The 2016 Presidential Election Trainwreck

[byu71]

It doesn't matter if you vote for Trump or Hillary... it is like voting for the same person. You should just take one of your young grandkids with you and let them vote for you.

Ted, You are a lot smarter than that.

I will mention just one item. I think Trump would nominate more conservative Supreme Court Judges than Hillary.

[SeattleUte]

Privatized prisons are disaster. They have incentives to keep people in prison longer. I'm super surprised you are ok with them.

The private entity that has the concession for operating the jail day to day does not decide how long inmates will stay incarcerated. The local jail here in Seattle is privately run. That is a disaster! But I think all municipal jails are awful.

Very generally, I'm for less criminal laws, less jail time.

[Jeff Lebowski]

The private entity that has the concession for operating the jail day to day does not decide how long inmates will stay incarcerated. The local jail here in Seattle is privately run. That is a disaster! But I think all municipal jails are awful.

Very generally, I'm for less criminal laws, less jail time.

There is at least one well-documented case where a judge was getting kickbacks from a prison owner for sending people to the facility.

As to the cost-savings, this is from Wikipedia:

Proponents of privately run prisons contend that cost-savings and efficiency of operation place private prisons at an advantage over public prisons and support the argument for privatization, but some research casts doubt on the validity of these arguments, as evidence has shown that private prisons are neither demonstrably more cost-effective, nor more efficient than public prisons.[7] An evaluation of 24 different studies on cost-effectiveness revealed that, at best, results of the question are inconclusive and, at worst, there is no difference in cost-effectiveness.[34]

A study by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics found that the cost-savings promised by private prisons "have simply not materialized".[35] Some research has concluded that for-profit prisons cost more than public prisons.[36] Furthermore, cost estimates from privatization advocates may be misleading, because private facilities often refuse to accept inmates that cost the most to house. A 2001 study concluded that a pattern of sending less expensive inmates to privately run facilities artificially inflated cost savings.[37] A 2005 study found that Arizona's public facilities were seven times more likely to house violent offenders and three times more likely to house those convicted of more serious offenses.[38] A 2011 report by the American Civil Liberties Union point out that private prisons are more costly, more violent and less accountable than public prisons, and are actually a major contributor to increased mass incarceration.[39] This is most apparent in Louisiana, which has the highest incarceration rate in the world and houses the majority of its inmates in for-profit facilities.[40] Marie Gottschalk, professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, argues that the prison industry "engages in a lot of cherry-picking and cost-shifting to maintain the illusion that the private sector does it better for less." In fact, she notes that studies generally show that private facilities are more dangerous for both correctional officers and inmates than their public counterparts as a result cost-cutting measures, such as spending less on training for correctional officers (and paying them lower wages) and providing only the most basic medical care for inmates.[41]

A 2014 study by a doctoral candidate at UC Berkeley shows that minorities make up a greater percentage of inmates at private prisons than in their public counterparts, largely because minorities are cheaper to incarcerate. According to the study, for-profit prison operators, in particular CCA and GEO Group, accumulate these low-cost inmates "through explicit and implicit exemptions written into contracts between these private prison management companies and state departments of correction".[42]

[SeattleUte]

There is at least one well-documented case where a judge was getting kickbacks from a prison owner for sending people to the facility.

As to the cost-savings, this is from Wikipedia:

Again, all of your examples involve corruption introduced or enabled through the public sector. I'm not saying that corporations are immune from corruption, however, but certainly you are not naïve enough to believe that the public sector is impervious to corruption. Ultimately, the only thing that private enterprise should be able to do with regard to prisons or jails is ministerial stuff.

If the private sector influences who is incarcerated and for how long, the corruption is in partnership with the public sector. Our rule of law requires due process, etc., and private sector involvement should have nothing to do with that, and I'm sure that is always the intent.

However, needless to say, maybe signal public sector corruption through the ages has been corruption of the administration of justice and the penal system. I can show you law review articles that describe in grim detail the almost complete absence of due process in our country for indigent poor. They're all kangaroo courts--or Stalinist show trials--if you're poor.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Again, all of your examples involve corruption introduced or enabled through the public sector. I'm not saying that corporations are immune from corruption, however, but certainly you are not naïve enough to believe that the public sector is impervious to corruption.

I never said that. But in any corruption case, you have to look at motivation and opportunity.

Ultimately, the only thing that private enterprise should be able to do with regard to prisons or jails is ministerial stuff.

Absolutely. So it sounds like you, me, and Frank agree that for-profit prisons are a terrible idea.

[USUC]

Trump being the nominee is a bad thing for the Republican party, but I tend to think that changing the rules at the last minute to prevent him from being the nominee is just as bad. Sure, they are a private organization, and they can do it, but people expect the nominee to be chosen by a fair and democratic process. Even though it has never been as fair and democratic as many people think, it would be very bad to just say "We don't care what the people think. Our nominee is Ted Cruz." Trump's supporters, who are prone to conspiracy theories even when they don't exist, will go absolutely crazy when proof of one becomes public right before their eyes. A huge number of them will never go back to the Republican party. I think you would also have a number of people who don't like really like Trump, but would be so put out by the move that they would stay away, many of them permanently.

Republicans are really in a bad position if Trump gets 1237 delegates, and ends up not being the nominee. If the Democrats had a decent candidate themselves, I would expect the Trump replacement to end up with no more than a couple of states (Utah being one of them). Even with Hillary running, a Republican that is widely seen as an illegitimate candidate will struggle to pick up 150 electoral votes, I think.

I think that the Republicans have, in large, brought this on themselves, so I don't have a lot of sympathy for them. I only wish it was happening to the Democrats too.

I don't necessarily agree with everything that Andrew Sullivan says, but this article sums up my fear of Trump perfectly. He also believes that in the long run, having Trump denied the nomination will be better for the Republican party. I don't think that people will swear off the Republican party for long.

More to the point, those Republicans desperately trying to use the long-standing rules of their own nominating process to thwart this monster deserve our passionate support, not our disdain. This is not the moment to remind them that they partly brought this on themselves. This is a moment to offer solidarity, especially as the odds are increasingly stacked against them. Ted Cruz and John Kasich face their decisive battle in Indiana on May 3. But they need to fight on, with any tactic at hand, all the way to the bitter end. The Republican delegates who are trying to protect their party from the whims of an outsider demagogue are, at this moment, doing what they ought to be doing to prevent civil and racial unrest, an international conflict, and a constitutional crisis. These GOP elites have every right to deploy whatever rules or procedural roadblocks they can muster, and they should refuse to be intimidated.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer...ald-trump.html

However, I do feel like this is already a lost cause. Trump will certainly get to 1237 and it looks like there will be enough Republicans willing to get behind him to ensure he is the nominee. I think this spells disaster for the party.

[Copelius]

However, I do feel like this is already a lost cause. Trump will certainly get to 1237 and it looks like there will be enough Republicans willing to get behind him to ensure he is the nominee. I think this spells disaster for the party.

Trump as the Republican nominee may actually get the Libertarian candidate a few electoral votes in states like Utah.

[USUC]

Trump as the Republican nominee may actually get the Libertarian candidate a few electoral votes in states like Utah.

Expect Gary Johnson ads to be run in western states this fall based on this message:

[SeattleUte]

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer...ald-trump.html

Holy shit. What a fascinating article. Sullivan has an interesting mind.

[USUC]

Holy shit. What a fascinating article. Sullivan has an interesting mind.

Yeah, it was a great read.

[Clark Addison]

I don't necessarily agree with everything that Andrew Sullivan says, but this article sums up my fear of Trump perfectly. He also believes that in the long run, having Trump denied the nomination will be better for the Republican party. I don't think that people will swear off the Republican party for long.



http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer...ald-trump.html

However, I do feel like this is already a lost cause. Trump will certainly get to 1237 and it looks like there will be enough Republicans willing to get behind him to ensure he is the nominee. I think this spells disaster for the party.

I'll have to read more about it when I get home, but my first reply is that if I were a Republican who hated Trump, why on earth would I want to stand in solidarity with Ted Cruz. Cruz is EXACTLY the type of Republican that made Trump possible.

[YOhio]

I don't like Ted Cruz, but he shows himself really well in this exchange. I couldn't imagine taking this kind of shit day after day.

http://www.cbsnews.com/live/video/tr...-dont-want-you

[splitbamboo]

However, I do feel like this is already a lost cause. Trump will certainly get to 1237 and it looks like there will be enough Republicans willing to get behind him to ensure he is the nominee. I think this spells disaster for the party.

I think that disaster for the party is what the whole Trump movement is all about. The party is dead.



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[SeattleUte]

Yeah, it was a great read.

Brilliant, and every line is hugely entertaining. A taste:

And what mainly fuels this is precisely what the Founders feared about democratic culture: feeling, emotion, and narcissism, rather than reason, empiricism, and public-spiritedness. Online debates become personal, emotional, and irresolvable almost as soon as they begin. . . .

Politically, we lucked out at first. Obama would never have been nominated for the presidency, let alone elected, if he hadn’t harnessed the power of the web and the charisma of his media celebrity. But he was also, paradoxically, a very elite figure, a former state and U.S. senator, a product of Harvard Law School, and, as it turned out, blessed with a preternaturally rational and calm disposition. So he has masked, temporarily, the real risks in the system that his pioneering campaign revealed. Hence many Democrats’ frustration with him. Those who saw in his campaign the seeds of revolutionary change, who were drawn to him by their own messianic delusions, came to be bitterly disappointed by his governing moderation and pragmatism.

The climate Obama thrived in, however, was also ripe for far less restrained opportunists. In 2008, Sarah Palin emerged as proof that an ardent Republican, branded as an outsider, tailor-made for reality TV, proud of her own ignorance about the world, and reaching an audience directly through online media, could also triumph in this new era. She was, it turned out, a John the Baptist for the true messiah of conservative populism, waiting patiently and strategically for his time to come.

Trump, we now know, had been considering running for president for decades. . . .

Each week, for 14 seasons of The Apprentice, he would look someone in the eye and tell them, “You’re fired!” The conversation most humane bosses fear to have with an employee was something Trump clearly relished, and the cruelty became entertainment. In retrospect, it is clear he was training — both himself and his viewers. If you want to understand why a figure so widely disliked nonetheless powers toward the election as if he were approaching a reality-TV-show finale, look no further. His television tactics, as applied to presidential debates, wiped out rivals used to a different game. And all our reality-TV training has conditioned us to hope he’ll win — or at least stay in the game till the final round. In such a shame-free media environment, the assholes often win. In the end, you support them because they’re assholes. . . .

Trump tells the crowd he’d like to punch a protester in the face or have him carried out on a stretcher. No modern politician who has come this close to the presidency has championed violence in this way. It would be disqualifying if our hyper¬democracy hadn’t already abolished disqualifications.

[SeattleUte]

I'll have to read more about it when I get home, but my first reply is that if I were a Republican who hated Trump, why on earth would I want to stand in solidarity with Ted Cruz. Cruz is EXACTLY the type of Republican that made Trump possible.

He does not favor Cruz for president, and he recognizes Cruz has no chance. He also regards Bernie as a cousin of Trump, a manifestation of the same phenomenon. What he says is that this angry, empty headed populism that makes democracy a victim of its own huge success needs to be resisted at every opportunity. He regards Hillary as the only hope for stopping Trump, but Bernie, the Republican elites, and even ISIS are all potentially aligned with him, if unwittingly.