Presidential Election 2016

[EOst]

Can't wait to see how he handles an election in four years when he controls our entire security apparatus.

[VAStationDude]

Someone has an anti third party agenda, and it's showing.

Stein and the Greens are their own worst enemy. No anti Green agenda or conspiracy needed.

[grant1simons2]

Greens refuse to build up from small state districts, and use their least qualified member to run for President

[amiller92]

Someone has an anti third party agenda, and it's showing.

I'm definitely not keen on third parties in presidential elections, especially for a vanity candidate like Stein who has a demonstrated willingness to flirt with conspiracy theories for self-promotion. Of course, Trump just showed that you can win that way.

[Tiller]

This really isn't a time to bitch about 3rd parties. The Trump regime just keeps getting worse. The bolded emphasis/summarizations are mine.

Up to a "million" protesters could be labelled "terrorists" and stripped of their constitutional rights:
http://usuncut.com/politics/trump-homel ... rity-pick/

Stripping citizenship (and thus one's constitutional protections) in retaliation for political dissent.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/pos ... u-s-flags/


And in case we forget about the elephant in the room, this is from 2014:

10 Feet of Global Sea Level Rise Is Now Guaranteed
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/10-fee ... inevitable

There's enough ice for 200 ft of sea level rise, so the question will be how much will get baked in before we turn off the oven?

[Anondson]

Randal O'Toole is afraid transportation secretary nominee is too pro-rail.

https://www.cato.org/blog/secretary-tra ... laine-chao

[Mod note: link was broken, so I found original source of post. Sorry for making y'all visit Cato Institute]

[Tiller]

Some interesting data and analysis:

Fairfax County, USA
Hillary Clinton won rich suburbs in record numbers. But her campaign failed to mobilize workers of all races.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/11/clin ... -firewall/

[David Greene]

Multiple sources now reporting that Moscow has compromising information on Trump, that the Trump team was in contact with Moscow during the election and that top Congressional and administration officials were briefed in December and quite possibly earlier. The allegations were in reports sent to both Obama and Trump.

Sen. McCain sent the information to the FBI as did opposition researchers for the Republican and Democratic parties.

Obama is thought to be putting things in place so this can still be investigated once he's out.

Mother Jones reported this just before the election but now it's gone mainstream.

[min-chi-cbus]

Crossing fingers!

[LakeCharles]

[Silophant]

Right?

[Didier]

At least MNdible is happy.

[seanrichardryan]

That's a peculiar assertion.

[Silophant]

Yeah, while MNdible is certainly less liberal than the median for this forum, I don't think he's a Trump supporter.

But mdcastle, wherever he hangs out these days, is no doubt psyched.

[xandrex]

One of the new POTUS's first orders is housing related: Suspending the FHA's mortgage insurance premium reduction that was set to go into effect. https://twitter.com/CNBCnow/status/822510744906371072

Increasing premiums on insurance to protect banks seems...not so populist.

[Didier]

It was a joke! MNdible is great, and his positions from the right side of the forum's liberal median are under-appreciated!

[LakeCharles]

At least MNdible is happy.

I don't think this is a particularly helpful comment. Whatever MNdible believes, I don't believe he has ever said on here that he is happy about Trump's election. So to assume that for him just to get in a dig isn't a great look. Especially in light of the recent article on streets.mn about how some people feel unwelcome here.

[Edit: Didn't see your last comment.]

[RailBaronYarr]

One of the new POTUS's first orders is housing related: Suspending the FHA's mortgage insurance premium reduction that was set to go into effect. https://twitter.com/CNBCnow/status/822510744906371072

Increasing premiums on insurance to protect banks seems...not so populist.

From a policy standpoint in a vacuum, I don't think this is necessarily a bad move. It's popular, just like the mortgage interest deduction or any number of other subsidies or misguided programs out there, but that doesn't make it good.

Like the MID, this mostly serves to allow homeowners across the board to buy a slightly bigger house than they otherwise would. For people who care about urbanism or energy use or anything else related, this almost always means a slightly bigger home and/or on a slightly bigger lot. And since the poorest in our society don't buy homes at very high rates, it benefits only a thin slice of people in the bottom third of the income scale who could make the switch from renting to owning (whether this is a good thing or not is debatable!).

The problem with this isn't that it's being removed. It's that its budget isn't being thrown specifically at low-income housing, whether that's expanding Section 8 vouchers or any other number of programs. And that's going to be a theme with pretty much every GOP proposal we see.

[xandrex]

From a policy standpoint in a vacuum, I don't think this is necessarily a bad move. It's popular, just like the mortgage interest deduction or any number of other subsidies or misguided programs out there, but that doesn't make it good.

Like the MID, this mostly serves to allow homeowners across the board to buy a slightly bigger house than they otherwise would. For people who care about urbanism or energy use or anything else related, this almost always means a slightly bigger home and/or on a slightly bigger lot. And since the poorest in our society don't buy homes at very high rates, it benefits only a thin slice of people in the bottom third of the income scale who could make the switch from renting to owning (whether this is a good thing or not is debatable!).

The problem with this isn't that it's being removed. It's that its budget isn't being thrown specifically at low-income housing, whether that's expanding Section 8 vouchers or any other number of programs. And that's going to be a theme with pretty much every GOP proposal we see.

Is PMI especially regressive, though? It’s generally for people who don’t have 20 percent to put down on a house, which falls mostly on first-time homebuyers and poorer people. The median home price in Minneapolis appears to be around $220K, which means about $44K down—an awful lot for a median-income family in this state (about $58K). Even if they go for a pretty crappy starter home ($120-150K for most parts of the city), that’s not exactly chump change. In other words, an awful lot of people who might want to buy some time before they’re 40 years old are going to need to get a loan that requires PMI. And this change appears to only affect federally backed loans…which require PMI for life, unlike traditional loans where you can eventually drop it. Only a refi can get rid of it.

Further, PMI is protection for the lender, so it seems questionable to use it as a tool to keep people from buying too much house. By that same line of thinking, the policy should be to make housing more expensive so people can afford less space and use less energy. There are a lot of other ways to improve urbanity and environmental causes than requiring the hoi polloi to pay more to bankers.

I suppose my real point of posting that tweet above, though, is that it’s an awfully strange move to make so quickly, especially if you’re running as a man of the people that’s going to make struggling people’s lives easier. Whether it's smart policy or not is another issue.

[MNdible]

I promise that I'm as mortified by Trump as the rest of you are.

Shouldn't the PMI decision be a pretty straightforward actuarial one? Insurance programs need to cover their payouts with the premiums they charge.