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> they do nothing to indicate if what Trump said was correct. That's right. For plans for the future, being "correct" is asking a bit too much, but we should
by graycat 10y ago
> they do nothing to indicate if what Trump said was correct.
That's right. For plans for the future, being "correct" is asking a bit too much, but we should also have some good audits or at least good details on the plans. I believe that we are quite short on audits or details for Trump's plans for the US with him as POTUS.
I've been for Trump since last fall or so, but I know we don't have nearly enough good details. But what the heck am I to do? To me, the other candidates look much worse, on details and more.
Last fall I thought that I wanted the details, but as voting citizens we nearly never get those. Sometimes politicians deliver -- JFK said we'd put a man on the moon and return him safely to earth and did. Bush 41 said that Saddam's invasion of Kuwait "would not stand", put Schwarzkopf in charge, and, as at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKi3NwLFkX4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKi3NwLFkX4
the results were brilliant.
Obama said he would "fundamentally transform" America, the US, or some such, but not in any way I'd want.
So, sometimes I like what politicians do, but usually I don't.
For unemployment rate, I was drawing partly from some Bureau of Labor Statistics material and discussion as at
http://themusingsofthebigredcar.com/lets-cut-the-crap-unemployment/ http://themusingsofthebigredcar.com/lets-cut-the-crap-unempl...
There he has a big plot of labor force participation rate. We're talking 90+ million people who could, presumably in principle, be working but now out of the labor force. If you take his judgment seriously, then the situation, to be technical, sucks. He also mentions BLS data U-6 and U-7, and I have yet to look up those and I didn't see links to them. But I believe that the official 5% unemployment rate is lying with statistics, i.e., maybe is literally true for a particular definition that may at times be an okay definition but definitely is not now.
Net, on unemployment, I don't think that the real rate, with a reasonable definition, is 5% or anywhere near that. Maybe Trump's 20% is correct or even too low. So, one hope for the economy, deficit, standard of living, etc. is to get the "labor force participation rate" up, way up.
On Trump University (TU), good to know that in NYS he claimed to be operating a university without a NYS license. So there is a way to stop misuse of university.
For the point that there wasn't anything in the TU courses couldn't find in Trump books, okay. Quite generally there isn't much of any value in education not already in books. So, that situation about has to hold for TU also.
Your references have Trump claiming his instructors are "handpicked" by him personally. Right, that seems to be a lie. I did see a video of a few guys, 2, 3, maybe a few more, who claimed to have learned some valuable material TU about how to make money in real estate. Okay, maybe a few people did. Maybe there was some content in the courses.
To me, TU looks like an example of my guess about how
Trump has done a lot of his smaller businesses: He has a broad, big picture idea, gets some people, and has them try to make the idea work. One of the keys to the idea is the Trump brand. Then the people
Trump hired charge forward.
If they make money, don't
lose big law suits, and don't
get too much bad publicity, then Trump regarded the project
as successful. Call it business. For the customers, it's buyer beware. From what I've seen of
the for-profit education
industry out there, TU seems
to fit right in. For the selling, sure, look at the famous movie scene from Glenn Garry Glenn Ross
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6Lf8GtMe4M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6Lf8GtMe4M
So, selling in business is permitted to be just like that and sometimes is. So, maybe much of the selling of TU to students was like that.
A concern: One of your video clips has Trump selling TU and to me he looks and sounds very much the same as he did in his rallies and interviews during the primaries. He's good at sounding sincere: He sounded sincere for TU but said things, e.g., "handpicked", that conflict with what was in the deposition transcript you referenced. And during the primaries he sounded similarly sincere. That's a concern -- I need to upgrade my sincerity filter.
So, instead of Trump I should have backed one of the 16 Republican candidates he beat? I liked them less than Trump -- have no reason to trust them any more than Trump. I should vote for Hillary or Bernie? They can sound sincere, too, but to me the details, such as I can find them, look a lot worse than Trump's, and I agree that Hillary is a terrible crook and should go to jail for her violations of the rules and laws about handling classified information. So, maybe I should wait for Batman, Superman, Captain America, or John Wayne? Not promising, either.
So, one reason I have on my computer as primary sources what Trump said is to have, for later, means to write critical blog posts, with the primary sources and solid references, if Trump fails to deliver on his promises. Thin soup if Trump is lying. Not a lot of recourse.
Do I know that Trump's plans for jobs, the deficit, taxes, the wall, trade negotiations, negotiations with Iran, economic growth, protecting the US from radical Islam, rebuilding the US military, etc. are solid, doable, realistic, feasible? I wish I did, but I don't. And similarly for Jeb!, Cruz, Rubio, Carly, ....
What should I do about TU, Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, etc.? It was business. If it was bad enough, then he'd be in jail.
Sure, I'd like a solid contract with a candidate for POTUS, but we don't have those yet. Lacking a solid contract, I'd like details. There are some, at a high level that don't guarantee much, at Trump's Web site. I'd like some examples of where our trade deals are bad, what good trade deals would look like, and the chances of getting good deals -- I don't have that. I'd like some really careful numbers, quarter by quarter, on the economy, budgets, taxes, revenue, deficits, interest rates, and inflation, but, again, I have no way to get those. Maybe the Fed staff can do some useful things with such macro economic modeling, but maybe they can't, either.
So, what can I do? What can any citizen or voter do? What did voters do for Ike, FDR, ..., Lincoln, ... Washington? Try to read character. And now we have what should be some advantages. Do I like our accuracy in reading character? HELL NO. Heck, I liked Romney, but recently I've concluded that he's a total turkey. How such a total turkey could have done that well in business and in MA politics I can't understand, but he looks like a turkey now.
For Trump: He's energetic. He's paying for nearly all of his campaign with his own money. Nearly any day in nearly any state, he can get 30,000 people to show up for one of his rallies -- i.e., he can build consensus and, e.g., thus get Congress to go along. He can get tens of millions of people to watch on TV and will likely do that again in the three or whatever debates with the Dem candidate -- again, he can get people to watch; he can build consensus. It appears that he wants the convention to add publcity and brand; if so, then that could help him get Congress to go along. I agree with him that the media is deliberately deceptive, disgusting, dangerous, and I'm pleased that he pushes back on them really hard -- and he's the only US high office candidate who does that. And, thus, maybe some of the newsies will actually dig into his details, plans, etc. to give us what we need but don't have now. He seems to be one heck of an effective manager: His small team did really well in the primaries. Think for a minute about the planning, details, contracts, arrangements, publicity, security, etc. for rallies for 10,000 -- 30,000 at a pop, all across the country. How the heck to do that, with a small, green staff?
Or, to me, Trump is the least bad, by a large margin, but, still, by a much larger margin, less than I wish we had and knew before we vote.
After all that, I've got my startup to work on.
- kbenson 10y ago> But I believe that the official 5% unemployment rate is lying with statistics It's not lying with statistics, there is a definition for who is considered employed and who isn't. It's important to track who has decided they want to work but aren't (unemployed) compared to those who aren't employed and are not looking (retired, caring for a relative/child). These are well defined terms[1] that are used in the unemployment and labor force participation[2] numbers. From what I can tell, if a person has not looked for a job in 4 weeks, then they are considered not participating. But it's not done there, they also ask if they have looked in the last 12 months, and why they stopped, to try to identify people marginally attached. Note, there is some thought that this could be the baby-boomers retiring[3], which account for larger demographic than others through a quirk of history. Employment has a fairly complex definition in this respect. Do I think the participation rate matters? Yes. Do I think we are necessarily back where we were before the recession? No. Do I think we are in a recession? Definitely not, based on GDP growth[4]. That much of this growth isn't going to help those that need it is a separate problem, and not necessarily helped by focusing on the employment rate. Quality of employment matter a lot. > Net, on unemployment, I don't think that the real rate, with a reasonable definition, is 5% or anywhere near that. Maybe Trump's 20% is correct or even too low. So, one hope for the economy, deficit, standard of living, etc. is to get the "labor force participation rate" up, way up. The problem is none of these numbers are qualified. If you don't accept the definition of unemployment put out by the US government, that's fine, but you can't credibly quote another number, using different criteria, without defining that criteria. Does 20% include everyone that could work? Quite a few (93.3% of those not in the labor force) don't want to work[5]. > For the point that there wasn't anything in the TU courses couldn't find in Trump books, okay. Quite generally there isn't much of any value in education not already in books. So, that situation about has to hold for TU also. True, but I think it's a bit different if you are the person who wrote the books,and you also have a course for thousands of dollars to teach you "real-estate secrets", then I don't think it's wrong to expect that you have something worth that extra money, otherwise the implication is that there's something new and actually secret that you are imparting, not the same old information you've already published. > Maybe there was some content in the courses. I don't doubt there was some content in the courses. There has to be something for people not to immediately report them as frauds (but not much, people don't want to believe they just spent thousands on a very bad investment). The problem is that the purpose of the courses was not to teach, but to try to pump them for more money, which is made clear by the handbooks and procedures the teachers were meant to follow. > To me, TU looks like an example of my guess about how Trump has done a lot of his smaller businesses... If you're making a case that he'll increase corruption in government by not correctly vetting those he chooses to work on a problem, and giving very little oversight, you're making a good case. ;) > So, instead of Trump I should have backed one of the 16 Republican candidates he beat? I'm not espousing you choose a particular candidate, just that you look critically at all of them, and all their claims. For me, this places Trump at the bottom. I don't like how he rides negative sentiment for popularity, and I don't like how > I liked them less than Trump -- have no reason to trust them any more than Trump. I should vote for Hillary or Bernie? They can sound sincere, too, but to me the details, such as I can find them, look a lot worse than Trump's I'mnot a big fan of Clinton, but I see her more as a career politician that has a hard time connecting to the populace, but as someone that does intend to do good. Bernie is probably the most sincere politician any of us have seen in decades. Unfortunately, some of his ideas aren't really feasible. It's moot now. > and I agree that Hillary is a terrible crook and should go to jail for her violations of the rules and laws about handling classified information. I think as a career politician she's focused more on doing what works to get stuff done, and that probably entails ignoring what she saw as some of the smaller, unimportant rules both on purpose and through ignorance. What I think is likely, is that after this happened, a scary amount of congressmen and senators that had previously unused government email addresses all of a sudden started using them. That she used one isn't damning to me at all. That she may have covered up stuff after the fact is troubling, and could quite possibly be true. I at least expect my politicians to be competent enough not to be caught (heh), given that I think they all have things to hide, not matter how small (how many laws do you break driving to the store?). Trump doesn't get a pass on this though, the only group I have less trust in to admit wrongdoing instead of cover it up is Corporate America. > So, one reason I have on my computer as primary sources what Trump said is to have, for later, means to write critical blog posts, with the primary sources and solid references, if Trump fails to deliver on his promises. Thin soup if Trump is lying. Not a lot of recourse. That's a good reason! I tend to think he'll check moderate his claims later though, so he can always point to the more moderate version and say "hey, that's not what I was saying at the end". It doesn't really matter if he's vocal about it. As it is, he's known for having a multitude of (sometimes conflicting) stances on issues[6]. I tend to think that lets people choose the stance the agree most with and assume that's what he means, and ignore variations they may not agree with, regardless of when the fall on a timeline. > So, what can I do? What can any citizen or voter do? What did voters do for Ike, FDR, ..., Lincoln, ... Washington? Look at past public (governmental) service. Washington was a general in the revolution, and a leading figure. Lincoln was a Congressman. FDR was a Senator. Each had quite a while in public service before becoming President. I think that's a very important way to determine what type of politician one will be as President, because I don't think high level political offices like all these listed are like any other job. The pressures are different, the power is different. I would have much fewer reservations about Trump if he'd been in some public office for a while and his behavior there could be used to counteract his public persona, which doesn't instill confidence in my regarding his abilities to work with others as a politician. > After all that, I've got my startup to work on. Fair enough. Good luck! 1: http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm#nilf http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm#nilf 2: http://www.bls.gov/bls/cps_fact_sheets/lfp_mock.htm http://www.bls.gov/bls/cps_fact_sheets/lfp_mock.htm 3: http://qz.com/286213/the-chart-obama-haters-love-most-and-the-truth-behind-it/ http://qz.com/286213/the-chart-obama-haters-love-most-and-th... 4: http://www.multpl.com/us-gdp-growth-rate/table/by-year http://www.multpl.com/us-gdp-growth-rate/table/by-year 5: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/11/14/more-and-more-americans-are-outside-the-labor-force-entirely-who-are-they/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/11/14/more-and-mor... 6: http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/full-list-donald-trump-s-rapidly-changing-policy-positions-n547801 http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/full-list-dona...