American Politics

[deh74]

Originally Posted by Mercutio

Other than the continuing brain tumour that is attitudes to gun control in your legislature, two things have amused me recently:

Bernie is so incredibly childish that even though he has straight up said that he will vote for Hillary, he still refuses to redirect his voter base and campaign resources into helping her (or at least not hindering her).

Hillary sent me an email last night which was essentially "the UK has fucked itself over, we cannot do the same, please give me $1". Hilarious.

I also received Hillary's email, and am posting it below.

Spoiler: show

DEH74 --

We all woke up to the news that the United Kingdom is leaving the European Union.

Now, David Cameron is resigning as the UK's prime minister, the pound is plummeting, and stock markets the world over are dealing with massive levels of uncertainty.

Right up until the moment the outcome of the vote was announced, political observers and financial analysts were confident that the referendum to leave the EU would fail. They never actually processed the possibility of a different result.

We can't make the same mistake.

No matter what the collective wisdom of our political punditry has to say between now and November, Donald Trump has a real chance of winning this election. Together, we have to wrap our minds around that fact -- and resolve to act on it.

This week, that possibility became all the more tangible. Trump's campaign manager was floundering, and now he's out. Trump released some bad fundraising news, so his supporters stepped up to boost the campaign with $5 million in contributions. People said that Trump's political operation was understaffed, and now new hires are popping up every day.

But we understand exactly what we're up against, and between now and the end of the month, we have an opportunity to prove it. We’re looking at a huge quarterly fundraising deadline, and we can use it to show exactly how committed we are to winning this election.

Can we count on you to step up? We need 68 donations from TOWN today to stay on pace to hit our goal of 250,000 more contributions before June 30th, and your donation will make a big difference (plus, we’ll send you a free sticker to say thank you!):

The main body of the email was then followed by a big red button that said "DEH74, donate $1". I'm personally Super Pumped about that sticker.

[deoxys]

Originally Posted by Mercutio

Bernie is so incredibly childish that even though he has straight up said that he will vote for Hillary, he still refuses to redirect his voter base and campaign resources into helping her (or at least not hindering her). .

If Bernie gives my information to the Clinton campaign, I will be livid. I didn't donate to Bernie or canvass for him to get spam trash from Clinton and the DNC.

Please don't call him childish for not doing what his own donor base is loudly asking for him to not do. And if you think it'should childish of me to not want that garbage in by inbox then I don't really care, but I didn't donate to the man to get Hillary and DNC spam in my inbox were she to secure the nomination.

[phoopes]

So my mom is voting for Trump and I was discussing the Brexit with her earlier today. I brought up the point that over 75% of 18-24 year olds voted Remain, so if only more people had gone out and vote the result could have been different. She responded by saying that people like me shouldn't be voting anyway because we don't have enough real world experience, and that the voting age should be 25.

[deoxys]

Well thankfully your vote counts just as much as hers and everyone else's.

...unfortunately her vote counts as much as yours and everyone else's.

[Mercutio]

I have no idea what the data protection rules in America are. In the UK it is illegal for, say, Green Party data to be passed to the Labour Party in a constituency where it is thought that only Labour can beat the Tories and they want to increase the chances of that happening. This to greater/lesser extents covers things like voting intention, email address etc. It is fairly likely that you are not legally allowed to pass certain kinds of data from Bernie to Clinton or Cruz to Ryan etc.

As for giving his donations away to her, he can do whatever he wants with the money you gave, subject to the law. It's his money. Again I imagine that there are nominally rules preventing him from doing this. But this is the nation of Super PACs, there will be a way around it.

[deoxys]

I'm not talking about his donations; they specifically want the data from his donors. Which he is allowed to give. The DNC wants his mailing list and any info he has from his donors and backers, such as names and email addresses (these are the big ones). His email list of his donors are the holy grail they covet right now; this is what the controversy is currently over.

[Mercutio]

I would have thought that something will get passed on. Hadn't actually seen that this was an issue until googling just now (I thought I remembered something about Clinton stealing Sanders data last year but apparently it was the other way around??).

A lot of people think that they own the data they give to political campaigners, and to be sure there are safeguards, but to an extent we can do what we want with it. In the UK, for example, if I called Concept and he told me to remove his phone number from my database, there's nothing he can legally do about it if I put down the phone and take no further action. It's like people who put up "no cold calls" stickers on their front doors; these are people that are explicitly targeted by cold callers because they are more likely to buy whatever you're selling once they do open the door.

I'm sure the Democrats have some system in place that nominally protects you but it's not like the unsubscribe button deletes your email address from a server. It just moves it to a 'do not email' mailing list. So I would expect that at least something will be passed over even if it isn't an email list. For every person like you who really doesn't want to deal with Hillary, another five will barely notice and will begin donating to her. The people running Sanders' campaign will know this, so will Hillary's, and so will Trump's. There's a science to email campaigns.

[deh74]

Originally Posted by Mercutio

I have no idea what the data protection rules in America are. In the UK it is illegal for, say, Green Party data to be passed to the Labour Party in a constituency where it is thought that only Labour can beat the Tories and they want to increase the chances of that happening. This to greater/lesser extents covers things like voting intention, email address etc. It is fairly likely that you are not legally allowed to pass certain kinds of data from Bernie to Clinton or Cruz to Ryan etc.

As for giving his donations away to her, he can do whatever he wants with the money you gave, subject to the law. It's his money. Again I imagine that there are nominally rules preventing him from doing this. But this is the nation of Super PACs, there will be a way around it.

Bernie can give all of his voter information to Clinton and the DNC and will almost certainly do so. If you don't like it, Deo, you can remove yourself from the list once Clinton and the DNC start emailing you.

While I don't believe Sanders can give all of his money to the Clinton campaign he can give it all to the DNC or Priorities USA, Clinton's SuperPAC. He probably wouldn't give it to Priorities USA though, which is good because the DNC needs it more for down ballot congressional and state level races. He also has the option of distributing the money himself to specific congressional and state level candidates that he approves of, although I'm not entirely sure how that would work, it would probably involve him setting up a PAC.

[Mercutio]

So a mate of mine from the Obama '12 campaign was telling me that most states have very weak data protection laws, meaning it is highly likely your email address will be passed on. Not that this really matters. But if you're in California for example you may be better protected.

[Mozz]

Originally Posted by phoopes

So my mom is voting for Trump and I was discussing the Brexit with her earlier today. I brought up the point that over 75% of 18-24 year olds voted Remain, so if only more people had gone out and vote the result could have been different. She responded by saying that people like me shouldn't be voting anyway because we don't have enough real world experience, and that the voting age should be 25.

lol love this

[deh74]

"I don't like the way you people vote, so you people shouldn't be allowed to vote". Depending on who "you people" are, this statement could be horribly offensive.

[Doppleganger]

Originally Posted by deh74

Depending on who "you people" are, this statement could be horribly offensive.

[Rangeet]

There's something to be said about not letting uninformed voters vote, but obviously there is no practical way to do this.

[deh74]

Originally Posted by Rangeet

There's something to be said about not letting uninformed voters vote, but obviously there is no practical way to do this.

The only thing (sort of) to this effect that I've seen suggested would be to require people to pass a citizenship test before registering to vote. Although there are obvious issues with that idea.

[RealMrGame10]

For example:

Very few people in my Civics class were able to pass a sample citizenship test

[deh74]

Originally Posted by RealMrGame10

For example:

Very few people in my Civics class were able to pass a sample citizenship test

Civics classes need to be a thing in more schools. Mine, for example, didn't have one at all.

[Doppleganger]

So should economics, but basic economics needs algebra as a pre-requisite and the easiest route out of high school (with no college prospects) isn't paved with FOIL.

Let's face it, the US education might blow, but people are willfully dumber here, as well.

[Talon87]

In my personal experience, Government (i.e. Civics in another region, "a rose by any other name") was a required course for graduation for all students. I took Government over the summer, to free up my schedule for desired classes during the school year, and I took it alongside the drug abusers and the mentally handicapped who were only there because summer Government was said to be easier than semester-long Government and they wanted/needed the easiest path to graduation. I don't know if this was just an Indiana thing or if you guys are mistaken about the role that a civics course plays in the standard U.S. high school curriculum. But it was definitely a Talon's-childhood thing. No one could graduate from high school without taking, and passing, this course. (And yes, we had to do things like take a citizenship test, study the bodies of government and how they work, give presentations about the Founding Fathers, etc, etc. "Civics" by any other name.)

As for Econ, Doppel has more of a point, but still only a tenuous one in my experience. Econ 101, "Microeconomics", was a required course for graduation for those seeking Indiana's highest high school certification. While that may not sound like much of a deflating argument, IIRC the lowest certificate, called the Core 40, meant that you could only attend college within the state of Indiana. It wasn't (or isn't?) recognized by many universities outside the state. If you wanted to go to school in California or New York, you had to take the coursework required for the higher certificate(s). And I only remember the one, the one I got, which definitely had Micro has a required course. Econ 102, "Macroeconomics," was opt-in and only taken by those taking AP Econ (like I did).

[phoopes]

See, I also took a "Civics" class in high school. But we were allowed to use our phones during tests (i.e. free answer lookup) so I don't think it really counts lol. Since then they've hired a much better teacher but I think the point still stands that lots of kids don't have a class at all or have a very low-quality education of the subject.

Econ wasn't required in my high school, but I took the "opt-in" as Talon called it of AP Microeconomics and found it to be very valuable.

[Snorby]

Some form of Econ as well as Gov are both required at my high school, though an Econ option is Consumer Economics which is hilariously easy. I took AP Micro/Macro this year instead, though.

[Mercutio]

Yeah but economics is essentially reading tea leaves. Civics is at least qualifiable in a way you can feasibly teach bored teenagers.

[Doppleganger]

Blood on her hands!

Also, the FBI is basically saying the Hillary emails are bogus because of the hackers.

Hillary wuz innocent gais

[Miror]

Originally Posted by Doppleganger

Blood on her hands!

Also, the FBI is basically saying the Hillary emails are bogus because of the hackers.

Hillary wuz innocent gais

Can't tell if you're actually serious with that link or not but in case you are;

http://www.snopes.com/guccifer-missing-from-jail-cell/

[Shuckle]

Re: Civics

I took 2 civics courses, one for government and one as part of the general social studies curriculum in middle school. I live rather close to the major political and governmental hub of the nation, though, so we tend to care a bit more about these things and making sure kids understand these things. Also my area is affluent so the public schools are really nice!

[Doppleganger]

That feel when Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton will be the one to sign your commission.

I'm not a fan of Obama, but man I would much prefer him to sign it over that pair.