Election 2024 & Presidential Race: Demented WannaBe Dictator Trump vs President Biden

[Jumbo]

On 6/22/2023 at 10:23 AM, TheGreatBuzz said:

Didn't he run as a Libertarian nominee?

 

 

There was a time right before, and in the early days of, trump's term when I actually liked Will Hurt to some extent.

 

Back then I had wishfully thought he and Kinzinger might be harbingers of a better gop coming, however slowly.

 

But since his departure from congress he's been somewhat more of a political opportunist. He strives to keep criticism of his party to a minimum and does a lot of focusing on going after the Dems.

 

There's a lot, as I often say here, to go after the Dems about and of course I get the position you're  in if you want to be elected as a republican now.

 

And yet, imo, these are the times when any decent human who wants to identify as a republican needs to spend ninety percent of their time denouncing what THEIR party is doing, though he's still no maga guy.

[PeterMP]

44 minutes ago, tshile said:

well there’s also a very obvious reality:

 

many people don’t give a flying crap about drug addicted, they just don’t want to see or deal with them. They want them rounded up and put in jail and chased into the shadows. They don’t want needle exchange programs with lines out the door. 
 

I tend to think that’s counter productive, ignorant, and doesn’t align with some basic qualities I was taught. It’s probably most costly long run and it certainly doesn’t help with the next generation. 
 

But no one’s required to view things that way. I totally get their point. Keep it away from them and that’s the extent they care about it. 🤷‍♂️ 

 

But they do care.  Because they care about the costs.  The cost in terms the criminal justice system, prisons, but also ER costs (people that are dying are overdosing and they don't have the money to pay the bills) and wait times.  They care about paying for the pensions for all of the people involved.  They care about how cops are treated and treat people.

 

They've got no problem complaining about budgets, taxes, and public pensions.  They got no problems complaining about complaints against the police but if a cop treats them or family member poorly or uses unnecessary force against them or a family member, they'll complain (and sue) about that too.

 

Add onto that we have an economic system where the federal government tells us that long term unemployment < 2-3% is bad.  Long term, at any point in time we need at least 2-3% of the people that want jobs and are looking for jobs to not have a job (based on the Fed's policies/beliefs which are generally agreed to by all of the leaders in our federal government).  But you better not be homeless or have depression issues that you need support with.  Or use drugs to self-medicate your depression issues from being unemployed.

 

Many people want something that isn't possible because they are too stupid, thoughtless, uneducated, or ignorant.  But they care and they get angry when they don't get the impossible.

Edited June 23, 2023 by PeterMP

[Spearfeather]

1 hour ago, PeterMP said:

Just want to point out that those stats are almost meaningless because they are based on states counting their homeless.  And what states/areas make the most effort to count homelessness?  The more liberal states

 

The source for the numbers in the article I quoted is AHAR, American Housing Assessment Report, which is done by US Housing and Urban Development.

[PeterMP]

1 hour ago, Spearfeather said:

 

The source for the numbers in the article I quoted is AHAR, American Housing Assessment Report, which is done by US Housing and Urban Development.

 

So I'm a little odd in that when somebody post something that I think is interesting or odd, I actually read it.  And then I normally read more.

 

So when I saw your post, I saw it was done by HUD, and I thought that's odd.  I'm pretty sure that HUD doesn't have employees all over the country counting homeless, and I'm pretty sure that HUD isn't paying for people to travel all over the country to count homeless.

 

So I read more.  And the report says:

 

"In 2022, the PIT estimates of people experiencing homelessness in sheltered and unsheltered locations, as well as the number of beds available to serve them, were reported by 387 Continuums of Care (CoC) nationwide. These 387 CoCs covered virtually the entire United States."

 

So HUD isn't actually doing any counting.  They are depending on the CoCs to do the counting for them.

 

So what is a CoC:

 

"Each CoC is generally composed of nonprofit service providers and local government agencies, such as departments of health and human services and public housing agencies, as well as other stakeholders that can include philanthropic organizations and local businesses. Every community is covered by a CoC, and an individual CoC’s territory may be a city, county, metropolitan area, or even an entire state or the “balance of state” not included in a local CoC. There are more than 400 CoCs in the U.S."

 

So CoC's are nonprofits and state and local governments so their ability to do their job is going to depend on local and state resources given to them to do their job.

 

That alone suggest that there might be differences from state-to-state and city-to-city.  But even further stated in the report:

 

"While methodological standards exist, CoCs determine their own methodology, and there is no universal method used to collect PIT data. This results in variations in how CoCs conduct their PIT counts, often based on the size and type of CoC. For example, some CoCs conduct a full census capturing data on all people experiencing homelessness. Others, often those with large geographic areas, use a sampling approach to count a smaller group of people experiencing homelessness and use that sample to estimate the number and characteristics for the entire population of people experiencing homelessness within their community."

 

So while HUD controls how these CoCs do the count a good bit of it is left up to the CoC.  And for this particular report, there's a whole bunch about how different CoCs dealt with Covid so more differences based on state, local, and non-profit support and decisions.

 

Then reading more about their report, I find a study by the NAS (that's national academy of sciences) that says:

 

"Nonetheless, there continues to be widespread agreement that it is difficult to adequately estimate the number of persons experiencing homelessness in the United States. Although New York City's count is one of the most sophisticated, Hopper et al. (2008) estimated that it missed about half of the people not staying in shelters."

 

Where Hooper 2008 is this:

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2446453/

 

Which includes:

 

"For indispensable collaboration that made this work possible, we thank our colleagues in the New York City Department of Homeless Services, especially Maryanne Schretzman, Jay Bainbridge, Katie Appel, and Şerban Iorga."

 

So we have NYC doing this extensive review to try to determine how many people are homeless, including working with (local) (Hooper and her co-authors are located in NY to determine how well they are counting) academics to see how well they are doing.

 

And then we also have things like this:

 

"Findings from this comparative case study approach confirm that the cross-site methodology is inconsistent, and therefore the PIT yields inconsistent results. Implications and recommendations for local, state, and national service providers and policymakers are provided."

 

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1606/1044-3894.2016.97.39?journalCode=fisa

 

Which also says things like:

"Yet,    the    PIT    count    is    still    administered    inconsistently  across  states.  The  varying  methods  of  PIT administration bias basic homelessness counts and impede  social  scientists,  policymakers,  and  program  staff in their pursuit of eliminating homelessness" 

 

"The results of the study indicate that there is significant variation in how different cities conduct the PIT count. Each  city  sampled  utilized  a  different  methodology.  Furthermore,  both  NYC  and  Houston  use  advanced  methodological  approaches  to  ensure  the  effectiveness  of  their  counts.  This  includes  the  use  of  some  form  of  decoy or control group, advanced statistical analysis of survey  results,  and  large  community  involvement  in  their  counts.  Additionally,  results  show  that  each  city  uses  a  different  survey  instrument,  which  it  created.  Each  survey  tool  is  based  on  the  HUD  guidelines  for  required data, but it also included additional questions."

 

(Note, NYC and Houston are 2 cities in their study.  Denver, also in their study, then isn't using advanced methodologies to ensure the effectiveness of their counts.)

 

So, yeah I'm going to stick to my original statement.  I'm not going to say the numbers are completely worthless, but they aren't very valuable.  There's a pretty large variation in how the counting is done, and that variation is directly related by how much the people in the state and area care about doing the counting well/right their funding/support from local/state governments.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 23, 2023 by PeterMP

[tshile]

I would argue they are completely worthless if the goal is to compare states/cities

 

im sure they serve other purposes but for that specific purpose the first thing you have to do is establish a consistent way of counting and a uniformed effort. 
 

And they don’t have either 

Edited June 23, 2023 by tshile

[Cooked Crack]

 

[Larry]

6 hours ago, The Evil Genius said:

It's likely happening because somehow in the last 50 years we've decided the pay gap between employee and employer should be widened so that employees don't make liveable wages anymore.

I came to the conclusion a long time ago that there forces at work who think it would be really great if the bottom 90% took a 50% pay cut. 

[Spearfeather]

17 hours ago, PeterMP said:

I'm not going to say the numbers are completely worthless, but they aren't very valuable. 

 

Yeah, and I guess this is basically what it comes down to.

And, I wasn't arguing that the rates ( and rankings ) are dead-on accurate, but I don't think they're wildly inaccurate, either.

 

Quote

While the report’s accuracy is reliant on factors such as the number of participating canvassers and the weather on the night of the count, it remains one of the most consistent and comprehensive attempts at quantifying the nation’s homeless population.

 

 

 

Edited June 24, 2023 by Spearfeather

[PeterMP]

16 hours ago, Spearfeather said:

 

Yeah, and I guess this is basically what it comes down to.

And, I wasn't arguing that the rates ( and rankings ) are dead-on accurate, but I don't think they're wildly inaccurate, either.

 

 

 

 

What do you mean by wildly?

 

I've already cited a source that despite NYC doing multiple things that go beyond HUD guidelines that they are likely off by 50%.  Even somebody trying is still not doing what I'd consider very well.  Could other places be off by a factor of 4 or more?  Would that be wildly?

 

The difference in homelessness per capita between CA (highest rate) and FL is less than a factor of 4.

 

And HUD puts out guidelines, but as near as I can tell they don't do anything to check that people are following their guidelines and nobody or organization has ever been punished for lying about following the guidelines. 

 

How much money do you want to put on that for a process carried about by a bunch of non-profits and public employees where there appears to be no penalty for not following the rules that everybody is actually following the rules?

 

The best data you have can still not be good enough to support certain conclusions (e.g. the homeless rate in FL is lower than VT).

 

Do I know that it isn't?  No.  But unless you can start to citing something related to the different methods of counting homeless and how well different organizations that are doing the counting are actually counting, then I'm going to tell you that I'm very doubtful that the numbers are that good.

 

And trying to say that FL has a lower homeless rate than VT (and even going further that it is the result of government policies) can't really be supported by the existing data and might not be true given what is known about the error in the data.

[fullnelson9999]

On 6/22/2023 at 4:49 PM, tomwvr said:

I personally hope Biden and Trump both drop out. Two old men that are corrupt and horrible at governing

Cite sources.

[Momma There Goes That Man]

22 hours ago, Cooked Crack said:

 

it’s smart politics for these candidates to say they will pardon Trump even if they wouldn’t really do it. One of the concerns if Trump actually loses the nomination is that he will crater the nominee. If the nominee promises to pardon him, it almost ensures that Trump will support them because it may be his only path to salvation. 

[Cooked Crack]

 

[Captain Wiggles]

[hail2skins]

I always thought I'd vote for ANYONE against Trump in a GOP primary, but I seriously don't think I could pull the lever for Vapid Nikki

[LadySkinsFan]

Once things become complex, they don't go back to simple. 

[88Comrade2000]

1 hour ago, hail2skins said:

I always thought I'd vote for ANYONE against Trump in a GOP primary, but I seriously don't think I could pull the lever for Vapid Nikki

Honestly, how many of these gopers will be around when voting actually starts?   Remember some big Dems like current Veep Harris; dropped out before primaries even began.

[Fergasun]

Christies speech against Trump and the Trumpists booing him was fantastic.  More people cheered for him overall as well.

[@DCGoldPants]

9 hours ago, Cooked Crack said:

 

Nikki is small time. She's doing this to put former GOP presidential candidate on her resume to up speaking fees. 

[hail2skins]

9 hours ago, 88Comrade2000 said:

Honestly, how many of these gopers will be around when voting actually starts?   Remember some big Dems like current Veep Harris; dropped out before primaries even began.

Agree, and for all the freaking about how the candidates are going to divide the vote again and hand the nomination to Trump, I think the field will be whittled significantly by primary time (even though I still think Trump is POTUS #47). But is DeSantis one of those who remains? Time will tell.......

[Cooked Crack]

 

[@DCGoldPants]

55 minutes ago, Cooked Crack said:

 

 

The GOP knows this. There aren't any new Trump voters. The folks who ditched him in 2020 aren't coming back to him. Those who voted for Biden even if they don't love Biden, aren't flipping to Trump...because it's Trump. It's only happening within their base still that the guy is holding everyone else back. 

Edited June 25, 2023 by @DCGoldPants

[The Evil Genius]

I personally can't believe Ozempic D moves the needle 2%. Are people not paying attention to what a clownshow Florida is? 

[Cooked Crack]

 

[88Comrade2000]

It wouldn’t shock me if Trump got back in but it wouldn’t be because of new Trump voters. Trump isn’t gaining new voters. If Trump beats Biden in 24; it would only be because of depressed Democratic turnout. Whether it be because of inflation/economic issues or dissatisfaction with Biden; Dem voters just stay home. That would be the only way Trump wins.

 

 

Other gop candidates have a better shot than Trump.  They will be new and fresh vs old and stale Biden. Also, that contrast in age, may help gop candidates. If the non Trump goper candidate doesn’t come off as extreme, they could beat Biden. Not sure about extreme Ron. Despite what polls says, in a national race; he’s too extreme with his culture war ****.

[spjunkies]

These polls mean zip, just keep pushing forward and stomp the republican idiots.