General Election Thread: Two Weeks Out

Baconwfu said:
I agree that no candidates (should) see campaigns as ways to enrich themselves. My point is that if Donald has an empty floor in his office building and he wants to use that for his campaign and wants to charge his campaign market rates (and those rates are reasonable for the purposes of a campaign) then he's not "enriching" himself. If he's charging his campaign market rates then in all probability, he be charging some other organization the same rate if this campaign wasn't there, so in an economic sense he's no better off.
Where he gets into "enriching" himself is if he's charging way more than he could get on the market, if he's occupying more space than is necessary or the level of the rent (market price or not) isn't justifiable for it's purposes.
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There's some evidence that he's doing that. It's particularly interesting that the value of his brand is decreasing so what normally would be market rate is more than what someone else would pay.
 
RJKarl said:
It's enriching yourself if you use OPM to pay your own companies for goods, services and rents that you can purchase from others. By definition, he is economically better off if he rents space from himself that wasn't currently being used by others. Further, he is doing a disservice to donors by renting the most expensive space he can find versus quality space that is far cheaper.

I'm not saying it's illegal, but it is certainly unseemly and an unwise of donations.
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I know you're not saying it's illegal, but I'm saying that assuming everything is on the up and up, (meaning he didn't overcharge his campaign or anything like that) it doesn't matter if he utilized his assets or someone else's, it's all the same, and really even could be smarter to use his own because that lowers transaction costs and simplifies a lot (i.e. lots of flexibility and you don't have to worry about dealing with dickhead landlords)

It's not enriching yourself if OPM was going to have to pay for the same things at the same prices and his companies were going to make the same sales/perform the same services for someone else at the same prices

I said, "in an economic sense" which does not mean economically. From an economic standpoint he is no better off because the space would've been rented anyway. Economically he is better off because he has income coming in, but unless he's charging more than market, it's not more income than would've been coming in anyway, thus he is no better off "in an economic sense"....that's a bit nuance I know, but there is a difference.



Correct me if I'm wrong, but you don't know what Trump is charging his campaign or how expensive his office space is (although i'm sure it's not cheap). Also, what benefits are associated with having offices in Manhattan (I assume that's where his offices are)? I mean, he was probably going to have offices there anyway because he's that kind of guy. You can definitely argue that having an office in Manhattan is frivolous, but there is obviously an argument that it has value and unless you're an expert on such thing, you kind of have to give him/them the benefit of the doubt on that one.
 
RJKarl said:
It's enriching yourself if you use OPM to pay your own companies for goods, services and rents that you can purchase from others. By definition, he is economically better off if he rents space from himself that wasn't currently being used by others. Further, he is doing a disservice to donors by renting the most expensive space he can find versus quality space that is far cheaper.

I'm not saying it's illegal, but it is certainly unseemly and an unwise use of donations.
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LOL. Democrats use OPM for everything they do. That's the way they buy the votes to stay in power. (Along with votes from naïve millennials like many on this board who have never had to pay for any of the giveaway programs that the Democrats are constantly proposing to buy votes.)
 
bobknightfan said:
LOL. Democrats use OPM for everything they do. That's the way they buy the votes to stay in power. (Along with votes from naïve millennials like many on this board who have never had to pay for any of the giveaway programs that the Democrats are constantly proposing to buy votes.)
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Funny words coming form a guy who's generation about to bankrupt medical care and social security by ignoring end of life costs their whole lives
 
knowell said:
This from a guy who plans to vote for Hillary. No one has used political power for personal gain better than the Clintons.

She is the living incarnation of cronyism.
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That's not the same as running for President to gain mailing lists and to scam old ladies for donations to pay political operatives with no real desire to govern.
 
PhDeac said:
Yeah. I found it weird that bacon spent so much time defending Trump hypothetically instead of just looking up if Trump was overcharging his campaign.
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I wasn't defending Trump for the sake of defending him, I loathe Trump, but I also hate muckraking, if you're going to criticize someone, criticize them from doing something wrong, not just some bullshit talking point that is meant to be misleading. In the original post from RJ that I responded to there was absolutely nothing wrong or unethical about what RJ described...which is to say there is nothing wrong with the fact that Trump's campaign was paying him to rent his office space/plane/whatever. There is nothing wrong with that or morally or legally. I did go so far as to say if he was overcharging or something then that's a different story...but how in God's name would I know if he's overcharging his campaign or billing unnecessary items for his personal gain. I know little about campaigns and little to nothing about office rental in Manhattan...point being, I didn't look it up because I figured all I would find was articles like the ones posted which didn't really say anything.
For full disclosure, I only skimmed those articles. They say he quadrupled/quintupled his rent paid, but it also says that his campaign used proportionately more space and that they spent less on space than Hilary, so really there doesn't seem to be anything sketchy going on there...just some BS talking points. If I missed some other telling info in the articles then I apologize and will stand corrected.
 
bobknightfan said:
Do you think those numbers are good for Hillary? How familiar are you with North Carolina politics?

There are many people registered as Democrats in NC who stopped voting for Democrats in national elections a long time ago. They continued to register as Democrats...and often vote for Democrats in local & state elections (The Democratic hold on Council of States offices is an example of that) because many local Democrats in the state, particularly in non-urban areas, do not reflect the views of national Democrats....but I would say that as much as 20% of the registered Democrat vote regularly votes for Republicans in national elections.

The GOP situation is nothing like that. Almost none of the registered Republicans in North Carolina are going to vote for Hillary.

The Independents are a mixed bag....but I would guess that up to 2/3 of the registered unaffiliated in North Carolina vote for Republicans on a regular basis.

So when those things are considered, those numbers you quoted don't look nearly as good for Democrats as someone who is unfamiliar with the way North Carolinians are registered and the historical situation behind why they are registered as they are.
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What the hell does any of that have to do with NC early voting going 2-1 Democrat? You can spin till you're dizzy, bottom line is NC is voting Democrat.
 
Deacsfan27 said:
According to the NC BOE website it's:

Dems: 39.6%
Pubs: 30.1%
UnAff: 29.8%

Which is really surprising.

https://enr.ncsbe.gov/voter_stats/results.aspx?date=10-22-2016
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Thanks for the link. The county I grew up in and registered to vote in, is 67% Democrat and less than 15% Republican. Almost all candidates in local races were Dems, so I registered Dem to vote in primaries. Never felt the need to change even though I vote Pub at least 2/3 of the time.

And holy cow is Watauga County white.
 
Since there's no news today...

 
myDeaconmyhand said:
What the hell does any of that have to do with NC early voting going 2-1 Democrat? You can spin till you're dizzy, bottom line is NC is voting Democrat.
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You can't be this dense. Do you actually think that 2/3 of the early vote in North Carolina has been for Hillary Clinton? Nobody knows how these people have voted. All these numbers tell us is the number of registered voters by party who have voted.

What the hell does what I said have to do with this? It's simple. Registered Democrat votes in North Carolina does not equal actual Democrat votes in North Carolina....for reasons I gave in my post.
 
bym051d said:
Since there's no news today...

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latest
 
bobknightfan said:
LOL. Democrats use OPM for everything they do. That's the way they buy the votes to stay in power. (Along with votes from naïve millennials like many on this board who have never had to pay for any of the giveaway programs that the Democrats are constantly proposing to buy votes.)
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ImTheCaptain said:
Funny words coming form a guy who's generation about to bankrupt medical care and social security by ignoring end of life costs their whole lives
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Can't we agree that millennials and boomers both suck equally?
 
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