U.S. Politics: 22 Trillion Problems But An Unsecured Border Ain’t One

[DMC]

2 hours ago, lokisnow said:

I’d rather have one primary in March and one runoff in June and be done with the whole damn thing. Everybody vote the same day, fuck the staggering.

Yes, if I was Lord Commander of Primaries this is plainly the most simple and least biased way to do it.

[lokisnow]

The trump administration transportation department may well be able to rescind 989 million in ongoing funding to the high speed rail project because of newsoms poorly worded state of the state speech (and because newsom taunted trump on twitter after his confusing speech and one can never beat trump at Twitter).

Most of that funding is going to necessary bookend upgrades for cal train electrification and a beyond stupid and useless upgrade of Los Angeles union station to make them both ready for HSR, and the loss of the cal train electrification would be especially devastating. The only reason trump hasn’t canceled this money In 2017 and 2018 is because Utah’s senators intervened. But trump may not care what those senators think now that newsom is out actively provoking trump into escalations and aggressive behavior.

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-high-speed-rail-20190219-story.html

https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/02/17/caltrain-electrification-project-california-bay-area-salt-lake-city-utah-stadler/

the sad thing is that by posturing over the bullet train newsom is probably trying to burnish his image for his future presidential run,  but he just stabbed the most important green infrastructure program in the country in the back and is actively making things worse with his juvenile behavior.

i don’t even support this bullet train, I voted  against it because it’s absurd to build the one section that is desperately needed (la to San Diego) last instead of first, but I can acknowledge the positives even while understanding all the negatives, but wow I’m amazed at how fast newsom is really achieving some low levels of leadership right away.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

14 minutes ago, Gertrude said:

Yep. I bought it when Booker was helping shovel people out of a snowstorm when he was mayor, but not anymore. And Gillibrand - that's what I was thinking about when I mentioned her. She was determined to be the leading voice on that issue and jumped too far ahead of it IMO. That and an interview I saw her give where she gave an 'impassioned' speech about ... some belief she has or something. It came off as trying too hard and very phony. Had a hard time concentrating on what she was saying because of how she was saying it.

Look, I know politicians are calculated, but don't make it this easy to spot. OK?

Agreed. Both feel very forced, though Booker is much better at it. I wouldn't worry about Gillibrand because she won't win, but Booker should be seen as one of the early favorites. And speaking of the favorites, Biden better make a decision soon, if not for just locking up the best staffers. He's running out of time.

17 minutes ago, Frog Eater said:

or even rotate the order. have 6 regions, Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Deep South, Southwest, Northwest and just rotate the order. 

Sure, that would work too. 

[karaddin]

3 hours ago, DMC said:

It's "controversial" in so far as the argument that it's disqualifying for a candidate, which is both unfair and entirely stupid for trying to recruit quality candidates.

I think it's reasonable to never vote for someone with that background in the primary. Accepting that you lost in the primary and still voting for that candidate in the actual election is an important part of doing that if they do win the primary though.

[Fragile Bird]

I never knew anything about Mia Love until many of you said it was a shame she lost her seat. Now that I see her regularly on CNN I have to say she is nothing more than a hard core Republican, and absolutely obnoxious. No loss there.

[DMC]

4 minutes ago, karaddin said:

I think it's reasonable to never vote for someone with that background in the primary. Accepting that you lost in the primary and still voting for that candidate in the actual election is an important part of doing that if they do win the primary though.

Yes, this is what I mean by "disqualifying," which I should have..qualified because it can mean a number of things.  I was not referring to still voting for that candidate against Trump in the general.  I assume pretty much everyone here will do/advocate that.  However, what I mean by disqualifying here is, well exactly what you said - refusing to support someone, even eventually, in a primary because they were a prosecutor. 

This seems a really dumb standard to me, I'm sorry.  We can pick apart any candidate, for example let's look at every top tier candidate.  Harris' role as a prosecutor perpetuated an inherent iniquity in our political and social system?  Ok, sure.  Whose career hasn't?  What about cozying up to big banks, or big pharma, or big oil?  Cuz that "disqualifies" Booker and Beto.  What about the actual bills Biden and Sanders helped pass as, ya know, actual policymakers in much more important positions when it comes to perpetuating the status quo in the criminal justice system (or any of the other multitudes of now-verboten policies their voting records share)?  Warren doesn't have much of a record before becoming Senator because of the nature of her career choice, but she was a registered Republican and voted that way until - in her own words - 1995.  When she was 46.

These purity tests aren't helpful because of stones and glass houses.  As long as the background isn't that problematic - which none of these are - then I think the emphasis should be on what the candidates are advocating now, not their background.  As I've said before, this type of stringency is just asking to devolve into the least common denominator of candidates, like the Republicans.

[Jace, Extat]

57 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

 

Regarding Gillibrand, I remain 100% convinced that she was calculating how it would help her presidential ambitions when she stabbed Franken in the back.

That seems unfair. She pretty brazenly stabbed him in the front.

[Guest]

Sanders campaign reporting that it raised $4 million in the first 12 hours since the announcement of his candidacy. 

[Altherion]

6 hours ago, lokisnow said:

So levy can’t let go of his crayon drawing, but this route is a settled issue since 2007 and cannot be changed.

I don't think anyone thought it could be changed, but it was flawed then and it's still flawed now.

7 hours ago, lokisnow said:

Newsom has committed to building out the 172 miles from Bakersfield to Merced, which there is enough money for.

Bakersfield is a city of roughly half a million people (800K for the whole metro area) which is around 100 miles away from Los Angeles (in a straight line). Merced is a city of roughly 80K people which is roughly 80 miles to San Jose and more than 100 miles to San Francisco (again, in a straight line). The entire idea behind high speed rail is to connect large cities over distances that are between one and two hours away by air. It doesn't make any sense if part of the way is fast and part is slow -- people will just take a plane.

You are right in that the writer (and, for that matter, myself in this post) completely ignored all of the local stuff about environmental reviews, needing to fit the track to existing passages, etc. etc., but the point of the article was not to analyze the local minutia, but to illustrate how the current system (it's not specific to high speed rail or California) renders infrastructure projects simultaneously absurdly expensive in terms of spending and nearly worthless in terms of the result.

Here's a more national example of exactly the same mentality at work: NASA has now spent nearly $50B on deep space rockets and capsules with almost nothing to show for it. For comparison, the privately developed Falcon Heavy (which has the distinction of actually having been launched once) has a development cost of less than a tenth of that and is almost certainly going to see a whole lot more usage because it's cheaper per launch as well as to develop.

[Martell Spy]

As far as healthcare goes, we have 2 problems in the Presidential primary. On one side we have Sanders, while his goal is laudable, he has yet to convince me he can pull it off. On the other side, we have centristy candidates who are proposing solutions best described as small beer. We really need someone between these 2 extremes, I feel. We need radical movement on healthcare. We also need to not fall on our faces when we attempt such. 

If Democrats do manage to take power of 3 branches in 2020, and if they fail to take extreme action, it will be something like 2030 before anything can be done again. And many Americans will suffer long and hard in the meantime.

Furthermore, as the Omamacare expansion of Medicaid showed, it's almost impossible for Republicans to unwind. And as they consider it to be socialism, they feel they have no choice to make a suicide charge to destroy this horrible communism. 

[DMC]

32 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

As far as healthcare goes, we have 2 problems in the Presidential primary. On one side we have Sanders, while his goal is laudable, he has yet to convince me he can pull it off. On the other side, we have centristy candidates who are proposing solutions best described as small beer. We really need someone between these 2 extremes, I feel. We need radical movement on healthcare. We also need to not fall on our faces when we attempt such. 

I disagree entirely.  Absolutely.  EXTREMELY.  The LAST thing you want to do is get specific on health care.  "Medicare for All" polls well, in large part because no one knows exactly what it means - myself included.  You don't want to fuck that up.

[Seli]

1 hour ago, Altherion said:

...

Bakersfield is a city of roughly half a million people (800K for the whole metro area) which is around 100 miles away from Los Angeles (in a straight line). Merced is a city of roughly 80K people which is roughly 80 miles to San Jose and more than 100 miles to San Francisco (again, in a straight line). The entire idea behind high speed rail is to connect large cities over distances that are between one and two hours away by air. It doesn't make any sense if part of the way is fast and part is slow -- people will just take a plane.

...

My city has around 350k, it is 400 miles from Berlin (6 ish hours by current rail connection, not even true high speed) and I happily take the train when I go there. Centre-to-centre is just so much more comfortable.

Although it does help both ends of this journey have good local transport options, great ones in a US context probably.

[lokisnow]

4 hours ago, Altherion said:

I don't think anyone thought it could be changed, but it was flawed then and it's still flawed now.

Bakersfield is a city of roughly half a million people (800K for the whole metro area) which is around 100 miles away from Los Angeles (in a straight line). Merced is a city of roughly 80K people which is roughly 80 miles to San Jose and more than 100 miles to San Francisco (again, in a straight line). The entire idea behind high speed rail is to connect large cities over distances that are between one and two hours away by air. It doesn't make any sense if part of the way is fast and part is slow -- people will just take a plane.

You are right in that the writer (and, for that matter, myself in this post) completely ignored all of the local stuff about environmental reviews, needing to fit the track to existing passages, etc. etc., but the point of the article was not to analyze the local minutia, but to illustrate how the current system (it's not specific to high speed rail or California) renders infrastructure projects simultaneously absurdly expensive in terms of spending and nearly worthless in terms of the result.

Here's a more national example of exactly the same mentality at work: NASA has now spent nearly $50B on deep space rockets and capsules with almost nothing to show for it. For comparison, the privately developed Falcon Heavy (which has the distinction of actually having been launched once) has a development cost of less than a tenth of that and is almost certainly going to see a whole lot more usage because it's cheaper per launch as well as to develop.

Well yes and no to it doesn’t make any sense. There is no more air capacity between Los Angeles and San Diego. There is no more freeway capacity between Los Angeles and San Diego, both are maxed out, which is why it’s the ideal City pair for high speed rail (and shit just upgrading it to Acela standard (slow high speed) would cost less than a billion in infrastructure and cut the travel time to 90 minutes).

and the same would be true of air capacity between the Bay Area and the LA area, except it’s spread out between three airports in the Bay Area and three in LA, and even then they are nearly maxed out as well. LA to the Bay is the most frequently traveled air route in the country and reducing any of the flight volume would be a massive boon to the climate. Additional freeway capacity would be a climate diasaster and also cost about ten billion, and it doesn’t get any one there faster.

and in LA, simply hopping on a plane isn’t always so easy, where we live now, about thirty miles from LAX, because of traffic, we have to leave about four hours before a flight, an alternative would be much appreciated, and having to invest four hours to take an hour flight is a really strong deterrent to flying. So it’s not necessarily as simple as just hopping on a plane, there are a lot of logistical obstacles to flying in LA for regular residents, and if you’re, for example, living in Bakersfield, and want to fly somewhere and are not rich enough to afford the astromocal fares out of a regional airport, you have to leave six-seven hours before a flight in order to catch your LA departing flight to whatever destination, a train that got you to union station in 70 minutes where there’s a fly away bus direct to the airport in twenty five minutes is a huge improvement. The same would be true for people of Fresno, flying out of the Bay Area.

there is a lot value capture to connecting the entire state to a frequent and fast rail service, it just doesn’t make a lot of sense to not start with LA-SD. the ridership estimates figure that only about thirty percent of ridership will be SF to LA, most of the ridership comes from intermediate stops to either destination.  And the conservative end of cumulative revenues collected over sixty years is about 165 billion, which is a less than five percent chance of it being that low, with a median expectations in the mid 200 billions in fare revenue collected.

as for Tejon, these are nasty mountains containing the San Andreas fault, the pass acts as a catchment for bad weather in the wet (winter) season and the pass has the infamous interstate crossing known as the grapevine, they are very poorly suited to HSR even if it doesn’t look like it on a map. Now they’re no alps, and I’m sure there are more impressive mountain crossings around the world, but Southern California struggles with dealing with the existing infrastructure in the Tejon environment already, I seriously doubt they’d manage rail any better. To say the route is ideal because it is the most direct on a map ignores the actual conditions on the ground and of the ground itself.

[Martell Spy]

7 hours ago, DMC said:

I disagree entirely.  Absolutely.  EXTREMELY.  The LAST thing you want to do is get specific on health care.  "Medicare for All" polls well, in large part because no one knows exactly what it means - myself included.  You don't want to fuck that up.

Yes, that is why some candidates are giving small-bore decisions or obscuring their positions, to be better positioned in the general. However, my job remains to attempt to make an informed decision in the primary. One thing is certain, I won't be voting for the candidate proposing small amounts of action. 

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

However, my job remains to attempt to make an informed decision in the primary. One thing is certain, I won't be voting for the candidate proposing small amounts of action. 

I think the objective is to avoid getting bogged down into a "they're gonna take away your insurance" attack.  Remain open to solutions and figure it out after you win.  This is literally what Obama did - the ACA ended up being a lot closer to Hillary's plan during the primaries than his "plan" at the time.

[Martell Spy]

2 minutes ago, DMC said:

I think the objective is to avoid getting bogged down into a "they're gonna take away your insurance" attack.  Remain open to solutions and figure it out after you win.  This is literally what Obama did - the ACA ended up being a lot closer to Hillary's plan during the primaries than his "plan" at the time.

Yeah, I thought of bringing that up actually. Obama said his plan wouldn't have the mandate, and this was one of the reasons I supported him. The thing was, the policy in that case turned out not to matter that much, in particular since it was later taken out. I did not feel bad about him violating that promise, considering the massive action he pulled off. That possibly worked for Obama simply because he was convincing. Or the policy may have made him look more like an outsider. I'm not sure how I would have voted if the two had reversed positions, but I did not like the mandate at the time. 

[Ormond]

17 hours ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

The candidates will be spending an oversized amount of time getting Democrats to know them in Iowa (a state almost lost to them), and maybe New Hampshire (a state with fewer electoral college votes that probably doesn't matter that much in the grand scheme of things. No offense. And they do that weird split anyway). 

What "weird split"?? Are you confusing New Hampshire with Maine?

[DMC]

16 minutes ago, Ormond said:

Are you confusing New Hampshire with Maine?

Sounds like it.

Anyway, that reminded me I did have some thoughts on the certain criticisms voiced on the primary schedule.  In general I entirely agree - what I particularly don't like is both of the first two states, which hold momentously disproportionate influence, are veritably lily white compared to the rest of the country. 

However, I don't think the schedule is necessarily bad for candidates - at least the idea that a couple small states should have this undue influence.  In fact, I think Iowa and NH will actually be particularly useful for the current crop of Dem candidates.  For Biden and Sanders, it's not too useful, they both obviously know how to run presidential campaigns.  But for the other 4 candidates in (my definition of) the "top tier" - Harris, Beto, Booker and Warren - the grassroots and retail politics nature of Iowa and NH is a useful test. 

No one questions all of those 4 candidates will have any trouble raising money.  The first 3 especially have already demonstrated they'll have no problem with fundraising, at all.  And all four don't really have any concerns about the national media either - they're all already experienced with it and each is at least adequate at the bully pulpit aspect of the role. 

But developing grassroots organization in parts of the country that didn't know who you were a few months ago is a very important part of presidential politics, including the general election.  And Iowa and NH is a good tryout for that.  In fact, I know many campaign operatives that have said as much.  If you want a substantive example, David Plouffe expounded upon the organization the Obama campaign developed in Iowa during the 2008 campaign, and how that not only informed them going forward, but helped them win Iowa in the general.

[Spockydog]

22 hours ago, Maithanet said:

Is this administration actively insane? 

Well, duh.

[IheartIheartTesla]

47 minutes ago, Ormond said:

What "weird split"?? Are you confusing New Hampshire with Maine?

Yes...all those tiny states run together for me (and I lived next door to NH for 3 years).

I understand the usefulness of retail politics, developing grassroots and testing some ideas regarding your policies in these little states. On the flip side, sometimes narratives get baked in pretty soon that can be hard to overcome. For instance, while NH may not have much to offer Sanders in terms of lessons, I know he will do well there just by its proximity to Vermont. Iowa being a caucus state also guarantees him a strong showing. While I supported him in 2016, not entirely sure how fair it is to the other candidates to be handicapped this early in the race (Clinton was enough of a juggernaut that the early states didn't matter as much)