Did Trump really try to solve a problem that doesn’t exist?

[msc545]

https://www.propublica.org/article/trumps-plan-to-restrict-mail-voting?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=majorinvestigations&utm_content=feature

Updates

1 mo

Vote suppression should be banned, especially vote suppression, because you don't like people might actually vote for. The excuses for this are bullshit.

[WhiteSteve]

That’s kind of my whole issue with MAGA: they run on imagined issues that don’t exist in reality, or at best, they badly exaggerate and/or mischaracterize them.

Trans women in sports? Non-issue

The “wide open” border? Complete mischaracterization and exaggeration, of both numbers and consequences

Election fraud? No issue existing prior to any of this.

This is all completely made up shit that they’ve somehow whipped half the country into an illogical frenzy about, with disastrous results, both tangibly and in just in our national culture. This phenomenon will be studied for CENTURIES, and sadly, probably strategically borrowed from by other bad political actors in the future, maybe here again, or elsewhere in the world.

But they look us in the eyes, DEAD SERIOUS, and tell us WE’RE the delusional ones. I’ve honestly just never seen anything like this, not on this broad of a scale.

[MrChinaski]

There was a real problem. He really lost to Biden. The solution was to claim the election was stolen.

Didn't you get the memo?

[msc545]

Well, he couldn't really admit that he actually lost to Biden now. Could he?

[Anonymous]

Honestly, I wouldn't say the problem didn't exist at all. There were real concerns about trade deficits, manufacturing jobs and foreign trade barriers. But I do think Trump took those problems and treated them as if broad tariffs were the obvious answer, and that's where I have doubts.

So for me, it's less there was no problem and more **was this really the right way to solve it?**

[WhiteSteve]

Just a little insight about trade deficits that you may or may not be aware of; no venom😊….

The thing to remember is that it’s not necessarily inherently bad to have a trade deficit. Sometimes that’s just kind of the nature of the relationship, and that’s ok.

As an example: take the African island nation of Madagascar. I don’t have all the exact numbers in front of me, forgive me; but Madagascar supplies something like 80% of the world’s vanilla. They just have an ideal climate for it, so they’re something of a banana republic, or I guess in this case, a vanilla republic. It’s a very significant portion of their export numbers.

So…. here’s America, and we like vanilla flavored stuff, and the extract goes into all manner of sweets. We’re a buyer. And we’re huge. So Madagascar is going to be getting a lot of incoming money. That’s the easy part.

Where you have to think a little more critically, is that Madagascar is super poor. Their average citizen lives off of the equivalent of $2.15 USD per day. They’re not going to be buying MacBook laptops and Ford F-150s; these people are barely surviving. They’re not just not importing things from America to be assholes; they literally can’t afford our stuff. Any products they get will be locally made, or some super cheap product that China or Vietnam or something will sell them. There’s just no market for American goods there due to extreme poverty.

So that’s going to result in a perceived “trade deficit.” But there’s really nothing to be done about it, except quitting vanilla, haha.

[WhiteSteve]

Is the same principle applicable to CHINA? Maybe that’s a better place to focus our efforts. But even some of these other countries we don’t immediately think about in Europe or elsewhere…. like how many Belgian goods are we REALLY importing? Some fancy beers, maybe some other kind of food product, but like…. i would never expect to be selling MORE to a country so much smaller than us, and with such a limited amount of goods we need for them.

America has an economy, like anywhere else; but we are not meant to be a for-profit business. The cringiest thing I hear from Trump supporters is when they reference him being some great businessman, and “he’ll run America like a business.” NEVER DO THAT, lmao, for myriad reasons I won’t even waste our time detailing. But must saying that the economy isn’t just some business’ balance sheet. You don’t have to “win” the exchange with most countries. It’s not like that.

Trump has also been dishonest in his characterization of a lot of these “bad trade deals.” I can’t keep up with the thousands of nonstop shenanigans from these guys, so stuff from a year and a half ago is a little fuzzy for me. But he had something having to do with Canada, and like dairy, or milk specifically…. something like that. I just remember that he was bellyaching about how unfair it was that they limit the amount of American milk they’d buy, something along those lines. But what we weren’t told is that there was just some kind of clause in the deal that mandated that Canadian milk production or sales had to reach some threshold before American milk could be purchased…. something in that vein, that’s just a common sense protection for your own farmers/ranchers that we’d demand of our own government. So I’m not mad at Canada for that.

I don’t know, just a few thoughts I thought might shed a little light. Take ‘em or leave ‘em✌️

[DryGermanGuy]

That idiot Trump doesn't even know what a trade deficit is! He thinks it means that the United States or American companies are losing money!

[duntoldya]

Ah so we're moving from "It's not happening" to "It's happening but it's no big deal"

[msc545]

Can you please explain what you're talking about?

[Sevenpointfive]

he breaks things to exploit them. that's all it is.

[jshm2]

No. He tried to steal the election - again,

[Alex-Snow]

The idiot is trying everything possible to interfere with the midterms be3cause he is scared.

[NathanDavis]

more like... he creates issue and problems, where there are not so much, or none, lol

[Just_Ken]

Mail in voting should be banned. Dead people shouldn't be allowed to vote.

[shish_kebab]

That seems kind of racist against dead people.

[Just_Ken]

@shish_kebab I suppose. Why shouldn't general custer a civil war vetrean be prevented from mailing his vote in from the other side with a thankyou gor your service lol

[shish_kebab]

It seems like the Democratic thing to do.

[msc545]

If that actually happened, it might be worth worrying about if it happened in any quantity. But it doesn't. The real reason that Trump wants mail-in voting banned it's because he wants as much voting as possible, made as difficult as possible so that people will not vote against him or his interests. In the US. We do not suppress voting like that for political reasons.

[shish_kebab]

If voting was made harder it would be made harder for both sides. Besides, last go round I got three mail-in ballots sent to me, none of which were mine.
My ballot came the next day.

[Just_Ken]

That sounds like the voter id argument. Basically you are saying people are too lazy to vote.

[shish_kebab]

Ken, also some Democrats can figure out how they get ID. So there is racism involved.

[msc545]

It's not a question of lazy. It's a question of practicality and finances. Turns out interestingly enough that right-wing voters tend to be a lot better off financially than left-wing voters and God forbid we have left-wing voters actually vote. They might vote against Republicans. Quite a bit in fact. Can't have that. Can we? Go check out how much it costs to get a passport if you don't have one and then think about whether or not you would be willing to pay for a passport if it meant missing a few meals.

[MrChinaski]

If Mitch McConnell can be a senator I don't see why his dead brethren should be disenfranchised.

[Just_Ken]

You litteraly can't do anything as a US citizen so its what is called a MOO point.

[msc545]

they Don't vote. It's just a lie.

[Just_Ken]

Many voters loved Hillary so much they rose from the grave just to vote her. It takes a village

[shish_kebab]

@Ken,
You are obviously just racist against dead people!

[msc545]

Really? Exactly how many dead people voted for Hillary and before you answer that be prepared to provide some proof for it instead of just some conspiracy theory crap.

[Just_Ken]

Democrats Jefferson Davis& Robert E Lee.

[msc545]

The whole two people. Go ahead and prove it.

[Just_Ken]

Nathan Bedford Forrest too

[msc545]

I think he was probably voting for Hitler if Hitler was in the running.

[Just_Ken]

Or David Wark Griffith who used to make democrat campaign movies

[shish_kebab]

Can we all just be man enough to admit that none of us counted the ballots? I didn't count them, did you?
All we have to go on is the facts.
The fact is that Biden was the choice of the Democrats until he lost big time in the debate with Trump. After that debate the Democrats threw him under the bus and installed Kamala Harris. Right?
Later when Kamala crashed and burned, Nancy Pelosi said they should've had a primary.
Ya think?

[Snakeyes7]

If it's not a problem then what's the harm in banning it anyway?

[msc545]

The harm is that the methods used to ensure supposedly illegals won't vote. Also keeps many many legal people from voting as well. That is the harm and that is the point.

[Snakeyes7]

As they shouldn't be either. Only citizens should be allowed to vote.

[msc545]

You don't seem to understand that it also keeps citizens from voting.

[Snakeyes7]

If they couldn't get the proper identification to vote, that's their problem.

[msc545]

If they can't get the proper identification, that's our problem because we want everybody to vote. I know you don't, because you think that they won't vote for your people, and you're probably right about that, but there's a very good reason they won't vote for your people: your policies suck.

[Snakeyes7]

No we shouldn't get everyone to vote. Voting never should have been a right but a privilege. Without it, a morons vote is worth just as much as yours.

We need a more "skin in the game" kind of approach like net taxpayer or military service. I prefer the former, that way we won't let politicians essentially use the welfare state as a means of buying people's vote.

[msc545]

You can't deny the right to vote to people because you don't like their point of view, or because you think they aren't smart enough. It might be that you're not smart enough. In any event, everybody gets a vote.

[Snakeyes7]

It also works vice versa, the people I think are morons probably see me as a moron who shouldn't get the vote. That's why I am not going off of political beliefs or intelligence but by whether they contribute to society and are not being bought off by politicians with welfare programs.

[msc545]

The "contributing to society" thing is a subjective judgment on your part. Not everybody agrees with you. You Don't get to substitute your subjective judgment for collective judgment.

[Snakeyes7]

That's why we need to have a proper definition, which one will need to be made if a "skin in the game" kind of system is to be implemented.

[msc545]

You need to lose your skin-in-the-game idea. All it is is favoritism and racism disguised as something that is semi-rational.

[Snakeyes7]

You are just saying all that because you have no actual argument against it.

[msc545]

A very solid argument against it: it keeps elderly people, and it keeps some married women, and it keeps people without cars from voting. People will not go out of their way to register to vote if you turn it into a problem, and that's exactly what you want to do. You want to do that because your shitty Republican Party has horrible policies that sane people don't vote for, at least not anymore.

[Snakeyes7]

The elderly shouldn't be voting. Especially after this recent poll saying that boomers agree that the social security tax should be raised on the younger population to support a failing social program.
If you retire, I think your time to decide where the world goes for you is done and should be left to the younger generations.

I have no idea why it would prevent married women and people without cars from registering to vote. None of that requires them to take government assistance.

[msc545]

Sorry to break this to you, but nobody gives a shit who you think should or shouldn't be voting. Your opinion isn't worth anything. Married women would have trouble voting because they frequently change their last name, and then it's an incredible hassle getting ID changed back. You wind up having to go to court in order to do this. Generally speaking, where you have to go to register to vote is not next door to your house, so you have to have a way to get there. That means you either have to have a car or you have to take public transportation, which you may not be able to afford to do and have food as well. Well, I don't think poor people should vote either, but guess what? They should vote, and they do. You just have to register, and registering may not be easy.

[Snakeyes7]

Why would a married woman be changing her last name constantly, unless she is marrying just because she gets some sick enjoyment out of divorce or something? She'd really have to only do it once.

Does the fact that you have to update your ID if you have to move to another state another part of this strange excuse to not have any sort of security measures when determining the future of your country?

I was mainly thinking of people who live in the city, otherwise they probably have to carpool or something.

[msc545]

Considering that's the only reason for this is to keep people who disagree with you from voting. I should think you would probably want to keep women from voting too.

After the midterms, I would imagine that you were going to need to find a way to keep virtually everybody from voting, since you people are going to lose and lose badly, and that will be the time when you have to use the voting fraud bullshit excuse.

[msc545]

Your arguments against voting and your skin in the game argument are anti-american and anti-democratic as hell.

[Snakeyes7]

I just don't get what the big deal is for married women. You have to get your ID updated for multiple reasons including the fact that they expire. Having to update their last name on their ID shouldn't be any harder than changing the address. Am I wrong?

[msc545]

If it causes even one person to not be able to vote, that is one person too many. There is absolutely no valid reason to require ID for voting Your excuses not notwithstanding. Provide some evidence for a significant voting fraud or stop whining about this. Voting fraud does not exist but what does exist and what you keep trying to promote is your racism. Go to another country and do it because in this country it's anti-American.

[msc545]

Yes, you are wrong. Again.

[Snakeyes7]

There's no point to doing it in another country because we are the only one who is retarded enough to think requiring an ID to vote is a bad thing.

The only reason not to require ID is because you want non-citizens, who have no actual stake in ensuring the country does well and might even want the country destroyed, to vote. THAT is anti-American.

You just brought us back to my original question. If voter fraud is not a problem, then why are you crashing out about us implementing measures to protect ourselves from it ever becoming a problem in the future? That's a stupid as saying that a country doesn't need a military because it is not currently being invaded at the moment.

[msc545]

Non-citizens don't vote, and it's never been a problem. Have bought into the idea that they do, but you can't prove it and you can't support it. Has never occurred in the U. S. Instead, what you are not saying (because you don't have the guts to say it) is that you don't want anybody voting who isn't white, and that's really what this is about. And the alternative: you also don't want anybody voting who's not going to vote the way you want them to vote, and that's also what this is about. You don't have the guts to say that either.

[Snakeyes7]

How do you know that non-citizens don't vote if you do not require IDs?

>is that you don't want anybody voting who isn't white,

I really don't understand what it is about IDs that makes people like you bring race into this other than to argue that non-whites are too stupid to figure out how to get the most critical thing you need to participate in society, a fucking ID. This is obviously not the case and if requiring IDs reduces the number of total votes then those votes were likely fraudulent.

>And the alternative: you also don't want anybody voting who's not going to vote the way you want them to vote, and that's also what this is about.

That's sort of true, but a significant portion of the people who are willing to vote against me were never supposed to be in the country, let alone voting, in the first place. They only vote against me because they rely on welfare fraud and will vote any politician in who will continue to let them get away with it, i. e. the Commiefornia politicians who passed a law to ban citizen journalism to keep their schemes from being exposed to the public.

[msc545]

People like me bring race into it because of people like you. You are nothing but a filthy racist, and every single thing you post reinforces that.