2016 US Presidential Election Thread

[Yosarian2]

Out of all those people, I'd vote for both those people over Hillary Clinton.

I've lived through 8 years of a Clinton in the White House, and I've lived through 8 years of W Bush in the White House.

Believe me when I say that if it does come down to Clinton v Bush, I am going to have absolutely no trouble voting Clinton. That might be the easiest choice I've ever made. Hell, I'd probably get out and volunteer for her campaign.

[Yosarian2]

Hillary might take O'Malley as VP, in order to have someone from a southern state on the ticket.

As for Jeb, he might want to get a woman as his VP. But I think he might try and screen them a little more carefully then McCain did, lol.

[Yosarian2]

If you're looking for a southerner Clinton can add, I'd expect one of the Senators of Virginia (probably Tim Kaine over Mark Warner) to be high on the list. Julian Castro (or Joaquin) would be an exciting choice as well and would counteract her age.

Fair enough. Virginia is much more of a swing state, after all.

And, yeah; the VP has to be someone who's both younger and who people would think would be plausible as a President. For an older candidate especially, having a convincing VP who could plausibly take over is very important. That's part of the reason Sarah Palin was such a disaster for McCain.

[Yosarian2]

What, to your republican mother, makes him a "decent candidate"? I really fail to see how Sanders can make people "cross party lines" unless they weren't remotely conservative to begin with.

At this point, a lot of conservatives really hate Hillary Clinton mostly because there's been a pretty steady stream of anti-Hillary attacks made in the conservative media for the past 20 years, ranging from the plausible to the conspiracy theory to the bizarre.

If Sanders gets the nomination, or even looks like he might, *then* conservative media will start telling all the conservatives why they should hate him. Right now, they're not bothering for the most part.

[Yosarian2]

I think the whole server issue has really hurt her credibility/trustworthiness in the general public's eyes.

it hurt her integrity / intelligence in my eyes, that's for sure, and I'm about as liberal as they come

as an IT professional in state government, doing that kind of shit is basic levels of "no shit, sherlock"

It was stupid, certanly. It sounds like it's technically legal for the head of a department in the federal government to run their e-mail out of a server in their home, but it was pretty clearly a foolish thing to do.

I guess I just don't think that it's a huge deal, in the grand scheme of things. People on that level of government leak classified stuff to the press all the time and usually nobody cares. And she didn't even do that; at most you could say that she may have been careless with handling classified material.

[Yosarian2]

"lots of people do it" doesn't make it acceptable, and I don't know if "careless with classified material" is a good thing to have in a President

Eh. I honestly just don't see any of this as that big of a deal. Keeping an imperfectly secured e-mail address that accidentally received a couple of classified e-mails (even though those are supposed to go through diplomatic wire instead) was a screw up, both on her part and on the part of the CIA for sending that stuff by e-mail a couple of times when they weren't supposed to, but not a major screw up, especially since nothing actually got hacked or leaked as a result. It's not even on the same planet as cases where politicians actually leaked classified documents to the media for political reasons, and that happens all the time as well (and even *that* may be justifiable, depending on the details).

[Yosarian2]

we are clearly coming at this from different perspective - I can be fired with the snap of a fingers for deleting important emails or storing them on a non-authorized device, and that's the case for pretty much every government employee. I'm not enthused about electing someone who willfully broke that rule with

literally every email she sent or received

as one of the 5 most important people in the federal government

It's not actually against the rules for the head of a department to use a private e-mail address for their job, and she's not the first secretary of state to do that, either.

I get that in most other govnerment positions, what she did would be against the rules, but in her case, it probably wasn't (unless, again, classified material was mishandled.)

Honestly, I think we keep far, far too many things classified, to a point where it seriously impairs the proper functioning of our government and public accountability for government actions; the massive obsession with secrecy in govenrment seems on some level to be anti-democratic, and I think we should move away from that as much as is practical and declassify the majority of currently classified documents and make it much harder to classify new documents without a really good reason. Especially since stuff like this, where someone gets documents that aren't classified at the time and then they become classified later, always causes such problems.

[Yosarian2]

I'm glad I'm not in the states! Your election looks like its going to be a Tea-party level conservative vs a moderate conservative in Hilary

Eh, her actual record in the Senate is actually reasonably progressive. She's not as far left as Sanders, but her voting record and her issues are a lot more progressive then most liberals seem willing to give her credit for.

[Yosarian2]

what do you want to drop then? it's fine and dandy to say "we should spend less" (in fact, I'm pretty sure that statement has near-unanimous agreement across the political spectrum) - the issue is that no one agrees what not to spend money on.

I don't think we should spend less. I mean, there's a few ares that we could cut (the military being the biggest one) but for the most part, the reason the US has such trouble balancing the budget and funding basic social programs is that our tax system collects much less money as a percentage of gdp then basically any other first world country.

[Yosarian2]

Yes, everyone on welfare is looking for a job.

The idea that you could not work and just collect (cash) welfare hasn't actually been true since the 1990's. Cash welfare is basically nonexistent in this country today, and that's part of the reason poverty and hunger have gotten so much worse.

There are still some kinds of aid, like food stamps, but TANF, which is what cash welfare is called now, is tiny, limited, and in many states is basically impossible to get on. It's so limited and so hard to get on these days that TANF spending didn't even increase when the entire economy imploded and unemployment shot up to 10%.

[Yosarian2]

I think this sums up trump supporters pretty well

[Yosarian2]

I'm legit moving to Canada if Trump wins

I'm not sure that's far enough away to help you.

[Yosarian2]

I'm legit moving to Canada if Trump wins

I'm not sure that's far enough away to help you.

There isn't a far enough away. Maybe if we really speed up work on a mars colony.

Yeah, and then Trump decides to build a wall around Mars and make Mars pay for it.

[Yosarian2]

Sanders is leading Clinton by 7 points in New Hampshire. But Trump is also running away with it so I guess you can take that with a grain of salt.

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main ... d-the.html

Sanders may do well in New Hampshire, and maybe Iowa, but he might have a lot of trouble when he gets to more diverse states; Sanders is doing very well with white, middle class, very liberal men, who are a big part of the Democratic primary in New Hampshire, but are a much smaller portion of the voting public in most other states.

[Yosarian2]

Well, the New Hampshire primary was a big part of Bill Clinton's upset win in 1992.

Sure, but Clinton did well in Southern states.

[Yosarian2]

I'm not sure I entirely get why his appeal is lacking with women/minorities/poor people

Like legitimately if anyone knows this please enlighten me

I think it's more that Clinton has a lot of support from those groups.

African Americans in general really liked Bill Clinton, even more so then the rest of the country. Also, on average, African American democrats tend to be somewhat less liberal then white democrats on social and economic issues.

In terms of Hispanics, Hillary actually has a better record then Sanders on immigration issues; back in 2007, while in the Senate, Hillary voted for comprehensive immigration reform, and Sanders voted against that bill. Although at least Sanders does say he supports comprehensive immigration reform now.

[Yosarian2]

It's not so much that poor people couldn't do the same things rich people could, or are less deserving of wealth, but a lot of poor people get trapped in a cycle of dependancy, where they feel like they don't have a say in their success.

I don't think that's true.

Cash welfare is almost non-existent in the US these days. TANF is still around, but you can only get it for a limited time, and it's almost impossible to get on the program (the number of people receiving aid under the program didn't even increase when the Great Recession hit, which just shows how limited it is). And those on the program are required to look for work. For the most part, cash welfare in this country died in the 1990's.

I really don't think that the kind of govenrment assistance we provide now creates a "cycle of dependency". The problem is that there are a number of basic poverty traps, where the more poor you are the harder it is to get ahead. Things like food stamps and rent support actually make it a (little) easier to climb out of poverty, because they make it possible to work hard and save a little bit of money, and maybe go back to school or something.

Anyway, most people who get public assistance right now actually are working. The idea that somehow people are "just leeching of the government" or "trapped in a cycle of dependency" or whatever simply isn't true; statistically, it never was true, really, and it certanly isn't possible today.

[Yosarian2]

The problem with the liberal ideology is that it assumes the upper class is out to get the lower class and that class warfare is inevitable. Stop worrying about what other people have and try to fix your own problems.

The idea that liberals just "want to bring the rich down" or whatever really isn't accurate. Maybe that's a fair statement for more far-left people, but there really aren't any of those of importance in the US (not even Sanders). Let me try to explain the way I see it.

There are a lot of factors that increase or reduce how likely you are to succeed in life. If you have bad schools, it lowers the odds you're going to succeed. If you're growing up in poverty, that reduces the odds. If your parents don't have a good education, that makes it harder. If you don't know where your next meal is going to come from, that makes it a lot harder to focus on school if you're a student or to make any kind of long-term planning if you're an adult. If you don't have health care, that reduces your odds of success. If you have to work 60 hours a week working two minimum wage jobs and still can't make rent, that increases the odds of going into debt and reduces the amount of time you have to try to look for a better job or to get some kind of education to improve your situation in life. If you can go to college, it increases your odds of success; if you can go to college without ending up with a huge loan, it increases it more.

None of those things *guarantee* you won't succeed in life, but some percentage of people won't, and the more of those risk factors you have, the higher percentage of people won't make it. Most people, if put in the right situation and given the right resources and the right kind of support, are willing and able to succeed. But there are a number of poverty traps that tend to keep poor people poor, and if you can help people get out of those, they will actually become a lot more productive and society as a whole will be a lot better off. Beyond that, there is always a risk in a capitalist system that something will go terribly wrong in your life and you'll lose everything, and if that happens you'll need some kind of help.

[Yosarian2]

I'm not saying it's fair, but I don't think it's fair to tax the rich at unfairly high rate either, no matter how much less work they put in. There are a lot of rich people that put in 80 hour days, and there's no reason they should have to pay a 50% tax rate.

The US tax system actually isn't progressive at all; it only seems that way if you're only looking at income tax.

If you include all taxes, both local and federal, sales taxes, property taxes, and so on, the top 20% actually pay the same percentage of their income in taxes as the middle 20%. The top .1% pays a lot less then that.

The key here is that sales tax, property taxes, social security and medicare taxes, and a number of others are regressive taxes, taxes that hurt the poor more then the rich. Federal income tax is progressive, but not enough to overwhelm all the other taxes. Meanwhile, the really rich people pay mostly capital gain taxes, which are much lower then all other taxes right now.

[Yosarian2]

So, apparently 20% of ESPN employees registered on Ashley Madison are female. If this is indicitive of the site as a whole, the female users must really get around, or there must be a lot of empty handed male users.

Actually, it's a lot worse then that, even. Most of the female accounts are either faked, or else they never used the site at all.

If you look at active users, people who checked their messages, it's about 20 million men, and only about 1400 women. That's it.

The whole thing was a scam. It was mostly just pathetic guys spending a lot of money to send messages to women who either weren't there at all, didn't exist, or in some cases might have been Ashly Madison employees leading them on to keep them spending money. There were basically no real female users there at all, at least not enough to matter.

http://gizmodo.com/almost-none-of-the-w ... 1725558944

[Yosarian2]

Just curious, if super rich people were more charitable what would be the most effective and helpful use of their charity?
Or maybe "If you were a billionaire and wanted to help those in need, what would you do?"

These are some really good options.

http://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities

Givewell is a trustworthy site that researches charities to figure out which are the best to donate money to to help the most people. Their top suggestion right now is the Against Malaria Foundation.

The other big thing, I think, is medical research, which in the long run might do even more good. Especially some of the people who are actually working on dealing with the diseases of aging, like Alzheimer's, cancer, diabetes, and heart attacks; those cause more suffering then really anything else in the world right now.

[Yosarian2]

Just curious, if super rich people were more charitable what would be the most effective and helpful use of their charity?
Or maybe "If you were a billionaire and wanted to help those in need, what would you do?"

It may interest you to look into the different charitable initiatives the super rich undertake. It's actually quite surprising how many are involved philanthropically, including the degree to which they are.

Some of the super rich do donate a lot to charity, but actually, most charity giving comes from the middle class. As a percentage of their wealth, middle class people tend to be more generous on average then the rich. It's just that when a really rich person does give huge amounts of money to charity (Bill Gates, ect) you hear about it.

[Yosarian2]

Just curious, if super rich people were more charitable what would be the most effective and helpful use of their charity?
Or maybe "If you were a billionaire and wanted to help those in need, what would you do?"

It may interest you to look into the different charitable initiatives the super rich undertake. It's actually quite surprising how many are involved philanthropically, including the degree to which they are.

Some of the super rich do donate a lot to charity, but actually, most charity giving comes from the middle class. As a percentage of their wealth, middle class people tend to be more generous on average then the rich. It's just that when a really rich person does give huge amounts of money to charity (Bill Gates, ect) you hear about it.

is this verifiably true? particularly if you remove tithing from the equation?

Yes, it is. The poor give a higher percentage of their wealth to charity then the wealthy every year.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/magaz ... .html?_r=0

. In 2001, Independent Sector, a nonprofit organization focused on charitable giving, found that households earning less than $25,000 a year gave away an average of 4.2 percent of their incomes; those with earnings of more than $75,000 gave away 2.7 percent.

And it gets even worse as you go farther up the wealth scale


http://www.cnbc.com/id/48725147

The study, conducted by the Chronicle of Philanthropy using tax-deduction data from the Internal Revenue Service, showed that households earning between $50,000 and $75,000 year give an average of 7.6 percent of their discretionary income to charity.

That compares to 4.2 percent for people who make $100,000 or more. In some of the wealthiest neighborhoods, with a large share of people making $200,000 or more a year, the average giving rate was 2.8 percent.

(Note that the studies were done in different years, with different methods, and were looking at different things, which is why the numbers are somewhat different. But the trend is the same.)

[Yosarian2]

No you're right. Donations to community colleges should definitely count as charitable.

Most colleges, really. I get that donating to Harvard doesn't make a lot of sense, but people who donate to state colleges do a lot to improve them as both educational and as research facilities, and helps people get scholarships. All of those things are both helpful and probably good investments for the country to make.

[Yosarian2]

No you're right. Donations to community colleges should definitely count as charitable.

Most colleges, really. I get that donating to Harvard doesn't make a lot of sense, but people who donate to state colleges do a lot to improve them as both educational and as research facilities, and helps people get scholarships. All of those things are both helpful and probably good investments for the country to make.

In 2012 WSU football operated in the red to the tune of roughly $5 million after counting as income a $6 million subsidy from the university.

In 2014, ten of the top ten highest paid state employees worked for the state universities, as did the overwhelming majority of the top 1000. By contrast, the state Supreme Court Justices barely make top 1500, and the Governor is in the upper 1600s.

Donating to at least my state's schools is akin to pissing in a bullet wound.

Oh i think college sports especally football are a stupid waste of money. But that's really a different subject.

That's also what most of those top salaries probably are are sports coaches.

[Yosarian2]

Yeah; I have no problem with extra-curricular activities that are actually for students, but college football (and basketball, and some other major college sports) are basically just unpaid minor-league teams that are loosely associated with collages. For the most part they're huge money-sinks, and totally distract from the main mission of the colleges, and the way the athletes are treated is unethical.

[Yosarian2]

Yeah; I have no problem with extra-curricular activities that are actually for students, but college football (and basketball, and some other major college sports) are basically just unpaid minor-league teams that are loosely associated with collages. For the most part they're huge money-sinks, and totally distract from the main mission of the colleges, and the way the athletes are treated is unethical.

You are aware that college football pays for all the other sports in most schools right?

A few colleges make money on their football teams, but only a few. Most college football teems lose a ton of money.

http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2014 ... 20_fb.html

The report found that expenses exceeded revenue at all but 20 schools in the Football Bowl Subdivision. The average loss among the Power 5 conferences was $2.3 million. At all other FBS schools, it was $17.6 million.

And this was a study conducted by the NCAA itself.

[Yosarian2]

Dropping the subject of sports for a second I get pretty nervous when people start talking about cutting academic funding for colleges. The US still has a world class college education system and we can't afford to screw that up. Yeah the expense is becoming a problem but still, if we screw up our higher education system we've got no chance at being economically competitive.

[Yosarian2]

One is a solid businessman and one is a mediocre rapper with one good album.

I think even Kanye is a better businessman then Trump is. Trump's gone bankrupt more times.

[Yosarian2]

the apples analogy isn't a particularly good one in this scenario >_> apples don't invest very particularly well

Maybe both people in this analogy are selling at a fruit stand?

[Yosarian2]

the apples analogy isn't a particularly good one in this scenario >_> apples don't invest very particularly well

Plant the seeds.

This will probably surprise you, but apple seeds from nice fruit often will make trees that bear terrible fruit. Apple orchards are expanded through grafting.

Knew about the grafting, did not know about the terrible fruit bearing.

But they don't have to taste nice to sell anyways.

@quadz: what investment yields good returns in a week?

Payday loans?

[Yosarian2]

The most likely to get the republican nomination probably is Bush, Rubio, or Scott Walker. Trump has maybe a 5% chance. Which is higher then i would have said a month ago.

[Yosarian2]

Jeb's problem in the primaries is not his last name
It's his brown wife

So sad but true.

I'd hate to admit it, but Jeb is probably the best of all possible Bushes. It's a shame we had to go through two of them before him.

A lot of Jeb's positions are terrible. He honestly believes rhat racist crap about "blacks wanting free things".

If we had to elect a bush (and we really really don't) then I'd rather just elect his father for a second term right now then elect Jeb.

[Yosarian2]

Yeah, I saw that quote. Carson is terrifying.

[Yosarian2]

Plus, the fact that this obviously smart, well-educated, black surgeon is saying out loud all the stupid and hateful things they believe (denying climate change, denying evolution, all muslims are evil, obamacare is the worst thing since slavery, poor black people just don't work hard enough, ect) allows them to feel better about themselves for beliving those things.

[Yosarian2]

I don't think they feel bad about themselves for thinking those things in the first place though.

I think they know that most other people disagree with them, and feel defensive and on-guard about the topics all the time. That's also why bashing "liberal elite professors" goes over so well in those groups.