Donald Trump running for president

Todd Garner said:
Living out in the woods like Mick Dodge and not concerning ones self with Government period is getting pretty appealing
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I would also agree with this. We may have different ideas on how the country should be, but one thing is for sure, it sucks either way. At least at the moment and where it's probably headed. Australia seems nice.
 
Gutterpump said:
I honestly and admittedly don't know much about American politics or what's happened here with Health care. I do support a model similar to Canada's though. Canada is kind of a hybrid of Europe and the US. I know right wing American's aren't prepared to go as far as Europe does socially, but if we are boosting social programs here, especially health care, it should be done properly.

Also, I don't think taxes can get much higher in NYC. It's higher here for me than it was in Canada when I lived there.
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Right wing Americans aren't willing to go half as far as Europe socially, IMO. Anti gay marriage, anti poor, anti immigrant, etc. Although some of the Scandinavian countries can be a bit intolerant as well, from what I have read.

IMO, Right wing politics in America revolves around guns, religion, dictating morality and preventing social programs from helping the poor. The old "it's your fault you were born poor, just pull yourself up by your bootstraps" mentality. Easy to say when you are born on the right side of the tracks, either literally or metaphorically.
 
Misfit28 said:
Right wing Americans aren't willing to go half as far as Europe socially, IMO. Anti gay marriage, anti poor, anti immigrant, etc. Although some of the Scandinavian countries can be a bit intolerant as well, from what I have read.

IMO, Right wing politics in America revolves around guns, religion, dictating morality and preventing social programs from helping the poor. The old "it's your fault you were born poor, just pull yourself up by your bootstraps" mentality. Easy to say when you are born on the right side of the tracks, either literally or metaphorically.
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I admittedly like guns as well. I wouldn't own a stockpile of them, nor do I support the NRA. But I love going to the range, which is a problem while living in NY. I have to travel into Jersey to shoot anything but a handgun. We do have an amazing Archery club in Brooklyn which also has knife throwing (which I'm also really good at and enjoy) as well as axe throwing. Stuff is FUN. I grew up around hunters, never really hunted myself though, just came along for shooting at the outdoor ranges. I plan on doing some hog hunting myself in Texas one of these days, with bay/catch dogs and knives, no guns. On the bucket list. I am a big fan of catch dogs, and own them myself (but my dogs do not get worked though).
 
Gutterpump said:
I admittedly like guns as well. I wouldn't own a stockpile of them, nor do I support the NRA. But I love going to the range, which is a problem while living in NY. I have to travel into Jersey to shoot anything but a handgun. We do have an amazing Archery club in Brooklyn which also has knife throwing (which I'm also really good at and enjoy) as well as axe throwing. Stuff is FUN. I grew up around hunters, never really hunted myself though, just came along for shooting at the outdoor ranges. I plan on doing some hog hunting myself in Texas one of these days, with bay/catch dogs and knives, no guns. On the bucket list. I am a big fan of catch dogs, and own them myself (but my dogs do not get worked though).
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I enjoy firing guns as well. Perhaps what I meant was the obsession with guns, LOL.

I live in Tennessee, so no stranger to guns. Haven't hunted much, though. No real desire to. Of course, I might give it a try just to add some meat to the freezer :)

Archery sounds fun to me, maybe I'll eventually try my hand at that.
 
youngandfree said:
10+% increase for all tax payers, and nearly 18% for the wealthiest
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OK, I don't have a problem with that. Especially if I don't have to pay premiums and deductibles for my health coverage.

Not only that, it would help people who can't afford healthcare as well.
 
Misfit28 said:
That's because of the way the routes are currently handled.
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Amtrak has had 44 years to become solvent without success. Reducing labor costs can be an effective interim measure, but deregulating the passenger rail system is the best way to ensure improved service and lower fares for consumers. Cutting Amtrak's subsidies and ending its monopoly is a responsible alternative to passing inneffective reforms.
From this article.
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It also says AVERAGE salary for on track employees is $41/hr. So that obviously includes "stewards" or whatever they are called. For unskilled labor required, that's obscene. As a skilled telecommunications technician, that also happens to be a union member, that's more than I make with over 16 years experience.
 
youngandfree said:
Amtrak has had 44 years to become solvent without success. Reducing labor costs can be an effective interim measure, but deregulating the passenger rail system is the best way to ensure improved service and lower fares for consumers. Cutting Amtrak's subsidies and ending its monopoly is a responsible alternative to passing inneffective reforms.
From this article.
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It also says AVERAGE salary for on track employees is $41/hr. So that obviously includes "stewards" or whatever they are called. For unskilled labor required, that's obscene. As a skilled telecommunications technician, that also happens to be a union member, that's more than I make with over 16 years experience.
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Good neocon article there.

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Deregulation will help the crumbling infrastructure?

How do you reconcile your apparent Libertarian leanings with your own union membership?

These salaries don't seem insane to me: Invalid Link Removed

You highlighted the word that means the most, AVERAGE.
 
youngandfree said:
Government subsidized rail transportation. Just because the train goes faster doesn't mean it won't be a black hole of money.
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If the train gets people places in a fraction of the current time, best believe the system will be used. There is a plan for a high speed tube to connect LA<-->NYC in a matter of something like 2 hours. It's incredibly fast.

The problem with our antiquated rail system is that it's incredibly slow. Of course nobody wants to use it.
 
Gutterpump said:
If the train gets people places in a fraction of the current time, best believe the system will be used. There is a plan for a high speed tube to connect LA<-->NYC in a matter of something like 2 hours. It's incredibly fast.

The problem with our antiquated rail system is that it's incredibly slow. Of course nobody wants to use it.
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2 hours?! That's insane and awesome :)
 
Misfit28 said:
Where do you get the 10-20% number?

You do realize that Bernie wants to get rid of the insurance companies, right?

I don't make six figures, lol.
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Thats horrible, if single payer system was put in place, I definitively would want insurance to protect me when government fails to provide the services they force me to purchase.
 
ax1 said:
Thats horrible, if single payer system was put in place, I definitively would want insurance to protect me when government fails to provide the services they force me to purchase.
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It would eliminate the extra costs associated with having a middleman, which is essentially what an insurance company is.
 
Misfit28 said:
Holy hell, that looks kinda scary lol.
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It's the future :) I love how Tesla comes up with insane ideas and executes on them, and how they also focus on 0/low emission technology.

Edit: And the whole Hyperloop, Musk says, would cost $6 billion, or less than one-tenth as much as California's long-awaited high-speed-rail network.
 
Misfit28 said:
IMO, Right wing politics in America revolves around guns, religion, dictating morality and preventing social programs from helping the poor. The old "it's your fault you were born poor, just pull yourself up by your bootstraps" mentality. Easy to say when you are born on the right side of the tracks, either literally or metaphorically.
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And left wing politics involves fear mongering about guns, are VERY religous worshiping the state at their diety, create poverty. The old "it's the government who really cares and loves you, just subdue your liberties and guns to them and they will give you security" mentality, and thats why this country is running to the shyts. People who depend on government at the end of the day vote for big government corporate fascist military police state fascists in exchange for chicken feed for life.
 
Gutterpump said:
I'm really supportive of an East/West coast bullet train too. One that possibly connects LA to NYC, and also ones that go up/down both coasts. We are so far behind in this respect.
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Hyperloop > bullet trains for the win. Its going for test runs probably later this year.
 
Gutterpump said:
I was doing a search for it just now but could only find the proposal for the 35min LA-SF hyperloop:

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Tesla / Musk are so far ahead of the game. This technology also produces no emissions.
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Ok, you got that! lol
 
Gutterpump said:
It's the future :) I love how Tesla comes up with insane ideas and executes on them, and how they also focus on 0/low emission technology.

Edit: And the whole Hyperloop, Musk says, would cost $6 billion, or less than one-tenth as much as California's long-awaited high-speed-rail network.
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Which proves a private company can execute a plan much more efficiently and cheaper than the government subsidized model. Which is the point I already made.
 
Misfit28 said:
It would eliminate the extra costs associated with having a middleman, which is essentially what an insurance company is.
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Insurance isnt "health care." You eliminate the middleman simple by going to the doctor directly and paying him directly. When you want Bernie to create a single payer system your creating a bigger middle man and bureaucracy.

Insurance is simply a service that measures risk and they put a price on it. Its optional, someone may want to gamble a price thats set just in case that anything happens. Its not supposed to be the way it is today set as "health care." Thats the problem, insurance isnt supposed to be health care to take care of people, but government has been bribed and they have managed to control the system and inflate costs. This all started slowly during the 70's with Nixon and managed care. Its all been downhill since.
 
youngandfree said:
Which proves a private company can execute a plan much more efficiently and cheaper than the government subsidized model. Which is the point I already made.
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The government is not in the business of designing cutting edge technology. Maybe the military and nasa are though. But yes, the government can purchase this technology from the people who specialize in it, for much less than existing infrastructure. This was my point, our infrastructure needs updating. I did not say that the government needs to make these inventions lol.
 
Gutterpump said:
It's the future :) I love how Tesla comes up with insane ideas and executes on them, and how they also focus on 0/low emission technology.

Edit: And the whole Hyperloop, Musk says, would cost $6 billion, or less than one-tenth as much as California's long-awaited high-speed-rail network.
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The original Tesla already has all the insane idea's, but competition shut him out and government stole his technology and kept it secret from us.
 
ax1 said:
The original Tesla already has all the insane idea's, but competition shut him out and government stole his technology and kept it secret from us.
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Free energy for everyone. He got completely shut down on that idea. Now that would've been socialism I could live with!!
 
Misfit28 said:
Good neocon article there.

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Deregulation will help the crumbling infrastructure?

How do you reconcile your apparent Libertarian leanings with your own union membership?

These salaries don't seem insane to me: Invalid Link Removed

You highlighted the word that means the most, AVERAGE.
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I reconcile it very easily. Union membership is a necessary evil for my day to day life at my job. Conservative policies are better for the country as a whole, the liberal policies since Obama took office have created record levels of poor people.

If private sector unions stick to employer/employee relationships and working conditions, then I'm all for them. But public sector unions are negotiating with the government, that is bargaining with other people's money, the taxpayers.

But here's how stupid our union, and many others are. During the Obamacare debate, the union was all over it. Even when the Cadillac Plan Tax was discovered, they wanted everyone to support it. Guess what we had, thanks to our union contracts. A Cadillac plan, that was going to get taxed as a penalty. We didn't pay for insurance for the first 10 years. The Cadillac Tax was supposed to kick in in 2014, but to appease the unions, Obama's cronies at HHS kicked the can down the road. As a result of the impending tax on our employer, the company said we need to start paying into our insurance, as a result of the soon to be realized tax penalty for the great insurance plan our union negotiated. So the union starts crying about the company trying to soak the union members, and completely ignored the fact they supported passage of obamacare, which causes the tax hike the company is trying to cover.

So now we pay into our insurance plans and people complained about how terrible the company was. Yet the union pushed for the law that caused the problem.

The other ironic side is I didn't start paying attention to politics and liberal vs conservative policy theory until I had been in the union for a few years. I can count on 1 hand the number of liberal democrat nut huggers that I work with, everyone else votes conservative.
 
Gutterpump said:
The government is not in the business of designing cutting edge technology. Maybe the military and nasa are though. But yes, the government can purchase this technology from the people who specialize in it, for much less than existing infrastructure. This was my point, our infrastructure needs updating. I did not say that the government needs to make these inventions lol.
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The government also isn't in the business of sticking to a budget and being cost effective, because they aren't spending their own money.
 
youngandfree said:
I reconcile it very easily. Union membership is a necessary evil for my day to day life at my job. Conservative policies are better for the country as a whole, the liberal policies since Obama took office have created record levels of poor people.

If private sector unions stick to employer/employee relationships and working conditions, then I'm all for them. But public sector unions are negotiating with the government, that is bargaining with other people's money, the taxpayers.

But here's how stupid our union, and many others are. During the Obamacare debate, the union was all over it. Even when the Cadillac Plan Tax was discovered, they wanted everyone to support it. Guess what we had, thanks to our union contracts. A Cadillac plan, that was going to get taxed as a penalty. We didn't pay for insurance for the first 10 years. The Cadillac Tax was supposed to kick in in 2014, but to appease the unions, Obama's cronies at HHS kicked the can down the road. As a result of the impending tax on our employer, the company said we need to start paying into our insurance, as a result of the soon to be realized tax penalty for the great insurance plan our union negotiated. So the union starts crying about the company trying to soak the union members, and completely ignored the fact they supported passage of obamacare, which causes the tax hike the company is trying to cover.

So now we pay into our insurance plans and people complained about how terrible the company was. Yet the union pushed for the law that caused the problem.

The other ironic side is I didn't start paying attention to politics and liberal vs conservative policy theory until I had been in the union for a few years. I can count on 1 hand the number of liberal democrat nut huggers that I work with, everyone else votes conservative.
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Do you mean "Conservative" or "Neoconservative"? It's difficult for me to tell where you stand.

Sounds like your union sucks. At UPS I don't pay a dime for my insurance, even though I have a second plan at my main job that I DO pay for.

So it's all Obama's fault that poverty is increasing? That's a stretch. The recession, which was already on the upswing when Obama was elected, caused the poverty rate to soar. The population also didn't remain static in the 8 years of Obama's two terms. Some might argue that the poverty rate would be even higher if it weren't for Obama's policies.
 
youngandfree said:
The government also isn't in the business of sticking to a budget and being cost effective, because they aren't spending their own money.
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Isnt it awesome...they steal people's money at gunpoint to hand pay contractors and their own employees...and then after they pay them, they steal it back at gunpoint all over again!
 
Misfit28 said:
Do you mean "Conservative" or "Neoconservative"? It's difficult for me to tell where you stand.

Sounds like your union sucks. At UPS I don't pay a dime for my insurance, even though I have a second plan at my main job that I DO pay for.

So it's all Obama's fault that poverty is increasing? That's a stretch. The recession, which was already on the upswing when Obama was elected, caused the poverty rate to soar. The population also didn't remain static in the 8 years of Obama's two terms. Some might argue that the poverty rate would be even higher if it weren't for Obama's policies.
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Obama did a great job with the economy printing trillions of artificial money out of thin air and pumping it into the economy.

I think if every business had their own printing press in the back, business would also be something to brag about how great of a job they did. "Hey, we printed thousands every day so we wouldnt have to lay off as much as we could have!" But now everybody's money is devalued and most people dont realize they were blindly taxed.
 
Misfit28 said:
Do you mean "Conservative" or "Neoconservative"? It's difficult for me to tell where you stand.

Sounds like your union sucks. At UPS I don't pay a dime for my insurance, even though I have a second plan at my main job that I DO pay for.

So it's all Obama's fault that poverty is increasing? That's a stretch. The recession, which was already on the upswing when Obama was elected, caused the poverty rate to soar. The population also didn't remain static in the 8 years of Obama's two terms. Some might argue that the poverty rate would be even higher if it weren't for Obama's policies.
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If UPS has insurance that isn't considered a Cadillac plan, I would argue your union sucks and isn't getting you the best plans. I never said I pay a lot, less than $30/week.
 
youngandfree said:
If UPS has insurance that isn't considered a Cadillac plan, I would argue your union sucks and isn't getting you the best plans. I never said I pay a lot, less than $30/week.
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Luckily I have two health plans, two dental plans, two vision plans, and an FSA. I'm guessing that my UPS plan isn't a Cadillac plan.

You just said your union was stupid for doing what it did. I'm confused, LOL.
 
Misfit28 said:
Luckily I have two health plans, two dental plans, two vision plans, and an FSA. I'm guessing that my UPS plan isn't a Cadillac plan.

You just said your union was stupid for doing what it did. I'm confused, LOL.
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I always thought UPS had some hard work....especially from the point of view from someone who likes to preserve much of their body for the gym. Years ago I did some part time work delivering wine, my body got trashed.
 
Misfit28 said:
Luckily I have two health plans, two dental plans, two vision plans, and an FSA. I'm guessing that my UPS plan isn't a Cadillac plan.

You just said your union was stupid for doing what it did. I'm confused, LOL.
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Apparently comprehension isn't your strong suit. I said they were stupid for pushing Obamacare, which they knew would penalize our company due to the fantastic insurance the union has negotiated to get. And when the penalty finally kicks in, they raised hell when the company told them employees would have to kick in on their insurance. All because HHS told the union they would be able to get an exemption, then they kicked the tax penalty down the road.

If the union didn't push for Obamacare, the discussion of the company getting a tax penalty for their insurance plans, and having to pass on that penalty, would never have happened.
 
youngandfree said:
Apparently comprehension isn't your strong suit. I said they were stupid for pushing Obamacare, which they knew would penalize our company due to the fantastic insurance the union has negotiated to get. And when the penalty finally kicks in, they raised hell when the company told them employees would have to kick in on their insurance. All because HHS told the union they would be able to get an exemption, then they kicked the tax penalty down the road.

If the union didn't push for Obamacare, the discussion of the company getting a tax penalty for their insurance plans, and having to pass on that penalty, would never have happened.
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This discussion is done. Ad hominem pisses me off.

In other words they were stupid.
 
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