour ago, Ternaugh said:

The latest ones feature how evil the Democrats are for trying to take away bump stocks after the Las Vegas attack, which completely ignores that Trump signed an executive order to regulate them.

 

It's such a stupid regulation.  If you know what you're doing you can use a leather belt as a bump stock.  I hate these rules for two reasons 1-  They don't work - at all.  2-  They violate the 2nd amendment.

 

I think most people would be down for some regulation on firearms, but the current law is "shall not be infringed" and I don't like the idea of the government violating our constitutionally protected rights whenever it's convenient.  I mean - they do constantly - but I hate it.

[Badger]

9 hours ago, archer said:

 

Until there's a political party that promotes my beliefs, I still think it's important to hand Republicans defeats in elections until they get the concept that I don't want either Trumpism or Democrat-lite.

 

I used to be able to point to 20-40 Republican politicians at the national level that espoused my ideals when I got into party politics 40 years ago. Now after working for decades to increase my faction's tiny share of the party, that number of politicians has shrunk to less than five and I no longer have the health to campaign, run for local office, run the county convention, or be a delegate to the state or national conventions. But I'd still rather the party be a force for good rather than evil.

 

And that's not going to happen unless the party loses at the ballot box consistently enough to get the idea that they're doing the wrong thing and changes what they're doing.

 

I don't really care about the next election. I worry about where the country will be 40 years from now if there continues to be two major political parties, each doing the wrong thing.

 

We've threatened a couple of different times to have a presidential nominee who would move the party back toward limited government and fiscal conservatism. So I don't think it's completely out of the question that it could happen. The party is pretty much conditioned to give a president whatever he wants, as we've seen with Trump. So it isn't out of the question that the right president for eight years followed by a worthy successor for another eight years could completely change the trajectory of the party.

 

Like I said, I cant vote for any.  I could in theory vote for a blue-dog Dem, but they are a myth.  I cant really vote for someone who will be directly opposed to me on 90 percent of everything I believe in, which is why I cant go with a Democrat. The House GOP guy in my district while I don't agree on everything as him, is close enough to vote for.  I do like to have at least one rep somewhere in gov't I voted for.  (for a period of a year in 2009-10, I had none, so I didn't matter at all in that time)

[Sociotard]

2 hours ago, Toxxus said:

It's such a stupid regulation.  If you know what you're doing you can use a leather belt as a bump stock.  I hate these rules for two reasons 1-  They don't work - at all.  2-  They violate the 2nd amendment.

 

I think most people would be down for some regulation on firearms, but the current law is "shall not be infringed" and I don't like the idea of the government violating our constitutionally protected rights whenever it's convenient.  I mean - they do constantly - but I hate it.

 

Ah, but there are the key words: if they know what they are doing.

 

The law makes it more difficult to make a weapon capable of fully automatic fire. People who want to make their semiautomatic weapon fire at a rate comparable to fully-automatic weapons can still do so, but without being able to buy the tool to make it easy, it is difficult. 'Difficult' directly correlates to 'less people do it'. I like the idea of limiting the number of people simulating fully-automatic fire. Therefore I like this regulation.

 

It doesn't have to absolutely end people simulating fully automatic fire. It only has to reduce the incidence of people simulating fully automatic fire.