President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

The point takes some elaboration, but I'm sure you'll get my drift when I ask ...

Settler X has just staked his claim to 160 acres of land. How "set up" is he?

 

That wasn't until 1862 . . . and you still had to GET TO the land, among other things. Welcome to Donner Pass!

The bottom line is: 18th- and 19th-century America NEEDED more people to do manual labor because it was a unique place in the world. New, untapped and growing. Literally growing.

21st-century America just doesn't need the people and doesn't need that kind of labor.

 

In no way set up.

But to say, as BTE did, that the US government provided no support to immigrants is nonsense. In fact immigrants were incentivized to come here by the promise of free land.

 

Right ... your narrow point is fine ...

 

So, offsetting penalties?

 

Huh. Is there some precedent for changing the Senate rules, to only require 50 votes?

Maybe Harry Reid can help us to answer the question.

 

I just don't want to hear any whining about it when the shoe is on the other foot. Those rules have protected the minority from tyranny of the majority for many years, with good reason. We're liable to find ourselves passing policy only to see it all ripped down and rewritten after each electoral change, as Trump has Obama's policies. Some of those changes are good, some are horrible, and I'm certain that would be true of both sides. For instance, Trump's FTC is making changes to protect payday lenders and Interior is tearing down regulations put in place on offshore drilling after the last catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico.

 

Minor quibble.

Western migration was incentivized. Mostly for those already here. Who had received nothing to that point.

Not sure how loudly we were screaming across the pond, "Hey, lookie here! Free land! Come on over!"

It was more, "Shit, the southern states seceded. We just lost a hunk of our agriculture. We gotta find a way to use this stuff out west!"

 

Pretty damn loudly. The reason Turkey Red became the dominant strain of wheat in Kansas is because so-called "Roosians" (actually Germans who'd been encouraged by Catherine the Great to move to the Volga Basin to improve the farming there) brought it there in the 1870s.

 

Maybe we can get some Norwegians to emigrate here if we offer them free land.

Maybe offer them part of ANWR. The weather won’t phase them, and they can get it in the Alaska Permanent Fund, which will offset their losses for giving up Norwegian residency.

 

One of our priests worked a little immigration into her sermon on Sunday. She quoted Knute Rockne, then referred to him as "an immigrant [pause] from Norway."