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The Well-Mannered Politics Thread

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Trump said: "In our drive to make Washington accountable, we have eliminated more regulations in our first year than any administration in history."

Political Editor: It’s true that the Trump administration has steadily tried to roll back regulations, but there is no clear way to measure his success compared to previous presidents – regulations are made through a messy process of rule-making and budget maneuvers, court cases, Congress and enforcers.

Trump’s claim to have eliminated more regulations than “any administration in history” also collides with the broad pushes to deregulate airliners and trains in the 1970s and 80s, and several presidents, such as Ronald Reagan, tried to use budgetary measures to neuter regulations without necessarily battling to erase them completely.

According to the Office of Management and Budget, Trump has withdrawn fewer regulations in his first year than Bill Clinton, George W Bush, or Barack Obama did during their presidencies. Earlier this month, the White House claimed that the Trump administration “withdrawn or delayed 1,579 planned regulatory actions”; according to the OMB, Clinton withdrew 1,824; Bush 2,632; and Obama 1,814.

Nor does ordering regulations gone actually erase those regulations. Sometimes presidents must enact a new rule to replace an existing one, opening the door to court battles, and there is a complex review process behind regulations to make sure they fit with laws. Trump’s attempts to repeal environmental rules, for instance, have already landed him in court over a debate that he is acting recklessly and without scientific evidence.

The Trump administration has, however, has worked with Congress to use an obscure 1996 law, the Congressional Review Act, to rescind more than a dozen rules enacted late in the Obama administration. The law had only been used once before.
 
Trump said: "America has also finally turned the page on decades of unfair trade deals that sacrificed our prosperity and shipped away our companies, our jobs, and our nation’s wealth."

Political Editor: Trump has fulfilled his promise to abandon the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade pact the Obama administration hoped could strengthen ties between nations such as Japan, Vietnam and Australia and curb Chinese influence in the Pacific. He has not abandoned the North American Free Trade Association (Nafta), however, or had much success negotiating one-on-one trade deals around the world.

Free trade has affected US manufacturing, though in a mix of pros and cons that make it all but impossible to use the sweeping language as the president does here. Since China joined the WTO in 2001, the US has massively increased cheap imports from China, according to the Census Bureau, and lost 2.4 million manufacturing jobs, according to a report by Economic Policy Institute (EPI), for example.

But trade deals are only part of the story. Manufacturing jobs started declining in 1997, years before China’s entry into the WTO (though three years after its trade status changed with the US), and researchers have questioned EPI’s conclusions. Despite the decline in jobs, manufacturing has become more productive, suggesting that automation and not trade deals were the cause of most job losses. In other words, few agree about how many jobs moved for which reasons. The same goes for Nafta, though a Congressional Research Service report concluded it “did not cause the huge job losses feared by the critics or the large economic gains predicted by supporters”. Its net effect “appears to have been relatively modest.”

Trump said: "Isn’t it a disgrace that it can now take ten years just to get a permit approved for a simple road?"

Political Editor: It’s not clear what part of the country the president believes it takes 10 years to obtain a permit for a road, but he appears to have drawn the notion from a Brooklyn-based group that has urged the White House to slash building regulations, especially those set by the Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency.
 
So, anyone else notice that Trump spent no time at all on education and workforce development and then proceeded to ramble on immigration? I mean, who needs to be smart if we can just blame brown people for a bad economy?
 
Political Correspondent on Trump's immigration plans:

Donald Trump on Tuesday outlined his vision for an immigration deal that would create a pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country as children.

But the proposal clashes fiercely with Republican immigration hardliners in Congress who have balked at the overture, panning it “amnesty”. Conservative obstinance has added more uncertainty to already fraught negotiations over the futures of hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants whose legal protections were put in jeopardy when Trump ended a program that allowed them to live and work in the US without fear of deportation.

“We presented the Congress with a detailed proposal that should be supported by both parties as a fair compromise -- one where nobody gets everything they want, but where our country gets the critical reforms it needs,” Trump said on Tuesday.

The White House proposal includes sweeping reform to the US legal immigration and dramatically boosts funding for security along the US borders. The plan would restrict family-based immigration and eliminate the State Department’s diversity visa lottery in an effort to move the country to a merit-based immigration system, changes that opponents argue will disproportionately impact immigrants of color.

“These four pillars will produce legislation that fulfills my ironclad pledge to only sign a bill that puts America first,” Trump said. “So let us come together, set politics aside, and finally get the job done.”

But negotiations on Capitol Hill are proceeding on separate tracks, with a bipartisan group in the Senate working on a plan that could be presented as a counter-offer to the White House framework. But another group comprised of the bipartisan deputies in the House and Senate have reported little progress. This group is important because an immigration proposal will ultimately need to pass the House, where a recalcitrant but powerful group of immigration hardliners have refused support a plan that offers undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship. The House Republican leadership is under pressure by the group to only bring legislation to the floor that could secure support from a majority of the caucus.

Seated in the audience were dozens of young Dreamers who braved the threat of deportation to attend the State of the Union as guests of Democratic lawmakers and at least on Republican.

Earlier on Tuesday, Arizona congressman Paul Gosar urged law enforcement to arrest and deport undocumented immigrants. It was unclear if any Dreamers in attendance would have been vulnerable to such enforcement practices.
 
The Raven said:
Trump just called for better job training, and the only policy point he mentioned is more vocational schools. I'm sorry but that's not even close to enough.
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The Raven said:
So, anyone else notice that Trump spent no time at all on education and workforce development and then proceeded to ramble on immigration? I mean, who needs to be smart if we can just blame brown people for a bad economy?
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Fucking LOL
 
Trump said: "I’m proud to report that the coalition to defeat ISIS has liberated almost 100 percent of the territory once held by these killers in Iraq and Syria."

Political Editor: The president appears to be drawing from a December Fox News report citing unnamed US military officials; after the recapture of Mosul, a State Department spokesman, Brett McGurk, said last August that the terror group had lost 22% of its territory in Iraq and 42% of its territory in Syria. Two months later its holdings had shrunk further, to roughly the size of Portugal.

Trump has given more freedom to Pentagon generals to authorize missions and strikes than his predecessor, but he has largely continued Barack Obama’s campaign strategies in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Africa, relying heavily on bombing campaigns and special forces. The terror group Isis has lost a large amount of territory since Trump took office, a continuation of its defeats over the past few years. It has changed tactics with the losses, encouraging so-called “lone wolf” actors and orchestrating terror attacks abroad.

Isis has also faced an increased pace of bombing by Russian forces, in support of the strengthened Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, who has turned his armies toward the group after defeating other rebel forces. Kurdish forces have continued to fight Isis as well, even as the Turkish military has turned fire on them both.

Trump said: "To speed access to breakthrough cures and affordable generic drugs, last year the FDA approved more new and generic drugs and medical devices than ever before in our history."

Political Editor: This claim comes from Trump’s own department of human and health services; it is true that the FDA has approved drugs at a breathtaking pace over the last year, raising concerns about the safety of new pharmaceuticals.

Trump said: "As tax cuts create new jobs, let us invest in workforce development and job training."

Political Editor: Whether tax cuts create jobs has been one of the most frequent debates among economists over the last 40 years; one 65-year study found little evidence to support the theory, for instance, and Kansas, a recent experiment in cutting taxes and regulations, has struggled to create jobs or pay for basic services in recent years.
 
Trump said: "For decades, open borders have allowed drugs and gangs to pour into our most vulnerable communities. They have allowed millions of low-wage workers to compete for jobs and wages against the poorest Americans. Most tragically, they have caused the loss of many innocent lives."

Political Editor: Trump has insisted for years on a link between immigrants and crime, but decades of research do not support the theory, and some studies suggest that undocumented people are less likely than native-born citizens to commit crimes. The president’s claims about violent crime and immigrants are baseless.

The modern US has never had “open borders”. Barack Obama’s administration, for example, deported more people than any previous administration, and greatly expanded the staffing for border security.

A 2016 study by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, a nonpartisan research organization found that immigrants do not take jobs from native-born Americans.

The report also found that first-generation immigrants cost federal and local governments between $43bn and $279bn in spending, largely on education – a huge range with many variables. The children of those immigrants become greater taxpayers and add about $30bn a year to the economy, according to the report, making those newly native Americans “among the strongest economic and fiscal contributors in the US population, according to the report.

It concluded that immigration has a “general positive” effect on the federal level but can have positive or negative effects, depending on the circumstances, at the local level.

The US is continuing to suffer a drug crisis of unprecedented proportions, with fentanyl and synthetic drugs entering the US from China, heroin from Mexico, and prescription opioids produced by American pharmaceutical companies. There were likely more than 59,000 fatal drug overdoses in the US in 2016, part of a steady increase over the last decade and a total of deaths greater than the number of American fatalities in the Vietnam war. Trump has declared the crisis a public health problem but declined to call it a “national emergency,” a designation that would open up immediate funds for treatment and prevention. The president has also chosen controversial figures to be top health officials, including a former pharmaceutical executive and a 24-year-old former campaign aide.

Tracking drug smuggling is an imprecise science; according to Customs and Border Protection, marijuana seizures fell 31% from fiscal year 2016 to fiscal year 2017, but cocaine and heroin seizures increased by 70%.
 
rossihunter2 said:
it's fair enough to go after him for provocation but my question is this...

maybe there's a fair possibility that Trump is being railroaded but surely there is an equally or even more fair possibility/probability that he is not being railroaded and is in fact being fairly investigated...

you mention bad eggs not being universal and it being the on-highs who advance a political agenda but you potentially lambast the FBI as a whole organisation - the top dog in the FBI is a Trump appointee and even he hasn't quashed or nulled the Mueller investigation so it suggests to me there is a very real possibility that something is going on

it's completely fair to question and obviously you have a more privileged position to judge than many of us but may i put forth that perhaps you are being a bit too quick to choose a side given that (I assume) you are not actually involved in the memos or the investigation into Trump or the investigation into Clinton...

like i think its completely fair to defend your own integrity but id venture to say its then a little hypocritical to go after the integrity of other law enforcement agents

just my two cents...
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Fair enough, I have my strong feelings about people like Holder, Lynch, Comey, and McCabe but I will try to watch going after the integrity of law enforcement agents.

Personally, I have no inside information on Trump at all. He may be innocent. He may be guilty as hell and will be impeached. Maybe he is guilty as hell and will be let off the hook. All I ask is for you liberals keep an open mind when it also comes to Hillary. There is a good chance she was guilty and let off the hook. I admit that there are a few whack jobs in the Republican Party that need to go. Maybe you can admit there are also a few whack jobs in the Democratic Party that need to also go.

Personally, I don’t think I could ever be friends with a guy like Trump, his personality rubs me the wrong way. I was a Rubio supporter. I will admit however that I am pretty conservative and I do like things that Trump has done. My gut feeling is that he did not collude with Russia regarding the election, but knows Russia has something embarrassing on him somewhere down the pike and he is afraid of them exposing him and therefore he is light on Putin because it. Not that that is a good thing. Again, just a gut feeling.

Anyway, I don’t personally attack any of you guys for your liberal opinions, and all I ask is you don’t personally attack me for my conservative opinions. Disagreement is fine. I admit fully that I am biased. I wish there was term limits on these lawmakers and that all laws that apply to us, also apply to them. I wish our lawmakers would stop most of their political grandstanding and start trying to work together to get things done.
 
Trump said: "The third pillar [of the immigration plan] ends the visa lottery -- a program that randomly hands out green cards without any regard for skill, merit, or the safety of our people. It is time to begin moving towards a merit-based immigration system -- one that admits people who are skilled, who want to work, who will contribute to our society, and who will love and respect our country.

The fourth and final pillar protects the nuclear family by ending chain migration. Under the current broken system, a single immigrant can bring in virtually unlimited numbers of distant relatives. Under our plan, we focus on the immediate family by limiting sponsorships to spouses and minor children. This vital reform is necessary, not just for our economy, but for our security, and our future."

Political Editor: The visa lottery is not a wholly random system without regard for merit.

Trump has repeatedly disparaged family visa sponsorship and the lottery visa program, saying the legal programs allow dangerous people to enter the US. (The president’s own ancestors followed their relatives who had immigrated to the US.) He has also claimed that foreign nations like Mexico “send” people to the US, a clear falsehood except in extradition cases in which American authorities have requested a fugitive.

The US State Department, with help from security agencies, runs the visa lottery program, has minimum requirements of two years work experience and at least a high school education, subjects applicants to background checks and security interviews, and relies on a computer to randomly select visa recipients.
 
The Raven said:
@Inqui what's it like to live in a sane country, even if it is actually run by sheep
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I'm not sure our countries are so different on that front. :p

We have our share of xenophobic nutbags too though. Thankfully the multiparty system generally keeps a lid on what they can actually do.

Immigration's one of those topics I don't tend to touch with a barge pole though. The sheer amount of misinformation and fear-driven rhetoric always manages to astound me even though it really shouldn't by now.
 
cobrajet said:
Fair enough, I have my strong feelings about people like Holder, Lynch, Comey, and McCabe but I will try to watch going after the integrity of law enforcement agents.

Personally, I have no inside information on Trump at all. He may be innocent. He may be guilty as hell and will be impeached. Maybe he is guilty as hell and will be let off the hook. All I ask is for you liberals keep an open mind when it also comes to Hillary. There is a good chance she was guilty and let off the hook. I admit that there are a few whack jobs in the Republican Party that need to go. Maybe you can admit there are also a few whack jobs in the Democratic Party that need to also go.

Personally, I don’t think I could ever be friends with a guy like Trump, his personality rubs me the wrong way. I was a Rubio supporter. I will admit however that I am pretty conservative and I do like things that Trump has done. My gut feeling is that he did not collude with Russia regarding the election, but knows Russia has something embarrassing on him somewhere down the pike and he is afraid of them exposing him and therefore he is light on Putin because it. Not that that is a good thing. Again, just a gut feeling.

Anyway, I don’t personally attack any of you guys for your liberal opinions, and all I ask is you don’t personally attack me for my conservative opinions. Disagreement is fine. I admit fully that I am biased. I wish there was term limits on these lawmakers and that all laws that apply to us, also apply to them. I wish our lawmakers would stop most of their political grandstanding and start trying to work together to get things done.
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that's completely fair enough and im not going to pretend that i dont get emotional about many political things and ad hominem attacks

and my mind is open with regards to the hillary allegations - my problem with this is that in my eyes i see a double standard among many conservative voters and politicians which i like to refer to as "what about"ing - i.e. whenever trump's investigation is brought up his supporters and politicians around him as well as fox news all ignore the investigation and respond with "well what about those clinton allegations" - essentially ignoring the legitimacy of any claims or news that reflects negatively on trump... that's not to say there isnt something shady about clinton but it's also not false to say that the fbi did not charge her... twice even after political pressure forced them to reexamine the case just before the election

that's not to say she's innocent and that trump is guilty but i hate the fact that the narrative is always the same from the majority of the right wing media and politicians etc... i.e. that trump's allegations dont count for anything because hillary's investigation didnt find her guilty yet...
 
Trump said: "In 2016, we lost 64,000 Americans to drug overdoses: 174 deaths per day. Seven per hour. We must get much tougher on drug dealers and pushers if we are going to succeed in stopping this scourge."

Note from me: those figures are confirmed as roughly correct and maybe even an underestimate in a post earlier in the thread

Political Editor: Tracking drug smuggling is an imprecise science; according to Customs and Border Protection, marijuana seizures fell 31% from fiscal year 2016 to fiscal year 2017, but cocaine and heroin seizures increased by 70%. Cracking down on “drug dealers and pushers”, as the president suggests, would not confront the problem of prescription drug addiction or shipments from unregulated laboratories in China.
 
Ludy51 said:
Fucking LOL
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Vocational schools alone are not sound strategy for strong workforce development. It's cute that you think you got me or something. If you think vocational schools are enough you oughta get in a DeLorean and move back to 1940. He spent no more than two sentences on education and workforce. That's fucking pathetic and shame on you for being okay with it.
 
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Not a fact-checking thing but I find this funny - both sides are rallying behind this one 3 word phrase in one way or the other:

In that immigration section of the speech Trump declared that “Americans are dreamers too”.

The statement, which has the air of the “White Lives Matter” response to the Black Lives Matter movement, is getting rave reviews from conservatives on Twitter.

But it has also inspired progressives, and the phrase “Dreamers are Americans too” is now trending
 
Oh, and where were the details on infrastructure? How will Trump lower prescription drug prices?

This president is too dumb and racist to deal with sometimes.
 
From Trump: "Last month, I also took an action endorsed unanimously by the Senate just months before: I recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel."

Then Trump suggests it’s a mistake for the United States to send money to countries that vote against US positions at the United Nations:

"Shortly afterwards, dozens of countries voted in the United Nations General Assembly against America’s sovereign right to make this recognition. American taxpayers generously send those same countries billions of dollars in aid every year.

That is why, tonight, I am asking the Congress to pass legislation to help ensure American foreign-assistance dollars always serve American interests, and only go to America’s friends."

From me: if im honest this sets a worrying precedent - Trump is leveraging the support of less than 50% of the US voting population to support only countries who agree with less than half of his country (and especially when its basis is in a move that is unanimously controversial no matter whether you agree with the move or not)

as a non-us citizen it is worrying that a government of another country could harvest support for proposals that are not majority supported in the UN through threats of lost aid etc.

maybe that's just me but it feels fairly petty to move aid around based on political support rather than who needs it most - it dehumanizes those who needs the aid in my opinion

but then again that's just my opinion
 
Trump said: "Terrorists are not merely criminals. They are unlawful enemy combatants. And when captured overseas, they should be treated like the terrorists they are.

In the past, we have foolishly released hundreds of dangerous terrorists, only to meet them again on the battlefield -- including the ISIS leader, al-Baghdadi.

So today, I am keeping another promise. I just signed an order directing Secretary Mattis to reexamine our military detention policy and to keep open the detention facilities at Guantánamo Bay."

Political Editor: The president is making a claim that has been debated in legal circles since Guantánamo Bay first received prisoners from the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: the legal status of the people detained there. Trump argues that they are enemy combatants and not simply criminals, and that the military should be able to detain them indefinitely.

For over four months, Trump administration has detained an American citizen without charge under this premise, and attempted to deny his habeas corpus rights. (It seems though that he may still have his day in court in a small defeat for Trump on this issue.)

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadu, the rarely seen leader of Isis, was captured not long after the US invasion of Iraq and during the rise of al-Qaida in Iraq, the terror cell in which he became a central figure. He was released from a US detention facility in Iraq in 2004, and went on to eventually help transform al-Qaida in Iraq into Isis.
 
Interesting note: not one mention of Russia in Trump's speech - i assumed he would ignore the allegations of collusion but he didnt mention the sanctions or anything else either - even in defence he didnt mention it...
 
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