If that's the platform that a President ran on and won, then that's just following through. Besides, congress can still bypass the veto, it will just make it more difficult for them. Also, no one in America is "depending" on the President. The President, like most democratic "leaders", is a figure head (spokesperson). The title is more honorary then anything else. Congress holds all the real power.



No, not everyone, just a majority. But what Donald Trump has proven is that it's really not that difficult to galvanize voters around simple ideas, despite the severe lack in substance. And that is for the office of President where the candidate is well known. Most voters have no clue who most of the congressional representatives are or anything about them. Only rather they have an R or a D next to their name on the ballot.



The problem is that politicians are like teenagers. They take a simple problem and make it 10 times more complicated than it really is. The real "complexity" to most issues is not the issue itself, but rather the political posturing for re-election. Most every problem in the world has a simple, elegant, solution. In fact, all of the best solutions in life are the simple ones. If your solution is complicated, then you need to go back to the drawing board.

The roadblock to getting any of the real problems in this country fixed starts and ends with congress. Do you really think congress is going to fix itself? How else do we fix congress then?

If you want anything fixed at this point, you need a revolution. The choice is either a political revolution using my suggestion above (yes, it would be a movement and probably take many election cycles to catch on) or a hostile revolution. One of those suggestions is a lot messier than the other and will likely happen in the near future if things don't change. I hear people in restaurants and other public places openly talk about revolting. I can't tell you how many times it has come up in lunch meetings that I've had with potential clients whom I just met (the client brought it up, not me). The idea is quickly reaching a point of critical mass. Do you understand how a self fulfilling prophecy works? When enough people believe something is going to happen, they start making subconscious decisions that slowly moves them one step closer in that direction.

Where have you been for the last eight years?



The President is an essential part of the American political process. Stop being obtuse. The CIC has an incredible amount of responsibility, and congress cumulatively has about as much power as the President. It's almost like it was designed to work this way.



Where have you been for the last eight years?



Donald Trump is not even remotely the first person to mobilize idiots by talking about things they're afraid of.



Okay, so the voters are the problem? That's probably true.



****. My bad. It's the politicians who are the problem. I'm trying to keep up. Also, please refrain from suggesting that processes are simple because the tangible result is simple.



I can't imagine why people in public service would want to continue serving the public.



No it doesn't.



No they aren't.



Is this the process by which you drafted this stance on geopolitics?



Lawmakers are important, yes.



Nope.



Well, we could use your revolutionary idea of voting for someone else. Once that catches on, it'll be all good in the hood.



If your furnace breaks you should just burn down your house and build a new one.



We'll have to wait until November to see if people vote. Keep me posted on this, because I think voting for someone you think is better is a really unique and amazing idea. Groundbreaking.



Ask Ammon and Cliven Bundy how that works out.



Let me know how that works out.



I hear people in restaurants and other public places openly talk about baseball.



That's a sweet anecdote. Is there any way you could extrapolate that to suggest that it represents a vast swath of the American population?



Thanks!



I do.



My god, I certainly hope that this decision that we've made subconsciously isn't something that would take a lot of planning and coordination.

The great news, though, is that if you're unable to convince the majority of the population to vote a certain way, it'll probably be way easier to convince them to pick up arms and violently overthrow the government.

We've started doing what you've suggested (workfare) here in the UK for people unemployed for a certain amount of time. Almost immediately the poorest paid workers in places like supermarkets where they were already on zero hours contracts found their weekly hours plummeting as free labour replaced them. So they ended up also on benefits and no doubt some of them even ended up on workfare. As Jon`C said, it just serves to subsidise large businesses.

We've also worked on that other area where such "shirkers" could be hiding - disability benefits. We've farmed out disability benefits assessments to a largely unaccountable private company who have targets to meet in terms of kicking people off that register. We also shut down Remploy's factories (a government subsidised charity that ran disabled-only businesses that allowed a lot of the mentally challenged to hold a job and contribute). So now we have people barely able or unable to actually keep a job and we're putting them into a system that will force them to work or be cut off entirely. I'm not really sure it's worth this much misery and these many early deaths just to scrape out a few benefits fraudsters.

I guess I'm questioning as to why you're fixated on catching the minority of dole claimants who are fraudsters when the methods you suggest are so drastic and hurt everyone going through the indignity of chronic unemployment? Fraud is already against the law and surely it's better to have targeted investigations than to cause the inevitable punishment of innocent people.

I thinking more CCC, less subsiding private employers. Sure, it would probably increase unemployment at first, but so does all secondary education. Big whoop.



You can still have capital gains taxes on individuals. The great recession was a result of massive corruption in how banks were handling wealth. Not the amount of taxes corporations had.

"This one problem isn't the only problem, so it doesn't need addressed."

"This one thing is best dealt with another way, because doing so solves a great many problems."

Capital equity literally is wealth.

Unrealized capital gains aren't taxed. Any money you've invested in a corporation is only taxed when you pull it out, whether because of a dividend or a stock sale. As long as a company holds your money for you, it is tax free.

Which is why most big companies right now are sitting on piles of cash instead of reinvesting or paying a dividend. That money is a tax free savings account for the ultra rich.

Suppose I'm a young professional in California. I'm a single adult, with no dependents, making a relatively immodest $100,000 annual salary. Pretty good, right? I should pay around $18,000 federal income tax, $8000 FICA, $6500 in state taxes - the federal government can call it whatever it wants, but this is all an income tax. Your effective income tax rate is about 33%. (You'd also pay some punishingly regressive sales taxes on another third of your after-tax income, but I'll put that aside for this discussion.)

Now suppose I'm a young billionaire in California. I'm a single adult, with no dependents. My lifestyle costs $1 million dollars a year, which I'm paid from a $1 billion trust invested in a pretty bad (2% pa) hedge fund. My annual unrealized capital earnings are $20,000,000 - that is, my actual income is $20 million a year. Financing my lifestyle requires me to sell $1 million in stock that I held for at least a year, which is taxed at the highest rate of 20%. Note that only the portion of the sale which is capital gains is taxed. Normally a hedge fund will do accounting magic to make sure you sell low-performing stocks to fund your lifestyle, but for the sake of argument I will assume the full amount is taxable. That means I pay $200,000 tax on real earnings of $20,000,000 - a mere 1 percent, which, I mean, is somewhat appropriate.


Even if a rich person does nothing to reduce their tax bill, they are still far and away ahead of normal people. The game is very much rigged, and the way the rich play it is to keep all of their money sloshing around in illiquid but otherwise safe stores of wealth. Blue chip stocks have been driven up to all holy hell because they're a safe store of wealth. Real estate markets have been destroyed throughout most english-speaking countries, because our real estate is a safe store of wealth for foreign investors. This whole financial derivative thing from 2007, the bay area tech boom now, massive cash holdings and stock buybacks, they're all central finance trying to provide the only asset of value in 2016, a safe place for a criminally rich person to park their impossibly large amounts of money.

Whining about your tone? No, it's just not a very effective use of my time. I get far more accomplished picking my nose and drinking cheap whiskey than trying to persuade anyone here about anything. Now, I'm not mad or anything, but with you in particular I'm really not going to go out of my way to explain or discuss much. I'm sure it was just another phase or something you were going through but your behavior here when I returned was such that I'm still rarely able to make it through many of your posts. I guess that's my problem but I don't really consider it a problem.




300 million citizens whose lives depend on the President? Federalism, man. Federalism. I suppose you also believe 300 million citizens lives should depend on how Anthony Kennedy feels on any given day.

Well, at least you only spent the majority of that post whining about my tone.

The great news is that you guys can all stop complaining about Obama because he's not really in charge of anything anyway.

You really should start drinking again.

Okay?

I'm not sure what's worse about this post, the fact that you're an overweight part-time janitor cracking jokes about someones positive lifestyle changes, or the fact that you're still trying to talk young men into self harm even though the army isn't paying you to do it anymore.

Oh, yep, here's an approximation of the Supreme Court's process that could only have come from Wookie(e).

Like, Christ, imagine a world where a conservative could believe Anthony Kennedy determines all the important Supreme Court decisions and where that conservative is also mad about such a thing happening.

"My best-case scenario is bad!" he laments.

"Hey, Kennedy. How are you gonna interpret the constitution today?"

"However I feel like. God!"

This thread does not deliver.

Neither do any of Wookie's promises to comment on things later.

Sorry, the dude that used to check posts every fifteen minutes is long gone. You'll be lucky if I check once every fifteen days. And I am overweight but I've never been a part- or full-time janitor. Seems like it would be a cool job, though.

But the real question is: How much do you drink?

Dunno, but if I were an Army recruiter during the Bush years, I'm sure I'd have to drink an awful lot to forget the desperate young people I helped kill.

I have never thought about that but I think odds are pretty low that would be the case. I conducted myself in a manner different than recruiters like the one Antony dealt with. James P. Barker did join through our office however I was not his recruiter and unfortunately he wasn't killed. We were in the same brigade in '05-06 though.

Sounds like you guys were running a pretty tight operation.

But really, though. How much do you drink?

I'm only asking because given your self appointed position on the customs and courtesies of an adult discussion (re: your criticism of me refusing to lend credence to your views and instead responding with overt mockery of your dumb ass), you'd likely be the foremost authority on explaining why any person's history of consuming alcoholic beverages has any bearing on the discussion at hand.

Otherwise we're left with naught but the assumption that it was a personal attack put forth out of frustration that I treat you like a child.

Well for some reason I was thinking that you were more coherent and easier to get along with when you were drinking but now that I've thought more on the issue I realize the differences are really negligible and regret that you think I might have implied some greater degree of caring about your opinion than is accurate.

Now, Wookie. I mean it:

How much do you drink?

More important question:

Wookie06, did you play through TODOA?

TODOA or not TODOA? That is the question.

I just realized there's a kind of wonderful irony in the idea that within a thread where Wookie06 criticizes Donald Trump, he also responds to criticism in the exact manner that Trump does.

Point out that his ideas are stupid and/or not very plausible - be met with personal attacks, deflections, and refusal to answer any questions on the matter.

Note that he doesn't seem to have even a cursory understanding of the system of checks and balances in the US Government? You should fall off the wagon, you loser.

Suggest anything negative about him as a human being? Bull****. He's none of those things, even though he's personally admitted to being those things in the past, you loser.

Ask him to explain how his ideas would be implemented? They just would, you idiot. He already explained how to fix it, and now you want him to explain how he'd pull it off? You're such a loser.

Tell him that you don't take him seriously because the aforementioned points make him impossible to take seriously? Well, he used to take you seriously, or he thought he did. Now that he thinks about it, he should have never taken you seriously, because you're just a dumb dummy idiot loser and you always have been, you total loser idiot who is an idiot loser.

Antony, please quit pining for my attention. Fine. I had 5 or maybe just 4 glasses of sangria last night. And the convention of the states movement is a serious thing meant to restore the system of checks and balances that you think it will destroy. Agree to disagree and move on.

I have not gotten back to TODOA but the computer it is installed in seems to be much more stable now. I think the external drives I had hooked up to it were the main source of my problem. I'm working on my truck now. I hope to get back to gaming sometime soon.

It's an illegitimate movement bankrolled by hedge funds to erode the social and legal obligations of the ultra rich, and you are a sucker for having faith in them.

Agree to disagree and move on, sucker.

The Convention of States (COS) Project was founded by Citizens for Self-Governance for the purpose of stopping the runaway power of the federal government.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Citizens_for_Self-Governance

A dark money group that has deep ties to Koch Industries and takes $1.6 million from Vanguard annually?

Nothing to be concerned about here

Don't be silly, Wookie. I only thing it's detrimental to our system of checks and balances because it purports to completely eliminate the effective power of the precipice thereof.

I cannot emphasize this enough: congressional authority to overturn Supreme Court decisions renders the court completely pointless. Why is this hard for you to understand?

You see, Congress makes laws, and sometimes people think those laws are unconstitutional, so we have courts in which these matters can be settled. If need be, the matter arrives at the bench of the nation's highest court, and they have what is essentially the final word in the matter. A decision can still be overturned, but it requires a lengthy change in the political current resulting in the appointment of Justices and further legal rulings on matters.

So what you're suggesting is that if Congress passes a bill and it's signed into law by the president, then is overturned by the Supreme Court, that a majority of Congress can vote to overrule that decision? They already passed the goddamn bill. So we give them the capacity to overturn it for what? This is the equivalent of the cliche signs that say:

Rule 1: I am always right.
Rule 2: See rule 1.

It's not just that it's a bad idea, it's that it's so incredibly devoid of any kind of sensible logic that it demands awe inspiring levels of disbelief that you think this is a good idea. What's more is that you're unhappy with the way elected officials implement policies, so you support elected officials setting policy on what kind of policy elected officials get to implement.

It's not that I disagree with you. That's not enough. It's that the circular logic that all of your suggestions operate on isn't even an orobouros. It's a snake that has already eaten itself and **** itself out. There isn't even a beginning or an end. It's just a pile of **** where something used to be.

It absolutely baffles me as to how you can even possibly be so incredibly dumb. I'm going to reference what I said earlier: I mock and make fun of you because it is legitimately the only response you deserve. Anything beyond that requires a modicum of respect for the idiotic garbage you're suggesting, and no self-respecting person should be offering that to you.

The only thing this stupid bull**** warrants is a giant cannon aimed at the sun, and a switch so you can fire yourself out of the former and into the latter.

The most significant problem with Trump's popularity is that it has caused people like you to think that you're really not so bad in comparison, and that's really the thing: While Donald Trump doesn't appear to pack the intellectual gear required to properly operate a doorknob, people lose sight of the fact that people like Ted Cruz are significantly worse, because they're touting policies that could actually be feasibly implemented, which would be considerably more harmful than the courts telling an orange ******** with a bad haircut that he isn't allowed to violate the Geneva Convention or do away with binding legal agreements authored by more than a dozen of our allies.

Christ, you are the worst, and if you aren't an alcoholic, you should just go ahead and become one, because you're already giving us just about as much as we could expect from any other white nationalist wet-brain hick drunkard.

Have we all come to terms with future President Trump?

I disagree with you but that's fine. I skimmed your post in a few seconds. About the length of time Jon`C could have read it twice and typed a response twice as long I'm sure. I don't see any reason to try to inform you on where I think you, singular and plural, are wrong. I'm at least a little heartened by the fact that if Trump or Clinton wins, the push towards a convention of the states will likely increase even faster than if Cruz wins and he supports it. Really interested to see who Clinton picks for VP. I'm thinking Trump will offer it to her. Maybe we can have Clinton/Trump vs. Trump/Clinton. Win/win for them. Lose/lose for us.

If Cruz can deny him 1237 then no. If Trump gets to 1237 then it's time to come to terms with future President Clinton.