Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/_landings/contract/O-TRU-102316-Contractv02.pdf

by arzt • 10 years ago

784 1268 10 years ago

assets.donaldjtrump.com

dragthor2• 10 years ago

Thanks! I was looking for this today.

adt2bt5• 10 years ago

Does anyone have an idea about the expected global response to the Secretary of the Treasury labeling China a currency manipulator?

fredgrott2• 10 years ago

China had that label before but it was stated in public hence the previous private monetary talks between US, China, NK, etc..its just now out in the open

netule• 10 years ago

Secretary of the Treasury is a member of the President's cabinet, so I'm sure Trump will appoint a willing implement.

ianai2• 10 years ago

If it works out to impeding trade with China in anyway it just acts to slow our economy. We are not going to become more competitive with 1+ billion people who are willing to work without any labor protections by saying we won't do business with them. We're just sanctioning ourselves from essentially the world's manufacturing depot.

loceng3• 10 years ago

It could result in jobs for locals - however then investment needs to be made to support the manufacturing, educating skilled workers, etc.

laichzeit05• 10 years ago

And who exactly would be importing all these cheap Chinese goods then?

spinlock4• 10 years ago

Good question. How did they react after the Clinton Administration put them on that list?

twblalock2• 10 years ago

http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21709923-there-risk-trade...:

He promises to label China a currency manipulator, but the only consequence of that would be that America would have to engage China in talks on the currency’s value, which would have no practical effect.

The downside is pissing off China, which the US needs to get along. There is no upside -- China won't change its behavior because of a label.

gozur8812• 10 years ago

Chinese officials won't be pissed off. They understand politics.

The difficulty will be in keeping a straight face during talks designed to go nowhere.

internaut4• 10 years ago

FIRST propose a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress.

If he does this alone, then he's made a huge impact.

I'm really concerned he might be assassinated.

ocdtrekkie2• 10 years ago

I honestly don't believe there's any chance of that passing. However, if Donald Trump actually can make that happen, I will forgive everything I hold against him, because it would clear out most of our government rot within the next two elections.

dugmartin• 10 years ago

I doubt it would make much of a difference - money is like water in politics, it will find its way in. Instead of the money coming in as donations for future elections it will be about promises of huge salary for the job after you hit your term limit, unless of course you only want those who don't need to work hold our elective offices.

rblatz• 10 years ago

My biggest fear of term limits would be the deep state respecting legislative oversight even less than it already does. A 2 term congressman can be waited out, but a 5-10 term congressman can really dig in.

pc2g4d• 10 years ago

Maybe, but it would also be a huge blow against the power of congress, which could only strengthen the executive. Without consistent leadership, congress would be even more feckless than ever.

geofft6• 10 years ago

A president's power to propose a constitutional amendment is only greater than a presidential candidate's power to propose a constitutional amendment because of his symbolic authority. The states need to vote on it.

There's other stuff he can do on his own authority (e.g., a hiring freeze), or that requires the power of the presidency (e.g., nominating a justice).

incompatible• 10 years ago

A proposal alone doesn't do anything. What is that chance that it gets a two-thirds vote of approval in Congress?

meddlepal2• 10 years ago

Almost no chance since career politicians would be giving up their cushy career jobs.

elihu• 10 years ago

Constitutional amendments need a 2/3 majority in the House and Senate to officially be proposed (except when proposed through a constitutional convention, which hasn't happened since the original constitution was written), and must be ratified by 3/4 of states to take effect. So, this won't happen unless there's suddenly a bi-partisan consensus that term limits are needed. (Also, congresspeople are unlikely to be willing to vote themselves out of a job.)

croon5• 10 years ago

Reality doesn't seem to be a relevant factor here, unfortunately. Hopefully this will get clearer sometime into his presidency, when most likely nothing will happen, but otherwise a downward spiral.

dloose• 10 years ago

I'm not sure that Congressional term limits are necessarily a good thing. Lobbyists and other special interests don't have term limits. It seems to me that if we impose term limits on Congress members, then the lobbyists will be the ones with the most experience drafting and passing legislation. I'm all for limiting the influence of money in politics and making more Congress seats "vulnerable" (something like 90% of incumbents get re-elected), but when we find a good legislator I think we should be allowed to keep them.

internaut4• 10 years ago

when we find a good legislator I think we should be allowed to keep them.

It's a fair point. I guess we'll have to wait and see what the 'term limits' mean, whether they are similar to presidential term limits (my original assumption) or not.

The question I find myself wondering is:

Is the range of possible upside equivalent to the range of possible downside?

My intuition is that there's a limited amount marginal improvements except in special cases but the potential downside goes from bad to worse to flat out catastrophic.

Maybe it is like how most programmers can improve a code base, but a single bad actor could fuck it to hell and back with greater ease.

I'm looking at you Dianne Feinstein. Evil bat-witch.

ninjakeyboard2• 10 years ago

moral of the story, you can't make these changes without some sort of analysis to show that they will have the intended effect. He's pulling the trigger w/o understanding the end effect imo.

drzaiusapelord• 10 years ago

It does nothing to stop corruption in government. The same forces that have a 20 year Senator begging for campaign money and being in the pocket of various special interests will continue against the freshman Senator that replaces him. Its feel-good nonsense for the most part. It barely addressed the symptoms of Washington corruption, let alone the cause.

I'm really concerned he might be assassinated.

Over a toothless regulation that affects only a small percentage of Congress and mostly guys ready to retire anyway?

dragonwriter11• 10 years ago

If he does this alone, then he's made a huge impact

No single action could increase the power of lobbyists and unelected officials not directly accountable to voters more than this, it's true. It would be an enormous impact.

internaut4• 10 years ago

Can you provide a supporting line of reasoning?

I think corruption is like a weed. It grows when you become acclimatized to your environment and start to exploit it.

Term limits get us closer to a part-sortition. From the wiki:

Author James Wycliffe Headlam explains that the Athenian Council (500 administrators randomly selected), would commit occasional mistakes such as levying taxes that were too high. Additionally, from time to time, some in the Council would improperly make small quantities of money from their civic positions. However, "systematic oppression and organized fraud were impossible". These Greeks recognized that sortition broke up factions, diluted power, and gave positions to such a large number of disparate people that they would all keep an eye on each other making collusion fairly rare.

elevenfist• 10 years ago

Get real, this is an amazing boon for lobbyists. Members of congress would not be able to gain experience at crafting legislation and dealing with the entire shitshow process at the federal level. Lobbyists can still be lobbyists for life.

On top of that, this significantly weakens congress's position when raising funds for elections. They've got to dance to the right tune quickly, they can't slowly ramp up a career and build a brand. With their bargaining power lowered...ugh.

America is probably going to get totally fucked now. And no, not necessarily because of this. But this policy proposal is the best Trump could come up with? This isn't even half-baked, it's fucking flour in a pot and he's calling it cookies. How can this be called a contract.

1024core2• 10 years ago

Anecdata time. I was at a conference. During the dinner, a couple sat next to me, and the husband happened to be a lobbyist in Sacramento (CA). We talked about term limits, and he was laughing at how he, having been around so long, was the go-to resource for incoming newbie representatives in the committee he lobbied. With a "trust me", he could get stuff into legislation with ease.

This is not to say that term limits are bad. But just term limits alone may not be enough to curb corruption.

exclusiv3• 10 years ago

The longer they are there, the more sold out they become.

Career politicians are the worst.

Completely disconnected from the people because the only thing they know is how to get elected and work the system for personal enrichment and job security.

They help pass laws which affect people and the economy they've never participated in. The bad ones are hard to get rid of. Kind of like tenured professors. So you might lose an exceptional one from time to time but they can switch houses or branches in that case.

If you like no term limits, why do we have one for the President?

mrschwabe8• 10 years ago

Mixed opinion on this because it seems there is nothing wrong with no term limits on GOOD politicians. It would have been a shame if Ron Paul would have been prevented from his hugely successful 22+ years service in office. And Americans should really have no qualms about letting folks like Trey Gowdy and Jason Chaffez serve indefinitely.

teamhappy• 10 years ago

Did he upload this today?

cujo• 10 years ago

No. Came out 2, 2 1/2 weeks ago.

beaner• 10 years ago

Not sure when the document was uploaded, but he's talked about it in public before:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zDPdwKL-7A

You can skip to 15:40.

magicpat2010• 10 years ago

Based on the filename, it looks like it was uploaded on October 23, 2016.

mxfh• 10 years ago

Here is the pdfinfo metadata of the file with MD5 69cbf547083badc96cd3d86ef233e124

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inostia6• 10 years ago

I am very surprised that I am just reading this now. I wonder, if I had read it before (and I read NYT obsessively), that I would have re-considered by opinion.

jobu2• 10 years ago

Whatever you think about Trump or the policies in that document, it's clearer and more concise than anything I've seen from an elected official.

imajes2• 10 years ago

Whilst the concision is nice, it's pretty hand-wavy and without definition.

PeCaN• 10 years ago

Hand-wavy? It has explicit action steps.

omouse• 10 years ago

like the US Constitution and amendments?

djtriptych3• 10 years ago

To which similar documents are you comparing it?

boomzilla• 10 years ago

That's exactly the point. No one has ever offered such a document, so say what you want about Trump, he's taking a step towards transparency and accountability.

JumpCrisscross3• 10 years ago

To which similar documents are you comparing it?

They are comparing it to Newt Gingrich's 1994 "Contract with America" [1]. It brought Republicans control of both the House and Senate, partly as a reaction to Clinton's 1993 healthcare plan [2].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_with_America

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_health_care_plan_of_...

CPLX• 10 years ago

"I will light our capital city on fire" is even more clear and concise. Perhaps you're optimizing for the wrong metric.

thebigspacefuck• 10 years ago

Oh, You!

shaftoe• 10 years ago

That would certainly go a long way to cutting bureacracy and restoring efficiency.

m3rc• 10 years ago

Concise, yes. Believable, not so much

hiou• 10 years ago

I have a feeling you were not alive for the "Contract with America".

On a side note this is one of the most naive things I have ever seen. I was a bit agnostic before, but wow this is literally handing Russia and China the keys to the global economy while thinking he is doing the opposite. Yikes, I really did not realize he was this under qualified.

ep1033• 10 years ago

how does that hand over the keys?

qaq8• 10 years ago

Hmm totally not being a Trump supporter how does this empower China exactly? Russia's economy is the size of NYC so that is even stranger point especially given Trumps position on " I will lift the restrictions on the production of $50 trillion dollars’ worth of job-producing American energy reserves, including shale, oil, natural gas and clean coal"

CountSessine• 10 years ago

this is literally handing Russia and China the keys to the global economy

Well, ok. Aside from the misuse of literally, that's certainly a metaphor I haven't heard being applied to this problem domain before...

ixtli• 10 years ago

Well I'm glad "clear and concise to your eye" is the rubric by which we're grading policy. Or maybe this isn't about the actual policy, you just want complex reality to be boiled down in a way that's easily digestible?

ainot3• 10 years ago

Could you explain Obamacare? That would be cool. Thanks.

cyberferret4• 10 years ago

And what are the repercussions if he does NOT achieve all these within the first 100 days? Will he step down? Come up with yet another plan? Contracts usually stipulate this as well.

[Edit: And the downvote brigade strikes - for merely asking a genuine question. I guess this is an indication of the sort of thing that we can expect 'top down' from now on... Stay silent, never question, just obey the mandates... sigh]

[Edit2: And now plenty of upvotes in support after my last edit, as well as useful replies - thank you for restoring my faith in democracy and the fact the people are willing to discuss and deliberate policies in a fair and rational manner.]

sushid• 10 years ago

100 day plans are nothing new. [0] It's a way of saying that the new administration will hit the ground running.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_hundred_days

agumonkey6• 10 years ago

In France Hollande have been moving goal posts every time these 'N days' plans failed. He's now thinking about a second mandate.

Out of curiosity, in this era of disruption (for better or worse) where are the plans to disrupt politicians ? So many flaws yet we keep believing in the same democratic design every election.

busyant• 10 years ago

And what are the repercussions if he does NOT achieve all these within the first 100 days?

He will claim that he did indeed achieve them despite all evidence to the contrary.

If you manage to corner him on the argument, he will blame you for the failure.

* edit. Not sure what the downvote is for. Trump has used both tactics outlined above. He was always against the Iraq war despite evidence to the contrary. When he was under the impression that he would lose the election he cast blame elsewhere (election rigging).

ant6n4• 10 years ago

He's gonna say "so sue me"

RealGeek10• 10 years ago

And what are the repercussions if he does NOT achieve all these within the first 100 days? Will he step down? Come up with yet another plan?

He will delete it from his website and claim it never existed.

natmaster2• 10 years ago

Really? Can you explain what this means then?

"All vetting of people coming into our country will be considered “extreme vetting""

facetube6• 10 years ago

This shouldn't be downvoted. This is a critical question for a candidate who's pledged to expand religious discrimination and torture.

1024core2• 10 years ago

Can you explain what this means then

Who's this "you" you are talking to? Unless DT's been hanging out in HN, there's no way you're going to get an accurate answer.

facetube6• 10 years ago

Concise, elegant, and wrong.

slg• 10 years ago

This New Yorker cartoon seems to sum up your position. [1] I think it is pretty clear that the policies in the document are a more important to most of us than the clarity of their presentation.

[1] http://www.newyorker.com/cartoons/a20072

d0lph• 10 years ago

Cached version, since the site seems unresponsive.

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp...

mlmartin2• 10 years ago

"All vetting of people coming into our country will be considered “extreme vetting.” "

I visit the US every year to see friends. Some of whom are Arab-American. I'm seriously worried that I'm going to find myself on the receiving end of 'extreme vetting'.

pavlov3• 10 years ago

Also, if your country happens to be one of those that refuse to accept one-sided deportations from USA, you won't get a visa anymore:

"... Cancel visas to foreign countries that won’t take them back."

mrep• 10 years ago

Excuse my ignorance, but why is that a bad thing? From what I remember, visa holders staying longer than they are allotted is the number 1 source of illegal immigration.

clifanatic• 10 years ago

Free colonoscopy though.

btym3• 10 years ago

I'm sad to see this downvoted, a bit of inappropriate humor is comforting right now. Thanks for the chuckle.

kkoomi• 10 years ago

Tough crowd.

mlmartin2• 10 years ago

Socialised healthcare by the literal backdoor, eh?

mahyarm4• 10 years ago

How about the random Canadian going shopping, or french tourist? The US border is already enough of a hard ass as it is.

beachstartup• 10 years ago

this is laid out like an actual memorandum of understanding as used in business.

many contracts start out this way then turn into actual contracts full of legalese. in government context that would be legislation.

this isn't a bad start at all if a reasonable amount of it actually happens.

waterphone7• 10 years ago

It's a horrible start and a huge step backwards. A blanket ban on hiring new government workers or replacing existing ones is the stupidest idea ever for cutting the government workforce. Among other things, we as Americans have a wonderful collective resource in the form of public land, which is already poorly funded and hard to maintain because of the low workforce. Preventing the hiring of any more people to work and maintain trails, campgrounds and other resources is going to lead to them falling into further disrepair, getting shut down and abandoned. Even the volunteers who spend considerable time and money of their own to do much of the supplemental work currently won't be enough.

hacker_9• 10 years ago

"limit, freeze, eliminate, ban, withdraw, label, end, remove, suspend and cancel"

Just some of the words that stuck out to me.

deadringerr13• 10 years ago

He had an entire TV show about firing people. He appears to prefer to destroy rather than create.

Nadya3• 10 years ago

Absolutely terrible example.

The TV show created many jobs (producers, editors, filmers, the 'assistant' (spokesperson...) position being fought for) and those who were "fired" (never really hired to begin with, were they?) failed to meet the job requirement. Which was to be the best business-person. A meritocracy, as things should be, rather than being based on race/gender/filling some sort of diversity quota.

In reality they became spokespeople when they won. But that wasn't what the show was about or portrayed. Trump was portrayed as the "hard/rough" sort of boss and the "You're fired." was just the slogan/catchphrase which worked wonderfully as a TV catchphrase/slogan. It was short, memorable, and people knew where it was from.

There was a whole lot more creation than destruction....

randyrand2• 10 years ago

But what about the phrase "eliminate the ban on X." Then you're not banning something.

It's almost like you can't just look at the verbs alone and distill very useful meaning.

geofft6• 10 years ago

I'm worried about 18F/USDS/etc. because of the freeze on federal hiring. Partly I have friends there, but mostly, those organizations need to exist if government is going to be effective. They're getting things done, and they're also taking business away from government contractors who don't get things done (i.e., saving significant taxpayer money).

monknomo2• 10 years ago

They're fucked. They likely won't lose their jobs, but they won't be able to expand or replace attrition. We've seen this movie before, during the downturn, and evidence points to 4 years (or more) of this crap.

Trump has expressed a preference for private industry to do things for the government, because they do it better. Accenture, Deloitte and KPMG are prolly the federal IT of the future

hanginghyena• 10 years ago

That's not awful, btw. The one upside of a large consulting firm is you can retain decent talent for boring projects by bouncing them around between assignments.... but you still have a single entity to hold accountable afterwards.

Plus a certain percentage of these people take the diverse base of experience and go start something useful. Teaching a bunch of smart, ambitious people about how the process actually works and then letting them go start their own operation seems like a recipe for job creation.... (and finding better ways to replace the status quo)

ascotan• 10 years ago

This happened during the Reagan administration. The money doesn't disappear, it just moves elsewhere.

snowwrestler2• 10 years ago

USDS, in its current form, is probably toast. It was a special initiative of Obama and is housed directly within his executive office. To my knowledge it exists solely at the President's discretion. Trump is not a digital guy, and not likely to want to hold over Obama folks (and vice versa).

18F is housed within GSA and so is somewhat isolated from political interference. That said, private contractors don't like it and will seek to label it as a wasteful project (already started--there was an attack article on HN last week).

The U.S. federal government under Obama had started to take some small steps toward modern digital competency. My expectation for a Trump administration is a complete reversal of that. Who's going to champion technology? Trump?? Mike Pence? Giuliani? And how many young talented developers are going to want to take a pay cut to eat bureaucratic shit in DC for Donald Trump? The allure for USDS was Obama himself.

ohyoutravel• 10 years ago

I disagree on USDS. My understanding is that the money to fund USDS is already appropriated through the end of 2017, and there is bipartisan support to extend that money. A bill was introduced to do just that, actually (though nothing has been done with it since it was referred to committee). Lots of people like USDS on both sides of the aisle because it actually does make things more efficient.

Not saying it will survive an entire Trump presidency, but I think it's not on the chopping block immediately. I do worry that they won't be able to expand as planned though to have mini-USDS people in each Agency because of the hiring freeze.

pnathan3• 10 years ago

A popular approach from many is to make government ineffective. Not joking. It's at the crux of Republican proposals for 8-12 years.

Then, add to that the fact that these people are ensuring the big pigs don't get to eat at the trough? Yeah, not looking good.

I think I would be looking for a private gig right now if I were in 18F/USDS.

thetrb• 10 years ago

There's a lot of really scary stuff in there:

- Cancel payments to U.N. climate change projects

- Remove two existing regulations for every new regulation

- Drastic tax cuts

- Massive immigration changes

kafkaesq• 10 years ago

Remove two existing regulations for every new regulation

On the bright side, this is a sure-fire recipe for deadlock.

pasquinelli• 10 years ago

or for ballooning the size and complexity of each regulation, as each new regulation has to fold into itself two existing regulations that need to be removed for the sake of this plan.

Jtsummers4• 10 years ago

The hiring freeze for federal employees is concerning as well.

One of the major issues is that we've had several hiring freezes in the US civil service in recent decades. It causes a bathtub effect. You do reduce the workforce through attrition, but eventually you have to hire again and hire almost exclusively junior people (< 25 or 30). So you end up with a massive gap spanning around 15-20 years of age and experience.

You lose a great deal of institutional knowledge (particularly critical for civil service which has many long running programs (for various reasons both good and bad)). Contractors don't really suffice in this regard because they (the employees, not necessarily the companies) tend to move much more frequently. It's going to be a problem.

ep1033• 10 years ago

Are you telling me starve the beast doesn't actually work?

Color me shocked. : )

dragonwriter11• 10 years ago

You do reduce the workforce through attrition, but eventually you have to hire again and hire almost exclusively junior people (< 25 or 30).

This wouldn't be true if government pay was competitive (low pay partially offset by, particularly, pension benefits means entering government mid-career except as a box-checking thing to move to a private position leveraging the knowledge of government is discouraged, but entering at a junior level for a full career is less discouraged.)

Of course, the kind of people embracing starve the beast aren't going to mitigate the skill impact by improving pay.

bsilvereagle2• 10 years ago

You lose a great deal of institutional knowledge (particularly critical for civil service which has many long running programs (for various reasons both good and bad)).

NASA and DoD research labs are still dealing with the experience and cultural gaps from the hiring freezes of the 90s. I think for a lot of Americans it's easy to think of the "lazy bureaucrats" of the federal government (which definitely exist) and see a freeze or Reduction in Force as an overall good thing. However, every freeze and RIF has long lasting damage in the federal scientific community.

dragthor2• 10 years ago

- Cancel UN climate payments, use money instead on America water and environmental issues. Sounds good to me. Let China and India clean up their own mess, while we clean up our messes.

- Yes. Too many regulations by unelected bureaucrats. Sounds good to me. I'd rather have one clear and meaningful regulation than two "up for random interpretation."

- Yes. Tax cuts for all working people. Let people decide what to do with their own money (spend, save, donate, etc.). The bigger the government, the smaller the individual.

- Massive immigration changes? Not really. The pamphlet seems to enforce existing laws regarding criminal illegals.

all_usernames• 10 years ago

Tax cuts for all means reducing government resources, which means increasing the power of huge corporations. This is a hostile takeover of the American government.

GVIrish• 10 years ago

Tax cuts for all working people. Let people decide what to do with their own money (spend, save, donate, etc.). The bigger the government, the smaller the individual.

Tax cuts are all well and good in a vacuum, but how are we realistically going to pay down the national debt when we enact a massive tax cut on top of a tax rate that is already at historically low levels?

Some people say we can cut all of this government bureaucracy to make up for tax cuts but we'd have to take a figurative axe to all of our federal agencies to get to a point where we can afford a massive tax cut and pay down the national debt.

Otherwise we'd have to enact big cuts to Medicare/Medicaid, defense, and Social Security as well, which people seem loathe to stomach.

burkaman3• 10 years ago

Let China and India clean up their own mess, while we clean up our messes.

But China and India are on the same planet as us.

orf4• 10 years ago

Cancel UN climate payments, use money instead on America water and environmental issues. Sounds good to me. Let China and India clean up their own mess, while we clean up our messes.

What the hell. How ignorant is that.

CatMtKing• 10 years ago

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trump-picks-top-c... Is this what you consider cleaning up our mess?

ocschwar5• 10 years ago

"Cancel UN climate payments, use money instead on America water and environmental issues. Sounds good to me. Let China and India clean up their own mess, while we clean up our messes. -"

The issue with climate change is that the people making the bess are not the same ones who suffer from the mess. So our mess isn't just ours. And their mess isn;t just theirs.

It really should have to be explained to you.

dlp2112• 10 years ago

- Yes. Tax cuts for all working people. Let people decide what to do with their own money (spend, save, donate, etc.). The bigger the government, the smaller the individual.

A family of 4 with a median household income of $50k/yr pays close to nothing in federal taxes. Tax cuts don't help the people that need it.

jaza3• 10 years ago

Let China and India clean up their own mess, while we clean up our messes.

Near-zero chance that Trump will clean up any of America's environmental mess. Near-certain chance that he will significantly add to America's environmental mess.

cowardlydragon• 10 years ago

What happens when the world stops buying our debt

daveguy• 10 years ago

Hopefully Trump will not be able to bankrupt the government in 4 years. Filibuster in the Senate is an option for 2 years and maybe there will be some shift in 2018.

mywittyname8• 10 years ago

The Fed buys it instead -- they have infinity money.

The Treasury doesn't care if other banks won't lend them money, so long as the Fed will, and the Fed always will.

doctorshady• 10 years ago

Maybe I just don't understand how light touch government works, but wouldn't removing two regulations per new regulation help special interest groups in a lot of cases?

krick• 10 years ago

Cancel payments to U.N. climate change projects

I'm all green peace and pro-nature, but is it really such a bad thing? I have no idea, what that money is actually spent on, and UN seems to be pretty... well, pretty useless organization, to be honest. To what extent do these billions prevent/slow down melting of ice caps and drough? If they don't, then what's the matter? It seems to be better to spend money ob the lesser something, than on greater nothing.

pyre4• 10 years ago

On the flip side, Trump is putting a Climate Change-denier in charge of the EPA, and has promised to 'gut' the EPA... so I wouldn't necessarily trust judgement there on how effective the UN climate change projects are (instead of them just being opposed to them on principal, "Climate change is a hoax, so all climate change spending is wasted").

woodruffw• 10 years ago

This reads like Buzz Windrip's list from It Can't Happen Here.

It can happen here.

dv35z• 10 years ago

Totally agree with you. Just read that book a few months ago. Scary similarities, and prescient (let's hope not too much).

sremani• 10 years ago

Why is this flagged ? The Outsourcing act itself has repercussions to tech industry. This is not political opinion, its a policy pamphlet. Its fine, you hate the man with all your guts out, but it would be a sign of maturity, to argue for or against them, sharing your insights, rather than flagging the message and flogging the messenger.

knowaveragejoe• 10 years ago

Some of this sounds great - term limits on congress, a measure to reduce the revolving door effect of government officials going into lobbying.

Some of it sounds ridiculous - for every new federal regulation, 2 existing regulations must be eliminated. How is that considered feasible by any rational person? It might sound great if you don't think too hard about it.

The scariest things for me are the backing out of climate change accords and the opening up of additional shale/gas/etc resources. We really don't need to be heading in that direction, energy-wise.

rewrew• 10 years ago

Well, there are many truly crazy and stupid regulations already on the books, plus you could do this by simply empowering the Federal Oversight Committee (which does this anyway) to just do more removals. So that one actually has a relatively simple path to achieve it.

cyberferret4• 10 years ago

That one popped out at me too - 1 in 2 out?? It's not like decluttering a house - these are the fundamental building blocks of society...

andromeduck2• 10 years ago

Well I'm sure there's still a lot of opportunities to combine and simplify existing regulations. You wouldn't be able to do it forever but I don't think we'll run out this term.

trav42254• 10 years ago

No offense, but the overwhelming majority of them are not (IMO).

malz8• 10 years ago

For a "law and order" candidate it's also curious to propose removing laws. Of course, in his mind the necessary laws are those that constrain personal behavior (drugs, vice, abortion). The laws to repeal will be those that "cost jobs" by protecting worker safety, consumers, or the environment.

dharmon3• 10 years ago

Who knows how many outdated regulations are still on the books?

It seems the thing to do would be hire interns to start scouring for every "A married woman shall not chop down a birchwood tree on the day of her wedding while wearing her bridal gown" style law.

If this idea persisted for 50 years maybe they'd have to start repealing actual relevant regulations.

kbenson9• 10 years ago

It seems the thing to do would be higher interns to start scouring for every "A married woman shall not chop down a birchwood tree on the day of her wedding while wearing her bridal gown" style law.

Sure, but how many of those exist at a federal level? Those are often city, county and sometimes state regulations.

rayiner4• 10 years ago

I'd actually be surprised if there were many of those. Regulations are constantly being codified into the Code of Federal Regulations. It's about 175,000 pages. It's printed at about 55 lines per page, which makes it about 10 million lines. About the same size as the Linux kernel. That's big, but it's not "we don't even know what's in here" big.

gdulli• 10 years ago

How is that considered feasible by any rational person?

It's something that sounds simple and good to someone who not only isn't aware of the details of what it would mean in practice, but also isn't aware of their own inability to understand the details and nuance, or that there are details and nuance. It was a Dunning-Kruger election.

ainot3• 10 years ago

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which low-ability individuals suffer from illusory superiority

High brow smack (condescension) like that and "basket of deplorables" are what America revolted against.

If the liberal left was truly smart, why did they allow the president to run up more national debt than all presidents prior...combined?

redler3• 10 years ago

Chesterton's Fence:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence

EdiX• 10 years ago

I'm going to introduce a new concept here, the "Dunning-Kruger effect effect": people who talk about the Dunning-Kruger effect usually haven't read or did not understand the Dunning Kruger effect paper and are only putting their ignorance on display [0]. Furthermore they are also ignorant of follow up studies proving that even the original effect was just a statistical artifact [1].

The Dunning-Kruger effect effect is itself an example of Dunning-Kruger effect but given that the Dunning-Kruger effect does not actually exist in general, the Dunning-Kruger effect effect may be the only instance of Dunning-Kruger effect that actually exists.

[0] http://danluu.com/dunning-kruger/ [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11831408

elchief5• 10 years ago

I suggested dropping a law for every new law on here a year or so back and it was surprisingly popular

Here's the link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9740748

kbenson9• 10 years ago

Well, at least that's steady state. If you wanted to keep the current statutes you could make sure to fold them into the new law after reviewing them. That sounds like a same way to force review of older laws to some extent, if you accept that review of older laws won't result in endless arguing. At least there should be real information about the impact the prior law had, positive and negative.

nartsbtaa2• 10 years ago

We should just throw out any regulations that don't spark joy.

deadringerr13• 10 years ago

Okay, this was the first time I laughed today. Thank you.

b_emery3• 10 years ago

California tried term limits. They didnt work. Turns out you need to have actual political skills to do politics.

jayd16• 10 years ago

It'll mean unelected officials and lobbyists hold all the clout.

krapp• 10 years ago

And yet if you ask most Americans what "actual political skills" are, they'll likely say venality, corruption and malice, which leads us to having elected a president primarily on the basis of his incompetence.

semiel• 10 years ago

Some of it sounds ridiculous - for every new federal regulation, 2 existing regulations must be eliminated. How is that considered feasible by any rational person? It might sound great if you don't think too hard about it.

Canada has a variation on this law.

http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/R-4.5/page-1.html#h-...

burkaman3• 10 years ago

And this law actually started in British Columbia as "repeal 2 for every new regulation". It does seem like it could be useful as a short term policy, if Congress can't find any way to agree on directly repealing unnecessary regulations.

akiselev4• 10 years ago

It may look similar on the surface but Trump's proposal is nothing like the Canadian red tape reduction laws. The latter are focused on reducing the administrative burden of demonstrating regulatory compliance but it does not impact the regulations themselves except as a last resort. The vast majority of the time, compliance can be streamlined to offset the extra cost of new regulations. What Trump wants to do is cut regulations he and his supporters are ideologically opposed to while framing it as his public service meant to benefit small business owners.

Edit: Also note that in the preamble it specifically says "Canadians and small businesses." This law does not impact, for example, environmental or safety regulations for real estate developers or utilities. Trump will almost certainly try to cut EPA regulations but something like the Canadian law would never allow that.

Graphon12• 10 years ago

I had a variation of that for my household, except it applied 1:1 ratio, and only for shoes. For every new pair of shoes purchased, one old pair had to go out the door.

russdill• 10 years ago

Moronic metric chasing. They'll just make regulations longer and more convoluted so that a single regulation has the same amount of text as 3 or even 4.

melling6• 10 years ago

I guess you haven't been paying attention. Many people don't believe in Global Warming, or at the very least don't want to even slightly impact the economy. The Democrats weren't going to hold office forever, and neither will the Republicans.

The best thing for everyone would be for market-based solutions that have clear advantages. Solar, wind, electric cars, nuclear, etc.

Republicans, for example, will put solar on their homes and drive electric cars if there are obvious advantages.

threeseed3• 10 years ago

Completely ignorant position.

Market based solutions only work if the market is fair i.e. all players are subject to the same conditions. The problem is (a) fossil fuels have large subsidies all up/down the chain and (b) fossil fuels do not have a surcharge for their impact on the environment.

peteretep• 10 years ago

    > Many people don't believe in Global Warming

I spent a lot of time reading the "Ask Trump Supporters" Reddit this cycle. Climate Change was one issue where almost all of them broke with their candidate, which was pretty interesting to me.

exclusiv3• 10 years ago

Agreed. Positioning is everything. If rather than saying people's cars are causing global warming, they said how about we get off our reliance of foreign energy as a matter of security and by the way it's better for the environment and energy will get cheaper, there would be more buy in. But they can't help themselves because they can't get over their disdain for skeptics. They have an agenda and it's a religion for most.

I don't hear anything about the sun when climate change is brought up and it's over 99% of the mass of the solar system. Then you have people talking about feeling how warm it is when we are talking about small changes.

If it was 82 outside and you polled people, you'd get all kinds of results. But suddenly anthro climate pushers are super sensitive thermometers. They talk about weather events when you try to have a climate discussion all the time.

Questioning is science, especially when you can't prove it like the speed of light.

mempko• 10 years ago

Markets are created by states. Why the indirect route?

noobermin• 10 years ago

There's a lot of room to wonder about his trustworthiness given his record as a businessman, but even in this document, he doesn't address campaign finance reform. Congressional term-limits just consolidate power in the moneyed elites--the problems is not just the politicians, it's who corrupted them. If anything, this is a document to passify those moneyed interests who, unlike say Sheldon Adelson, worry about a Trump presidency.

Everything I've seen so far suggests Trump isn't what blue-collar voters ordered for.

josho3• 10 years ago

Trump railed against the system that allowed politicians to be bought. It turns out his solution is to term limit congress. Sounds like treating a symptom not the root cause.

Shivetya• 10 years ago

Well let us be honest here. Electing politicians hasn't exactly been doing us that much good. If anything we have learned we cannot accept their word at all.

I am of the opinion that politicians corrupted themselves by selling their ability to shape the laws that govern the country and decide who is punished and who is rewarded.

feld• 10 years ago

It doesn't stop the flow of money, just requires that it's more fairly distributed throughout the party.

bmmayer1• 10 years ago

Is campaign finance reform really that big an issue, considering Trump just proved it's possible to win an election without any big money or support from special interests?

randiantech• 10 years ago

Funny, that "if one created, two removed" was a law imposed by a Principal Software Architect to me and my team regarding apps and apis as part of a rationalization program. "If you create this new API, make sure to remove at least two". I have to say, after two years there, that helped a lot to reduce redundancy and complexity. But well, apps and api are not the same of public policies... who knows.

rurban• 10 years ago

No. The problem are the corrupt selfserving politicians, and not the ones who corrupt them.

And his program is not only term-limits. mostly going after the criminals and clean up the mess. They should be worried, and are already crying.

Should be doable even with the press witchhunting him and later with the antiliberal nonsense he will come up to please his voter base.

jamisteven• 10 years ago

Why is that scary? Do you know how many of these laws are absolutely useless in present day?

yabatopia• 10 years ago

No. Do you?

Houshalter2• 10 years ago

It's not as crazy as it sounds. Studies show that Government has a "liberal bias". That even during Republican administrations, more liberal policies are passed than conservative ones: http://www.vox.com/2014/9/19/6532489/chart-policymaking-has-...

The reason is because it's much much harder to repeal laws than to add new ones, so they tend to increase over time. Regulation bloats.

douche2• 10 years ago

Like technical debt. We are long overdue for a good refactoring push.

darawk• 10 years ago

Some of it sounds ridiculous - for every new federal regulation, 2 existing regulations must be eliminated. How is that considered feasible by any rational person? It might sound great if you don't think too hard about it.

IMO this is the best thing in there. The burden of complex legislation is incredible, and there are tens of thousands of pages that could be simplified and/or removed entirely. It'd be a very long time before we ran out of stuff to prune and the benefits of doing this would be enormous.

It's hard to overstate the benefits of individuals being able to actually comprehend the legal areas in which they operate.

tdaltonc• 10 years ago

I agree that regulations should be simpler, but this sounds like a bad way to achieve that.

Are "regulations" strictly countable? It sounds like trying to minimize the number of lines (or characters) in a code base. Fewer lines (or characters) doesn't mean it will be more readable.

mozumder• 10 years ago

I don't get the appeal of term limits on Congress.

Why would you vote for an amateur politician instead of a professional career politician?

Aren't career politicians better than amateur politicians? If a politician is doing a good job, why would you artificially limit their term?

The branch of government with the highest approval rate is the Judicial branch, where Supreme Court Justices are appointed for life.

stevesearer2• 10 years ago

The appeal is that it would make being a career politician impossible and that term-limited congress would therefore act out of interest for their constituents rather than themselves. But you're right that it would also prevent good politicians from staying.

Another proposal which could have a similar effect would be to drastically increase the number of representatives so that each one represents a smaller number of people (say 50,000). Having many more reps would reduces the individual power and influence of any one rep in particular and could dissuade them from acting in their own best interest.

exclusiv3• 10 years ago

The Supreme Court has a really straightforward framework for their job though. They are judges not politicians.

joeclark774• 10 years ago

The other appeal (aside from what has already been stated) is that it would eliminate the problem of Congressmen obsessing about the next election as soon as they arrive. Lots of problems in our government are due to legislators wanting to avoid accountability, avoid having to take a position, or kicking the can down the road. But imagine if you only have two years and then go home! You'd be willing to really do something.

JumpCrisscross3• 10 years ago

2-for-1 need not be a law, just executive guidance around what Trump will or will not veto. If it doesn't take two substantive--to him--pieces of regulation off the table for each one proposed, he'll send it back for more cutting.

pbreit3• 10 years ago

Critics still can't get their head around "taking it seriously but not literally".

pnathan3• 10 years ago

Some of these ideas are, I think, able to stand on their own merit. In particular, the revolving door has been identified in a bipartisan fashion to be a real problem.

I defer to actual political experts to discuss the proposed solution and its nuances.

Delmania2• 10 years ago

- term limits on congress, a measure to reduce the revolving door effect of government officials going into lobbying.

Terms limit worsen the revolving door, because the reps focus more on their next job than actually legislating. They become incredibly short term sighted.

The real fix would be to outright ban gerrymandering and force the officials to have to represent a mixture of political views.

rocqua2• 10 years ago

It's quite feasible, because it is very difficult to distinguish 'a regulation' from 'many regulations'.

Sadly, that quickly leads to huge compendiums of regulations covering a lot rather than neatly organized reasonably scoped regulations.

nikatwork• 10 years ago

for every new federal regulation, 2 existing regulations must be eliminated

I'd read this more as a position and statement of intent than a concrete plan. The devil will be in the spirit of the execution, not the letter.

JKCalhoun• 10 years ago

Some of this sounds great - term limits on congress, a measure to reduce the revolving door effect of government officials going into lobbying.

Term limits for State congressional representatives seems not to have accomplished that though: http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2015/01/16/states-sho...

blablabla1233• 10 years ago

Some of it sounds ridiculous - for every new federal
regulation, 2 existing regulations must be eliminated. How is
that considered feasible by any rational person? It might
sound great if you don't think too hard about it.

I think that's the reason Trump becomes president of the US. It may sound ridiculous to you but he is 100% correct with that point. Everybody knows that there are too many government regulations, people across the whole political spectrum agree on that.

And although I'm from Germany, I can tell you rules that can be removed. For instance rules that require you to own a gun in certain counties, there are other actually ridiculous rules. There are YouTube videos about that and as a matter of fact these rules are not enforced.

We need to relax our constrained thinking to start modernizing outdated structures. It's sad that Donald Trump must do this job.

matt4077• 10 years ago

Nobody agrees on thet, except in the very narrow definition of everyone knowing at least one regulation they'd personally abolish (the lefty choosing marijuana, the right "all of them")

I've investigated the same complaint for EU law and all you can find is bizarre propaganda making ridiculous claims in bad faith – they make the regs sound absurd, but you can find out the real purpose within half a minute of googling.

Famous example: requiring Cucumbers (bananas etc.) to conform to a certain shape, including curvature for different quality grades. Reasoning: the retail industry wanted it (they couldn't agree on a common standard), it helps trade by establishing standard grades. It's also been repealed as a result of the populist pressure, but by then everyone had been using it and they just continued.

finiter6• 10 years ago

Everybody knows that there are too many government regulations, people across the whole political spectrum agree on that

But they don't agree on which ones should be removed. It's why "everybody knows" Congress is terrible but they keep getting re-elected. It's because everyone likes their representatives but hate all the others.

cmdrfred• 10 years ago

You can find enough to pass nearly 10 via the first hit on Google.

http://www.freedomworks.org/content/19-ridiculous-federal-cr...

analog31• 10 years ago

In my view, term limits will have no practical effect on the influence of money on politics, so long as the parties can preserve their control of congressional seats through gerrymandering. Money will always find a way to speak louder than voters, so long as voters are suppressed.

I love my party, but in my district, my party's primary is the only election with a meaningful impact on anything. And my party has this district, in order to keep us from ever gaining a majority of our state's legislative caucus.

To drain the swamp, restore democracy. Any effort to decrease voter participation is inherently corrupting. Make it easier to vote. Make sure everybody's vote is counted equally. Of course, "counted equally" should be a matter of debate. Get rid of gerrymandering. Get rid of the electoral college.

Taek• 10 years ago

That was one of the hardest things about this election. I really like some of Trump's policies and promises.

And some of them are frightening. Frightening enough to make me want to steer clear, but the DNC did not put forward a candidate that made me feel any better. Calling for a Manhattan project to defeat encryption? Yikes.

America lost this election long before November, I'm sure of that.

warlox3• 10 years ago

Behind every regulation is a body. Or 3 of them.

blintz2• 10 years ago

Term limits won't do a damn thing to curtail lobbying. Lobbyists love having lots of fresh blood just looking to make a quick buck flooding the legislature.

The limits create a constantly revolving legislature that is easier to manipulate and will in general do a poorer job. If he really cared, we'd see something on campaign finance reform; but alas, he doesn't actually want to get money out of politics.

gozur8812• 10 years ago

On the other hand, people who can't run for reelection have no reason to spend all their time raising money.

necessity• 10 years ago

How is that considered feasible by any rational person? It might sound great if you don't think too hard about it.

Very "rational" non-arguments. You must have thought hard about it to come up with those.

kilroy123• 10 years ago

I agree the ones trying to stop lobbyist are very good. However, I'm sick to my stomach about the Climate Change ones.

shams93• 10 years ago

Yeah its going to get intersting when California is constently 128-135*... during february

vacri2• 10 years ago

term limits on congress

Wouldn't pass in a million years. Why would congress pass such a law against themselves? And as a constitutional amendment, it would require a 2/3rds majority.

imron• 10 years ago

Trump has made that a key part of his platform. He took that to the electorate and has been given a mandate - presidency, senate, house.

Any Republican member of congress who goes against that is going against a core part of his platform.

Many fervent Trump supporters, including a number of influential ones on social media have stated that any elected Republican that doesn't support Trump's platform will see a challenge from a pro-Trump candidate in the 2018 mid-terms. It will likely be the end of them if they don't go along with it.

I can't imagine many Democratic voters will be happy if their representatives vote against an anti-corruption measure. Especially considering DNC corruptions and cronyism essentially cost them the election.

Trump is the social media president. I'm confident he'll be able to get support for this from the electorate.

arzt• 10 years ago

The tariff stuff freaks me out - it's a total idealogical paradigm shift.

Re the point of reducing regulation, Larry page actually recommended a variation of this to the president of South Korea to reduce legal complexity of its government:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2014/07...

"Reducing complexity, in fact, was a theme throughout the talk. Page recounted how when he was trying to simplify things at Google, he suggested the company take all of its rules and regulations and keep them at an easy-to-digest 50 pages. He even suggested a similar idea to the president of South Korea, Park Geun-hye. "I said, 'Hey, why don't you just limit your laws and regulations to some set of pages? And when you add a page, you have to take one away.' She actually wrote this down. She's great."

jonathankoren• 10 years ago

Larry Page is not a pubic policy expert. He's a CS grad school drop out that got lucky.

This is as stupid as having the president of South Korea say, "You should keep the code to Google to a page and half. It would make it easier to understand."

Seriously, this makes no sense beyond claptrap. Why 50 pages? Why not 1? Why not 5 million? Why an arbitrary limit at all? The whole idea hinges on the idea that somehow this is obvious and an intrinsic good. It's not. It's not even a metric worth optimizing for, because it has zero concern about actual societal effects.

williamle8300• 10 years ago

I think the idea is that his stance is not introducing new federal laws.

It probably could have been worded plainly instead of adding a conditional. Federal laws should be considered in their own right, not in comparison towards other federal laws.

farright2• 10 years ago

And yet if the rule were "for every new javascript framework, 2 existing frameworks must be eliminated" HN would be cheering.

redler3• 10 years ago

This is not unlike how an opposing party will criticize a bill based on its number of typed pages. The thump of a couple of inches of paper on a podium makes for great and reductive theater. It's likewise naïve to consider the number of regulations to be a direct barometer of the goodness or badness of regulation in general. Next we'll see the refactoring of existing regulations into smaller or larger components to affect their numerological residue.

Wanton numerological regulation slashers should be wary of Chesterton's Fence[1].

On the scale of meaningfulness, this idea is somewhere between the Dow Jones Industrial Average and middle school kids playing with margins, spacing, and font size to satisfy a teacher's page-length requirement.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence

adamgravitis• 10 years ago

Reducing the number, length and complexity of regulation is a valid goal, and that hasn't changed in thousands of years:

"The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government." - Tacitus

burgreblast• 10 years ago

How do you guys deal with re-factoring code? Imagine a codebase that has been largely additive for 100 years.

While the "+1 minus two guideline" has plenty of shortcomings in the long term, there is lots of low hanging fruit now, and it's an important mindset shift.

Guys, don't just add LOC. Refactor, clean it up and make it better. Remove blocks we don't use anymore.

tim333• 10 years ago

Then again there were 3,378 new fed regulations totalling 81,611 pages in 2015. It can be counter productive if the new regulations are so voluminous that no one has time to read them.

I ran into problems along those lines in the UK buying some stuff in Spain. Apparently "don't money launder" translates in to a 1 ft high stack of EU regulations that no one understands. I'm not convinced they are hugely better than the three word version.

true_religion• 10 years ago

Sure, he'll pursue it and it'll fail. He only has 100 days to spend his political capital attempting this, along with everything else he's trying.

imtringued• 10 years ago

for every new federal regulation, 2 existing regulations must be eliminated.

It's easy to game. Now every new regulation is as big as two old regulations.

awqrre2• 10 years ago

Some of it sounds ridiculous - for every new federal regulation, 2 existing regulations must be eliminated.

Doesn't sound that ridiculous to me, we have to find a way to eliminate useless/ridiculous regulations because they just pile on...

walshemj3• 10 years ago

You can see he has never held elected office

Its going to require an amendment to the constitution (which takes decades) and from experience a newbie MP Congress man etc will need one entire cycle to get to grips with the system and become effective.

Having inexperienced elected representatives just gives more power to the executive - which is not what I think Trump wanted.

_pmf_• 10 years ago

One could argue that in the long run, this will lead to a simplification of the legislative process.

ArkyBeagle5• 10 years ago

When people leave Congress they invariably go into lobbying. Term limits has to have some small effect on increasing this because you'll necessarily cycle more people through Congress, and they'll know less. If we are to have lobbyists ( and I think we must ) then let us have knowledgeable ones.

The Gingrich Revolution was founded on term limits, and yet here we are.

"Additional shale/gas" makes no sense at least now because of market conditions. There's an untold huge level of zero-coupon debt hanging because of the last shale revolution. It does nothing to help use market discipline to wean us off hydrocarbons, but it might still be the "bridge fuel" even green people were touting ten years ago.

Myself, I think there was epistemic closure against any hydrocarbon activity in the chattering classes a few years back. This will make the compromises necessary to navigate emerging alt. technology more difficult.

tssva• 10 years ago

Term limits are an awful idea. They limit my ability to vote for the candidate of my choice while providing no benefit. Term limits already exist for many political offices and in no case have they resulted in any tangible changes in political behavior.

hendubz• 10 years ago

As a non-American, this is possibly a stupid question but why are limited terms on congress a good thing? My assumption was that those who wish to progress in government can benefit from lengthier terms in the legistlative branch to gain experience. Doesn't imposing a limit (or at least one shorter than several election cycles more than the executive branch) reduce the amount of experience that one can gain before potentially looking to move on and up?

dragonwriter11• 10 years ago

As a non-American, this is possibly a stupid question but why are limited terms on congress a good thing?

Term limits are one of those things that Americans always expect to be good before they are implemented, but never actually are more satisfied with the affected institution after they are implemented. They attack a boogeyman (the "career politician" that is supposedly worse than the neophyte politician) that many politicians attack at the start of their careers (and many later, trying to construct themsleves.as outsiders) so often that people have internalized the idea that experience is a negative trait in governing.

SpikeDad• 10 years ago

Rational? Just an excuse to eliminate logical and valid and societal positive regulations. Nobody is saying that the regulations will be from the same bill or law.

We will exactly be heading in the wrong directions. One regulations for rich Republicans and remove 2 regulations protecting poor minorities.

josephpmay• 10 years ago

Why does this post show up as flagged, but there's no vouch button which I normally see for flagged posts? I voted for Hillary, but this post shouldn't be flagged.

sctb• 10 years ago

The vouch button appears when a story is flagged to the extent that it's killed, but [flagged] can appear before then. Since vouches saved this one and it's on the front page, we've removed the [flagged] label. Edit: and now the upvotes have countered the flags.

giarc9• 10 years ago

I'd also like to know why it's flagged. It's a very important document right now.

scosman2• 10 years ago

He's calling executive actions unconstitutional. Let's hope he sticks to that.

Smaug1232• 10 years ago

No, it's describing the actions he's going to repeal. "Repeal those actions which were unconstitutional", not "repeal the actions, which are unconstitutional".

spinlock4• 10 years ago

this is where the difference between "which" and "that" is important.

scosman2• 10 years ago

I don't see the quote you mention in the linked article. However, the wording is ambiguous.

archgoon• 10 years ago

No, the wording is ambiguous. I'd interpret it as a subset of Obama's executive orders are unconstitutional.

ComteDeLaFere3• 10 years ago

Doesn't he mean executive orders? I believe those are considered law, while executive actions are simply directional.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/11/20/365467914/...

EDIT: Never mind, he said ...cancel every unconstitutional executive action, memorandum and order issued by President Obama.

stcredzero8• 10 years ago

Which is worded so ambiguously, he could technically get away with doing nothing!

rileyteige• 10 years ago

Not exactly. He's just saying he will reverse those Executive Orders which are considered unconstitutional by many (at least many of those who voted for him in my community).

rayiner4• 10 years ago

Executive actions are obviously not per se unconstitutional. The President is the CEO of the executive branch--many executive actions are simply him telling his subordinates what to do.

ComteDeLaFere3• 10 years ago

Does anyone know if this -

Enacts new ethics reforms to drain the swamp and reduce the corrupting influence of special interests on our politics.

...means overturning Citizens United? Because if it doesn't, then this is just propaganda.

andromeduck2• 10 years ago

Seems pretty reasonable. I remain optimistic.

ninjakeyboard2• 10 years ago

Leave nafta? There doesn't seem to be a very thorough analysis on the effect of this.... You can't just make changes to economic policy and hope for the best - there are far and wide impacts to making changes like this.

badestrand• 10 years ago

There are several drastic terms like that, e.g. "Cancel visas to foreign countries that won’t take them back.". When entering negotiations with such a threat you will get what you want, he will be able to easily dictate changes to NAFTA and every country will take their people back. I am not even sure this is such a bad strategy.

kuschku• 10 years ago

But that’s not how the world sees it. Many countries will see his request literally, and just completely refuse anything.

An example of such a miscommunication in Europe right now: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-37799805

elchief5• 10 years ago

I'm curious whether Canada/US revert to the older FTA if NAFTA goes away...

zardo• 10 years ago

You can't just make changes to economic policy and hope for the best

Obviously you can, you mean shouldn't. I'm sure wisdom will prevail.

giarc9• 10 years ago

I imagine in the end it will be renegotiate rather than leave. If you look here [0] you will see just how important us Canadian's are to you.

0 - http://www.businessinsider.com/state-and-country-trade-maps-...

cesarbs• 10 years ago

A lot of what's in there seems pretty reasonable, but:

1) The whole border wall thing is just ridiculous. I thought he had given up on that. Why would Mexico have to pay for that? If the US wants to build a wall, fine, build it and pay for it. It doesn't make sense to demand that Mexico pay for it. It's like building a wall on your property and demanding your neighbors pay for it.

2) The FDA thing is scary. Regulations and processes are there for a reason. I'll be very wary if this goes through and I ever have to take any medication that's not established in the market.

mudil• 10 years ago

The FDA thing is really really scary if you are sick. This situation is clearly illustrated in the movie Dallas Buyer's Club.

Clubber2• 10 years ago

Yes, that's also the primary reason EpiPen can charge so much for their device. Their competitors' products were blocked / backlogged by the FDA.

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/09/01/49223579...

ben174• 10 years ago

You can find more detail on how he plans to make Mexico pay for the wall here:

https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/Pay_for_the_Wall.pdf

Specifically, he will threaten to disallow wire transfer of money from US to Mexico by non-citizens. Since that is a revenue source they greatly depend on, he suggests they'd rather fund the building of the wall. If they agree to fund the wall, then the ban on transfers will go away.

soundwave1062• 10 years ago

The wall is ridiculous in itself though. I'm looking forward to see what Donald Trump's wall does when they encounter Santa Elena Canyon. (https://www.nps.gov/bibe/planyourvisit/secyn.htm)

waterphone7• 10 years ago

Then they'll send money with Bitcoin.

mywittyname8• 10 years ago

So Mexicans start using bitcoin, amazon gift cards, or something like that. Or we end up with "underground banks" that can effectively transfer money across the border without actually doing so, i.e., you buy a digital good at a physical location in the US, transfer it to a relative in Mexico, who then sells it back to the company at a slight discount for cash (which, as a side-effect, would be a great way to launder drug money).

Or I guess, you bounce money through Belize or something.

Either way, it doesn't sound very effective.

finid8• 10 years ago

Banks that make money (fees) from such international money transfers are not gonna be very happy with Trump.

ocschwar5• 10 years ago

Well, that's one way to get all of Mexico hooked on Bitcoin.

bjacokes2• 10 years ago

This falls prey to the same fallacious thinking as gambling with the house's money. Assuming we can extort billions of dollars from Mexico, that's money we could be spending on anything – why is a wall the best use for it? And if a wall is the best use for it, the government should be prepared to build it with our own tax dollars, regardless of whether we extort money from Mexico.

seibelj• 10 years ago

I do not support building a wall, nor building a wall and getting Mexico to pay for it. However, if I was trying to get Mexico to pay for the wall, gosh darn it this document explains coherently how to do it! You can't deny that the administration is goal-oriented.

inostia6• 10 years ago

This actually makes sense as a policy. Though I don't understand why he still thinks Mexico should pay for it. It just seems a bit dickish. Simply increasing the federal prison time for illegal immigrants (as suggested) would probably eliminate a lot of the traffic.

SubiculumCode• 10 years ago

Would the president have that authority?

jaza3• 10 years ago

They'll just run their cash over the border to Mexico, instead of sending it via electronic means. This has already been happening for years, although the vast majority of such cash running has consisted of illicit drug money. No reason why it couldn't expand to become the main way for illegal workers to get their cash heading south to their families, if there really were no other option.

bduerst7• 10 years ago

How do you know if a wire transfer is from a U.S. Citizen?

downandout• 10 years ago

Sounds like we should all be shorting Western Union stock. If he actually implements these controls, they will be the hardest hit.

ojbyrne2• 10 years ago

In retaliation, Mexico files a complaint through NAFTA and the WTO, and starts taking retaliatory action. A 10% immediate surtax on the value of US owned property would be a good start.

And eventually the trade war turns into a shooting war. We've seen the script before.

anonbanker4• 10 years ago

When exchanging pesos is outlawed, only outlaws will exchange pesos.

skeletonjelly• 10 years ago

I thought he had given up on that.

FWIW this document isn't dated that I can see but it does refer to election day like so:

"On November 8th, Americans will be voting for this 100-day plan to restore prosperity to our economy, security to our communities and honesty to our government"

So I assume it was written before the election

sp3322• 10 years ago

The filename has 102316 in it so probably 10/23/16, only two weeks ago.

davemel378• 10 years ago

It doesn't make sense to demand that Mexico pay for it. It's like building a wall on your property and demanding your neighbors pay for it.

When buying a house, wouldnt you try to negotiate for seller concessions like paying for repairs?

Trumps wall comments were always in conjunction with discussing the massive trade deficit with Mexico. If we are in a stronger position to negotiate with Mexico, why wouldnt we negotiate the best deal we can get?

If you really think about it. We only need this wall because of Mexico, so why should we pay if we dont have to?

yolesaber5• 10 years ago

If you really think about it. We only need this wall because of Mexico, so why should we pay if we dont have to?

If you really think about it, we don't need the wall at all because people will just dig holes underneath it, like they have with all the other walls and fencing we have built.

1,954 miles is a long way to go - https://theintercept.com/2016/10/18/best-of-luck-with-the-wa...

albinofrenchy2• 10 years ago

When buying a house, wouldnt you try to negotiate for seller concessions like paying for repairs?

Yes; but you typically do that before you buy the property, we've had texas for a while now.

All the talk about trade deficit with Mexico makes it sound like people think we just cut Mexico a check every year. As a nation, we receive goods and services for that deficit. It isn't money on the table.

mywittyname8• 10 years ago

If you really think about it. We only need this wall because of Mexico, so why should we pay if we dont have to?

People flee Mexico because it's an extremely poor country with a horrible government and is controlled by drug cartels. Screwing the country over further economically sounds like the worst way to solve this problem. In fact, it seems like a very good way to exacerbate the problem.

Perhaps that's why private prison stocks are up so much on Trump's election. His actions are clearly going to increase the flow of illegal immigrants into the US, and now that these people can be tossed into federal prison for mandatory minimum sentences. So the end result is, the federal government will be on the hook for something like a quarter million dollars for each one of the people caught crossing the border.

Trump just created a (12 million illegal immigrants * $250k/yr each * 5yr minimum sentences = $15 trillion) market.

randyrand2• 10 years ago

1) because we have more negotiation power than they do.

agumonkey6• 10 years ago

People filmed at Florida HQ were still very awaiting for that wall.

ps: their enthusiasm got to me. Somehow, no matter how low Trump's speeches were, if he manages to spin calmer, safer, leaner lives for people in America I'd be happy. If. Because if it goes as I imagine, grand but failing plans, hope backpressure, the disillusion will be grandiosely sad.

sams99• 10 years ago

on the FDA side, this is enlightening:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3538397/

"Each drug is estimated to cost $1.2 billion to $1.3 billion in cash outlays per approved biopharmaceutical"

This particular problem means that lots of very promising cancer drugs never see the light of day.

For example for Neuroblastoma there is an approved drug called dinutuximab https://www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/cancer-drug.... This is the only approved drug for treating pediatric cancers that was approved in the last 10-20 year.

Meantime significantly more potent (and possibly effective) drugs are in clinical trials, eg: Hu-3F8 at MSKCC. But... given the cost and enormous amount of red tape needed to get the drug approved (combined with very small market) odds of them getting approved in the next 10 years are not that high.

Something needs to change, but I am not sure exactly what.

cnnsucks5• 10 years ago

> I thought he had given up on that.

You did?? He's been personally promising to build it 3-5 times a day to tens of thousands of people in every competitive state in the US. It's kind of hard to miss...

> Why would Mexico have to pay for that? ... It's like building a wall on your property and demanding your neighbors pay for it.

Except the neighbors -- to stretch the analogy a bit more -- have their children, pets and a few spare vehicles in your yard and have become accustomed to browbeating you into not complaining about it. Trump et al. plan on altering this dynamic.

pavlov3• 10 years ago

To stretch the analogy even further: your family has become accustomed to having the neighbors' children cook your food and borrowing those spare vehicles whenever you feel like it.

They're not just hanging out in your yard, they're contributing to your household's economy and are friends with your own kids. In fact, your daughter told them to keep the pets in the yard because she loves them so much.

Suddenly asking the neighbors to build a thick fence and stay the hell out will get your other family members very upset, and also means that you'll have to do more cooking from now on. Tough choices for the family dad...

luxuryballs• 10 years ago

drug cartels are a problem in Mexico, they might lose substantial amounts of business due to the wall (lots of drugs are sold in the US), which would be good for Mexico

teemwerk• 10 years ago

no carried interest talk, which is alright by me, that actually makes sense in giving an incentive for risk. would be interested to see if the 10% hit on monetary repatriation works, that could have some serious effects if that much multinational money gets sucked out of europe and abroad.

giarc9• 10 years ago

But is that money really doing anything over seas? Is it actually being put to work or just sitting in accounts?

jdc05893• 10 years ago

FIFTH, I will lift the restrictions on the production of $50 trillion dollars’ worth of job-producing American energy reserves, including shale, oil, natural gas and clean coal

This is what I have the biggest problem with. The ONLY WAY we are going to continue making progress towards widespread clean renewable energy is if it is financially beneficial for corporations to continue investing in R&D. Sure, there are some outliers that will stick with it on principal, but the majority will go where the money is. Cheaper fossil fuels == less investment in renewable energy. Period. This is bad timing given the critical point we are at (so far as we know) regarding climate change.

This is pure short-sightedness motivated by the desire to deliver on his promise of creating jobs.

fisherjeff3• 10 years ago

In addition to that, I'm not sure what the benefit is to energy producers - oil prices are already not far above a 15-year low and domestic crude production is at a 25-year high, currently almost 10% of global consumption.

Even without subsidies or other incentives, I just can't see where the demand comes from to drive significant oil supply increases. I'm genuinely curious what the restrictions are that are throttling our energy industry.

knz2• 10 years ago

I'm genuinely curious what the restrictions are that are throttling our energy industry.

"Environmental regulation". Who needs clean air or water. Superfunds Sites are cheap to clean up right?

chris112• 10 years ago

I don't know exactly, but there are probably oil reserves in places like Alaska that would be cheaper to extract if it were allowed.

stcredzero8• 10 years ago

The fact that the term "clean coal" can be bandied about with a straight face says something about the state of science education of the general public. (Pretty much the same knowledge needed to instantly realize that various wind/solar operated water-from-air devices and Solar Freakin Roadways aren't viable from back of the envelope calcs.)

leephillips2• 10 years ago

“Sunlight is abundant beyond the energy needs of the entire human race”. (Los Alamos National Laboratory [http://www.lanl.gov/discover/publications/1663/2015-may/pero...].) This is their back of the envelope calculation.

pfraze5• 10 years ago

Coal mining and related production is a large employer. It's about propping up small coal-towns.

arcticfox4• 10 years ago

I think that's a little harsh. There's no first principle that the average citizen should know that says "clean coal" isn't possible.

In fact, in 5-10 minutes of specifically looking at the topic I still don't see why you're mocking the concept.

bsilvereagle2• 10 years ago

You may be interested to learn more about coal-direct chemical looping: https://www.osu.edu/features/2013/ohio-state-develops-clean-...

fulldecent• 10 years ago

A significant amount of coal is burned in the world today. Much of it is burned in an inefficient way. Retrofitting coal burning plants to burn cleaner would a large impact on global carbon emissions. Replacing coal with cleaner sources would also have a large impact.

The important thing is: dollar-for-dollar, retrofitting is more effective than replacing.

danblick• 10 years ago

America has enough shale oil to be a net energy exporter, which means no more dealing with Venezuela or need for huge defense spending to protect strategic resources across the world. So I dunno, I can see why developing those resources might be in our interest.

at-fates-hands• 10 years ago

> which means no more dealing with Venezuela or need for huge defense spending to protect strategic resources across the world.

The problem is that we HAD energy independence when we discovered oil in the Bakken Peninsula and what happened? Our fearless leaders who wanted to be energy independent had a great chance to tell OPEC to go screw themselves and what happened?

They let them go to war with OPEC. We lost jobs, oil companies shut down in droves as the race to the bottom happened. OPEC said it wanted to put them out of business and for the most part, the people in Washington talking big about energy independence let it happen.

I have no faith they will ever keep their word. We had a wonderful opportunity and they let OPEC drive our companies out of business and cost that region thousands of jobs. And in the process, drive up the cost of oil as well.

gumby• 10 years ago

Since oil is a fungible commodity, instabilities in oil prices outside the US will cause instabilities and price rises in the US (since a price rise outside the US is simply an incentive to export). Thus the US military patrols the Persian gulf in order that domestic oil makes it to the refinery.

agumonkey6• 10 years ago

If fracking issues are real, all the potential diseased persons will also free houses and jobs too. How do you like that smart.

gshulegaard• 10 years ago

I don't know:

THIRD, a requirement that for every new federal regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated.

Is scariest to me given a Republican controlled Congress. The one sided control makes me nervous.

pdonis2• 10 years ago

Congress doesn't write federal regulations. Executive branch agencies do, within very broad guidelines that Congress has put in the statutes empowering those agencies. A lot of what Trump is proposing here can be done without any Congressional action at all; it's just a matter of changing the priorities of the agencies who write the regulations.

Of course, doing that is a much, much bigger job than I think Trump realizes.

novalis78• 10 years ago

This is fantastic. That's exactly how it should be. Otherwise over decades you end up with regulations that stifle all forms of entrepreneurship and creativity.

zanny2• 10 years ago

This document contradicts that every other sentence after that. Almost all the bills he proposes are regulations, the executive orders... regulations. He proposes to overturn about a quarter as many things as he wants made law or executive order.

einrealist• 10 years ago

This is a declaration of war.

totalZero3• 10 years ago

....maybe if you're a solar panel.

rocqua2• 10 years ago

That and >FIFTH, suspend immigration from terror-prone regions where vetting cannot safely occur. All vetting of people coming into our country will be considered “extreme vetting.”

are the 2 most scary things on that first page. I really like his limitations on lobbying though. I hope they aren't too ham-fisted and easy to get around.

gizmo3852• 10 years ago

Wouldn't those lobbying regulations (blocking federal employees from lobbying) violate the first amendment? Wouldn't that deny an entire political class of people from being able to participate in the political process?

tn132• 10 years ago

I am not sure that makes sense. We dont have to hurt the oil industry to help innovation. We dont have to hurt ordinary cars to help self driving cars popular.

theptip8• 10 years ago

Agreed, this is the definition of short-sightedness. And the difficult part is that it's likely to produce a significant (short-term) boost to the economy.

Subsequent generations will have to pay back the principal on this loan, with interest. And we will lose our opportunity to carve out a leadership position in the energy technologies of the 21st century, as well.

ArkyBeagle5• 10 years ago

I just came out of an energy company job, and you're outta luck. There's nothing in the energy sector to make me think they'll innovate unless they stumble into it.

Now, certain people might be able to sidle into energy but it'll be pretty rough going.

I was simply trying to buck up '80s-'90s era control systems to stop breaking things and this was perceived as "they're takin' 'er jerbs." Nothing was understood. My interpretation is that there is considerable willful ignorance of how technology might be used in that sector that will never be broken. You're threatening people's identity if you do.

Just thorough testing ( at least to my lights what is thorough - I have 30+ years safety-and-life-crticial realtime embedded experience) was seen with a jaundiced eye. A "real oil guy" does it on a laptop on the jobsite.

The rest of your post is spot on. However, at least natural gas will be deadly cheap for the forseeable future. We had one project to try to capture flare gas, but it cost (much) more than the captured gas will ever be worth.

jdc05893• 10 years ago

I just came out of an energy company job, and you're outta luck. There's nothing in the energy sector to make me think they'll innovate unless they stumble into it.

I don't think it only affects the existing members of the energy sector. Given the necessary financial motivation, there is a realistic opportunity for new competition in the renewable energy market rather than only relying on existing stablished companies to shift focus. Even if a group wants to move in to the renewable energy market on principal, funding will be a lot harder to come by with super cheap fossil fuel prices since investors (who are also motivated by money) won't see as much potential for short term profits.

jaza3• 10 years ago

Agreed - this will probably be the Trump administration action that has the worst long-term impact of all. The US might as well not bother turning up to the next global climate change summit (not that Trump will anyway). Unfortunately, though, the whole world will pay the price of increased US environmental contamination during this era.

slicktux4• 10 years ago

Well, that is not to say that states cannot implement their own environmental laws, take for example California. . .the fact that Trump 'will' lift "$50 trillion dollars’ worth of job-producing American energy reserves, including shale, oil, natural gas and clean coal. . ." does not mean that the states cannot take action; I know it is perceived as for the better if the environmental laws are uniformed throughout the states, but please let us not forget about state rights, 10th Amendment. If you, or whoever reads this comment, is really concerned about the environment than start focusing on individual and local changes; like in California; become a leader, propagate new technology that is good for the environment, and then the rest will follow the example of progressive states, as well as, progressive individuals. Don't sell your self short; Roll up the sleeves and get to work. . .no need for Federal Government Regulations; Limit The Federal Government Not The People.

AnthonyMouse6• 10 years ago

The problem is if West Virginia burns coal that causes air pollution and sea level rise in New York, New York can't pass a law against burning coal in West Virginia. Federal laws are needed when a state is externalizing costs and internalizing profits.

postcarnival4• 10 years ago

how do we know that "clean energy" hasn't been artificially propped up to begin with? if we can burn coal much cleaner and more efficiently then so what? let's do it if it's cheaper. We can still develop new technologies, that won't stop regardless.

prostoalex4• 10 years ago

Cheaper fossil fuels == less investment in renewable energy. Period.

Does it have to be US investment? Some other countries (China, Israel, South Korea) have a greater urgency to diversify into clean energy. Why can't the US ride the coattails of that research the way other countries benefit from cheap solar panels and affordable electric cars developed and produced elsewhere?

BurningFrog• 10 years ago

But these are global problems, and if the US unilaterally refuses to make money off of oil while the rest of the world keeps pumping, the biggest effect will be income and jobs leaving the country.

carlob• 10 years ago

Wow did he just take a page directly from Berlusconi's book? Berlusconi did the exact same 100 days contract about ten years ago!

DanBC• 10 years ago

100 day plans are very common in business world, epecially among directors of medium - large companies.

mr_tristan• 10 years ago

The first 100 days is actually a tradition for new US Presidents to create a plan (and a litmus test), which started with FDR in 1933.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_100_days_of_Franklin_D._...

b_emery3• 10 years ago

I'll bet he doesn't know that the pubic sector shrank more under Obama than the previous presidents:

"The public sector grew during Mr. Carter's term (up 1,304,000), during Mr. Reagan's terms (up 1,414,000), during Mr. G.H.W. Bush's term (up 1,127,000), during Mr. Clinton's terms (up 1,934,000), and during Mr. G.W. Bush's terms (up 1,744,000 jobs).

However the public sector has declined significantly since Mr. Obama took office (down 668,000 jobs). These job losses have mostly been at the state and local level, but more recently at the Federal level. This has been a significant drag on overall employment." [1]

I'll be surprised if he gets half these things done in the next 4 yrs, though most are so vague it's not clear what 'done' would mean.

[1] http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2014/10/public-and-private...

thatfrenchguy• 10 years ago

Classic, you never make conservatives accountable for this kind of things.

chrismeller• 10 years ago

Most of them being at the state and local level sounds more like the recession (and corresponding decrease in tax revenues the following years) catching up with state and local governments that actually have to stick to a budget.

I'm not sure what the breakdown of "more recently at the Federal level" is, but it doesn't sound very pro-Obama in terms of your argument, particularly since Trump is talking about the Federal government.

akiselev4• 10 years ago

Between a quarter to half of California's state budget comes from the federal government [1] and I'm guessing the same is true for most states. With that much money coming from the federal government, it's a muddy distinction.

One of the primary argument against the federal government is the disconnect from local needs but most of the money is tied to federal mandates anyway (for example, the feds threatened road infrastructure funding to get the last few states to pass the 21 year alcohol age limit and DOE funding is tied to CORE). As a result the state/federal distinction isn't very precise.

[1] https://ballotpedia.org/California_state_budget_and_finances

mark242• 10 years ago

If the Secretary of the Treasury designates China as a currency manipulator, your new iPhone will wind up costing you $2000. What madness.

JumpCrisscross3• 10 years ago

your new iPhone will wind up costing...$2000

Donald Trump implored his fans to boycott Apple's products in February [1].

[1] http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/19/politics/donald-trump-apple-bo...

mevile• 10 years ago

It will end up being made in the US though.

nabla9• 10 years ago

Not US, Vietnam.

Foxconn has manufacturing plant in Vietnam. Vietnam is cheaper than China.

douche2• 10 years ago

If it really becomes a big deal, Apple can move the factory back state-side. They are getting to the point where Chinese labor is getting expensive enough that they are automating manufacturing and replacing people with robots over there anyway.

Human labor is becoming increasingly irrelevant.

pvelagal3• 10 years ago

Actually, i would like to know what this "currency manipulator " labeling really means ? Will goods from china be taxed more ? if so, how much more ?

latch• 10 years ago

45% is the number he's talked about in the past.

icelancer2• 10 years ago

Good. Americans should bear the true cost of offshore-built devices.

pavlov3• 10 years ago

For corporations, there's an odd mix of sticks and carrots. For example these two promises:

"... trillions of dollars of American corporate money overseas can now be brought back at a 10% rate."

"Establishes tariffs to discourage companies from laying off their workers ..."

So a company can more easily bring back offshore billions to the US, but at the same time, new tariffs are put in place that make it harder to lay off people, thus effectively discouraging the company from spending that money on creating jobs in the country?

Seems like the net effect of these seemingly bold new rules could be practically zero.

It's odd that Trump is a businessman, yet his list of solutions includes all kinds of tariffs and trade restrictions to rein in business. There's a reason Western countries don't use tariffs much anymore: they're counterproductive if you want to stimulate growth. But I guess that old economics lesson is about to be put to another test.

japhyr2• 10 years ago

It's odd that Trump is a businessman, yet his list of solutions includes all kinds of tariffs and trade restrictions to rein in business. There's a reason Western countries don't use tariffs much anymore: they're counterproductive if you want to stimulate growth. But I guess that old economics lesson is about to be put to another test.

It's pretty clear he was never a good businessman. He was good at finding loopholes and exploiting people and policies. Now I imagine we'll start to see that kind of shoddy policy making at a national level. And "shoddy" is giving him a large benefit of the doubt. It feels like an intentional attempt to maximize short-term benefits with complete disregard for long-term consequences.

usaphp2• 10 years ago

"It's pretty clear he was never a good businessman."

Don't you find it silly to call a person with a net worth of $4 billion "not a good businessman" keeping in mind that he made this money doing business

cybertronic• 10 years ago

This is so Berlusconi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_with_the_Italians

jplahn• 10 years ago

Or so Newt? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_with_America

ep1033• 10 years ago

Well, considering Newt is one of Trump's key advisers....

mulletboy• 10 years ago

Came here for this. http://i.imgur.com/UzFYJM8.png

skywhopper2• 10 years ago

"THIRD, cancel all federal funding to sanctuary cities."

Is this explained anywhere?

loeber• 10 years ago

From Google: "A sanctuary city is a city in the United States or Canada that adopts local policies designed to not prosecute people solely for being an undocumented individual in the country in which they are currently living. These practices can be by law (de jure) or they can be in fact (de facto)."

savanaly• 10 years ago

Had to google that one myself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctuary_city

s_kilk• 10 years ago

Wait, so he'll be cutting all federal funding to cities like New York, LA and San Francisco?

owyn• 10 years ago

A sanctuary city is one that obstructs (directly or indirectly) the enforcement of federal immigration laws.

http://www.apsanlaw.com/law-246.List-of-Sanctuary-cities.htm...

Since this list is most of your bigger more liberal cities (LA, SF, NYC), I do wonder what it means to cut off all federal funding to those cities.

ocschwar5• 10 years ago

I live by one of those cities, and there are indeed a lot of visa overstayers living there.

The prospect of those people being too scared to call 911 if they witness a crime is something I am decidedly NOT looking forward to.

ch4s35• 10 years ago

Basically the federal government says "Round these people up, an oh by the way do it on your own dime." These cities basically say no, we're not going to pay for that.

arprocter• 10 years ago

It's quite a long list of cities (sadly the only sources I can find seem to be anti-immigration - http://cis.org/Sanctuary-Cities-Map)

nickpsecurity5• 10 years ago

This is actually pretty good and what I was expecting of him once he got to stop the smear campaigns that are U.S. elections. Now, let me cross-reference a few that might be good against what he's said or done in the past where I think he might try to make them happen with a possibility they will.

1. Renegotiate NAFTA and TPP. I opposed both as they were mainly just for the richest to get richer moving jobs & playing games behind peoples' backs. He might clean them up a bit or make them favor U.S. more.

2. Foreign trading abuses. He griped about that on the Oprah show especially pointing out how the Japanese make it nearly impossible for him to do business in their country. He said many of the countries supposedly have trade agreements to make it easy but they trip us up with little obstacles. He'll probably stand by that.

3. Shift from UN to American infrastructure. I have doubts climate change strategies will work at all given how they're partial with lots of noncompliance. Meanwhile, those infrastructure aren't getting much support. Lesser of two evils.

4. Cancel unconstitutional EO's of Obama. I'm for doing that for all Presidents. He should start at Bush by vetoing Patriot Act, mass surveillance, etc. We know he said Obama for a reason, though. (sighs)

5. My family and many local businesses were affected heavily by illegal immigrants where lots of people lost jobs. We've also been hit with the fine letter of the law repeatedly. I'm for tight immigration policies & fair enforcement of law. Opposite of this coin is he should start arresting or fining any business owners that knowingly hired illegal immigrants just to be fair. There are two sides to that problem.

6. Tax Simplification. Often good.

7. Discourage offshoring. Should've been doing that along with maintaining a strong industrial base domestically. A huge chunk of our economy is financial engineering. Need more real stuff.

8. Child and elderly care. Sounds good.

9. Help veterans part of the National Security Act. They've been getting dogged by the system pretty bad that I've seen.

novia• 10 years ago

Yeah, you get child and elder care if you make enough money to owe enough taxes to cover those bills. Poor? Working minimum wage? Sorry, I guess your kid gets to stay at home with gramma to kill two birds with one stone.

davidw• 10 years ago

I'm kind of realizing that my wife and I are in a decent financial position and have good jobs and that things like

* Killing Obamacare and leaving millions without health insurance (but lowering premiums!)

* Lowering taxes on high earners

* Child care credits for high earners and not for the poor

Would all benefit us. The angry cynical part of my brain kind of urges me towards a "you know what, all those white-no-education-economic-malaise people who voted for him are going to get just what they deserve.".

But there's also all the fascist stuff about deportations and walls and I don't want to live in a me me me society anyway, so I'll do what I can to fight this garbage.

Among other things, I just signed up for the ACLU: https://action.aclu.org/secure/renew-your-aclu-membership

nickpsecurity5• 10 years ago

There's already welfare in existence to help poor among elderly or children. This at least appears to be an increase over that.

Angostura2• 10 years ago

I have doubts climate change strategies will work at all given how they're partial with lots of noncompliance. Meanwhile, those infrastructure aren't getting much support. Lesser of two evils.

Sorry, but once the worst effects of climate change kick in, your infrastructure won't last terribly long at all.

nickpsecurity5• 10 years ago

That's my point. I don't think it will. So, let's be comfortable while we can. Also encourage people to try to do something about it but self-interest in short-term seems to prevail on this issue.

pvelagal3• 10 years ago

"7.Discourage offshoring. Should've been doing that along with maintaining a strong industrial base domestically. A huge chunk of our economy is financial engineering. Need more real stuff."

I am from India, and here is my observation. Why do American voters expect their "politicians"(be it democrat/republican) to stop offshoring, when these guys seem to have absolutely have no control over individual companies doing that ? Isnt offshoring an individual company/corp's prerogative ? The voter expectations and the laws, look mutually exclusive to me.

nickpsecurity5• 10 years ago

" Why do American voters expect their "politicians"(be it democrat/republican) to stop offshoring, when these guys seem to have absolutely have no control over individual companies doing that"

They do have quite a bit of control. The companies are doing it primarily because they lobbied politicians to pass laws and treaties to make it easier for them in the first place. Such things can be reversed although the consequences will be huge. Shouldn't be done suddenly which is what I don't like about what he'll probably do.

Far as voter expectations, those against globalization see the government there to meet their needs. This includes protecting their jobs and wages. The offshoring has been negative for those here while positive for them elsewhere (eg India). Incentivizing companies to hire Americans and pay them well increases quality of life here plus gives us stronger, internal economy.

postcarnival4• 10 years ago

thank you for a coherent post, I had to scroll to near the bottom past the liberal cesspool above to get to this...

SolarUpNote• 10 years ago

Replace health insurance with health savings accounts?

hexis• 10 years ago

As it's currently structured, HSA's are usually a part of a health insurance plan with high deductibles. It's not an either/or thing, it's a both/and thing.

riskable• 10 years ago

What's funny about this is that health savings accounts are really just a discount program based on your tax bracket. The higher your tax bracket the bigger the discount. So in other words, the richer you are the more you'll save with a health savings account.

So if Trump pulls off his "huge tax cuts" he'll be undermining his plan for health savings accounts. Classic Trump cognitive dissonance.

webXL• 10 years ago

So what if someone in the 33% bracket can potentially save up to 8% more than someone in the 25% bracket, they're paying much higher on AGI! And when the rates are reduced so there's a lower incentive to use the accounts, it still can be saved/invested and grow tax-free and gains can even be spent tax free if used on qualified medical expenses. That's the bigger incentive IMO.

sandesp• 10 years ago

Hey do you have another working link for Public penetration test results: https://ptr.iot.nist.gov/A2L7P9D23345 you posted a month ago. I had to send a message here because Hackernews does not allow direct messages.

rsp1984• 10 years ago

Apart from the content, why is it even called a "contract"? There's no terms and obligations for the "American voter" in there.

pyre4• 10 years ago

He's trying to play off of his "I'm a business man" persona. By calling it a "contract" people are more likely to believe that he will honour it. Time will tell if that actually happens or not.

r00fus• 10 years ago

It sounds like a contract of adhesion or perhaps a contract in a mafia sense.

I have no power to decline or negotiate this contract. I did not vote for this, nor did the majority of Americans.

igravious• 10 years ago

SIXTH, a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections.

Pardon my naivety but who does this target?

martythemaniak• 10 years ago

Near as I can tell, his second campaign chief Paul Manafort.

meric3• 10 years ago

Saudi Arabia.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-13/saudi-arabia-has-fu...

themihai• 10 years ago

This can't be good for Tesla and a lot of other green companies. My hope is that despite this "contract" he won't do much... I believe the price of the energy is not longer only about the production and distribution but also its long term effects(i.e health, sustainability, climate change).

throwaway13337• 10 years ago

So far, oil prices are on the rise with the news of Trump winning.

It's not surprising as he heavily critiqued the deal with Iran - a deal which opened up trade of a lot of oil from the country.

hatsunearu• 10 years ago

He's handing America's world dominance handedly to China. Start learning Chinese folks, America is done.

meric3• 10 years ago

How does American world dominance help the people who voted for Trump?

warlox3• 10 years ago

Free trade lowers prices for everyone. The poors won't be able to buy food if Trump follows through with protectionism.

danieltillett• 10 years ago

I can’t believe that he is really going to go through with:

THIRD, I will direct the Secretary of the Treasury to label China a currency manipulator.

Has nobody told him what this is going to do to the economy? The rest of his proposals he will have to get past congress and the courts, but this is one he can do all on his own.

fredgrott2• 10 years ago

hmm .. the thought I had when reading it was..

The Impossible Dream...

Why? Remember Trump ran as a Populist..but both political parties are somewhat Corporate Shrills...

Not saying it cannot happen..but probably not in his two terms..

jotadambalakiri• 10 years ago

So you can sign a copy of the contract that only you will have? I don't think that's the way contracts are made.

usaphp2• 10 years ago

I guess voting for Trump is considered signing your side of the contract

NolF• 10 years ago

He was voted for president democratically, that's the populous signing their part of the contract.

e0m• 10 years ago

Given that the Republicans have a majority in BOTH the House and the Senate, it's likely a majority of these initiatives will go through!

pdonis2• 10 years ago

The Republicans have a majority in the Senate, but just barely; it certainly isn't even close to being filibuster proof. And given how polarized the parties are now, I would expect the Senate Democrats to simply stonewall anything they don't like.

dougmany• 10 years ago

I am surprised nobody mentioned

cancel all federal funding to sanctuary cities
Some of the 31 American cities are Los Angeles (the first since 1979); Washington, D.C.; New York City (see also Illegal immigration in New York City); Jersey City; Berkeley, California; Coachella, California; Philadelphia; San Francisco; Santa Ana; San Jose; Oakland; Salt Lake City; Dallas; Houston; Detroit; Chicago; Salinas, California; Minneapolis; Miami; Denver; Baltimore; Seattle; Portland, Oregon; New Haven; Somerville; Cambridge; and Portland, Maine.

sean_patel5• 10 years ago

Despite being an independent left leaning liberal, I welcome this proposal, if they can actually implement it.

I see wide-spread exploitation of the "Sanctuary City" Law in San Francisco, especially in the Restaurants, Construction site and Janitorial jobs.

The Sanctuary Law, for those that don't know, forbids the Feds from asking employers about the immigration status of the employees / workers. This has caused 100s and 1000s of (mostly mexican and hispanic) undocumented immigrants to arrive and live in Sanctuary Cities (like San Francisco, LA, etc) and strain the local public services, while simultaneously being exploited by their employers.

Most get paid less than minimum wage (some even as low as 8$ / hour instead of the $13.75 min wage in SF), women get abused, sexually harassed etc (in restaurant jobs).

michaelchisari• 10 years ago

And you find that cutting federal funding entirely is a reasonable, proportional response?

kstrauser2• 10 years ago

The more important aspect is preventing local police from having to act as immigration agents. That has a very real effect on crime: illegal immigrants don't have to be afraid of talking to police. I think we're safer when everyone feels free to report crimes and act as witnesses.

skywhopper2• 10 years ago

I'm pretty sure San Francisco has no power over Federal agents, and I can't find any evidence that the law attempts to "forbid the Feds from asking employers about the immigration status of the employees". Best I can tell it only forbids _City_ employees from actively assisting or spending city money to assist federal immigration agents. This is entirely reasonable. As for evasion of federal law by employERs, the employers should be the target of enforcement, not the employees.

jchendy3• 10 years ago

I still can't tell _why_ you support the proposal. What are the actual problems with sanctuary laws?

tn132• 10 years ago

Seems reasonable.

finid8• 10 years ago

propose a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress.

Not a bad idea.

begin removing the more than two million criminal illegal immigrants from the country and cancel visas to foreign countries that won’t take them back.

Only the criminal ones. OK

waterphone7• 10 years ago

Bad idea that sounds like a good idea until you discover that it actually leads to greater special interest influence because nobody in Congress knows how to do anything so lobbyists just do it for them. http://prospect.org/article/populist-road-hell-term-limits-c...

finid8• 10 years ago

A reasonable term limit has to be in place. A person who has been in the Senate since 1986, like John McCain, should have been out of there if term limits were in place.

Thirty years is a long time to be elected, re-elected and re-elected and ...

Mathnerd3142• 10 years ago

Congress is different from state legislatures in that a lot of its laws create agencies, and those agencies preserve institutional knowledge (e.g., the FDA, FBI, etc.). There's a reasonable argument that Congressmen shouldn't need to know any specialized knowledge. If the law is so obscure that only lawyers can interpret it, that's a bug, not a feature.

finid8• 10 years ago

Fully-funds the construction of a wall on our southern border with the full understanding that the country of Mexico will be reimbursing the United States for the full cost of such wall; establishes a two-year mandatory minimum federal prison sentence for illegally re-entering the U.S. after a previous deportation, and a five-year mandatory minimum federal prison sentence for illegally re-entering for those with felony convictions

How Mexico will be forced to pay for a wall built by the US will make for a good TV show.

Private prisons are about to make a killing with the 2- and 5-year mandatory prison terms.

elchief5• 10 years ago

Ban Western Union "send money back to family in Mexico" payments until Mexico agrees to pay for the wall: https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/Pay_for_the_Wall.pdf

sago• 10 years ago

Buy BTC, now. It's going to be yuge.

waterphone7• 10 years ago

I take it Trump hasn't heard of Bitcoin.

giarc9• 10 years ago

I don't usually read campaign documents like this... is this normal? Is it normal to simplify things so much so to say Day 1 do X, Day 2 do Y, Day 3 resolved.

mikeash5• 10 years ago

Too bad there's no other way to send money internationally.

joesb4• 10 years ago

Do they also ban sending money to any other country where the guy in other country will send the money to Mexico?

passive• 10 years ago

Seriously, prison sentences for illegally entering the country is grade-A nuts. There's other stuff on there that at least sounds good, but this sounds like "we'll solve a $$ problem with $$$".

btym3• 10 years ago

Yeah, this is just confusing. The supposed economic impact of having illegal immigrants work for less than minimum wage is not going to be worse than the impact of housing, clothing, and feeding them for 2-5 years.

shostack2• 10 years ago

And us tax payers picking up the bill for those stays in Federal prison is interesting as well. If the argument is they are costing taxpayers money in the form of jobs, isn't costing taxpayers money from paying for prison similar?

rahilsondhi• 10 years ago

Are any TN visa holders worried about Trump wanting to withdraw from NAFTA?

FreedomToCreate• 10 years ago

Its not a clean cut procedure that Trump could execute and bang, all TN visas holders are out. There is a significant work force on TN visas working at stat ups and major Fortune 500 companies, holding positions that are critical to those organizations. To have these people leave would not be cheap for these organizations and Trump will have to consider this.

Clobbersmith• 10 years ago

Yes with a but.

I'm not convinced Trump fully understands what NAFTA entails. He talks a lot about the importing of goods manufactured in Mexico and the export of American jobs to Mexico, but to my knowledge he hasn't talked about any other aspect of it. Surely the tech sector would freak out and raise a stink if all their TN employees had to leave overnight.

The CBC has a high level article covering the ambiguities around getting out of NAFTA. http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/donald-trump-nafta-trade-1.3657...

jernfrost• 10 years ago

I hate Trump, but some of this isn't actually that bad sounding. I have some doubts though if such a divisive and hated guy can manage to get stuff through though. He has not made himself into a person people want to cooperate with.

For some things though, he makes the problem sound way simpler than it is. E.g. removing existing regulations when introducing an new one and reducing government employees.

We got a right wing government in Norway thinking much along these lines promising removal of red tape, fewer public sector employees etc.

They failed. Reality is just a lot more complicated. Instead they have resorted to stupid tricks to make it look as if they are reducing public sector employees. They more some employees to other organizations which are not technically part of government. They they can make the statistics look pretty. But they are still paying for the services of these people.

The problem with e.g. reducing public sector employees is that every new government has big ambitions they want to happen YESTERDAY. That can only happen by public sector employees making it happen. The more ambitious your changes, the more new bureaucrats you frequently need to hire to get this done.

New ambitions typically also means a lot more rules and regulations have to be added.

I know this problem well from Software development. We want to reduce the number of useless lines of code. Except from users and managers there is a tremendous pressure and incentive for new functionality to be added. That means more lines of code not less.

Laws and regulations will be the same. People want the new stuff. They don't want to hear that you spent all this time removing stuff which doesn't really give anybody anything new, except a nice refactored law book.

Likely you are going to need to hire lots of people to actually start cutting down on regulation. Identifying what can be removed and figuring out how the rephrase things requires actual work, which somebody has to do. And if they are doing that they are not implementing the new policies of the administration.

_betty_• 10 years ago

I thing the idea behind the removing existing regulations rule works better for software than it does for laws.

It basically boils down to Leave things tidier than when you arrived.

No massive refactor projects, just fix up little things when you're in the area. Sure you never end up with a particularly nice codebase but it's not getting worse and it's not costing the business massive amounts to make something prettier for little benefit.

Also works well with backlogs, especially for client projects, you want a new feature? what are you willing to drop off the backlog to get it?

It's generally well known that most products contain a crap tonne of unused features and removing them reduces technical debt (eg potential bugs, overweight/slow apps).

I don't see it as a hard rule to sell in software.

datashovel• 10 years ago

"Six measures to clean up the corruption and special interest collusion in Washington, DC"

Ok, I'm on board with all of those... Then, besides a few other points, it just gets worse and worse the further into it you go.

If he accomplishes all 6, or even half, that's great. I just hope he won't have enough time to ruin everything else. At least now (especially after Dubya) we know we need outsiders vigilantly watching every move (and non-move) he makes.

theptip8• 10 years ago

FIRST, propose a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress.

I've debated this approach with friends in the past. From a game-theory perspective, does this promote or hinder political corruption?

I'm inclined to believe that term limits would actually encourage corruption.

1) If senators have to find a job after 8 years, surely that encourages the revolving door between industry and government, as they need to find another job .

2) If excellent and popular politicians have to be replaced before they fall from popularity, and it still costs a lot of money to get elected, then candidates will become more beholden to special interests (as they can't campaign on their track record or political capital). This would also dilute the overall quality of legislators.

3) If the average candidate has little or no political record, then how can we root out those who are beholden to special interests? At least currently we can look at who they have taken money from over the years in the public records that are available. If every candidate is a blank slate, who hasn't been subjected to oversight, it will be much easier for a candidate to be secretly bought without the public having a chance to spot it.

The real problem is not that there exists career politicians, it's that they experience extreme conflicts of interest due to being permitted to engage in insider trading [1], that they are not restricted from taking jobs in the industries they regulated while in government [2], and that there is a massive flow of money into politician's campaigns from special interests [3].

A more credible solution to these problems is advanced by Represent.us: http://anticorruptionact.org/whats-in-the-act/

[1] https://theintercept.com/2015/05/07/congress-argues-cant-inv... [2]: https://www.opensecrets.org/revolving/ [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC

loceng3• 10 years ago

It's scary really. Industry has the profits to pay for the marketing anyone needs to get elected, however it could take a 'lifetime' for someone who's educated and aware enough to be naturally get into power.

hyperion2010• 10 years ago

The thing I worry about more here (amazingly) is the answer to the question "If representatives don't have enough experience to write new laws then who will write them?"

sfblah• 10 years ago

Ok but what if the term limit was, say, 16 years for the House and 18 for the Senate?

theptip8• 10 years ago

It's not clear to me why there is a magic time that someone suddenly becomes ineligible for public service. I'm sure many politicians keep getting better at their job, even between year 16 and year 32.

Or even if we assume an asymptote of quality improvement over time, surely we want to have more politician-years spent during the peak of their quality, rather than in their first 4/8/16 when their output is less?

The idea of term limits implies that politician's utility becomes negative at some point in time, and that just doesn't fit with my understanding of how negotiating and learning how to build consensus works.

I'd love to see some hard data either way on this one.

mahyarm4• 10 years ago

You also get people like Feinstein[1] because of the lack of term limits.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dianne_Feinstein#Mass_surveill...

grzm19• 10 years ago

If you're arguing for term limits, you can make your case stronger by pointing out senators and representatives from both parties.

theptip8• 10 years ago

I approve of many Dems, and disapprove strongly of Feinstein, so I'm sympathetic to the thrust of that argument... but I fear that might be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If the only result of enacting term limits was Feinstein getting kicked out, I'd be all for it. But it affects far more politicians than her.

The natural counterargument is that there are probably other ways of dealing with the Feinstein problem without the nuclear option of term limits.

Specifically, the party doesn't field a credible contender to her, as she's right up in the core of the party elite. "Top 2" was supposed to encourage challenges from contenders similar to the party incumbents, but I think we'd be better served by a proportional representation system (STV or similar).

And if the core problem is that the party parachutes in stooges and backs them with the full weight of the party's campaign funding and infrastructure, then I don't see how term limits solve the problem; out with Feinstein, in with another party-blessed elitist who only cares about surveillance when it is used on fellow members of the elite [1]. I'm sure they can find someone who has not served a day in public service to carry on her agenda.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/28/nsa-surveillan...

theptip8• 10 years ago

FOURTH, a five-year ban on White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave government service.
FIFTH, a lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government.
SIXTH, a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections.

Can't see a reason to complain about any of these (though I've posted objections in other threads about other measures, mainly here [1]). Can anyone spot issues on these measures?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12916509

oceanswave• 10 years ago

Any time you enact a ban on potential employment of a person, your run into a bunch of hairy issues. Not to mention the required governmental oversight to ensure this is enforced

math0ne• 10 years ago

Yeah I just can't imagine how this could be enforced.

theptip8• 10 years ago

Can you elaborate your first sentence? Not really well-versed in the hairy issues you raise.

This will (necessarily) require more oversight. But I think we should be prepared to accept some regulation/oversight of the political process itself, given how critical it is to the functioning of society.

RealGeek10• 10 years ago

Even though Republicans have House and Senate majority, I still don't see any of this getting through. Those politicians won't self-destruct their careers.

theptip8• 10 years ago

Yeah, while Trump got elected on a wave of anti-establishment rancor, most of Congress is still the establishment.

I predict that no turkeys will be voting for Christmas, and no Congressmen will be voting for limits on lobbyist dollars.

skizm• 10 years ago

Screw it. Let's go all in with "clean coal". Fund NASA with the additional tax revenue from all the new oil money going around. Let's get off the planet before it matters.

Synaesthesia• 10 years ago

Let's face it we're mostly stuck here. Only a small handful of people can leave the planet.

Waterluvian• 10 years ago

Federal prison is probably not as terrible as some of the conditions Mexicans flee from.

laichzeit05• 10 years ago

I can guarantee you prison is not going to be the same after Trump "reforms" the system :) They're not going to be using tax money to feed themselves.

sangnoir3• 10 years ago

How much money can you send back to your family every month from Federal prison?

kaonashi• 10 years ago

I guess throwing a million kids in prison is cool then.

_audakel2• 10 years ago

wow. alot of these would be amazing if he got them to go through. maybe the "world is ending" rehtoric of 2008 when pres. obama was elected is similar to the current talk?

_audakel2• 10 years ago

   cancel every unconstitutional executive action,

memorandum and order issued by President Obama.

I think we need some claification on what is "constitutional"

btym3• 10 years ago

I will be replacing "unconstitutional" in my head with "against Donald Trump's business interests" for the next few years.

FireBeyond2• 10 years ago

Right, because as it is it seems pretty much synonymous with "things I do not like"

meritt• 10 years ago

Today, Trump appointed Myron Ebell (a massive climate change denier) to head up the EPA.

We're so utterly and completely fucked.

sean_patel5• 10 years ago

Florida is 1 of the 1st States to be severely affected by rising sea water levels from Climate change, and they just voted this guy into Office. Wow!

NoPiece• 10 years ago

Ebell is heading the EPA transition team, not the agency.

msd81257• 10 years ago

Trump and Myron talking Trump: "Hey Myron, thoughts on climate change?" Myron: "Oh it's nothing, the polar bears are just brown and cities are going underwater, but your ozone-damaging hairspray won't escape your dressing room (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU2p6YakNJg) while you grope a supermodel"

Please Elon Musk, if you're reading this, make Tesla and SolarCity come faster so we can still experience snow no matter who runs this country

inostia6• 10 years ago

How did I not see this before the election (even if it came out 102316 as evidenced in the file name)? Why did NYT/Guardian/all of the news sites that I regularly visit not report this?

This is a clear policy proposal, contrary to everything I had read that said he had no clear plan.

grzm19• 10 years ago

I agree that there was noise regarding Trump not having a clear plan. That said,

- Did you check out either candidate's websites?

- Were you aware of Hillary's equivalent?[0] Was this reported in the news sites you frequent?

[0] https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/

I'm asking the questions honestly. I did know of Trump's contract (though I don't remember how I came across it), and didn't look at the Clinton campaign site. I don't recall anything in the news about either.

inostia6• 10 years ago

I did look at both candidate's websites. Though a link to this .pdf was not easy to find. This is exactly the sort of thing that I expect the media to link me to, rather than an (after-the-fact) HN post.

I read news websites every single day and never saw anything close to the clarity of his positions presented here.

mrschwabe8• 10 years ago

Bookmark some more news sites so you get a wider spectrum. Smaller independent operations (ex: Breitbart, Drudge Report) are less vulnerable to being co-opted or politically motivated.

Also, r/The_Donald is has been an excellent aggregate for all things related to the campaign.

Also, see Wikileaks to get an idea of how bad the bias/corruption has been in the media (ex: CNN giving HRC questions in advance of debates [0], CNN asking HRC campaign for input regarding questions for Donald in exclusive interview [1]); this should help you understand the scope of the situation and why you haven't been getting good reporting from mainstream news.

[0] https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/786225211481792514

[1] https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/25846

toomanybeersies• 10 years ago

The absence of leaks from the RNC doesn't mean that the RNC doesn't do the same things as the DNC.

elemenopy• 10 years ago

You cite Breitbart as an example of a website that is "less vulnerable to being co-opted or politically motivated."

How is that even remotely accurate, considering the Chairman of Breitbart, Steve Bannon, is Trump's campaign chairman?

tempestn2• 10 years ago

I agree with you that much of the mainstream media showed a bias against Trump through this election. (I feel they had very good reasons to be biased against him, but regardless, should have done a better job of keeping the reporting neutral.) That said, Breitbart and Drudge Report are probably the two most well known right-biased sources in existence (aside from the obviously much larger, but less biased, Fox News). Describing them as not politically motivated seems misleading at best.

anondon• 10 years ago

His stand on climate change scares me.

What can the public do to prevent him from opening energy reserves and backing out of climate change agreements?

Are there efforts going on to prevent this?

Building a wall along the Mexican border...I don't see the thinking behind the decision.

esotericsean• 10 years ago

The climate change one scares me the most as well. We should be focused on renewable energy more than anything right now. It's a much bigger threat than terrorism.

And building a wall and kicking out immigrants is so backwards. We need to be more united as humans and work together, not put up more barriers.

laichzeit05• 10 years ago

What's wrong with making people come through a door in a wall? You realize some people have homes with walls around them and they actually prefer visitors to ring the doorbell and wait for you to let them in. It's the exact same principle. If you lose sight of this very simple concept then you need to go back and see where you overcomplicated it. You don't see people like Richard Feynman going "oh this quantum mechanics, it's just too complicated, you can never explain in simply. Forget it." That's being intellectually lazy. The concept of borders, walls, immigration, visas must be simple to explain. There's a wall, there's a door. You want to come in, you go through the door. Done. If you think this is backward, then just remove the locks on the doors to your house while you're at it.

He's specifically talking about ILLEGAL immigrants. People that did not come in through the door. If you fail to prefix the word immigrant with illegal in any immigration discussion you're deliberately distorting Trumpian policies.

mahyarm4• 10 years ago

Work on accelerating the price drop of solar and general energy storage. There is still a lot of progress to be made in things like making the tooling cheaper for things that are not silicon.

The fact if a large developed nation supports climate change or not is moot when the developing world does not give a flying shit about it.

mrschwabe8• 10 years ago

Trump should append this contract with "End Internet shills" because it seems there are a lot of them on this thread. Good golly, I thought finally CTR would close up shop after last night.

For the first time in generations the USA finally has a president who isn't a puppet. And this contract allows us to keep said President accountable from day one. Nerds rejoice! Fear not the knee-jerk comments from un/mis-informed trendies and especially ignore the talking-point bots still hating on Trump via whatever is left in the Soros/CF payroll account. After years of trying they ultimately failed and clearly cannot impact the will of the people at the end of the day. MAGA.

allemagne• 10 years ago

Grow up and realize that not everyone who disagrees with you is a "shill." This goes for you and for every Trump supporter who made the internet an intellectual wasteland during this election.

Trump won the election but lost the popular vote. Half the country finds him personally repulsive. His presidency will be more contentious than any other in memory. Like any other politician, he will not deliver on his promises and he will not fix complex problems just by being willing to "get things done."

There will never ever be any shortage of people genuinely willing to criticize Trump for free.

mrschwabe8• 10 years ago

You say to grow up but in the following sentence you lob a totally unnecessary insult, shifting blame as if there is none to fall on those who supported the Clinton campaign.

You say Trump won the election but lost the popular vote; ok I'll give you that (ignoring for a moment the culture of criminality of the Clinton campaign and the possibility for election fraud ) but the margin of that popular vote is only by a 0.2 to 0.7% lead [0]. Hardly more than 50% if even.

Regardless, if I'm not mistaken, the popular vote doesn't determine who becomes President so this argument is flawed because if popular vote did determine who became President then the Trump campaign could very well have optimized their campaign to win said popular vote; requiring a different strategy but one that could very well have been successful just as they were at winning the battleground states as they did, and as so few predicted.

You say that half the country finds him personally repulsive. Why is that? I just laid out some facts about the media collusion and attempts to smear and disrupt his character and campaign. Why is your angst not directed at the sell-out mainstream media for helping to coordinate the propaganda which is now so deeply rooted in people's opinions towards the now President to be?

Finally, maybe it would be better to give the new President a chance to implement his promises before judging him on that regard. Maybe he is not like any other politician, after all he's the only President to ever take office who has no prior position in politics or military.

[0] http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2016/presidential-...

kylecordes• 10 years ago

It is fascinating to read all these comments (594 as I write this) analyzing this is a policy document. This is a marketing document. What will the actual policies be? Who knows. Perhaps some of them will be somewhat like some of the words in this document. Perhaps others will not. We are headed very far into uncharted territory, and all these pundits writing so many words confident about exactly what will happen, seems obviously silly given what has happened recently.

grzm19• 10 years ago

I agree there's an element of silliness :) Another way to think about it is we're trying to determine what might happen given what we know and understanding what we consider acceptable as part of the process. And hopefully figuring out how to discuss these issues with each other without increasing our polarization, and finding some common ground.

Okay, okay. I can hope, can't I?

xenadu022• 10 years ago

Just so everyone is aware: selling insurance across state lines is code for "gut all insurance regulations". Why did most credit card banks relocate their paper headquarters to SD? Because SD had no usury laws and federal law said laws of your headquarters was all that mattered. It gutted all state regulation of credit cards in one fell swoop.

This is the same approach DJT and the Republicans want to take for health care. Think about that race to the bottom for a minute. Denied and dropped for making a single claim? Good luck, totally legal in [insert small state here].

Without the individual mandate insurance marketplaces don't work so I assume repealing Obamacare will immediately lead to millions of people being thrown off health insurance.

Truly a great victory for America.

pmorici5• 10 years ago

Is the current system working? My insurance rate has gone from $66 per month for a HDHP to $277 per month 3 years later under the healthcare law for the essentially the same HDHP plan. At that rate of increase I wouldn't be able to afford it at all any more in a few short years so what does it matter?

davesque5• 10 years ago

That's because the system you're now paying into is saving the lives of people who would have had no healthcare otherwise. Like it or not, you live in a society with other people. If you want your society to be fair and just, you have to make some sacrifices.

hibikir• 10 years ago

It isn't, but that doesn't mean that any random change will fix it. Your argument is then as follows:

1-We must do something 2-{This} is something 3-Therefore, me must do {This}

You won't find many of us arguing against the first assertion, but I don't think real numbers say that it's insurance regulation that made the prices go up: It's the fact that the risk pools are full of very sick people. While deregulation would separate the sick from the non sick, it would make sure the sick would not be able to afford insurance at all.

The ACA is working great for people that make so little they get subsidies. It's also not a problem for those of use that work at places that compensate us with well over a thousand a month worth insurance. It's the people in the middle that are in trouble: They either access the ACA unsubsidized, or work for employers that hire a lot of low paid labor, leading to godawful health insurance. I worked at places where the insurance we got was so flimsy, the ACA made it illegal: Huge deductibles, coinsurance along with lifetime maximums that made sure that if you got something bad, insurance would cut you off.

Health insurance in this country has been in an awful trend since at least the Clinton years. the ACA only helped some. We don't need a repeal, but something that subsidizes you too. Health savings accounts and insurance across state lines ain't going to help, but it's going to give us sicker people that just have access to the emergency room and go bankrupt, like in the last of the Bush years.

Broken_Hippo• 10 years ago

That will be awful. I've generally been fine with insurance companies selling in multiple states, but I always picture it with regulation - because of such a situation.

tw043• 10 years ago

So he's going to lower taxes on the wealthy, drop taxes on businesses, increase spending on military, destroy our national parks to extract oil, and lay off federal employees.

This is going to help the middle class and the uneducated who are struggling through... magic. None of the lobbying stuff will ever see the light of day. The term limits won't happen. He's going to repeal the "illegal" Obama executive orders but leave the Bush ones in place because... they're illegal but he likes them?

The immigration thing will happen and result in massive backlash if I had to guess. None of the reforms will ever happen because he doesn't have the power to enact any of it, and the Republicans are NEVER going to agree to that when they're currently in power. His justice choice will never in a million years overturn Citizens United which is literally the only affect he could have on political corruption.

samfisher83• 10 years ago

The president doesn't make the tax plan congress does, but given he has a republican congress he can get a lot of those things passed.

tw043• 10 years ago

That's the point, he'll get the things passed that are going to hurt the country, and the only things that are actually GOOD ideas will sit on the floor because congress is never going to vote to limit its own power.

giarc9• 10 years ago

A middle-class family with two children will get a 35% tax cut.

He's basically Oprah with tax cuts. Kidding aside, I think all politicians promise wide tax cuts, and this "contract" was written prior to him winning. So take most with a grain of salt.

mememachine4• 10 years ago

It certainly doesnt seem like a dem. tradition

danenania• 10 years ago

He's (unfortunately) going to have a LOT of leverage over Congress. One word to his minions and he can instantly remove over 50% of any Republican's support. They are terrified of provoking him.

bdavisx• 10 years ago

How is he going to remove their support - Paul Ryan was still reelected against Trump's wishes.

TuringNYC• 10 years ago

You are arguing that he wont do/be-able-to-do things which GOP silent supporters (large corporations) dislike. That is probably a safe bet. However, he can still do crazy things that all his supporters wont care about, such as skewering minorities, Muslims, etc -- I doubt there will be any objection from either his populist support or GOP financial support.

chrischen• 10 years ago

He is pushing protectionist trade policies (backing out of NAFTA, punishing China for currency manipulation, backing out of TPP, etc) that will probably have the biggest income on low-skill jobs that will help the lower and middle classes at the expense of profits for businesses.

RealGeek10• 10 years ago

A middle-class family will get a 35% tax cut.

I did some back-of-the-envelope calculation to figure how our taxes could change for various income levels for married joint filers. This does not factor in any deductions.

Nobody is getting a 35% tax cut. Tax rate for middle-class families will go down by around 1% only, and taxes will go up for low-income families by 2%. Single tax filers will also see an increase in taxes.

The biggest tax cuts will actually go the highest income earners, tax rate will go down by 6.42% for someone who makes $10 million. Maybe that is what Trump calls the middle-class?

Trump's proposed tax brackets vs current brackets

$18,000 Current: $1,800 (10%) Trump: $2,160 (12%) Change: + $360 (2%)

$36,000 Current: $4,472 (12.42%) Trump: $4,320 (12%) Change: - $152 (0.42%)

$75,000 Current: $10,322 (13.76%) Trump: $9,000 (12%) Change: - $1,322 (1.76%)

$120,000 Current: $21,542 (17.95%) Trump: $20,250 (16.87%) Change: - $1,292 (1.08%)

$250,000 Current: $57,913 (23.16%) Trump: $45,750 (18.3%) Change: - $12,163 (4.86%)

$500,000 Current: $143,665 (28.73%) Trump: $11,1750 (22.35%) Change: - $31,915 (6.38%)

$1 million Current: $341,666 (34.16%) Trump: $293,250 (29.32%) Change: - $48,416 (4.84%)

$10 million Current: $3,905,666 (39.05%) Trump: $3,263,250 (32.63%) Change: - $642,416 (6.42%)

aliston• 10 years ago

Virtually nobody making 10 million a year pays a 39% tax rate. They likely take most of their comp as stock and pay the long term capital gains rate. If they're in finance/VC, they are taking full advantage of carried interest. They have financial planners who structure their portfolio to favor low-tax investments. They form S-Corps and trust funds to defer tax liability, get paid in distributions, write off all sorts of business expenses, use real estate to offset gains with depreciation, carry forward every conceivable loss, tax loss harvest etc. etc. etc. This is how Warren Buffett, Mitt Romney and Trump end up paying < 20% effective rates.

The people hit hardest by "tax the wealthy" politicians are folks making large salaries (engineers, doctors, lawyers...). The mega-wealthy like Mark Zuckerberg make $1 a year in salary. If you really want to go after the wealthy, you need to tax wealth, not ordinary income and go after the complexity of the tax code.

mordocai• 10 years ago

I haven't done the math (and I'm not a fan of the tax cuts) but trump is also offering bigger tax breaks for families with kids per his policy page(https://www.donaldjtrump.com/policies, I haven't read this pdf yet). Since you didn't take that into account, does that change the numbers at all? It wouldn't surprise me one bit if when a republican says "middle class families" they mean literally "married people with non-adult kids".

gok• 10 years ago

Firstly, a X% tax cut means a X% reduction in amount of tax paid, not a X% increase in after-tax income. So $10,322 -> $9000 would be a 12.8% tax cut.

Secondly, you're forgetting standard deductions. It's $12,600 today; the Trump plan is to raise it to $30,000. So it would actually be:

$36,000 Current: $2,582 (7.2%) Trump: $720 (2.1%) $75,000 Current: $8,433 (11.2%) Trump: $4,200 (5.6%) etc…

(I hate the guy and don't think this tax plan is a terribly great idea, but the math above is wrong)

vehementi3• 10 years ago

I thought this was post-election but it's just his propaganda from a few weeks ago. Nothing should really be taken any more seriously than anything else he's talked about

kdamken• 10 years ago

For the tax cuts, seems like it'd be pretty helpful for the lower and middle classes from what he's posted here - https://www.donaldjtrump.com/policies/tax-plan

tehabe2• 10 years ago

I'm confused about this regulation thing. Many people hate regulations because they think of it as limiting for businesses. But I think, you couldn't work as a business if there were no regulations.

An example, Nevada voted to open its electricity market this week. Everybody should be able to choose the provider they want.

But to do this, there need to be regulations in place. Independent companies need to know how they can use the grid, the company who owns the grid needs to know what it can charge for the usage of the grid.

If you let such a market without any regulation, there won't be a market, because the grid owner won't let anyone use its grid.

So removing regulations is not always a good thing. Most of the time regulations were put there for a reason.

pitaj3• 10 years ago

If you let such a market without any regulation, there won't be a market, because the grid owner won't let anyone use its grid.

What?

tehabe2• 10 years ago

anyone meaning mostly competitors. If you want to distribute electricity, you need a way to reach your customers. Since it is unrealistic to build your own grid.

And if there are no regulations about it, the grid owner doesn't have to give you access to its grid. So you can't supply your electricity. So the customers can't exercise their right to choose.

forgingahead• 10 years ago

So, this is NOT new, it's been around for a while (see the footer of the document). Important to recognize that this may not be his actual first 100 day plan now he has actually won.

The bigger problem is that since the Democrats and media took the "Literally Hitler" approach, no policies got discussed even though they were available in plain sight. Now whether you like them or not, he's won, and people had no opportunity to understand the policy differences between the candidates.

jonstewart• 10 years ago

There's nothing to discuss here. A reaction along the lines of "Well, that doesn't sound so bad, but maybe he ought to think about..." means you're now playing by his rules. This is just Reagan++.

chenster7• 10 years ago

In other words, it's all other people / country's fault.

chenster7• 10 years ago

WTF, America? How could anyone trust an alleged narcissist, extremist, sexist, racist, self-righteous and nationalist who paid nothing in income tax for the last 20 years to do what he says?

grzm19• 10 years ago

A significant percentage of voters in the US came to that conclusion, given the choices they had. I think it's likely pretty easy to find one of them to ask, if you're willing to listen.

davesque5• 10 years ago

Not the majority, though.

rullelito• 10 years ago

Why is it bad to not pay income tax?

chenster7• 10 years ago

Is this a serious question?

xenadu022• 10 years ago

Oh almost forgot: get ready for the end to net neutrality.

Comcast/ATT/Verizon: nice startup you got there... would be a shame if anything happened to your traffic.

d-sc• 10 years ago

Question: What are the analytics that this website contains to track the potential support/non support of viewers of the document?

dr_• 10 years ago

"... The business rate will be lowered from 35% to 15%, and the trillions of dollars of American corporate money overseas can now be brought back at a 10% rate."

15% seems like a lofty goal, even 25% would be drastic. Unless a corporation can be confident that there will be significant growth in the economy, they are likely to hoard the savings than reinvest them.

readhn2• 10 years ago

Who put this list together and how? a night of heavy "thinking"? Who did they consult on how realistic and achievable these goals are? Does budget allow for any of this?

Is this all made up BS plan that could never be achieved?

Blackthorn• 10 years ago

Lest anyone forgets, term limits will never happen. Mitch McConnell is 100% against it and, guess what, it has to get through him to happen.

nameisu• 10 years ago

if these are really his views then I would be happy if he can achieve 50% of this. I understand why big people fought against him now.

bronz• 10 years ago

why would mexico pay for the wall? 9 out of 10 times when someone asks this question they are not aware of the fact that we had a $58 billion trade deficit with mexico in 2015. trumps proposal is to use this and all the other leverage we have over mexico to get them to pay for the wall. at first glance it seems that it would be very much in mexicos best financial interest to cooperate, actually. most liberals think he just says that mexico will build the wall and that he does not offer any kind of plan or explanation. this is because they never actually confirm their presumptions. im not saying that his plan is great or will even work. but it is a plan and although it is unconventional, it is also plausible.

the most concerning aspect of trumps policies is that regarding climate. but thankfully renewable energy is now well on its way. its not a fragile infant anymore -- it will survive trump if not explode into popularity under trump despite his stance on the environment.

the trump movement was a grass roots movement. People voted for him because he said that he will stop companies from outsourcing their work with simple tax implementations. they lifted him from obscurity and into the presidency. take a look at the other times he ran and you can see what his campaign would have been like without the grass roots element: nothing. trump would not be president if people in the mid-west had good employment and a sense of financial security.

and as for the sexual assault thing, i would rather have trump be elected than see bill clinton back in the white house because bill clinton is literally a rapist. i know it may come as a huge shock for liberals -- being a liberal it was a huge shock to me -- but its true. i know this is not the most reputable source but before you disagree with me i would like you to watch this video of a woman recounting the event.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHh73fkDUIs

and another

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug7diBO3XYY

i very much doubt that someone who could easily make a nice living in hollywood as one of the best actors in the world would instead decide to publicly accuse one of the most powerful men in the world of one of the worst crimes possible.

heres an article from npr (one of the most liberal new organizations on the planet) addressing the issue and offering absolutely no evidence to contradict it.

http://www.npr.org/2016/10/09/497291071/a-brief-history-of-j...

if anyone can point to evidence that proves her wrong then please let me know. im impartial.

hal9000xp• 10 years ago

I was born in Uzbekistan, having Russian citizenship and living in the Netherlands.

I wonder if they allow me to enter US.

I hope Trump won't go that far (i.e. banning from entering US because I was born in Uzbekistan).

plandis• 10 years ago

Great so insurers can go back to dropping/denying people.

Why does Trump want US citizens to die because they cannot get health care?

PSeitz• 10 years ago

This document is from before the election, it's invalid now.

JulianMorrison• 10 years ago

"SIXTH, a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections." -- sounds rather Russian, don't they have a law now forcing Amnesty International and others to register as "foreign agents"?

Aoyagi• 10 years ago

Yes, but I don't see any parallels there.

beatpanda• 10 years ago

I think it's weird how very few people on HN seem to be worried about his promise to initiate pogroms against minorities in the first 100 days, like it doesn't even warrant a mention for most of you

johndoe90• 10 years ago

FIRST , cancel every unconstitutional executive action, memorandum and order issued by President Obama.

Does this mean the LGBT rights to marry will be taken back?

nommm-nommm5• 10 years ago

LGBTs didn't gain the rights to marry by executive order issued by Obama. They gained those rights largely by judicial review.

projektfu2• 10 years ago

Two words: industrial policy. Without it any likelihood of creating substantially more jobs than the the current trend goes out the window. The problem? Industrial policy is hard and requires some attention span. You can't just tweet it out.

crb002• 10 years ago

"Restoring National Security Act" The Federalization of law enforcement has the potential for fascism. Also lowering the repatriation of corporate abroad profit makes it more tax efficient to move jobs overseas. A 10% repatriation below the 15% cap gains rate is a massive tax loophole.

theptip8• 10 years ago

The Guardian just published a line-by-line analysis of this document:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/13/trump-policy...

Damie1399• 10 years ago

Let's pay Damien Gregory for the Real Lockdown phone gas you president speech and Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube Lockdown and Trump towers contact him for your shit back needs to be Paid for everything 509-945-4338

Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

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