Mourning in America - Trump Year One: November '16 to

I haven't noticed Fred trying to talk down lived experience with think-pieces?

as one of the "worst offenders" in that department, that says very little

I lived a year in the US with a roommate from Pittsburgh, for what it's worth.

we should literally start a separate thread just to talk about how much that is worth

that was an xp to iatee

I'm getting bored with posters in this thread and Facebook telling a gay man of Cuban descent how, where, when, and why I should or should not be upset about.

I'm all for tactics and strategy but this election wasn't lost because thousands of colliers in Pennsylvania thought Hamilton a repulsive example of anti-American political correctness, therefore we liberals have to "tamp down" identity politics.

Also we have a thread about the MENA region and, with a few exceptions ...

ugh sorry I derailed a dumb discussion into an even dumber discussion ...

It's not unusual to have fun with canadians
But when I see you hanging about with canadians
It's not unusual to see me cry

xp:
Until something is done about the demand side (psst, carbon tax), supply side measures don't matter a great deal. For Bakken shale, its $6-7 cheaper to ship by pipe than by rail, but rail suffices.

Nobody is drilling for oil domestically with $46/bbl. Emissions will continue to slowly decline due to NG being so much cheaper than coal in electricity generation.

The big issue with Trump and climate is the international agreements. Getting to Paris was so hard fought that I fear a unilateral exit of Paris and Rio framework will set the whole endeavor back by a decade.

@Alfred: yeah the left-vs-left blame game is something I also see going on and doesn't seem much use unless it's blaming very specific historical instances and blaming actions NOT people

I mean maybe a few people but like, particular, powerful people who actually need holding to account, not just 'feminists', etc.

it's just "weird" idk that today's discussion has been 1/2 foreigners and ex-pats.

― sarahell, Sunday, 20 November 2016 23:37 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this evening's discussion, tbf. i figure its time related

also, the us election killed the rest of ilx. srsly.

Sanpaku that all seems just a tad sanguine to me. Why should we allow this administration to get away with any of their petroleum-first ideas?

whenever ppl mention "optics" it's always worth asking whose gaze is at issue and honestly anybody who cares enough to follow the slam-bam media trifecta of pence going to hamilton, the cast reading out a high-minded plea, and trump following up publicly with a truly improbable level of petty hostility and comes away thinking that trump really stuck it to those liberal assholes, well, they can go kick rocks. i'm not on their side. they don't just need to be called out, they need to lose, all their candidates and their stupid issues, and lose so badly that no one ever wants to be like them again.

the environmental issues are really scary because I can't see what anyone can actually do. The offshore oil drilling was a major accomplishment (at least where i live) in the 80s. It's frightening to think, as you mentioned, how many decades of work this is gonna roll back.

whenever ppl mention "optics" it's always worth asking whose gaze is at issue and honestly anybody who cares enough to follow the slam-bam media trifecta of pence going to hamilton, the cast reading out a high-minded plea, and trump following up publicly with a truly improbable level of petty hostility and comes away thinking that trump really stuck it to those liberal assholes, well, they can go kick rocks. i'm not on their side. they don't just need to be called out, they need to lose, all their candidates and their stupid issues, and lose so badly that no one ever wants to be like them aga

Those of us most destroyed by the Trump victory watched the Chuck Todds and read Talking Points Memo and paid attention to the daily scrim while men and women who used dial-up to log onto AOL in rural Wisconsin read an email forward sent by a cousin with the subject line HILLARY -- BENGHAZI AND THE TRUTH. Following this shit every day brings one no mental health and doesn't even guarantee the results we want.

sorry -- I pasted Tracer Hand in the first graf.

yeowch!

Where were you when Alfred pasted Tracer

@El Tomboto,

What this administration can do domestically in 4 years is host a bunch more poorly bidded lease auctions.

It can't force private industry to produce fossil fuels from them.
Rig count is catastrophic now for any petroleum drillers.
No one is drilling in the U.S. if they aren't required to by lease provisions.
Nearly every coal operator is in bankruptcy. Even low cost operators in the Powder River basin are losing money.

However, we on the environmental side should be mindful of what this means.
By 2019-20, there will be another oil crunch as in 2007-8. When gas is back at $5/gal there won't be popular support for the demand side measures that are necessary.
2016 was a chance to impose painless (at current prices) carbon taxes, or politicians favorable to them.

Green causes could have won in 2016, but won't in 2020 when actual resource shortages start to bite.

I watched I-732 in Washington state. Here was a campaign in a green state that could have set a model for appropriately pricing in externalities, without intersecting with other debates about the size of government.

That was our chance for sane policy this year. I supported it from a distant state. It only got 42%, because morons from the Sierra Club to Van Jones thought they might in the future come up with a better idea.

Otm

In a state with a regressive tax base and a criminally underfunded public school system, writing 732 as a revenue-neutral measure was a mistake. (In fact the fiscal analysis in the voter's guide posited that it would be revenue-negative.) Whatever the other problems with 732, I would've voted for it if it had been revenue-positive.

Being Canadian is like living in the apartment next door to a really loud extrovert, who's good friends with your roommates. Even if you want to ignore him, the way he lives his life has a significant, material impact on the way you live yours. Last week I came home and he was on my couch & wouldn't leave even after I told him I had stuff to do. "You go ahead and do your stuff. By the way, I've been talking with your roommates and we all agree there's gonna be some changes around here."

canada is acoustic, while the us is plugged into a Marshall stack.

on another note:

trump - everything he does, the sheer ridiculousness of it all - is such an infuriating mind-fuck. i'm finding it u+k to not ruminate on this shit, not let it fuck with me. trying to find that fine equipoise where i stay aware and alert, but not gripped or panicked by the whole thing. four more years of this; we need some mental/spiritual tools.

^

Those of us most destroyed by the Trump victory watched the Chuck Todds and read Talking Points Memo and paid attention to the daily scrim while men and women who used dial-up to log onto AOL in rural Wisconsin read an email forward sent by a cousin with the subject line HILLARY -- BENGHAZI AND THE TRUTH. Following this shit every day brings one no mental health and doesn't even guarantee the results we want.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, November 20, 2016 5:23 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This feels otm to me. Since the election, I know I've altered the sources/amounts of news media I consume, as well as the way I consume it (obviously while still trying to remain an informed person). The whole thing felt like one of those moments where I realized that for all the time and mental energy I was spending on reading the news, I wasn't actually better informed about the world at all and in some ways was less informed the more I spent my reading hours on it.

Whatever else your local issues, getting emissions down should take precedence.

Period.

I don't expect the U.S. dollar to exist in any remotely familiar form in 2100. Its a useful collective fiction.

On the contrary, our greenhouse emissions will be present in the atmosphere for tens of thousands of years. Tens of thousands of years where the Earth's carrying capacity is markedly reduced. Billions who will never live, because of our generation.

I've followed the climate issue since 1989, and frankly at this point, I think I'd vote in favor on pandemic plague wiping out half the population (including myself) as that would 1) extend the timeline for solutions, and 2) make the endless droughts/famines later this century less destructive. Just be glad I'm too damaged by knowledge to be electable.

Harsh truths

In a state with a regressive tax base and a criminally underfunded public school system, writing 732 as a revenue-neutral measure was a mistake. (In fact the fiscal analysis in the voter's guide posited that it would be revenue-negative.) Whatever the other problems with 732, I would've voted for it if it had been revenue-positive.

― slathered in cream and covered with stickers (silby), Sunday, November 20, 2016 8:30 PM (thirty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I thought the WA Carbon tax would have made the overall tax code more progressive? idg why it has to be revenue positive

Washington state has the most regressive state tax system in the entire country

Sorry to state the obvious. I mean that I sort of see silby's point. Of course I also see Sanpaku's as well.

the Carbon tax would have made it less regressive, because it had a big low income tax credit in it

no Silby's point as stated doesn't make sense. Saying, well, let's not do this thing that saves the environment and makes the tax code more progressive unless it increases revenue, because the tax code we're starting out from is regressive. IDGI

Moreover, the low-income tax credits would help prevent I-732 from hurting Washington state’s neediest households. Critics of carbon taxes often argue that they are regressive, pointing to the fact that lower-income Americans spend a high fraction of their income on energy. With these tax credits, however, I-732 would be sharply progressive, making low-income households significantly better off.

http://www.salon.com/2016/11/01/why-are-environmentalists-denouncing-a-carbon-tax-in-washington-state/

increasing revenue in a regressive tax code is more painful for the poor than holding revenue constant and making it more progressive...

should have also quoted the following para in that slate piece

This is an important point, not just for I-732, but for carbon policy more generally. In a recent paper, Maryland economist Rob Williams and coauthors examined a national carbon tax for which revenue would be returned in equal, lump-sum payments to all households. They showed that these lump-sum payments would exceed average expenditure on the tax for households earning less than $70,000 per year, so these households would be net winners. I-732 is potentially even more progressive because the tax credits would be targeted to low-income households.

The cut in the business tax for manufacturing that was also part of it also made the whole thing seem like a Trojan horse.

All missing the point. Pricing emissions now is far, far more important than whether its slightly progressive or regressive.

From the outside, it appeared the opposition was largely from groups that would have preferred a say in how revenues should be spent. Pricing emissions puts solar EV, wind, replacing coal generation, household efficiency/conservation etc. on an equal playing field for all, rather than just benefiting grant applicants.

that's just isolating substitution effect stuff; you don't want to use the tax to kill manufacturing, you want to shift within manufacturing to lower carbon intensity... idk, from an outside pov it was a shitty thing for the enviro left to do..

(xp to Silby)

The backstory on the initiative seemed to be, a coalition of orgs were working on an initiative, it went slowly, because progressive coalitions lol, some other policy shop went it alone to put something on the ballot, everyone in the coalition working on the other bill opposed 732.

here's the story I read before voting

http://grist.org/election-2016/washington-carbon-tax-732/

i'm pretty much resigned to global warming being inevitable. see you in 100,000 years

yeah I mean I also assume that people who don't yet exist would prefer not to so their never coming into existence is the silver lining of the everybody now alive dies cloud

Has anybody encountered any thinkpieces on why the Left is more prone to "perfect enemy of the good" factionalism than the Right?

On the Right, they can pursue more restrictions on reproductive rights at late-term, then 20 weeks, then closer to conception, etc. They're willing to accept the grind towards achieving whatever dystopia they're after.

On the Left, if a climate crisis solution doesn't perfectly meet everyone's needs, some environmental groups will actively oppose it rather than seek to correct its faults at a later date.

i'm pretty much resigned to global warming being inevitable. see you in 100,000 years

― 龜, Sunday, November 20, 2016 6:44 PM (twenty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^this

get real yall

better to focus on poverty/civil liberties, planet earth about to be recycled

one reason i find the 'russians hacking the election' theories not that believable is what happened in my parents county in south NJ

it's a pretty white, middle-class county - not upper middle class/upper class like cherry hill - the house next to theirs flies a blue lives matter flag, a cop lives in the neighborhood, there's not really any markers of upper middle class in the area (closest apple store, whole foods, nordstroms, ll bean, etc. are all half an hour away by car)...

the county went for obama 55% / 44% for romney in 2012

however, in 2016, trump is winning by .5% so far http://results.enr.clarityelections.com/NJ/Gloucester/64655/181484/Web01/en/summary.html

to my mind, definitely fits in with the narrative that white middle class voters flipped for trump this election

Pretty much all social justice goes out the window when the poor are outbid for food. It's happening between nations, but I hope it doesn't become a huge issue withing the U.S. in my lifetime. It's probably inevitable.

also: thinking if the line of attack for dems this election shouldn't have been 'trump is racist/sexist/misogynistic/xenophobic/islamophobic' - all qualities that immediately offend us educated city slickers but code very different depending on which side of the culture wars you find yourself on

instead, should have focused on trump as a con man - trump U allegations, but also as someone who doesn't pay his workers, takes advantage of tax loopholes, etc. - seems like this is a much more 'universal' message - if there's one thing all americans hate, it's getting conned / fits into a 'fight fire with fire' strategy vis a vis hillary's 'corruption' charges re: emails and clinton foundation