Polls: Society & Politics

Rogan: First Amendment In Danger If Harris And Walz Win - www.realclearpolitics.com/.../...and_walz_win.html

If it's only in the capital I was thinking about flying to Cap Haitien next weekend, which is on the other end of the island. I just wanna see the ruins, citadel and voodoo and see some colonial buildings and do some snorkeling and head back. But if it's everywhere I'll go somewhere else.

The main problem is that it doesn't really function like private insurance. It does NOT assess flood risk for EACH property; instead, premiums reflect average historical losses within a property’s risk zone. Moreover, the floodplain maps determining a property’s risk zone are often several decades out of date. As a result, premiums may bear NO relationship to the true risk of flooding. The cost of an federal policy averages about half of what would be a market rate. Congress actually mandates this inaccurate pricing method. In 2014, it hastily revoked a few tentative steps at reform after constituents complained loudly when they tried to charge something approximating market rates for flood insurance.

Who benefits from flood insurance? People in flood-prone Gulf states like Louisiana and Florida, of course. But many beneficiaries also share another characteristic: they are upper income. The program does not charge nearly enough to cover the expected costs of its liabilities. The assessments are not sufficient to build any buffer to cover an extraordinary year, such as what occurred with Hurricane Katrina in 2005 or Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Because homeowners don’t incur the full cost of building in a flood zone we end up with more houses there than if homeowners incurred the full cost of the flood risk, which exacerbates the government’s costs in the next disaster. The optimal solution would be for the government to get out of the flood insurance business entirely and leave it to the private market, which would endeavor to accurately measure risk and charge a price for its insurance that covers the expected costs. Smart reforms would also help Congress refrain from throwing money at disasters, bailing out homeowners who shouldn’t have built in flood-prone areas to begin with. Sensible long-run incentives to mitigate damage would discourage such homebuilding by exposing homeowners and businesses to the real cost of building in floodplains.

This week, CA Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation that classifies carrying a gun at a polling place as an unlawful "act of intimidation." Supervisors in Shasta County, which was cited in the text of the measure as a hotbed of voter intimidation, responded by voting to draft a letter denouncing the law. Patrick Jones, the board chair and manager of a firearm shop in Redding, said the law brands gun owners as extremists. "So, I take offense to this," he said.

ttps://news.yahoo.com/news/shasta-supervisors-far-majority-says-212152618.html

You know, the idea that people are innocent until proven guilty? Doesn't that let all sorts of guilty criminals off the hook? Shouldn't we change this so people don't get away with terrible crimes? What about those child molesters with victims too young to speak? I think people with certain political views have the right idea about this terrible problem.

It is forecast that the $1.3 trillion estimated cost of annual foregone revenue from Trump's tax reduction plans (out of a total revenue intake of $6.3 trillion annually) is a shortfall of 20.1% which would be offset by $5.9% increase in revenue from Trump's tariff plan.
In sum, a total loss of $14.2% of federal revenue with no plans for how to make up the shortfall. He has suggested giving the President control over the Fed to set interest rates as well as control of the money supply (printing money). He has also suggested to eliminate the debt ceiling. Economists & the Congressional Budget Office have derided both of these ideas as leading to precipitous rises and consumer prices and dangerously inflationary.

More detailed breakdown:
Donald Trump's proposed tariffs to make up this revenue loss from his tax cuts (which include a 10% worldwide tariff and a 60% tariff on Chinese goods paid for by the American consumer - so in effect a hidden tax), are estimated to generate approximately $280 billion annually.
If the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Trump legislations provisions are made permanent, it is estimated that the federal government would experience a reduction in revenues of approximately $400 billion annually.
Additionally, the long-term fiscal impact would increase the national debt by $16.5 trillion over the next 75 years. This revenue loss primarily arises from the continuation of foregone income tax introduced by the TCJA.
Regarding the image above, Trump has NO ability to influence insurance rates as they are set at the state level, Congress has signaled that they have no plans to restore the state and local tax deduction (SALT), the president has no ability to mandate coverage of IVF treatment and the president has no ability to set credit card interest rates.

Trump demanded that Republicans shut down the government unless the continuing resolution contained a measure requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote. It is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, and the measure was widely seen as an attempt to suppress voting. Trump was unable to command Republican loyalty on this issue as he did earlier this year when he insisted Republicans kill the bipartisan border bill.

That recognition of his slipping power might have been behind his hastily announced press conference this afternoon at Trump Tower in New York, a press conference best described as the September 10 presidential debate 2.0.

Trump reiterated his vision of the United States as a hellscape. He insisted that the nation’s booming economy is actually hemorrhaging jobs, that the FBI statistics showing crime falling are all lies, and that inflation, which has fallen close enough to the target of 2% that the Fed recently began to lower interest rates, is at an all-time high.

Trump reserved his greatest rage for the ABC debate moderators who, he complained, fact-checked him after agreeing not to—“I want an apology,” he said—and for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. To her he attributed what he insists is a flood of undocumented immigrants drowning states in a welter of crime, although we know immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than native born Americans. He recounted in some detail a number of horrific rapes he claimed were committed by immigrants. He did so apparently with no self-consciousness about his own liability for sexual assault that the presiding judge said would commonly be understood as rape, although his focus on rape could have been an attempt to push back on the the recent spate of ads by conservative lawyer George Conway’s Anti-Psychopath PAC featuring woman who claim Trump sexually assaulted them.

Are these signs of obvious desperation the beginning of the end for trump?

"In particular, there's evidence that the car seat rules that we've imposed, which of course I want kids to drive in car seats, have driven down the number of babies born in this country by over 100,000. So as we think about how to make kids safe here, I think we should do it in a way that's accommodating to American families."

When there's a school shooting, the right says we need to stop making school gun free zones where only authorized people can have guns, so since someone was killed at a Trump rally, shouldn't he have had the chance to defend himself?

Same court. Different political party.

It's an idea being bandied about recently. Should it be eliminated or preserved? Why or why not?