Comment by TrumpVoter12345 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TrumpVoter12345 | Hacker News Reader

TrumpVoter12345

Throwaway for obvious reasons. It's dangerous to support reform against the reactionary left.

I'm a Trump voter. I consider myself pretty well educated (M.Sc. CS/EE, honors), and I work in a research lab. I'm not your typical Trump voter. Full disclosure: I'm also an immigrant (legal one, nearly 20 years), naturalized US citizen, I make several hundred thousand dollars a year, and pay a ton in taxes. I'm liberal on social issues. I support LGBT and gay marriage. I'm an atheist. I have a wife and a kid. I'm also pro-gun, pro marijuana, and pro letting people do whatever they want with their lives. I'm also extremely fiscally conservative, and against illegal immigration.

My FB feed was so skewed against Trump I had to close my account. Bombshell stories on Clinton wouldn't trend, while the most inane BS about Trump would immediately reach the top and stay there.

It is strange for me to hear FB being accused of being "too conservative". I certainly saw nothing like that "red" feed on WSJ.

BTW, I could elaborate why I voted for Trump if anyone is interested. I don't agree with him on everything, but on the balance he seemed like the lesser of two evils to me.

I would like to hear you elaborate on your reasons for voting Trump, particularly what kinds of changes you are expecting/looking forward to.

Happy to oblige. Let's get the big one out of the way: I disagree with Trump on climate change. That said, the current president did jack sh#t about it, and so would Clinton (who is owned by her wealthy donors). Combined with the fact that the President can't enact policy unilaterally, and there's broad consensus around climate change in the legislative branch, I don't think too much damage will be done if any at all.

I voted for Trump for several primary reasons:

1. I'm very much against war, and Clinton has shown herself as a war hawk again, and again, and again, and basically wrecked much of the Middle East as a secretary of state. Enough is enough. This alone would have been a sufficient reason for me to vote for Trump. 2. I do not believe in government handouts. I believe that for prosperity, and especially to improve the lives of the working poor, it is necessary to create jobs. To do this, you need to reduce supply of unskilled, below-minimum-wage labor flowing across the border, and make keeping jobs in the country the low energy state into which corporations will naturally arrive, if they want to have US markets at their disposal. Trump promised both of those things. 3. I do not believe that free flow of military age males from the countries with which we're de-facto at war is a wise thing to have. Refugee needs would be much better served by their neighbors, not by people whose military blew up their relatives. 4. It is becoming blindingly obvious that Obamacare is a trillion-dollar handout to the Big Pharma and medical insurance companies. The healthcare is SIGNIFICANTLY more expensive now than it was before, and coverage is worse as well. And the cost is growing double digit percentages every year. Donald Trump promised to improve competition by allowing import of drugs and letting people shop for medical insurance across state lines. Not sufficient, IMO, but we just can't afford to pay 10x for the same drugs anymore. 5. The vast majority of Donald Trump's contributions comes from his small scale supporters, not from Wall St and megacorps. As such, he's not beholden to their interests, unlike certain other candidate. Thiel being the only notable exception I can name off the top of my head. 6. I've found what the press did in this cycle completely disgusting.

So TL;DR: anti-war, pro-jobs, anti-sjw/pc, pro-LGBT, not owned by Wall St or the establishment. That sounds pretty good to me, loose tongue and personal antics notwithstanding. I don't agree with him on some things, but by and large there's more overlap than with Clinton.

Thank you for responding, this gave me food for thought. (Also, you can add extra line breaks in your comment to get breaks between your numbered points.)

Also wondering how much you were convinced about Trump's sincerity. Whether he truly cares about the promises he made or the people he made them to.

I'm more convinced of his sincerity than of Clinton's. Let's face it: he doesn't _need_ presidency. 400K a year is pocket change for him, he's not a politician and he did not spend 30 years of his life converging on this goal. Moreover, he partially financed his own campaign with tens of millions of dollars. Truth is, all politicians lie to get elected, he's no exception.

But I believe he did not lie about the core tenets of his campaign: wars, immigration, globalism. He will do something about those at the very least. That's good enough for me.

> That said, the current president did jack sh#t about it

Did you get a chance to see this?

https://www.whitehouse.gov/energy/climate-change

> In September 2013, EPA announced proposed standards for new power plants and initiated outreach to a wide variety of stakeholders to help inform the development of emission guidelines for existing plants. In June 2014, EPA released the Clean Power Plan — the first-ever carbon pollution standards for existing power plants that will protect the health of our children and put our nation on the path toward a 30 percent reduction in carbon pollution from the power sector by 2030.

> Since President Obama took office, the U.S. has increased solar electricity generation by more than ten-fold, and tripled electricity production from wind power. Building on the advancements of the first term, we continue to take new and comprehensive action to encourage cleaner forms of American-made energy. Through public-private partnerships, streamlining the federal permitting process, and furthering American leadership in clean energy, we are on track to meet our clean-energy goals: to install 100 megawatts of renewable capacity across federally subsidized housing by 2020, permit 10 gigawatts of renewable projects on public lands by 2020, deploy 3 gigawatts of renewable energy on military installations by 2025, and double wind and solar electricity generation in the United States — once again — by 2025.

> That is why President Obama created the Advanced Research Project Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) in 2009. This Agency helps to advance high-impact energy projects that have the potential to transform the way we generate, store, and use energy. Every year, the President’s budget continues to invest in the crucial programs that will keep the United States at the forefront of clean energy research, development, and deployment.

> The Obama administration has proposed the toughest fuel economy standards for passenger vehicles in U.S. history, requiring an average performance equivalent of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. The Administration has also finalized the first-ever fuel economy standards for commercial trucks, vans, and buses for model years 2014-2018. These standards are projected to save over 500 million barrels of oil and save vehicle owners and operators an estimated $50 billion in fuel costs.

And I'm quoting about a fifth of what's written there. I am honestly surprised that you can dismiss everything here. Even more so in comparison to the person who tweeted like this.

http://www.ecowatch.com/6-of-donald-trumps-most-outrageous-t...

Blah blah blah, announcements of a plan to create a committee to create a committee. The fact is no tough environmental legislation was actually enacted. And solar grew because it got massively cheaper. Guess what, it'll continue to grow under Trump.

Don't get me wrong, I did vote for Obama (again mostly because he promised to end wars), but he ended up being a complete disappointment on almost everything.

> Blah blah blah, announcements of a plan to create a committee to create a committee.

You're willfully ignoring things I wrote up there to paint a very dishonest narrative.

> Every year, the President’s budget continues to invest in the crucial programs that will keep the United States at the forefront of clean energy research, development, and deployment.

Read this -- research into clean energy requires funding from the federal government. Much like the moonshots projects in the 60s in space and defense, we need something similar in a way that's not entirely dependent on the Wall Street markets (who are focused on short term gains).

Don't you think this is much better and actionable than a committee?

> And solar grew because it got massively cheaper. Guess what, it'll continue to grow under Trump.

Why can't Obama claim credit for that? Do you think it would have happened independently of his administration's viewpoints on solar?

No doubt, if he holds status quo, solar will continue to grow at the same or higher pace. But if he subsidizes coal further, I would be skeptical. But we will know whether your prediction was true or not in a few years time.

> Don't get me wrong, I did vote for Obama

I'm not getting you wrong, you're getting me wrong. You're just dismissing reasonable conversation. And you voting for Obama doesn't give you a blank cheque to parade inarticulate arguments nor does it give you the freedom to cherrypick what you liked and disliked about his election.

> http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/09/politics/supreme-court-obama-e...

Read that. His administration has been hampered by Republicans on partisan lines from 2010, and maybe even day 1 depending on whom you ask.

Don't get me wrong, I welcome criticism about his transparency, whistleblower treatment, and spying.

Why do you consider the Clean Power Plan not tough?

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