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swchandler
Joined: 08 Nov 1993
Posts: 10588
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 Posted: Sun Sep 13, 2015 5:29 pm Post subject: |
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After watching the Trump video, a Bill Maher video followed with a different view of Trump and what's going on. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher was included in the panel. Very entertaining.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Az-VaoiJq3I |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17747
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2015 9:35 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | By Byron Williams, contributing columnist © 2015 Bay Area News Group
POSTED: 09/12/2015 04:00:00 PM PDT0 COMMENTS
Since the Donald Trump phenomenon began I have asked a simple question:
"Which has the best chance to reach fruition: Donald Trump becoming president or a sparrow reaching Mars with an anvil tied to its tail?"
The sparrow remains the heavy favorite.
The significance of Trump is not so much his status as the Republican front-runner with more than 400 days before Election Day, but how he managed to attain this position -- his overt display of xenophobia under the guise of public policy to address immigration.
The Republican Party would like to portray Trump as an aberration, the kooky uncle who picked the lock in the attic and crashed the Thanksgiving Day dinner, but he is saying what the party has been advocating since 2001, which has systematically cost them large swaths of the Hispanic vote.
In the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy, conservatives reprised the illegal immigration debate by commingling the people who risked their lives to come to America illegally for work with those who came here legally to send jets into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and into a field in Pennsylvania.
The canard of fear maliciously overshadows the much-needed debate on immigration, which can only occur through the dispassionate lens of reality that says it is impossible to deport 11 million people.
What about the economic piece of the immigration debate?
Economists Angel Aguiar and Terrie Walmsley conducted a 2013 study and their findings reveal where full deportation (the unlikely Trump et al position) reduces gross domestic product by 0.61 percent; legalization with borders increases GDP by 0.17 percent.
This data factors high- and low-skill workers. Specifically addressing low-skill workers, UC San Diego economist Gordon Hanson concludes that low-skilled immigrant workers can make the American economy more efficient. Hanson offers that the mobility factor of low-skilled immigrant workers is higher than native-born American workers.
"Low-skilled U.S.-born workers tend to be immobile across regions. When, say, the demand for low-skilled labor picks up in North Carolina, native-born workers in other regions are slow to move in ...," Hanson writes. "The consequence of the immobility of low-skilled labor is to gum up the labor market, slowing the pace of growth in booming regions and the pace of recovery in slumping regions."
The xenophobia position also holds that the current immigration dilemma suppresses wages, but a 2010 study by the Brookings Institution concluded that, "The most recent academic research suggests that, on average, immigrants raise the overall standard of living of American workers by boosting wages and lowering prices."
Even a judicious immigration policy would not equate to perfection. The unintended consequences would most likely include individual cases where workers were pushed out by immigrant competition. But isn't competition germane to a market economy?
Moreover, the xenophobes dominate this debate void of any historical context. Was it not a forced immigration policy that allowed America to go from fledging nation in 1787 to amassing more than 80 percent of the global market share for cotton by 1860?
According to Cornell University associate professor Edward Baptist, cotton's economic impact in the 19th century was akin to oil in the 20th century and the microchip in the 21st century.
But the economic efficacy of immigration is not the debate we're having.
Wanting restrictions on immigration does not make one a xenophobe, but that is not the conversation that is dominating the discussion. Rather, it is a mountain of reactionary hatred, fortified by fear.
Trump did not start this debate. But his albeit overtly bombastic Neanderthal manner is causing discomfort for his GOP rivals and many within his party.
Ironically, Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama have put forth similar immigration plans that have gone nowhere.
Maybe xenophobia is the flavor of the season. The only sticking point is the way Trump is serving the dish. |
I can see that he is familiar with Malibu Bard. |
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isobars
Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935
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| Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2015 10:54 am Post subject: |
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| I suspect Trump is leading because politicians are even more disgusting than he is. |
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boggsman1
Joined: 24 Jun 2002
Posts: 9120
Location: at a computer
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| Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2015 11:05 am Post subject: |
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| isobars wrote: | | I suspect Trump is leading because politicians are even more disgusting than he is. |
It's really bizarre...almost suggests that Republicans claim of being fiscally conservative is all BS.
“Donald Trump is the worst Republican candidate on economic issues,” Club for Growth President David McIntosh said in a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. “It’s astonishing that he’s even running as a Republican. Trump is the most liberal candidate on fiscal policy in the whole field, with the possible exception of Bernie Sanders." |
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nw30
Joined: 21 Dec 2008
Posts: 6485
Location: The eye of the universe, Cen. Cal. coast
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| Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2015 1:15 pm Post subject: |
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Trump's political leanings in his past, were almost the same as Reagan's political leanings before he entered politics, after dumping being a democrat, and switching to the GOP.
So democrats can evolve their politics (BHO, Clinton, et al) but republicans can't?
Since when? |
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isobars
Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935
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| Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2015 1:26 pm Post subject: |
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I've all but ceased to shive a git which Republican wins the presidency.
As long as it isn't the established socialist, the lying/conniving/self-implicated criminal Hillary Clinton, or the Obamaclone/gaffe-a-minute Biden, even Rand Paul would be an improvement. |
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jp5
Joined: 19 May 1998
Posts: 3394
Location: OnUr6
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| Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2015 2:39 pm Post subject: |
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| isobars wrote: | I've all but ceased to shive a git which Republican wins the presidency.
As long as it isn't the established socialist, the lying/conniving/self-implicated criminal Hillary Clinton, or the Obamaclone/gaffe-a-minute Biden, even Rand Paul would be an improvement. |
Well Iso, one of those republican types just might yank your government handout, along with medicare while that socialist guy just might give you a raise and keep paying your medical bills. |
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MalibuGuru
Joined: 11 Nov 1993
Posts: 9300
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| Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2015 3:00 pm Post subject: |
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| jpbassman wrote: | | isobars wrote: | I've all but ceased to shive a git which Republican wins the presidency.
As long as it isn't the established socialist, the lying/conniving/self-implicated criminal Hillary Clinton, or the Obamaclone/gaffe-a-minute Biden, even Rand Paul would be an improvement. |
Well Iso, one of those republican types just might yank your government handout, along with medicare while that socialist guy just might give you a raise and keep paying your medical bills. |
Until he runs out of other peoples money. |
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isobars
Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935
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| Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2015 3:32 pm Post subject: |
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| MalibuGuru wrote: | | Until he runs out of other peoples money. |
I didn't bother to note or vet the source, but the last cost estimate I saw of Bernie's promises was $18 trillion. Even today's college kids, unlike our president, can understand that won't work. |
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swchandler
Joined: 08 Nov 1993
Posts: 10588
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| Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2015 3:41 pm Post subject: |
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That confirms it JP, you are definitely on isobars' killfile list. In reality, he's read your post too, but he's just trying to keep up the illusion.
If the government shutdown his government income stream, believe me, he would scream bloody murder demanding that it be restored. |
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