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

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

otm

otm x2

caveat that her strategy did work for the majority of voters (brutal to win pop vote by 1.5 million, which was the tally last I saw) but to eke out rust-belt swing states def agree

the more I think about it the less I think any given way of attacking trump would have done much. I mean his whole thing was 'of course I cheat, now I'm cheating 4 u'

what I do think could have helped was attacking him in ways that built clinton's own character / made her come across as more of a human being. e.g. had she taken control of her own twitter account and gone off script more in the debates. they were playing it safe and that seemed like a pretty sensible strategy at the time, let donald trump be the one who goes off script and non-donald trumps who go off script and say something like 'deplorables' get disproportionately punished for it.

trump got hit with plenty of that stuff in both the primaries and in the general and it just didn't stick

I read someone on her campaign compare it to an athletic competition where the other guy gets to be on steroids, which seemed like a pretty apt comparison.

caveat that her strategy did work for the majority of voters (brutal to win pop vote by 1.5 million, which was the tally last I saw) but to eke out rust-belt swing states def agree

― flopson, Sunday, November 20, 2016 10:54 PM (twenty-six minutes ago

the strategy "didn't work" because the election isn't decided by the popular vote. the reason the lost the electoral college is precisely because her strategy failed to appeal to the voters she most needed to reach

there was no precedent, really, in facing a candidate like this. it still makes absolutely no sense to me why people were willing to vote for a known liar who doesn't honor his contracts and has shady ties to russia -- among his other, many faults. in the future i think democrats should strive to seem less strategic, if possible: just try to be clear about their agenda in a way that connects with the concerns of average people. polls show that most people lean progressive on the issues, anyway, even if they don't think they do

like, trump was literally going to these states and talking to people, often doing two stops per day. clinton didn't do anything like that.

or find a reality tv star

xp

Going into the election I rated the chances of the respective candidates doing anything whatsoever about global warming at about 0% for Trump vs 0.5% for Clinton

Clinton also couldn't draw when she did rallies. She should have gone to those states more anyway, but I'm just saying she was never going to be Trump.

Another big mistake I thought was the shying away from attacking the entire GOP and refusing to conflate Trump with their agenda (indeed, even trying and failing to peel off "moderate republicans" as a focus). How hard is it to campaign on "these people are going to take your fucking medicaid/medicare away"?

But anyway I was already so pessimistic about what the future looked like under a CLINTON presidency -- no action on global warming, a continued slow march toward privatizing everything, a terrible political landscape for the Democrats going forward, likelihood of one term, etc. And now this is so much worse. Every day is like a fever of nightmare scenarios racing through my head before the fever finally breaks at some point in the evening.

Today my mind was playing out these, for example:

GOP holds up federal funding for sanctuary cities. NYC and other cities litigate. In most cases they probably win, but it takes time, GOP appeals, continues to hold up federal funding pending appeal even if court orders otherwise. Existing SCOTUS precedent favors the cities, but the GOP doesn't care, cities struggle to meet funding gaps for key programs with federal funding, many of which affect the poorest. Meanwhile GOP gets impatient, mass-hires fed immigration police, starts raiding the cities, whole neighborhoods of the boroughs lose 10%, 20%, 30% of their population.

I went further with it too: fed funding loss forces either large budget cuts or tax increases, city services suffer, homelessness on streets increases, track pickup reduced, things start to look more like the 80s, etc. The only reason I think this might not really happen to NYC is that Trump and his family are so invested here.

Every day is like a fever of nightmare scenarios racing through my head before the fever finally breaks at some point in the evening.

― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Sunday, November 20, 2016 11:32 PM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha otm

I feel like the Pences of the world would love to fuck NYC and either don't grasp or don't care about the larger consequences.