US 2024 Presidential Election

Silvanus

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I showed you the stupid policies (which I think everyone willing to acknowledge that test agrees is rather stupid)
You showed us the test, a lot of which does seem pretty poorly composed and weighted, yes.

the explicit motivation of the policies
Well, you showed us that a motivation they had in modifying the hiring process was diversity. You haven't drawn any credible connection between it and the questions you're objecting to, other than speculation that they were used as proxy characteristics.

the intended result of throwing out most of the applicants
An intended result of any hiring process's first stage is to filter out most of the candidates. You claimed something very different: that these questions intended to throw out candidates based on their RNO or sex.

[...] but throwing out extra piles of people who pass the traditional exam is at least questionable policy in the face of that shortage.
Wait, if they were filtered out by failing to reach the pass rate of this test, then they didn't pass.
 

Nielas

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Does he realize that Canada would be such a blue state that it'd make California look like Kansas? No, of course he doesn't. He probably thinks they'd support him 100% out of "gratitude".
Right now Doug Ford, the right-wing Conservative Premier of Ontario is pretty much the most vocally anti-Trump of the major Canadian politicians. Ontario has an election coming up so Ford (a very savvy politician) is pretty much betting his political future on the fact that this represents the view of the majority of voters in Ontario.
 
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Chimpzy

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Trump orders creation of US sovereign wealth fund, says it could buy TikTok

WASHINGTON, Feb 3 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday ordering the creation of a sovereign wealth fund within the next year, saying it could potentially buy the short video app TikTok.

Trump offered little in the way of detail and it was unclear how such a wealth fund would work. Typically such funds rely on a country's budget surplus to make investments, but the U.S. operates at a deficit. Its creation also would likely require approval from Congress.

"We're going to create a lot of wealth for the fund," Trump told reporters. "And I think it's about time that this country had a sovereign wealth fund."

Trump had previously floated such a government investment vehicle as a presidential candidate, saying it could fund "great national endeavors" like infrastructure projects such as highways and airports, manufacturing, and medical research.

Administration officials did not say how the fund would operate or be financed, but Trump has previously said it could be funded by "tariffs and other intelligent things."

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters the fund would be set up within the next 12 months.

"We're going to monetize the asset side of the U.S. balance sheet for the American people," Bessent said. "There'll be a combination of liquid assets, assets that we have in this country as we work to bring them out for the American people."

The Biden administration also was considering establishing such a fund prior to Trump's election in November, according to The New York Times and Financial Times.

Investors on Wall Street said the news came as a surprise.

"Creating a sovereign wealth fund suggests that a country has savings that will go up and can be allocated to this," said Colin Graham, head of multi-asset strategies at Robeco in London. "The economic rules of thumb don't add up."

There are over 90 such funds across the world managing over $8 trillion in assets, according to the International Forum of Sovereign Wealth Funds.

In another surprise twist, Trump suggested the wealth fund could buy Tiktok, whose fate has been up in the air since a law requiring its Chinese owner ByteDance to either sell it on national security grounds or face a ban took effect on Jan. 19.

Trump, after taking office on Jan. 20, signed an executive order seeking to delay by 75 days the enforcement of the law.

Trump has said that he was in talks with multiple people over TikTok's purchase and would likely have a decision on the app's future in February. The popular app has about 170 million American users.
 

The Rogue Wolf

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So Trump- who criticized Biden for "playing favorites in the market"- is floating the idea of having the government outright buy a company. For what? What strategic purpose does this serve for the country? Is it going to do more for us than USAID did?

Oh yeah, by the way, actual President of the United States Elon Musk wants USAID shut down, calling it a "criminal organization".

 

Agema

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Right now Doug Ford, the right-wing Conservative Premier of Ontario is pretty much the most vocally anti-Trump of the major Canadian politicians. Ontario has an election coming up so Ford (a very savvy politician) is pretty much betting his political future on the fact that this represents the view of the majority of voters in Ontario.
I mean, that's the fascinating thing about that brand of the right wing. They love a certain amount of mutual support and joint purpose, but at the end of the day they are nationalists. Whilst its nice to have bonds of convenience between nationalists of different states when the main aim is winning elections against the hated liberal-left, once they gain power they're all about screwing over other countries, and next thing you know they're all at each other's throats.
 

Agema

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So Trump- who criticized Biden for "playing favorites in the market"- is floating the idea of having the government outright buy a company. For what? What strategic purpose does this serve for the country? Is it going to do more for us than USAID did?
Some ideas, from bad to good.

I doubt they'd be so brazenly corrupt, but they could use Federal funds to buy it, and then offload the shares super-cheap to themselves: Musk, Trump Media and Technology Group, etc.

One might note that most unscrupulous governments have very happily corrupted media that are government owned to benefit themselves. Typically this is state TV/radio broadcasters and newspapers. But why not online media? It's entirely feasible the Federal government could buy TikTok, install a very ideological board to run it, who then ensure the algorithm favours their ideology and party.

If the USA is worried that TikTok is a security risk because China can acquire user data out of TikTok, so can the USA easily acquire user data from it if they own it. Yummy!

One can argue the simple aim of hammering TikTok was to spite China: a refusal to allow China to have a massive success story (at least in the US market). But it's valuable. If no US company is willing to buy it, why not have the USA buy it? The alternative presumably is that it just dies (in the USA).

Plenty of economists argue that it is beneficial for states - even ones without massive oil slush funds - to create their own sovereign wealth funds. The USA could very reasonably also do so. Why not start with TikTok given that it has decided it needs to be sold?
 

TheMysteriousGX

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Maybe I'm too Montanan for this, but how does the government get around to buying a multi-national tech company that doesn't want to be sold?

Like, eminent domain, I get, but that's actual stuff. Land. Buildings. Stuff that doesn't vanish when the power goes out. I guess there's servers to seize, but what's stopping Bytedance from just not having USTok and Ticktok interact, or firing up the ol' electro-magnets?
 

Cicada 5

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But is that a crime? Not a rhetorical or smartass question, legitimately wondering if that would be a crime.
Doxxing in and of itself isn't illegal but it often does lead to other criminal offenses like stalking, intimidation and identity theft.

If these people are harmed as a result of this, that's just more ammo for Trump and Musk.
 

Trunkage

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I never said it was better, but the sky isn't falling like the left likes to claim. Trump isn't an outsider but he is more of an outsider than Biden or Kamala. Why would he know it's called Project 2025 though was asked? It was never called that before. What goal posts? Why should anyone be worried about Project 2025? Half the shit people claim is in there, isn't in there.
If a 10th of what people think is in there is actually in there, the US is fucked

So far, it's already way past 10% and we are two weeks in
 

Trunkage

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So Trump- who criticized Biden for "playing favorites in the market"- is floating the idea of having the government outright buy a company. For what? What strategic purpose does this serve for the country? Is it going to do more for us than USAID did?

Oh yeah, by the way, actual President of the United States Elon Musk wants USAID shut down, calling it a "criminal organization".

Buying Tiktok?

I don't know if you have noticed but all other major social media is now controlled by right wingers. Tiktok I'd last man standing...

It's been the plan the whole time

Fun tidbit I found out today. The Wicked book, written in the 90s, had a bunch of young people obsessed technology called ticktockers...
 

Agema

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Trump can just tell Musk or Zuckerberg to give him whatever information he wants and they'll do it without even pausing in sucking his dick.
I'm not sure they would. They both run global businesses which risk huge damage if their customers believed that they would just hand over information to the US government at a whim. Here they are relying on the principle that the USA has a robust legal system that is supposed to constrain what the US government can do, thus providing a level of security. Contrast with China, which has a law that appears to more overtly say that any company must hand over data on request from the Chinese government, and why there are plenty of people who decline to use some Chinese goods and services.
 

Satinavian

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I'm not sure they would. They both run global businesses which risk huge damage if their customers believed that they would just hand over information to the US government at a whim. Here they are relying on the principle that the USA has a robust legal system that is supposed to constrain what the US government can do, thus providing a level of security. Contrast with China, which has a law that appears to more overtly say that any company must hand over data on request from the Chinese government, and why there are plenty of people who decline to use some Chinese goods and services.
Iirc the US does actually have a similar law (well, several, but most relevant was the now thankfully expired Patriot act).

The only exceptions are information about US citizens. But the rest is fair game. And the EU and US butted heads about this several times. That is also why the European Courts cancelled the safe harbor agreement and why the EU later negotiated some special "EU-US-privacy shield" which the EU courts later struck down again because the US couldn't keep its fingers from EU users Facebook data. The third attempts is in negotiation but currently all those US and Chinese companies are basically required to keep most of that data in the EU under EU law even if compliance is an issue here.

I don't feel my data more secure with US companies than with Chinese ones when it comes to intrusive governments. And i am very glad i am in the EU with lawmakers and courts protecting our information.

However I don't know how much or if any protection UK citizens get these days.
 
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Agema

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Iirc the US does actually have a similar law.
It does, but as I understand there are (theoretically) more legal safeguards, that the government or law enforcement agencies are expected to provide a justification that requires independent legal permission from the judiciary for anyone they want information on. I mean, basically, akin to a search warrant. In practice that might be relatively thin, but it's still better than China which I think would face no meaningful obstructions at all if it demanded data.
 

Satinavian

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It does, but as I understand there are (theoretically) more legal safeguards, that the government or law enforcement agencies are expected to provide a justification that requires independent legal permission from the judiciary for anyone they want information on. I mean, basically, akin to a search warrant. In practice that might be relatively thin, but it's still better than China which I think would face no meaningful obstructions at all if it demanded data.
Yes, but that was done via secret courts (FISC) that seem to have given away the information every time anyway. That is not proper oversight. It got so bad that even congress eventually bothered to take a deeper look at what happened.


I don't feel there any meaningful difference between China and the US when it comes to protecting data of foreigners from nosy governments or other misuse.
 
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Agema

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Maybe I'm too Montanan for this, but how does the government get around to buying a multi-national tech company that doesn't want to be sold?

Like, eminent domain, I get, but that's actual stuff. Land. Buildings. Stuff that doesn't vanish when the power goes out. I guess there's servers to seize, but what's stopping Bytedance from just not having USTok and Ticktok interact, or firing up the ol' electro-magnets?
If a company is crippled by the government, the company is all but valueless and the shareholders lose their money. Therefore, a threat to cripple the company may cause the shareholders to sell because it's the only way they're getting their money back.

Or, they could agree to lose the money and terminate the company as a great big "Fuck you" to the country that stole their business. But generally, investors want their money back.