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The Republican Utopia


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I don't know. A strongly populist economic idea that seems to have suddenly pushed into the mainstream of the left over the objections of their center (Obama, etc).

 

Maybe it's just that I don't particularly like this, but I mean, it's not like the TPP was anything extreme. I would've said the TPP was a pretty moderate global consensus sort of thing. Killing it just got to be really popular in the anger-driven 2016 election.

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I don't know. A strongly populist economic idea that seems to have suddenly pushed into the mainstream of the left over the objections of their center (Obama, etc).

 

Maybe it's just that I don't particularly like this, but I mean, it's not like the TPP was anything extreme. I would've said the TPP was a pretty moderate global consensus sort of thing. Killing it just got to be really popular in the anger-driven 2016 election.

People on both the left and the right opposed the TPP, so I suppose that makes opposition both populist and moderate. The left had labor issues with the TPP, while the right had issues with losing rights/sovereignty:

 

The provision, an increasingly common feature of trade agreements, is called “Investor-State Dispute Settlement,” or ISDS. The name may sound mild, but don’t be fooled. Agreeing to ISDS in this enormous new treaty would tilt the playing field in the United States further in favor of big multinational corporations. Worse, it would undermine U.S. sovereignty.
ISDS would allow foreign companies to challenge U.S. laws — and potentially to pick up huge payouts from taxpayers — without ever stepping foot in a U.S. court. Here’s how it would work. Imagine that the United States bans a toxic chemical that is often added to gasoline because of its health and environmental consequences. If a foreign company that makes the toxic chemical opposes the law, it would normally have to challenge it in a U.S. court. But with ISDS, the company could skip the U.S. courts and go before an international panel of arbitrators. If the company won, the ruling couldn’t be challenged in U.S. courts, and the arbitration panel could require American taxpayers to cough up millions — and even billions — of dollars in damages.

 

 

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I just watched the video of Clinton practicing to dodge Trump's hug.

 

Honestly I think her campaign team must be terrible or followed her terrible advice. Because the video is hilarious. They needed to do a way better job of showing her acting like a normal person.

 

I had similar thoughts when the photo of her on a hike was posted the day after the election.

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I really don't see it as a right or left issue.

 

Wish more issues were like that.

One thing I've talked about a few times on here is how violent crime hasn't increased. It's just that there is more national news so we hear about the worst things, and hear about them every time they happen, so it seems like there's more crime.

 

 

I just had this same thought about politics. We don't hear about the things both sides agree on because it's not newsworthy. We hear about the important issues that are contentious. Then the divide gets blown out of proportion and probably gives birth to new politicians who think of the other side as the enemy, which makes things worse. They aren't immune to it.

 

Which brings me to another thought I keep having. I'm focusing on Fox News because I think they're the worst... I think we (the public) think politicians are above being swayed by news channels but that doesn't make sense. They're normal people who happen to be good at public speaking, and are usually somewhat attractive. Some of them are smart. Some are morons. There's no reason to believe the same proportion of senators doesn't take Fox News as the gospel as does the general population.

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Moiraine, your post made me think of an issue in which the Trump admin effectively spat in the face of the general, bipartisan consensus in the country:

 

Jeff Sessions restoring mandatory minimums and the war on drugs.

 

 

I was reading about how even most deep-red states were getting away from imprisoning people for low-level drug crimes, opting for a focus on treatment instead.

 

Sessions comes in with his old-school, tough on crime mindset and ruins that. The war on drugs was wrong then and it's wrong now. It's a shame this has gotten almost zero coverage since we have a blowhard moron leading us who sucks all the oxygen out of the room.

 

His leading our legal system is going to be a stain on our history.

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Ya. It's f'ing ridiculous. Pursue the people killing each other over drugs. Not the users. People abuse drugs (and alcohol) usually because they have issues they want to numb. They should be dealt with by treating the underlying issues. Not with jail.

 

 

Maybe this isn't the case with Sessions but it seems almost cartoonish how the Trump admin is just doing the opposite of Obama, like it's a personal grudge. Obama freed as many people from stupid-long drug sentences as he could.

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I would agree that killing the TPP has been bipartisan. It just seems that from each party they're coming from the non-center wings.

Something supported by both the left and the right is what I'd define as a "center" position.

 

 

You could say the same thing about the TPP itself: support from both the left and right.

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