What the Trump Win Means For Tech and Science (arstechnica.com) 382
Republican nominee Donald Trump has won the US Presidential election to become the country's 45th president. Now that he is going to run the government, it's a good time to look back on the kind of policies and changes he is likely to bring in the United States. From an article on ArsTechnica:Trump's presidency could bring big changes to regulation of Internet service providers -- but most of them are difficult to predict because Trump rarely discussed telecom policy during his campaign. The Federal Communications Commission's net neutrality rules could be overturned or weakened, however, if Trump still feels the same way he did in 2014. At the time, he tweeted, "Obama's attack on the internet is another top down power grab. Net neutrality is the Fairness Doctrine. Will target conservative media. [...] With Trump's win, it's still not clear what a Trump administration would do on the issues of cybersecurity and encryption. As Ars reported last month, Trump and his campaign team have been vague on many such details. During the presidential debates, he brushed off the intelligence community's consensus that the attacks against the Democratic National Committee were perpetrated or silently condoned by the Russian government. But Trump did call for a boycott of Apple -- a boycott of which he didn't even abide by -- during Cupertino's fight with federal prosecutors about whether Apple should be forced to help the authorities unlock a killer's encrypted iPhone. [...] Trump's presidency, by some accounts, is likely to be a disaster for science. Most analyses of his proposed budgets indicate they will cause deficits to explode, and a relatively compliant Congress could mean at least some of these cuts will get enacted. That will force the government to figure out how to cut, or at least limit, spending. Will science funding be preserved during that process? Trump's given no indication that it would. Instead, many of his answers about specific areas of science focus on the hard choices that need to be made in light of budget constraints. With the exception of NASA, Trump hasn't identified any areas of science that he feels are worth supporting. More generally, Trump has indicated little respect for the findings of science.The Silicon Valley top heads were largely upset with the outcome of the Presidential Election, to say the least.
Trump says science is a fake (Score:5, Insightful)
his position on climate change: doesn't exist, and we need to fire up america's coal mines again, regardless of the pollution.
Re:Trump says science is a fake (Score:5, Insightful)
His positions on almost everything don't exist. On virtually every topic his position has been:
"Our current policy is such a mess. Total disaster. We're going to completely repeal it and replace it with 'Something Great(TM)'. It's going to be so great, let me tell you..."
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His positions on almost everything don't exist. On virtually every topic his position has been:
"Our current policy is such a mess. Total disaster. We're going to completely repeal it and replace it with 'Something Great(TM)'. It's going to be so great, let me tell you..."
No, don't you see that *is* his position. He's going to make it great again.
Re:Trump says science is a fake (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly, I'm not scared of his policies because we have no clue what they are. I'm scared that he doesn't seem to surround himself with highly competent people. He's three main advisors Guliani, Newt and Christie are proven losers. An inexperienced president with bad advisors gives you Bush, and inexperience president with good advisors gives you Obama. I think their final approval ratings reflect this.
Re:Trump says science is a fake (Score:4, Informative)
Bill Maher had an excellent bit [youtube.com] going over "his people".
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His positions on almost everything don't exist
This. 110% this. That (besides the misogyny and bigotry) is my biggest problem with Trump. Outside of a few social issues, nobody has any clue what his policy on anything will be.
Not (quite) dead yet (Score:4, Interesting)
The electoral college has yet to vote.
This is exactly the kind of thing the institution was created to protect us from -- ill-considered actions by the voters; one of the critical flaws of democratic action by the masses. The wolves deciding what's for dinner.
The system allows for the EC to act on this by not voting him into the presidency. There are numerous strong reasons to do so.
There are 29 states (plus the District of Columbia) that require lockstep following of the voting public issue; they issue a small variety of rarely enforced punishments for electors that do not do so, including fines and misdemeanors. EC members have individually done this 157 times to date, so there's plenty of precedent on a per-elector basis.
Also... if they don't do this... then I submit that the EC has proved that the institution has no actual worth.
Another thing: this circumstance was brought about by a dissatisfied public. Imagine the levels of dissatisfaction as automation adds its impetus to the job losses we've already seen due to recent labor policies. Now consider the chaos Trump could add to the mix if he actually follows through on some of the things he said on the campaign trail.
Some of those include an increased willingness to use nuclear weapons; disruption of current trade patterns; economic problems (we're already seeing some of that, check the news on world financial market reaction this morning); Walking back major aspects of social progress - Roe v. Wade, LBGT rights, etc.; government using religion to select people for abusive treatment... It's quite a list. I find it a formidable counter-indication in terms of expecting the next four years to go well, and the follow-on effects may last for considerably longer than that.
Remember how long it took under the Obama administration to recover from Bush's bumbling economic moves? Then there's the whole question of who ends up in whatever supreme court seats go vacant. That alone could change the nation's path in many negative ways, as we have previously seen several times.
Think I'll go for a walk.
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The electoral college has yet to vote.
I read an article yesterday that a survivalist type expected Trump to win in a landslide (he didn't) and the electoral college to vote for Hillary (still possible).
Re:Roe v. Wade and social progress (Score:5, Insightful)
Can we drop the hyperbole here? For all the bluster in the abortion debate, it really stems down to a very basic worldview difference. Do you 1) believe that a person's humanity - their thoughts, their feelings, opinions, memories, hopes, dreams, everything that makes them them - is embodied by a soul granted at the moment of conception; or do you 2) believe that all of the above stems from thoughts within one's brain (regardless of whether you also believe in a soul or not)?
If you take view #1, then of course you're going to consider abortion murder, at any stage. If you take view #2, then of course you're not going to consider early-term abortion murder, because the fertilized egg doesn't even have a single nerve cell, let alone a brain. It takes six weeks just to organize a brain enough to manage to beat a heart, let alone think. So of course they're not going to see it as murder. Because they don't share your worldview.
Do you understand that?
Now things get more complicated the further along you get into pregnancies... in some ways. But they also in other ways get simpler.
As you get into a later term pregnancy, you start getting to the point where you have a cerebrum that's managing thought to some degree - and hence there start to be more moral issues which arise in a person with the latter worldview. Now, you're probably wanting to portray it as pro-life people saying "there's no moral issue right up birth, but 100% moral issues after birth". But that's your misunderstanding of how abortion works that's the problem.
"Late term" abortions are a vague term. It can be defined as beginning as early as the start of the second trimester, or as late as beginning near the end of the second trimester. Most pro-life people focus, when describing abortion, on D&E (Dilation and Extraction). Except that this is rarely the preferably route, and more to the point can't be conducted late in a pregnancy, the maximum cutoff usually being somewhere around the end of the second trimester. The preferable route, whenever the pregnancy is advanced enough to support it, is induced labour. So there's no such thing as a "8 or 9 month abortion" - that's known as a birth. And by both law, and by medical standards that existed independently of law, if a fetus is delivered alive and viable, all reasonable attempts are to be made to keep it alive, the same as for any other person regardless of their age. You can probably point to some counterexamples, like Dr. Kermit Gosnell. But then I'd have to point out that Gosnell was sentenced to life in prison for murder for killing viable fetuses delivered during abortions. I'll reiterate, for stress: abortions conducted late enough to deliver potentially viable pregnancies are done through birth, through induced labor, and a lack of attempt to save a viable fetus is murder.
The other issue at hand is that you should have an understanding of how common late-term abortions are, and why they're conducted. Just over 1% of abortions are "late term" (note the ambiguity above on how to define it). The later you're talking about, the rarer they get, by significant margins. Contrary to the pro-life myth that they're elective, or the pro-choice myth that they're for maternal health, the vast majority are conducted due to the inviability of the fetus. Randomly jumbling together genes is an inherently fault-prone process. Nearly half of all fertilized eggs miscarry before the mother even knows she was pregnant. Many pregnancies miscarry later. But some pregnancies don't miscarry, despite the fetus not being viable. Perhaps its brain never developed, or its lungs are deformed and ineffective. So put yourself in that mother's position. You're going around every day, people are smiling, asking you when you're due, etc, and you have to explain to each of them that the child that you've been looking so forward to meeting will
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Trump might not be a criminal technically because he has never been convicted in criminal court, but he breaks the law all the damned time.
Re: Trump says science is a fake (Score:4, Insightful)
I would add that he got elected because he knows how to run a confidence scam.
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What does the Trump win mean for tech? Not a clue.
And I seriously doubt anyone else has a clue either. But we should have a lot of fun poking holes in the Other Guy (tm) who thinks his WAG (wild-ass guess) is better than our WAG....
To be slightly more serious, ignore the Trump win, look at the House and Senate, and you might have less WA in your WAG....
If he holds to his election promises, the tech industry should see a reduction in work visas, a blockade of any new outsourcing initiatives, and new tariffs (or trade deals) to make foreign made products (practically everything tech related) less attractive (i.e. our toys will get more expensive).
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his position on climate change: doesn't exist, and we need to fire up america's coal mines again, regardless of the pollution.
People demagogue him and Republicans on his stance on coal, but it's not just as a fuel that coal is useful. Coal is very much needed in steel and aluminum manufacturing, and those things are needed if one thinks our manufacturing is important, as Trump clearly does.
There is also the other human aspect of it that putting people en masse out of work to satisfy the environmental fetishes of Liberal activists may be a price that the Dems were willing to pay, and one can argue that it cost them the election,
Clueless (Score:5, Insightful)
What does the Trump win mean for tech? Not a clue.
And I seriously doubt anyone else has a clue either. But we should have a lot of fun poking holes in the Other Guy (tm) who thinks his WAG (wild-ass guess) is better than our WAG....
To be slightly more serious, ignore the Trump win, look at the House and Senate, and you might have less WA in your WAG....
Can only hope. He has hired smart people (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah this campaign has been more bumper stickers and slogans than specific policy proposals, so we really don't know yet.
Having studied Trump as a businessman, I strongly suspect he doesn't know which policies he'll propose - that will depend on what he hears from the experts he hires. In his long business career, he hired really smart people and trusted their judgement, rather than micro-managing, thinking he knew everything betterv than everyone else. His role was threefold a) the public face, drumming up publicity, b) negotiating major deals and c) overall leadership. He largely left the operational details to the very competent people he hired.
Let's HOPE he does the same as President, signing off on foreign policy developed by foreign policy experts, economic policy developed by experts in economics, etc.
Also one in particular - another Republican leader, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan is a budget nerd, who actually wrote several federal budgets and knows the federal budget perhaps better than anyone else. There's been tension between Trump and Paul Ryan during the campaign. Hopefully that tension is healed and Trump respects Ryan's significant expertise.
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Having studied Trump as a businessman, I strongly suspect he doesn't know which policies he'll propose
You found the correct answer, I'm sure that as of right now, Trump doesn't *have* a policy towards any of this, he'll find experts on the area and go with their advice, filtered through his lens of "what the people want" to some extent.
All things considered, is that *really* such a bad plan? Is it any worse than what we have now, which is a government that mostly listens to big corporations?
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All things considered, is that *really* such a bad plan? Is it any worse than what we have now, which is a government that mostly listens to big corporations?
Unfortunately he's going to open his mouth from time to time, and his advisors may not remain advisors any longer if they don't back him up on what he says. One is reminded of the beginning of Game of Thrones...
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All things considered, is that *really* such a bad plan? Is it any worse than what we have now, which is a government that mostly listens to big corporations?
It all depends on who the "experts" are. We can't gain much insight into what Trump's political style will be like from his business career. He's now dealing with the political aspects of everything for the first time. From what limited information we can gather from his fledgling political career, all we can tell is that:
1. He likes to put family into positions of power.
2. He seems to prefer far-right wingnuts for the most political positions
3. He'll hire any nasty villain with a sordid past if they have a
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Re:Can only hope. He has hired smart people (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope you're right. I really do, but Candidate Trump often would say that he knew better than the experts and that only he could solve the problems. This might have been campaign bluster meant to fire people up, but it could also have been an indication that he'll do what he thinks is the best thing to do despite what the experts think.
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Candidate Trump often would say that he knew better than the experts and that only he could solve the problems.
I looked at those comments in the context of "In the current environment" or "Among the people who survived the purges", time will tell
Re:Can only hope. He has hired smart people (Score:5, Informative)
I think by "experts" in that case he meant "Clinton / Democrat / Establishment".
No, he didn't. Some examples:
I know more about ISIS than the generals do, believe me.
The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.
I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things...my primary consultant is myself.
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So. . .appoint Ryan as OMB ?? He's likely to be more useful there than in the House. . .
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Having studied Trump as a businessman, I strongly suspect he doesn't know which policies he'll propose - that will depend on what he hears from the experts he hires. In his long business career, he hired really smart people and trusted their judgement, rather than micro-managing, thinking he knew everything betterv than everyone else. His role was threefold a) the public face, drumming up publicity, b) negotiating major deals and c) overall leadership. He largely left the operational details to the very competent people he hired.
That works well in Business, but it's sure going to be a paradigm shift in Government
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Having studied Trump as a businessman, I strongly suspect he doesn't know which policies he'll propose - that will depend on what he hears from the experts he hires. In his long business career, he hired really smart people and trusted their judgement, rather than micro-managing, thinking he knew everything betterv than everyone else. His role was threefold a) the public face, drumming up publicity, b) negotiating major deals and c) overall leadership. He largely left the operational details to the very competent people he hired.
That works well in Business, but it's sure going to be a paradigm shift in Government
Actually, that was Ronald Reagan's governing method. He had little interest in the details of government, but was the public face, negotiating major deals, and overall leadership.
Regardless of whether you agree with Reagan's goals for the government, it seems to have been successful in that Reagan, to a large extent, accomplished what he did.
(Partly. Where this technique failed was in budget control: Reagan financed his presidency by a huge rise in deficit spending, despite promising in the campaign that he
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Trump's management style is an interesting cross b/w micro-management and delegation. He supposedly signs every check in his organization (according to Lee Iacocca years ago) and is very familiar w/ the operations of his organization at all levels. We've all heard the stories of how he had his kids operate Caterpillars, so there will likely be some level of involvement by him in every department, depending on where he thinks critical pain points are. Be it ICE, law enforcement, the military and so on.
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I think this is the worst part - not knowing what he'll do. He's been in favor of so many conflicting policies during his candidacy - and we all know that most campaign promises evaporate come election day - that I really have no clue what he'll do. Will he become a centrist President and all of that "build a wall/Mexicans are rapists" stuff was campaign bluster? Or will he push what his alt-right base want
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His wife has promised to make turning cyberspace into a safe place for children her goal. She complained about abuse on social media as an example. So except her to push strongly for censorship and restrictions of speech, presumably supported by her husband since she said it at his rally.
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San Francisco, (Score:5, Funny)
I'm afraid . . . has disappeared completely up its own asshole.
Science, Tech? (Score:5, Insightful)
Regarding the tech industry, let's look at Apple Inc. I think that article misses a really big issue: Tech Manufacturing.
Trump stated that he wanted Apple to make it's products here in the USA. That might be possible with a system of tariffs. But the bigger issue is that type of protectionism would push companies like Apple out of world markets due to not being able to be price competitive.
Under those kinda of pressures I think tech companies might just leave the US.
Back when I worked for Apple we had manufacturing in Ireland. The decision to do so was based (apparently) on the cost and taxes associated with "doing business". The argument that this hurt American workers might be valid- though it did not hurt American business and certainly bolstered Apple's bank account.
For the tech industry it depends on where you want to place the pressure to "bring American jobs back"... If you institute tariffs, you can price the company out of the world market or drive them out of the country. If you are permissive about allowing companies to operate outside the USA for manufacturing you lose worker bee jobs.
Since the above is true, without a mitigating factor to be found, the answer is not trying to return tech jobs to the USA. Given the lower costs abroad it doesn't seem possible.
However, retooling the workforce through education, development of new technology, and American innovation would work- assuming that the situation with international intellectual property law does not worsen. It also depends on a lack of anti-intellectualism. Which is at an all time high at the moment.
So most of the issues up in the air with this new situation have to do with issues which are only mitigated by policies this president-elect does not support.
Old-school big-industry manufacturing is gone. It's not coming back. The only way to rekindle those kinds of jobs is through the development of new products.
Which means science. And we are not going to see much of that.
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But the bigger issue is that type of protectionism would push companies like Apple out of world markets due to not being able to be price competitive.
It's not a danger for Apple specifically, their profit margins are high enough that they could eat the difference without changing their pricing at all. It could be a danger for most everyone else though, no one else in the industry has profits like Apple's.
Domestic manufacturing (Score:5, Insightful)
Trump stated that he wanted Apple to make it's products here in the USA. That might be possible with a system of tariffs.
No it will not. Tariffs will not cause that to happen. The USA almost utterly lacks the infrastructure to build products like what Apple makes domestically. The supply chains are almost all in China and various parts of eastern Asia. We lost those a long time ago and they aren't coming back soon. And I'm not even getting into the labor cost differential which absolutely matters. It would cost a fortune to manufacture an iPhone domestically at this point. Even Apple doesn't make enough profit to make that idea feasible.
Under those kinda of pressures I think tech companies might just leave the US.
There is no might. They would be forced to leave.
Old-school big-industry manufacturing is gone. It's not coming back. The only way to rekindle those kinds of jobs is through the development of new products.
Complete nonsense. The USA has a manufacturing sector worth over $3 TRILLION annually. By itself it would be one of the ten largest economies in the world. I've worked in manufacturing for several decades in the US and news of it's demise is greatly exaggerated. The sector has become a shrinking portion of the overall jobs market but there is plenty of manufacturing going on and very profitable manufacturing at that. It's just capital intensive [wikipedia.org] manufacturing rather than labor intensive [wikipedia.org]. If you want to bring back labor intensive manufacturing jobs you had better be prepared to pay low wages competitive with those in China and elsewhere.
Basic fallacy of economics (Score:4, Insightful)
Regarding the tech industry, let's look at Apple Inc. I think that article misses a really big issue: Tech Manufacturing.
Trump stated that he wanted Apple to make it's products here in the USA. That might be possible with a system of tariffs. But the bigger issue is that type of protectionism would push companies like Apple out of world markets due to not being able to be price competitive.
And here is the basic fallacy of economics.
Our national economic health is measured by the total health of our companies. The welfare of the citizens is an afterthought in these calculations, a fake "unemployment rate" tells us how people are doing.
This is what fueled the recent election.
I don't particularly care what happens to Apple. The government shouldn't either. The government should look after its people.
If the people benefit while Apple has to struggle in world markets, would that be a bad thing?
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Why does it have to be either-or? Apple can manufacture part of their products in the US, and other parts in other countries, be it China, Thailand, Philippines, et al. That would avoid the issue of iPhones being too expensive abroad (which they incidentally already are, despite being manufactured in China).
Actually, if Trump can bring back a good bit of manufacturing of all things - phones, computers, tablets, networking gear, et al back to the US, that would also boost back employment in the Tech sect
Power to the corporations! (Score:5, Insightful)
It might also be possible with less regulation, lower labor costs, and lower corporate taxes
Translation: More corporate abuse and pollution, trampling worker rights, and a bigger national debt.
The costs abroad are only lower because we have artificially inflated US costs.
Only if you don't care about things like living wages, clean air, clean water, preventing corporate malfeasance, etc.
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Only if you don't care about things like living wages, clean air, clean water, preventing corporate malfeasance, etc.
That does sound like Trump. The parent may have a point, if this is going to happen then that's likely how it will go. Though I wouldn't rule out tariffs in addition to that, he ran his campaign on protectionism and "regulation" is a fungible term - people who are opposed to regulation generally don't consider things which they agree with to be regulation.
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Just so you know, "lower labor costs" means your paycheck gets smaller, too.
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It might also be possible with less regulation, lower labor costs, and lower corporate taxes. That's what Trump has been saying he is going to try to do.
The costs abroad are only lower because we have artificially inflated US costs.
Actual science isn't about product development.
One easy way for Trump to reduce regulations, which involves no legislative action - simply undo the tons of executive orders that President Obama had signed over the last one year. They all have an onerous burden on the economy, w/o having a direct price tag on them. That would ease things a whole lot, before one even starts to go over the various regulatory agencies and see what exactly impairs the US economy, and where
Tech and science (Score:2)
Should learn to be less openly disrespectful of regular Americans.
Re:Tech and science (Score:5, Insightful)
Should learn to be less openly disrespectful of regular Americans.
Or what? They'll elect Donald Trump?
Re:Tech and science (Score:5, Insightful)
Correct. Tech and science are not the same as policy and values. For example...
The scientific fact that carbon emissions raise global temperatures does not mean that the only possible policy is for government to restrict carbon emissions.
The scientific fact that there are racial and gender disparities does not mean that the only possible policy is for government to intervene in freedom of association.
Science and tech (i.e., people in those areas) are jumping from observations and scientific results to policy based on their own preferences and interests. Usually, it goes something like "we discovered this problem, and now give us a lot of power to try and fix it". Well, as you are discovering, voters are rejecting that.
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Yes. Too bad you had to learn this way.
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Science respects facts.
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Holy crap I just realized. It's part of the master plan. Let the ocean levels rise and that will pretty much take care of all the blue states that are left. Perfect "adaptation" strategy.
Many new tech posts (Score:5, Funny)
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...and the only supply issues appear to be shipping costs, as they appear to be shitting bricks up in Silicon Valley.
Rufo told me that every human race tries every political form and that democracy is used in many primitive societies ... but he didn’t know of any civilized planet using it, as Vox Populi, Vox Dei translates as: “My God! How did we get in this mess!”
-- Robert Heinlein, Glory Road
Seriously... (Score:2, Insightful)
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Fuck you.
Get over it (Score:2, Insightful)
Look, I understand you all need to vent and the previous article was full of wailing and gnashing of teeth, but it's time to put on your big-boy pants and start acting like adults.
The election isn't about "getting your way", it's about "crowdsourcing a decision". The crowd chose not to go with Clinton, and there were a lot of votes in support of that decision. Deal with it, the rules were well defined from the beginning and you had plenty of time to prepare and build your case.
We've complained about corrupt
Broke the glass ceiling (Score:5, Insightful)
And as a followup to the previous, for all the things that counted against Hillary Clinton, being a woman wasn't one of them.
Regardless of the hallucinations and rationalizations thrown from the left, the fact that she was a woman really didn't matter. The polls back this up.
The issue almost never came up. Trump responded when Hillary brought it up by saying that being a woman isn't a qualification for the job, but when Hillary dropped the issue so did Trump.
No one cares any more, just like no one cared that Obama was black. Obama never brought it up either - he never played the race card. It didn't matter.
There is no more glass ceiling. Hillary was judged not on the basis of her gender, but on her qualifications and (largely) her ethics.
We live in a world where a woman *actually could* be the next president. She'll be judged on her talent and abilities, but not her gender.
Hillary broke the glass ceiling.
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So people voted for the 5 times draft dodging, 6 times bankrupt, 3 times married, walking, talking human piece of offal? I think your analysis is off.
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Re:Broke the glass ceiling (Score:5, Insightful)
No one cares any more, just like no one cared that Obama was black.
No one? Really? Wanna bet I can find counter examples?
Re: Broke the glass ceiling (Score:2)
Re: Broke the glass ceiling (Score:4, Insightful)
His skin color obviously wasn't a problem to too many people.
Way to move the goalposts.
Re:Broke the glass ceiling (Score:5, Interesting)
No one cares any more, just like no one cared that Obama was black.
I live in a predominantly black neighborhood. When Obama was running for president I had a 3hr wait at the polling station the first time, 2hrs the second time.
Voting yesterday: no wait. None. I walked in to an empty polling booth, cast my vote and left.
Black people cared that Obama was black and turned out in record numbers. White people by-and-large didn't care what colour he was. No matter what they say though, a lot of people voted for Obama, in part, because he was black. (they may have liked his message to, but race was a factor for many in the minority community).
Yesterday was almost a backlash, a lot of angry white uneducated voters, and angry older voters from an age when racism was acceptable turned out en masse to vote for the guy who wants to make America white again.
Hillary lost the election in part because Obama was black. It's not the only reason, she's also a bitch and people are angry at the current establishment and her track record; however, it is partially a reason.
The popular vote difference was only 0.2%, and even though he had a decent size lead in electoral college, many of the states he won were by very small numbers. Maybe not all Trump supporters were angry racist white men. It is very easy to believe that at least 0.2% of the electorate is angry white racist men though- and that's all the difference that there was in the end.
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Some white males are angry white racists, and some are not. I wasn't saying are, to the contrary, most arn't.
What I was saying is, it doesn't take many of them to tip the election. A few hundred thousand votes in the right place could have made the difference. There are at last a few hundred thousand angry white racist males in states like Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina (especially North Carolina).
Remove the angry white racist males and Trump wouldn't have had the numbers to win. Racis
Re:Get over it (Score:5, Informative)
The election isn't about "getting your way", it's about "crowdsourcing a decision". The crowd chose not to go with Clinton, and there were a lot of votes in support of that decision.
Wrong, the crowd did chose Clinton over Trump. She had more votes. Your flawed electoral system crowned Trump however.
Re:Get over it (Score:5, Insightful)
Like Brexit, just because you didn't get your way doesn't mean you stop trying. That's not how democracy works. Now Trump is in, people who opposed his policies before have their work cut out to limit the damage. Same as now that the UK has decided to leave the EU, we have to make sure we protect our rights, our economy and the interests of the 48% who wanted to stay.
It's extremely important that people keep opposing Trump and holding him to account, because now that the Republicans control both houses and soon the Supreme Court, someone has to.
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The election isn't about "getting your way", it's about "crowdsourcing a decision". The crowd chose not to go with Clinton, and there were a lot of votes in support of that decision.
The popular vote was 47.8% to 48.0%. (Yes, Clinton won the popular vote.) This is not a decision, it's a tie. The only reason Trump can claim to have "won" the election is strategic, based on the broken Electoral College system which grants more weight to voters in less populous states plus winner-take-all policies at the state level which award all the state's EC delegates to a candidate who was only ahead by a slight margin. Trump received less than 60% of the vote in 20 of the 30 states he won. In sever
Valueless posts (Score:3, Insightful)
You're insane or profoundly stupid [...]
No, I just think the tidal wave insults should stop.
This is a forum of information and insight.
Get over yourself, post something of value.
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I'm with you on this. We have to still get up, go to work, support what we support and oppose what we oppose. Raise our families the best way we know how. We had eight years of bitterness from a certain segment of Americans who refused to work with Obama because of the color of his skin. They were out to destroy him before he was even sworn in, and admitted as much. Trump deserves to be evaluated on what he does. He's got a GOP House and Senate and all
Moratorium (Score:5, Insightful)
I propose a moratorium on all "what does the Trump victory mean for..." until the guy is actually in office and starts doing stuff, because right now no one has a clue (least of all him) what he's actually going to try to do.
I don't even know at this point whether the Republicans are going to play along with him.
Heck at this point I don't event think I'd be surprised if someone offed him before January.
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Come now, we can't let facts get in the way of rhetoric. The fact that there are 70+ days before inauguration is apparently irrelevant. . .
Let the guy propose his team and get them in place. And then, perhaps, judge by results of what happens, and not perceptions of what could be ??
Leaving the US (Score:3, Interesting)
It's impossible to know (Score:3)
It's impossible to know what Trump will mean for R&D. He never actually said what his policies were on such things. He was vague about his policy on most things whilst getting elected. Perhaps it is strategic (if no one knows what you want to do, they can't vote against you for it)- or perhaps he hasn't really thought it through himself. I think he wanted to get elected to have the power more than to push any particular political agenda.
What we do know is that he is a climate change denier. We know he's not a big fan of NASA either. So climatology and space sciences will probably take a big hit. We also know that he wants to fund some pretty large projects, such as building a wall on the border, putting boots on the ground against ISIS, giving tax major breaks to the very wealthy.
Tariffs will result in lower trade, which in turn will result in less money for the government, so in order to get the budget in responsible territory, he'll need to cut costs somewhere. No one can predict where, but it stands to reason, public research grants might be where he retrieves money to offset the increase in spending (and lack of income) elsewhere.
Who knows (Score:4, Insightful)
What he's going to do about anything else is truly a mystery and it's probably best not to obsess over it.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Na.... his health care is going to be huge, he's going to have so many beautiful plans.... ............ as long as your rich ............ if not die fast because he nor his party gives a flying fuck about you. Your too ugly to insure. What a looser. Get's sick without any insurance.
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Run the government? (Score:3)
FTS: "Now that he is going to run the government..."
I'm a Canadian, so the subtleties of US governance are lost on me; but isn't the President largely a figurehead, except perhaps when it comes to foreign affairs? The Republicans control both Congress and the Senate, and both Congresscritters and Senators have a substantial degree of autonomy when it comes to voting and putting forth legislation, do they not? With the Republicans so much in power, does it really matter much if Trump, Cruz, Rubio, or some generic Republican occupies the White House?
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I'm a Canadian, so the subtleties of US governance are lost on me; but isn't the President largely a figurehead, except perhaps when it comes to foreign affairs?
Well, the presidency was never quite a "figurehead," but historically it did have a lot less power. That was by design in the Constitution. (The revolutionaries had just left a king behind, so they didn't want another.)
However, over the centuries the Executive Branch of the federal government has grown to be HUGE compared to the others (Legislative and Judicial). All of the "departments" (of education, treasury, defense, interior, etc.) -- i.e., most of the government -- are run by the president, and t
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House cleaning (Score:2)
Chances are good that there will be a house cleaning of some government-funded projects. Given his speech last night about rebuilding our infrastructure, which is usually a major tenet of the Left, it's entirely possible that funding will be increased for broadband projects. The question is whether or not there will be quid pro quo for such funding.
Trump does love grandiose projects, though, so I would expect funding for crown jewel stuff that makes for good PR such as NASA.
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"Thank you for calling Time-T-Cast. How can we fuck you today?"
That's looking forward, then (Score:2)
It's a good time to look back on the kind of policies and changes he is likely to bring in the United States.
You want to look back on the things he hasn't done yet? Sounds about right for Trump logic, I suppose...
Definitely uncertain. :-) (Score:2)
There are so many things in play that it's hard to tell. Trump really doesn't have too many detailed policies beyond building the wall, enacting tariffs and renegotiating trade agreements. I hope he ends up hiring competent advisors and not just his buddies. The only core policy item that seems clear is that everything is broken and will be "changed." How is the question...
I can think of a few conflicting items right off the top of my head:
- Republicans are going to control the legislature. They're owned by
Trump's most valuable contribution (Score:3)
Since Trump has never articulated a comprehensive science/tech platform, the most we can hope for right now is that the Democrats will finally be shocked into ditching the anti-science left and reaching back to its great days of popularity under Roosevelt to rebuild its base.
Franklin Roosevelt summoned oil pipelines into being when the country needed them: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu... [ucsb.edu]
Today's Democrats look for fake religious reasons - not even scientifically testable environmental arguments - why pipelines should not be built.
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LOL. Have you been paying attention to STEM in academia recently?
For the last few years it's been under constant assault from entryist feminists - evo psych and biology were the first targets, but even physics and maths have come under assault recently. It's all been coming from the gender studies/social science departments that spew out risible agenda research that's reprinted by the media.
Academia needs to be brutally... and I do mean brutally... cut back on. Not STEM subjects... fund them more, but axe a
Re:The retrograde candidate (Score:4, Insightful)
Absolutely [time.com] fscking [newsweek.com] true [theatlantic.com].
We may have a sexist buffoon for a president now, but at least democracy has a chance for another four years.
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A lot of people lost lifespan last night for sure.
America went to the fridge, read the expiration date on the spoiled milk, smelled the
spoiled milk, and said "eh, best way to know if it is spoiled is to chug the whole thing down."
My only hope is that Trump opponents realize how fragile our country is, and don't put any
additional stress on it while it collapses. This will both hold them blameless as republicanism
is exposed as a fraudulent ideology, and increase the changes enough pieces survive so
that after
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America went to the fridge, read the expiration date on the spoiled milk, smelled the
spoiled milk, and said "eh, best way to know if it is spoiled is to chug the whole thing down."
My only hope is that Trump opponents realize how fragile our country is, and don't put any
additional stress on it while it collapses. This will both hold them blameless as republicanism
is exposed as a fraudulent ideology, and increase the changes enough pieces survive so
that after this disaster there is still enough left to glue back together.
*YOU* are why Trump won, and you don't even get it...
The arrogance with which you state that any ideology other than your own is "fraudulent" is EXACTLY why Trump will be the next President. Lots of us "Deplorables" are sick and tired of people like you thinking you're so superior to us.
I don't consider Democrats to be "fraudulent", they are people and have points of view, but as soon as you dismiss ours, then frankly, you're the one who needs to lose for awhile and eat some humble pie. Enjoy Trump for aw
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Lots of us "Deplorables" are sick and tired of people like you thinking you're so superior to us.
Have fun cleaning up your own mess. I won't be helping you with that.
Re:We won't have time for science. (Score:5, Insightful)
Like Venezuela is now?
Re:We won't have time for science. (Score:5, Funny)
Four years from now, we're all going to be living in the rubble and cooking squirrels over oil barrels.
So, no different to how the average Trump voter already lives.
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Insults like yours against the common person is what helped Trump take the election. I hope you're proud of yourself.
Being a distant relative to a basket of deplorable (I live in California), one-half of my lily-white family in Idaho lives exactly like that when they're not manufacturing and distributing meth. The better half of my family calls them white trailer trash and don't associate with them.
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Four years from now, we're all going to be living in the rubble and cooking squirrels over oil barrels.
If you do it right, squirrel is pretty tasty.
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And this comment is how people like you helped Trump win.
For anyone who isn't leaving, the lesson is to be kind and respectful to people in the country, even if you have class or cultural differences with them. If you want to prosper, try to figure out how the rest of the country can prosper along with you.
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Really ? Trump is worse than the Nuclear War TCP/IP was built to survive through ???
Re:Will we even HAVE an internet? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. The nuclear bombs only had a physical capability to damage the Internet. Trump will have legal authority to damage the Internet.
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