Bernie Sanders- Does He Have A Chance?

[EquALLity]

Is passing legislation as president just as easy?

Well, they're not exactly the same, but they require similar things.

Also, since Bernie has an amazing record with this (better than the other candidates, IMO), it makes him better with it than the other candidates in passing legislation.

That hardly addresses my argument.

Yes it does. There are no guarantees for an executive order with any candidate, but Bernie's are better, so he's the best option.

I'm asking, it doesn't make much sense to have a government with socialism, unless a justification can be given. Plus, as I asked, it doesn't make much sense to me if you are for equal rights yet you're still a statist. But that's just me.

I don't understand how you can have socialism without government.

Socialism is when, through taxation, the government redistributes wealth to help people with social programs. It also requires regulation on business, which makes government necessary.

Where's the contradiction in being for equal rights and government?
IMO the government is necessary to grant people equal rights.

[Red]

Well, they're not exactly the same, but they require similar things.

How?

Also, since Bernie has an amazing record with this (better than the other candidates, IMO), it makes him better with it than the other candidates in passing legislation.

How, again?

Yes it does. There are no guarantees for an executive order with any candidate, but Bernie's are better, so he's the best option.

False dichotomy?

I don't understand how you can have socialism without government.

Well from what I heard socialism is about promoting equality isn't it?

Socialism is when, through taxation, the government redistributes wealth to help people with social programs. It also requires regulation on business, which makes government necessary.

I thought it was where all the profits are distributed equally to everyone in the company.

Where's the contradiction in being for equal rights and government?

Well the government has power, social hierarchy and such.

IMO the government is necessary to grant people equal rights.

Yeah the mass population, but what about the population as a whole?

[EquALLity]

How?

Reaching out to republicans, for one thing.

How, again?

If it makes you better at passing legislation as President if you've done it in Congress, since Bernie has been best at it in Congress, he'd be best at getting legislation passed and getting stuff done as President.

False dichotomy?

How is that a false dichotomy? What's the alternative to Bernie Sanders?

Well from what I heard socialism is about promoting equality isn't it?

Not really, actually.

Socialism is about the economy, and obviously that impacts other things, but not social issues. And it doesn't promote economic equality. It just means that we should redistribute wealth from the very rich to those who need it, so that everyone essentially has a basic standard of living.

I thought it was where all the profits are distributed equally to everyone in the company.

You mean in the country?

That's communism, not socialism. They're extremely different, and the misconception that they're the same is the reason why many people who love socialist programs (like Medicare) are against what they think is socialism, and think Bernie is a communist.

Well the government has power, social hierarchy and such.

What do you mean by 'social hierarchy'?

They have positions of power, yeah. They were elected to, because representative democracy is the best political system a country of hundreds of millions of people can have. There's nothing inherently wrong with them having those positions.

Yeah the mass population, but what about the population as a whole?

What do you mean?

[brimstoneSalad]

They just think they're different in skin color, but that skin color is irrelevant, and doesn't make anyone superior.

In what way is the skin color of the Muslim, Jewish, and Christian race different?

If somebody has light skin, does that make that person European? Does that same person become Hispanic after getting a sun tan?

Stereotyping people by "race" as having a particular skin color is in itself racist.

As far as I've seen/heard, Sanders is more racist than Trump: Trump is nationalistic, and possibly prejudiced against Islam as a religion.
Why? Trump doesn't really talk much about race, and Sanders does. And Sanders stereotyped an entire "race" as belonging to or only having one religion, or a religion as a race implying he thinks it's not a choice to have that religion (which is worse? I don't know).

Except it doesn't, and we know that Muslims face a lot of discrimination and bigotry in the US.

That doesn't really say anything about the net consequences.

The golem effect could be very compelling.

What does that have to do with this?

If we treat Muslims as criminals, they may become criminals because we treated them that way. However, this is a matter needing empirical evidence to compare with the advantages (if any) it provides.

Can't he? Some republicans have backed his ideas, and a lot of the republican party agrees with them.

That doesn't matter much, many are just impractical, and others will be stopped by the courts.

We don't know if he would really do these things, but we do know that he is unpredictable and willing to incite violence.
Do you really want to take that chance?

He said not to hurt anybody, I don't think you're treating him fairly. You're cherry picking on both sides, but the truth is neither is an angel, and neither is a devil. Trump and Sanders both have problems and advantages. The case before us is to weigh those, and it's not something that can be done yet.

This is something he might be able to do as president.

Are you not concerned about it?

Not particularly. I'm more concerned about the billions than the few dozen who may or may not be waterboarded during interrogation. It's unfortunate, but I don't see it as a major issue considering the numbers are so small.

It's as if Trump said, as president, he would murder a hundred kittens. Sounds terrible, but in perspective it's a drop in the bucket since the overall policies of a president affect billions, and if Sanders stands in the way of genetic modification, nuclear power, and mainstream effective medicine, he will harm so many more people that neither Trump's hypothetical kitten murdering nor waterboarding can overpower that in terms of harm.

It is, but he's calling for vigilante justice and assault, while that stuff is simultaneously happening at his rallies? Does this not worry you at all?
Trump calling for protesters to be beaten, and them being beaten, doesn't concern you?

It doesn't worry me. He clarified in the very quotes you posted and said not to hurt them, and he backtracked on this position because he realized he spoke wrongly and called for excessive force.

This whole thing is being blown way out of proportion. He said something he should have, then backed down a bit to a more reasonable position.

What do you mean, something for the courts to worry about?

If he really incited violence, that's for the actual criminal and civil courts to work out, not for the court of public opinion and political rhetoric.
If he did something illegal, he'll be accountable for it, and if he's in jail, obviously he's not going to be able to run for office.

I don't think so. Why can't he? An executive order led to Japanese internment camps.

It's thanks to the Japanese internment camps that that kind of thing won't happen again. That was a disaster, and a well recognized violation of civil rights; the courts will squash it before it get anywhere if he tries to do something like that.

Not in at least three areas. He's not against GMOs; he just wants consumers to know what's in their food.

Then somebody needs to inform him that all human crops are genetically modified by cross breeding in various ways, that lab genetic modification is safer than crossbreeding, and that the status of a food being "GMO" or not doesn't give consumers meaningful information about the nutrition or contents of the food and so by labeling it as such the effect is coming out against GMO food and scaring people for no reason, harming the marketability of safer and higher yielding GMO crops, thus harming agriculture and our environment in the process.

The only reason he would support labeling GMOs is if he thinks they are different or somehow unsafe -- the only reason is him being against them.

Like I said, it's like forcing food that has been handled or grown by black people to be labeled as such so irrational racists can avoid it. The only reason to do or agree with that is if you're a racist (or just pandering).
It's not relevant information that the consumer needs to have, and by listing it you only generate fear and paranoia about a perfectly safe thing.

It's disappointing that he doesn't support nuclear energy, and has good things to say about alternative 'medicine', but those are just two issues.

Those are two of three huge issues.
If Sanders doesn't change his position on at least one of these before the election, I don't think I can support him in good conscience.
A change in just one of these would tell me he can be reasoned with, and can be sensible and overcome his own biases in the face of evidence.

And that's amazing. We need peace in the middle east. We need to stop wasting resources and sending our soldiers out to die in pointless and perpetual wars that further destabilize the region.

Trump was against invading Iraq too. He'll probably pull out of the Middle East all the same (although he may make less effort to establish peace there). The effect should be similar.
If Sanders is slightly better on this issue, that's barely meaningful. It doesn't stop climate change. It doesn't improve agricultural stability and the world food supply. It makes oil cheaper, which will increase the rate of global warming since more will be exported and burnt.

It doesn't have to crash so often; that's a myth put out by the banks.

I didn't say it has to crash, but it recovers. It's not a very big deal.

What about the seven-hundred billion (minimum- some sources say it's over fourteen trillion) dollars we had to pay to bail them out?

You mean the money that was paid back with interest?
Not an issue to me.

Bernie has a comprehensive plan to regulate Wall Street. He wants to break up the big banks, for one thing.

That may be a bad idea.

He just wants more studies to demonstrate its safety.

That makes me like him much less, not more. It's a common dishonest line of political rhetoric, and tells me just how ignorant and intellectually dishonest he is on this topic.

More studies? More testing? Does he want to kill some more animals testing radiation, which is already well established?
What does he expect this nebulous goal to accomplish, when we already know exactly how and why all modern nuclear disasters occurred, and that -- by the way -- they kill fewer people a year than solar power?

How is it racist to have policemen record the skin-color of the people they investigate?

They're not recording skin color: that would be fine. They're recording "race". They already take photos of people, so it seems irrelevant. If you want to do computer analysis, there's plenty there to work with.

It's preventing racism by holding police accountable.

Doesn't sound like that. Sounds like it's drumming up political rhetoric and making the issue worse.

Maybe the machine switched black and Latino inputs to white inputs?

Yes. The way computer fields work is that they often have a default value, or one at the top to select: probably white, since it's the most common. If the field was buggy and wasn't registering for some reason, it could have returned the wrong value if badly programmed (which these systems often are).

Have any computer scientists weighed in on this issue?

Anyway, like I said, even if they were changing it, that doesn't mean they're racist: they were probably just trying to do their jobs and dealing with the racist system that's criticizing them for arresting more blacks and Latinos than whites when all they're doing is trying their best to be fair.

You can't make assumptions like this without evidence.

The fact that he suggested the President was born in Kenya, and basically started the birther movement is enough.

That's nationalistic, not racist. Trump was just jumping on the bandwagon there.

As Bernie put it, "As I mentioned to you earlier, my father was born in Poland. Like Obama, I am the son of an immigrant father. Nobody has ever asked me for my birth certificate. Maybe it's because of the color of my skin being different than Obama's,"

Maybe. We don't know why this is.
It could also be because of concerns that he might be a Muslim, due to the prevalence of Islam in Africa. The claims tended to come hand in hand.
Reasoning probably varied between different people.

There's also the fact that he wouldn't condemn the endorsement of the KKK when he was questioned about it.

You mean this?
http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/28/politics/ ... remacists/

He said he didn't know anything about it. You expect him to condemn somebody he doesn't know anything about on the word of a Journalist who may be trying to trick him? His response seemed pretty reasonable. Just 'I don't know anything about this, send me a list and I'll research it'

Then there's what he said about undocumented immigrants from Mexico.

Again, he has been espousing nationalistic sentiments. Undocumented Mexican immigrant is not a race.
I don't agree with him, but I don't see this as a very big issue compared to global warming, safe medicine, and protecting the environment with efficient agriculture; it's also an issue I doubt he'll do anything about (he's not going to deport everybody).

He hasn't clarified them. He just says, "I don't condone violence" and "I don't speak about violence".

That sounds like a correction to me. What I read was what you posted, about using violence (knocking somebody down, or something like that) to stop somebody else from using violence (throwing a tomato). It didn't seem like a big deal.

Black people, despite using marijuana at the essentially same rate as white people, are four times more likely to be arrested for it.
Black people make up 27.4% of impoverished people in America, and white people make up 9.9%. So, black people are about 2.7 times more likely to be in poverty.

2.7 < 4. I think poverty plays a role, but I find it undeniable that there's a racial element.

You completely ignored population density. Why? I very explicitly outlined it, and it's relevance.
You can not ignore confounding variables and then claim causation. And it's not like you didn't know about it: I just told you about it.
Like I said, poor white people are usually hill billies, low population density means less police enforcement and fewer arrests.

Even within a city, poor whites are less concentrated:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/won ... e-poverty/

In St. Louis, 29.5 percent of poor African Americans live in concentrated poverty. Among poor whites, just 1.6 percent do.

If the arrest rate of blacks were 50 times higher or more in St. Lois, then you could allege racism, because you would have finally controlled for poverty and population density together.

Check out their graphic:


New York is your best case (Seattle might be better, but it's hard to read because the bars are smaller). About 17.5% of poor whites compared with about 26% of poor blacks in concentrated poverty
26/17.5 = 1.49

Multiply that in to your calculation:

27.4 / 9.9 = 2.77
2.77 * 1.49 = 4.13

If blacks are only being arrested at four times the rate, that's actually low based on that number, and it means police may be slightly racist against whites.
But I'm not going to say that, obviously, because there may be other variables.

Anyway, 4 times higher is about what you would expect from a non-racist system based on concentration of poverty in urban areas.

Like I said, it's dishonest to assert a causation from racism there when you aren't accounting for the variables.
And it's very easy for people to choose to ignore the variables, as you just did, because they are caught up in the political rhetoric, convinced of their positions, and really it's more work to look for numbers and do the math so why bother proving yourself wrong?

Working to prove oneself wrong is a mark of a critical thinker. It's not like Sanders doesn't have access to this information. He chooses not to, because he already believes what he believes and has no interest in correcting himself. His narrative is that there's wide spread racism in the police force, and that's what he's going with: evidence be damned.

Combine that with the prevalence of racism and that police are lying about their racial profiling, there's absolutely nothing dishonest about asserting a causation here.

You're letting political rhetoric and the assumptions those derive from get the better of you. It's dishonest to claim causation because it ignores confounding variables, as I showed above.

This is not the regressive left; this is the progressive left. We're trying to bring awareness to the racial issues so that we can progress.
Regressive is the denial of the systematic racism.

No, they're just fabricating racism where there isn't any evidence, and then inventing new racism to replace it -- that's why it's regressive.
We need to advance into a post racial society, and leave ALL the racism behind.

I found this: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=37

Of the 1,791,000 bachelor’s degrees conferred in 2011–12, the greatest numbers of degrees were conferred in the fields of business (367,000), social sciences and history (179,000), health professions and related programs (163,000), psychology (109,000), and education (106,000). [...].

That looks good to me. All of these are important, and many are STEM.

That's unfortunate. These are not mainly STEM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science,_ ... ite_note-1
None of these are Natural sciences, Technology, Engineering, or Mathematics.
Healthcare (mainly nursing, probably) is the only thing that comes close.

"Social sciences" and to a significant degree psychology (with few exceptions) are soft sciences, or even pseudosciences (often), and they are very broad categories that contain the bullshit degrees I talked about like "gender studies".
http://www.genderstudies.ucla.edu/

socialsciences.jpg

Positivist social scientists use methods resembling those of the natural sciences as tools for understanding society, and so define science in its stricter modern sense. Interpretivist social scientists, by contrast, may use social critique or symbolic interpretation rather than constructing empirically falsifiable theories, and thus treat science in its broader sense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_science

This is not science. Like academic philosophy, the field is wrought with problems, and just because it has "science" in the name of the department doesn't mean it has anything to do with actual science.

So, unless I hear more in terms of limiting free tuition to useful degrees, I'll have to consider this a negative for Sanders. I doubt he has any interest in promoting STEM over "social science" and other useless degrees.

Education as a field of study is only useful to the extent that you're educating people on something useful.

I don't have studies on it, but other countries can afford it.

Just because some countries can afford it doesn't mean it's good or useful.

Perhaps, but then it'd bring the issue to their attention, and since almost all Americans want money out of politics, it could influence states to fix the issue.

States can't fix the issue either, the court will overturn those laws. It has to be an Amendment.

I agree that we also need a Constitutional Amendment, and Bernie can achieve that through the Supreme Court.

That's not how Amendments work. Neither the Supreme Court nor the President have anything to do with constitutional amendments.

Current Justices who voted for Citizens United:
[...]Justice Anthony M. Kennedy (likely to be replaced)
[...]Justice Elena Kagan wasn't on the court during this ruling, but she seems to be against it.
He's also likely to replace Antonin Scalia, who voted in favor of Citizens United.

We don't know how Kagan will vote, so I wouldn't count on that. If there are two replacements, there's a very good chance. What are the chances of Scala and Kennedy being replaced?
Won't they pretty much die on the bench if they have to, to keep from being replaced by Sanders?
What are the chances of them dying in the next nine years?
Will his replacements even be able to be confirmed?

Remember, a case with standing also has to get to the supreme court, and that's not always easy.

What reason is there to believe that? He's never suggested it.

We'll see when he's running for the general. Even Cenk said this. There will be a Trump 2.0 when it comes time for the general, and he will appeal to popular policies.

Not that I'm aware of, but if other countries can afford these things, why wouldn't we be able to when we decrease unnecessary military spending etc. like they have?

That kind of reasoning doesn't necessarily follow. Look at the tax rates in those countries and their fiscal conditions, their populations, their GDP per capita. There are too many variables to make assumptions like that. I hope I already showed that with the arrest rates. These are complicated issues, and you need professional economists to review them.

[EquALLity]

In what way is the skin color of the Muslim, Jewish, and Christian race different?

If somebody has light skin, does that make that person European? Does that same person become Hispanic after getting a sun tan?

Stereotyping people by "race" as having a particular skin color is in itself racist.

It's about 'natural' skin.
Anyway, I'm not saying it's accurate; I'm just explaining what most people are thinking about this. Mostly people believe in race. Do you think most people are racists?

As far as I've seen/heard, Sanders is more racist than Trump: Trump is nationalistic, and possibly prejudiced against Islam as a religion.
Why? Trump doesn't really talk much about race, and Sanders does. And Sanders stereotyped an entire "race" as belonging to or only having one religion, or a religion as a race implying he thinks it's not a choice to have that religion (which is worse? I don't know).

Are you serious?

1) Trump is racist, as demonstrated by that he started birtherism, wouldn't condemn the KKK, and because of what he said about undocumented Mexicans.
2) Trump is clearly and undeniably bigoted against Muslims. He wants them to wear IDs, register in a national database, and to prevent them from immigrating here. He also doesn't seem to give a shit about all the Muslims he'd kill by invading Iraq and by bombing the hell out of the Middle East. He's not 'possibly' prejudiced. It's extremely clear.
3) Bernie talks about race, but in the context of condemning racism. He called bigotry against Muslims racist, but it's obvious that he doesn't think all people from the ME are Muslim or have to be Muslim. It's just commonly called racism, and is probably often motivated by racism, so he called it racism. He was incorrect, but it's absurd to call that racist.

That doesn't really say anything about the net consequences.

It's something to consider. We need studies, but that's not what people like Trump want (because they don't actually care about net good- they're just bigots).

If we treat Muslims as criminals, they may become criminals because we treated them that way. However, this is a matter needing empirical evidence to compare with the advantages (if any) it provides.

Ah, I see.

That doesn't matter much, many are just impractical, and others will be stopped by the courts.

Do you want to take that chance?

There are probably plenty of courts that would be happy to discriminate Muslims.
We've seen things like that in the past (courts ruling in very outlandishly right-wing ways).

He said not to hurt anybody, I don't think you're treating him fairly. You're cherry picking on both sides, but the truth is neither is an angel, and neither is a devil. Trump and Sanders both have problems and advantages. The case before us is to weigh those, and it's not something that can be done yet.

Right, he said not to hurt anybody (while also saying he'll cover the legal fees if you do hurt someone), after saying to hurt people multiple times, knowing that there's actual violence at his rallies.

That's what he did. We can't have a President who encourages violence against protesters. It's sick and I honestly can't believe you're defending it.

You can't go around encouraging violence around people who you know are prone to violence (And doesn't it bother you that his supporters are so violent? Doesn't that raise a red flag?), and then later pretend you don't talk about it. It's bullshit.

Not particularly. I'm more concerned about the billions than the few dozen who may or may not be waterboarded during interrogation. It's unfortunate, but I don't see it as a major issue considering the numbers are so small.

It's as if Trump said, as president, he would murder a hundred kittens. Sounds terrible, but in perspective it's a drop in the bucket since the overall policies of a president affect billions, and if Sanders stands in the way of genetic modification, nuclear power, and mainstream effective medicine, he will harm so many more people that neither Trump's hypothetical kitten murdering nor waterboarding can overpower that in terms of harm.

It's not just waterboarding, like he said. He said he would bring back "a lot worse", and not even for efficacy; "because they deserve it".

Is that not extremely disturbing? Because they deserve it?
None of this raises any flags to you? It doesn't raise any flags that he wants to murder terrorists' children?

Bernie isn't against GMOs; he just wants labeling.
He wants more studies for nuclear energy, and I agree that that's bad.
His favorable words for alternative medicine are also bad.

However, he would save many more lives through his other policies.

It doesn't worry me. He clarified in the very quotes you posted and said not to hurt them, and he backtracked on this position because he realized he spoke wrongly and called for excessive force.

This whole thing is being blown way out of proportion. He said something he should have, then backed down a bit to a more reasonable position.

You mean shouldn't have said, right?

He's bullshitting. He encourages violence, and then when asked about it, lies and says "I don't talk about violence". He never said that what he said was wrong; he's just blowing it off.

If he really incited violence, that's for the actual criminal and civil courts to work out, not for the court of public opinion and political rhetoric.
If he did something illegal, he'll be accountable for it, and if he's in jail, obviously he's not going to be able to run for office.

What do you mean, if?

It's not inciting violence to tell your violent protesters to knock the crap out of people? Or to, multiple times, complain that we "can't hit people anymore"?
What?

It's thanks to the Japanese internment camps that that kind of thing won't happen again. That was a disaster, and a well recognized violation of civil rights; the courts will squash it before it get anywhere if he tries to do something like that.

I don't think so. Look at how hateful his supporters are. I personally know people who said that the Japanese internment camps were acceptable (and I know one is a Trump supporter... coincidence?).

Then somebody needs to inform him that all human crops are genetically modified by cross breeding in various ways, that lab genetic modification is safer than crossbreeding, and that the status of a food being "GMO" or not doesn't give consumers meaningful information about the nutrition or contents of the food and so by labeling it as such the effect is coming out against GMO food and scaring people for no reason, harming the marketability of safer and higher yielding GMO crops, thus harming agriculture and our environment in the process.

The only reason he would support labeling GMOs is if he thinks they are different or somehow unsafe -- the only reason is him being against them.

Like I said, it's like forcing food that has been handled or grown by black people to be labeled as such so irrational racists can avoid it. The only reason to do or agree with that is if you're a racist (or just pandering).
It's not relevant information that the consumer needs to have, and by listing it you only generate fear and paranoia about a perfectly safe thing.

What do you mean by all crops are genetically engineered? Do you mean selectively bred? I thought those were different?

I don't agree that you'd only support GMO labeling if you are against GMOs.

I used to support it, not because I was against GMOs (I was kind of against them at one point though because of animal testing), but because I thought people should have a right to know what's in their food, and because I wanted a lot of transparency when it comes to stuff like that. I saw it as the more transparency the better.
Of course, that's not necessarily true- my point is just that you don't have to be against GMOs to be in favor of mandatory labeling.

Those are two of three huge issues.
If Sanders doesn't change his position on at least one of these before the election, I don't think I can support him in good conscience.
A change in just one of these would tell me he can be reasoned with, and can be sensible and overcome his own biases in the face of evidence.

...But you can support a violent madman in good conscience?

His speeches I linked demonstrate his critical thinking abilities.

Trump was against invading Iraq too.

No, he didn't, it's BS. He likes to say that now because he knows it's a populist position, but he's only on the record as supporting it before the invasion.

In fact, he supports invading Iraq again.

http://www.factcheck.org/2016/02/donald ... -iraq-war/

There is no evidence that we could find, however, that he spoke against the war before it started, although we did find he expressed early concerns about the cost and direction of the war a few months after it started.
Others have looked, but no one else — including PolitiFact and the Washington Post Fact Checker — has been able to find any evidence to support his claims, either. Now, BuzzFeed reports that Trump indicated his support for war in a radio interview with shock jock Howard Stern on Sept. 11, 2002 — a little more than six months before the war started.

Stern asked Trump directly if he supported going to war with Iraq, and Trump hesitantly responded, “Yeah, I guess so.”

He'll probably pull out of the Middle East all the same (although he may make less effort to establish peace there). The effect should be similar.

Um, no. He literally wants to invade Iraq again. He's on the record saying it.
He also wants to bomb the hell out of the Middle East.

If Sanders is slightly better on this issue, that's barely meaningful.

Bernie: actually opposed Iraq War (not lying about it like Trump), criticized our 'ally' Saudi Arabia (further demonstrating his honestly and critical thinking abilities), wants to normalize relations with Cuba, has historically been very opposed to regime change.
Trump: Just a liar who knows nothing about foreign policy.

You mean the money that was paid back with interest?
Not an issue to me.

Do you not think that the bank bailouts were an issue at all?
It's controversial whether or not the money has been completely payed back.

Also, it caused a lot of harm even if after many years it was payed back. Not to mention the harm towards people from the recession (the greatest recession since the Great Depression), that many people are still dealing with the consequences of.

That may be a bad idea.

How?

That makes me like him much less, not more. It's a common dishonest line of political rhetoric, and tells me just how ignorant and intellectually dishonest he is on this topic.

More studies? More testing? Does he want to kill some more animals testing radiation, which is already well established?
What does he expect this nebulous goal to accomplish, when we already know exactly how and why all modern nuclear disasters occurred, and that -- by the way -- they kill fewer people a year than solar power?

Are you saying he's dishonest, now?

He probably is just ignorant. I don't agree with him about this, but I don't think that it's as major as you are suggesting.

They're not recording skin color: that would be fine. They're recording "race". They already take photos of people, so it seems irrelevant. If you want to do computer analysis, there's plenty there to work with.

That's not inherently racist.

Doesn't sound like that. Sounds like it's drumming up political rhetoric and making the issue worse.

...So we shouldn't investigate racism from the police?

How does it make the issue worse?

Yes. The way computer fields work is that they often have a default value, or one at the top to select: probably white, since it's the most common. If the field was buggy and wasn't registering for some reason, it could have returned the wrong value if badly programmed (which these systems often are).

Have any computer scientists weighed in on this issue?

Anyway, like I said, even if they were changing it, that doesn't mean they're racist: they were probably just trying to do their jobs and dealing with the racist system that's criticizing them for arresting more blacks and Latinos than whites when all they're doing is trying their best to be fair.

You can't make assumptions like this without evidence.

White isn't the most common, though. That's the issue.

Not that I know of, and if they did that would be really surprising.

I disagree. I don't know what you mean by 'racist system'. The mainstream media doesn't promote the idea that there's systematic racism. And if they did, how would that be racist?

That's nationalistic, not racist. Trump was just jumping on the bandwagon there.

He wasn't jumping on the bandwagon; he was one of the leading forces. That was basically what he campaigned on one year.

And that's racist. "The President is black, so he's not really an American."

Maybe. We don't know why this is.
It could also be because of concerns that he might be a Muslim, due to the prevalence of Islam in Africa. The claims tended to come hand in hand.
Reasoning probably varied between different people.

The maybe was sarcastic; Bernie was implying that that is the reason.

I agree though; it's probably a mix of bigotries.

You mean this?
http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/28/politics/ ... remacists/

He said he didn't know anything about it. You expect him to condemn somebody he doesn't know anything about on the word of a Journalist who may be trying to trick him? His response seemed pretty reasonable. Just 'I don't know anything about this, send me a list and I'll research it'

I think you're overestimating Trump's honesty.

He lied, as usual.
He's on the record on knowing who David Duke and the KKK are. Megyn Kelly, of all people, called him out: http://insider.foxnews.com/2016/02/29/m ... uke-moment

Even my dad thinks Trump was appealing to racists in the south.
Do you think it's a coincidence that they overwhelmingly support him?

Again, he has been espousing nationalistic sentiments. Undocumented Mexican immigrant is not a race.
I don't agree with him, but I don't see this as a very big issue compared to global warming, safe medicine, and protecting the environment with efficient agriculture; it's also an issue I doubt he'll do anything about (he's not going to deport everybody).

Do you think he'd say that about immigrants from Europe?

That sounds like a correction to me. What I read was what you posted, about using violence (knocking somebody down, or something like that) to stop somebody else from using violence (throwing a tomato). It didn't seem like a big deal.

No, it's bullshitting.

And it sounds like you're defending what he said.
"Knock the crap" out of protesters throwing tomatoes isn't a big deal, when you know your supporters are prone to violence?
And it's not just that. He has repeatedly complained that we can't beat up protesters anymore. These aren't just heat of the moment slips.

You completely ignored population density. Why? I very explicitly outlined it, and it's relevance.
You can not ignore confounding variables and then claim causation. And it's not like you didn't know about it: I just told you about it.
Like I said, poor white people are usually hill billies, low population density means less police enforcement and fewer arrests.

What exactly are you implying?

I just doubted it made a significant difference, since I've never really heard about it in these discussions before, and you didn't elaborate.
I'll examine it now, though.

New York is your best case (Seattle might be better, but it's hard to read because the bars are smaller). About 17.5% of poor whites compared with about 26% of poor blacks in concentrated poverty
26/17.5 = 1.49

Multiply that in to your calculation:

27.4 / 9.9 = 2.77
2.77 * 1.49 = 4.13

If blacks are only being arrested at four times the rate, that's actually low based on that number, and it means police may be slightly racist against whites.
But I'm not going to say that, obviously, because there may be other variables.

Anyway, 4 times higher is about what you would expect from a non-racist system based on concentration of poverty in urban areas.

Like I said, it's dishonest to assert a causation from racism there when you aren't accounting for the variables.
And it's very easy for people to choose to ignore the variables, as you just did, because they are caught up in the political rhetoric, convinced of their positions, and really it's more work to look for numbers and do the math so why bother proving yourself wrong?

Working to prove oneself wrong is a mark of a critical thinker. It's not like Sanders doesn't have access to this information. He chooses not to, because he already believes what he believes and has no interest in correcting himself. His narrative is that there's wide spread racism in the police force, and that's what he's going with: evidence be damned.

Interesting how much of an impact that had, but that statistic about black people being four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana is in regards to the entire country.

According to this, white people made up only 7.7% of NY marijuana arrests in the first quarter of 2015. WTF?
http://www.newsweek.com/how-do-misdemea ... ime-341145

During the first quarter of 2015, African-Americans were arrested for misdemeanor marijuana possession 1,494 times: That’s 50.47 percent of the total. Hispanics were arrested 1,130 times, or 38.18 percent, and together these two groups accounted for 88.65 percent of the total. Meanwhile, whites totaled 228 of these arrests (7.70 percent) and 79 (2.67 percent) of the arrestees listed as Asian/Indian, according to the state’s Division of Criminal Justice Services.

In terms of the racial breakdown, this isn’t all that different from the first quarter of 2014.

The results from 2014 are similar.

“The NYPD endeavors to assign its resources based, in considerable part, on an analysis of various conditions in different areas of the city. Among these conditions include level of crime, both major crime and lesser offenses. Another significant consideration relates to the nature and number of local citizen and community complaints in the various neighborhoods. This includes calls to 911, calls to 311 and complaints voiced by members of local precinct community groups,” the official says.

“Analysis has clearly shown that a significantly higher level of these conditions and complaints exist in those areas of New York City where there is also a high minority population. Based on these crime-related conditions, as well as complaints, the NYPD attempts to assign its resources to appropriately address these demands. A higher level of police presence in any particular area in which there is a greater level of offenses, in public, will often result in more enforcement activity.”

It's very difficult to buy that when the numbers are so drastic.

I can't find any information about marijuana usage rates by 'race' in NY city, though.
But still... Those numbers are insane.

You're letting political rhetoric and the assumptions those derive from get the better of you. It's dishonest to claim causation because it ignores confounding variables, as I showed above.

When you say it's dishonest, you're really saying that I'm intentionally promoting falsehoods, not that I'm just wrong about it.
...Is that actually what you're trying to say?

No, they're just fabricating racism where there isn't any evidence, and then inventing new racism to replace it -- that's why it's regressive.
We need to advance into a post racial society, and leave ALL the racism behind.

I don't believe they're fabricating it, of course.
Well, not of course, apparently, since you might think I know they're fabricating it, but that I'm arguing for the position anyway.

How are they inventing new racism?

That's unfortunate. These are not mainly STEM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science,_ ... ite_note-1
None of these are Natural sciences, Technology, Engineering, or Mathematics.
Healthcare (mainly nursing, probably) is the only thing that comes close.

"Social sciences" and to a significant degree psychology (with few exceptions) are soft sciences, or even pseudosciences (often), and they are very broad categories that contain the bullshit degrees I talked about like "gender studies".
http://www.genderstudies.ucla.edu/

Oh, that's disappointing. However, it's social sciences and history combined, and we don't know what the percentages are of the BS degrees. You can't count this as a downside for Bernie based on that.

In fact, I still think it's a plus, because the other common fields are very important. They aren't mainly STEM, but they'll still very relevant.

Just because some countries can afford it doesn't mean it's good or useful.

If some countries can afford it, why can't one of the richest countries in the world?

The other countries seem to be doing a lot better than us, perhaps because being burdened with student loan debt stifles the economy.

States can't fix the issue either, the court will overturn those laws. It has to be an Amendment.

The Supreme Court can't overturn them based on precedent if it overturns Citizens United.

That's not how Amendments work. Neither the Supreme Court nor the President have anything to do with constitutional amendments.

Whoops, I meant that the Supreme Court could overturn Citizens United (and the other SCOTUS decisions that are responsible for money in politics), not propose the Amendment.

We don't know how Kagan will vote, so I wouldn't count on that. If there are two replacements, there's a very good chance. What are the chances of Scala and Kennedy being replaced?
Won't they pretty much die on the bench if they have to, to keep from being replaced by Sanders?
What are the chances of them dying in the next nine years?
Will his replacements even be able to be confirmed?

Remember, a case with standing also has to get to the supreme court, and that's not always easy.

Scalia died a few weeks ago. The reason why I said the next POTUS is likely to replace him is because, as usual, Congress republicans are sitting on their hands and won't let Obama's nominee (Merrick Garland) through, with the (absurd) 'justification' that Obama's term is almost over.

Maybe, but they're pretty old, and there's a good chance they'll die when Sanders is President even if they don't retire.

As for Kagan, I did some more research and found this: http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2010/05 ... ena-kagan/

As the federal government’s top litigator, Kagan herself led the government’s defense in Citizens United. In that case, she argued on behalf of the FEC that the government had a right to regulate the speech of corporations.

So yes, she is against it.

They'd have to go through Congress, and that might be a challenge if it's dominated by republicans.
But he's still our best chance.

We'll see when he's running for the general. Even Cenk said this. There will be a Trump 2.0 when it comes time for the general, and he will appeal to popular policies.

Maybe, which shows that he doesn't actually have any principals.

That kind of reasoning doesn't necessarily follow. Look at the tax rates in those countries and their fiscal conditions, their populations, their GDP per capita. There are too many variables to make assumptions like that. I hope I already showed that with the arrest rates. These are complicated issues, and you need professional economists to review them.

We spend more on military than the next many countries combined- $598.5 billion in 2015.

Making public college tuition free would, according to the US Department of Education, post 62.6 billion dollars a year.
We can afford it just factoring in military alone (not to mention higher taxes on the rich and fixing the loopholes on corporations).

[Red]

Hey, remember when Bernie said that if you're white you don't know what it's like living in a ghetto? Isn't he just the least bigoted person ever?

[EquALLity]

Hey, remember when Bernie said that if you're white you don't know what it's like living in a ghetto? Isn't he just the least bigoted person ever?

His point was obviously just that black people are more impoverished than white people.

Are you seriously trying to make the argument that Bernie Sanders is a bigot?
Really?

We're talking about someone who literally was apart of the civil rights movement for blacks, and who actually got arrested in it.
He defended gay soldiers back in the 90s when gay rights were scoffed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAFlQ6fU4GM

He might be the Senator who has the best record on civil rights issues, and you're calling him a bigot?

[Red]

I do recall saying that he is the least bigoted person ever.

[EquALLity]

I do recall saying that he is the least bigoted person ever.

...Sarcastically.

Well whatever, if you agree.

There was unprecedented turnout last night, and Bernie won Idaho and Utah with nearly 80% of the vote in each state!
I heard one line in ID was a mile long!

[brimstoneSalad]

Hey, remember when Bernie said that if you're white you don't know what it's like living in a ghetto? Isn't he just the least bigoted person ever?

Sounds like typical regressive left, which kind of reinforces what I was saying.

Do you think most people are racists?

Yes. To varying degrees, and in varying ways.

More people tend toward the, "all races are different from each other, but equal with unique natural talents, etc."
Like multiple intelligences nonsense:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of ... _reception

This is comparable to the idea that all people are equal, and just have different unique skills and talents, but nobody is better than anybody else. It is transparently absurd.

It is from this that discriminatory racism develops. Either because a particular race is considered inherently inferior, or just inferior for a particular purpose or job but suited to another.

Are you serious?

Yes. We already talked about all of those things. They are not racist.

Assuming he did know that KKK guy, failing to condemn him and reject his support is not the same as being a racist himself.

Did Trump ever say that Obama wasn't American because he was black? I don't think the paraphrasing you gave is accurate.

He was incorrect, but it's absurd to call that racist.

It's not absurd to call it what it is. It's the kind of systemic racism that comes from people believing race is a real thing and meaningful in some way, constructing fantasies around what race is, which is required for the more ugly discriminatory racism we're more familiar with.

Do you want to take that chance?

I don't see it as a meaningful chance, one in a billion, maybe. Do you want to take a chance with Sanders? I'm trusting him less the more I learn, unfortunately.

That's what he did. We can't have a President who encourages violence against protesters. It's sick and I honestly can't believe you're defending it.

He encouraged violence to stop violence.

What if he called for somebody gently restraining people who were throwing knives?
Slightly less force against slightly more.

It doesn't raise any flags that he wants to murder terrorists' children?

Did he say that?

Bernie isn't against GMOs; he just wants labeling.

I don't agree. He seems pretty clearly against them to me.

If he wanted labeling on food black people had a hand in making, would you not call that being against black people touching food?

I interpret his actions as clearly anti-GMO. Has he said anything to the contrary?

However, he would save many more lives through his other policies.

That's a guess, and I don't think it's accurate. I think he'll do more harm than good based on his pseudoscience.

You mean shouldn't have said, right?

Yes. It was legally a grey area to say that.

It's not inciting violence to tell your violent protesters to knock the crap out of people? Or to, multiple times, complain that we "can't hit people anymore"?

If he did something actually illegal, the courts can handle it.

What do you mean by all crops are genetically engineered? Do you mean selectively bred? I thought those were different?

They're cross bred for specific genes. It's not different, just more clumsy and takes longer, and introduces more unwanted genes. Many or most are also genetically altered with radiation or mutagens, which is highly unpredictable and may have many unwanted consequences.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_breeding

More dangerous. More Time consuming. More expensive. Less effective.

I saw it as the more transparency the better.

Would you have supported a "this food was grown and/or handled by negroes" label, to help white supremacists avoid food with possible black people contamination?
Would Sanders support that?

Why or why not?

For you it was probably an issue of ignorance: you just hadn't heard the arguments, and didn't know. For Sanders, he has no such excuse.

He're another quote that tells me he's in with the fear mongers:

Sanders:
“I think all over this country, people want to know the quality of the food they’re eating and what they’re giving to their kids is good quality. We just don’t know all that much about genetically modified food, ”

People do need to know the quality, and telling people the GMO status of a food tells them nothing about the quality, it only confuses them and interferes with them being able to know the quality of their food -- just like telling people food was handled by black people says nothing about the quality.

The second point he claimed is a lie. We know MORE, not less, about lab created GMO than any other foods because we've chosen the specific genes that go into them and narrowed down their insertion points, rather than throwing a mess of unpredictable wild genes together and checking to see that a couple of the wild ones stick, or mutating them randomly with radiation.

Surely Sanders has heard the arguments and talked to scientists. He's not ignorant of what scientists are advocating; he's not in a position to be.
Either he's dogmatically against GMO and dismissed the arguments, or he's just a liar like all of the rest -- just another politician pandering to votes by lying to the public and fear mongering: no different from Trump with Muslims, and maybe worse.

Saying he's dogmatically against GMO and just not a critical thinker is giving him the benefit of the doubt -- assuming he's delusional instead of overtly lying to the public to fear monger and advance his own political goals.

If he isn't against GMOs, he's just as much a fear monger as Trump -- probably more so, since radical Islam actually is at least a little bit dangerous, and isn't a force for good in the world like genetic modification.

...But you can support a violent madman in good conscience?

I don't agree that he's a violent madman from what you referenced. You're exaggerating. I agree that he's a liar, but that's kind of irrelevant.
He's probably a rapist too (he may have raped his now ex wife), but it's not like that matters to his presidency -- he's not going to pass laws making spousal rape legal.

No, he didn't, it's BS. He likes to say that now because he knows it's a populist position,

Maybe he's lying, maybe not.
If he's populist, that's what's important on these topics.
How does he support invading again?

He also wants to bomb the hell out of the Middle East.

I don't actually believe that, I think he's pandering, and yes I'm willing to take that chance because he's leaning populist on most issues.

But how many people do you think he'll kill?
We can compare it to how many people Sanders will kill with his pseudoscience advocacy.

Sanders may kill a couple billion by promoting global warming by throwing a monkey wrench in the only practical solution.
He might kill a few hundred million more with his support of alternative medicine.
His anti-GMO position will continue to destroy the environment, and support mass famine.

If he's planning to kill fewer than, let's say a billion people, I have to favor him over Sanders because I think that's how many people Sanders may kill.

Trump: Just a liar who knows nothing about foreign policy.

Doesn't really matter. Trump will hire diplomats to advise him and do the real work. He's a business man, he's used to delegating to experts. He didn't make a fortune being a complete idiot.

Do you not think that the bank bailouts were an issue at all?

No, not really.

Also, it caused a lot of harm even if after many years it was payed back.

How many millions of people died from it?

That may be a bad idea.

How?

Do you know what the consequences would be?

Are you saying he's dishonest, now?

I'm becoming convinced that he is, yes.

He probably is just ignorant. I don't agree with him about this, but I don't think that it's as major as you are suggesting.

He's either electively ignorant and without critical thinking skills on the order of a Flat-Earth creationist, or he's a liar.

I don't believe it's possible that he just hasn't been exposed to the arguments against his positions.

That's not inherently racist.

I think it is. Like asking for "race" on a job application.

...So we shouldn't investigate racism from the police?

Not in that way it's being done, which is unscientific. Having a place to fill out "race" on a form is unscientific, because it's asking for a subjective evaluation.
This is not useful, it's just indicative of racists trying to stop racism. It's nonsense.

White isn't the most common, though. That's the issue.

Of course it is in the population. If a computer programmer was asked to make a race field, he's going to search races by demographics, and go top down. He'd really be in trouble if he put black first, assuming that police would want to select that most frequently.

The mainstream media doesn't promote the idea that there's systematic racism. And if they did, how would that be racist?

I disagree, I think they do seeing how much they like to report on this stuff. And it's racist because there's no good evidence that it exists, and people are making assumptions.

And that's racist. "The President is black, so he's not really an American."

Again, is that really a quote?

Do you think it's a coincidence that they overwhelmingly support him?

Doesn't mean he's a racist.
I'm quite sure that Sanders is, though, since he's the only one I've seen talk about race and display that kind of ignorance on the subject.
If he apologized for his racist remarks, and made clear he understands that race is nothing but a social construct, I would not think Sanders was racist anymore.

Do you think he'd say that about immigrants from Europe?

Europe is not Mexico, it's irrelevant. He probably doesn't mind Canadians either, or any wealthy and well educated people coming over. He's even said something about inviting college graduates to immigrate.

"Knock the crap" out of protesters throwing tomatoes isn't a big deal, when you know your supporters are prone to violence?

Correct. Did they kill anybody?
It was an expression. He's talking about stopping somebody from doing violence.

How about "gently restrain" somebody who is throwing knives?
Do you have a problem with that? It's the same sort of thing: Using force to stop a crime or assault.

And it's not just that. He has repeatedly complained that we can't beat up protesters anymore.

I don't think that's what he said. He said something like "we can't hit anybody anymore"
He only called for force against somebody who was doing something illegal, as far as I saw.

I just doubted it made a significant difference, since I've never really heard about it in these discussions before, and you didn't elaborate.

I did elaborate, though. I explained varying population density, and how it affects police enforcement.

That's just my point, though. Rhetoric is proven to deactivate the critical thinking parts of the brain --authoritative statements that we agree with, it works the same way religion does. You were in rhetoric mode, and you assumed my argument was insignificant.

Getting caught up in this rhetoric is turning off your critical thought. We always need to be aware of our biases, and particularly critical of things we want to believe, or are caught up in due to the excitement of personality cults like Sanders.

Interesting how much of an impact that had, but that statistic about black people being four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana is in regards to the entire country.

NY was the best case with a significant level of poverty and density. It applies even more so to most other cities.

Poverty, population density, percentage of population, and prevalence of drug use are only a few factors.
You saw how much just one factor you dismissed out of hand can affect the result.

How about behavior and IQ?
There is a cultural trend of adversarial behavior toward police (which has complex and historical causes, it's a vicious circle), and smarter people (even if they are poor) are less likely to do stupid things and get caught.
https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/j/jencks-gap.html
These are more controversial, but also true.

Are you ready to dismiss both of those as well without actually knowing how large those effects are? I really hope not.

You simply do not know enough about this, or have enough information to evaluate causality. I don't have enough information to evaluate causality. Admitting this is the only intellectually honest thing to do.
Doing actual research on this subject could be a dissertation. I know it would take me days or even weeks to do, and I would probably have to collect more than is available.

Another significant consideration relates to the nature and number of local citizen and community complaints in the various neighborhoods. This includes calls to 911, calls to 311 and complaints voiced by members of local precinct community groups

It's very difficult to buy that when the numbers are so drastic.

It shouldn't be, because the numbers aren't that dramatic. Also, re-read the part I left underlined, and think about what that means.

Citizen complaints. So if somebody calls the police and reports drug use, the police come and arrest the people.
It has been demonstrated that civilians -- not police -- report blacks and Hispanics more than whites when they see them committing minor crimes.
This can be due to the racism of the community itself, and has nothing to do with the police who are just responding to calls.

This is a racist reporting bias on the part of ordinary people, and it's completely out of the hands of the police.

I can't find any information about marijuana usage rates by 'race' in NY city, though.
But still... Those numbers are insane.

It's irrelevant how 'insane' the numbers look. You can't make assumptions.
You saw how fast the difference explodes, because each variable is multiplied in to the total.

Four variables that are just 1.2 times higher more than double the total.

When you say it's dishonest, you're really saying that I'm intentionally promoting falsehoods, not that I'm just wrong about it.
...Is that actually what you're trying to say?

Dishonesty can also be intellectual dishonesty, but I hope it's something that you're not doing anymore now that you see how much the confounding variables can affect the result, how many confounding variables there are (even unknown ones), and understand better why we can't assert causality without controls.

Causality is something we can't just assert from a correlation because we want it to be true, or somebody in authority claimed it was.
Human society and interactions have too many variables, and it's very difficult to study these things, comparing a few naive numbers is not how to do it.
It's not the hard science of biology, medicine, or clinical human health and nutrition.

I don't believe they're fabricating it, of course.

You might just say they're innocently ignorant and that they don't understand anything about science, or even what is needed to establish causality.
But then why do you give any credibility at all to their claims when they're that dumb?
You can't trust anything these people say.

At least with Trump, that's obvious.
We all know we can't believe him. Sanders and his camp create the illusion of honesty and credibility, when in reality it's bullshit.

How are they inventing new racism?

They're establishing institutional racism against "whites" in order to fight the imaginary racism against blacks in the form of quotas, etc. As well as institutional sexism against men, etc.

Imagine if police were required to arrest equal numbers of blacks and whites for drug usage. What's the outcome of that like, if not racism?

I'm not saying this is a big problem (it's kind of trivial, and it's not something I care much about), but it is true.

When I say Sanders is a racist, I mean it. However, that doesn't mean I care very much about that. It won't keep me from voting for him if he can be more reasonable on other subjects which I do find very important.

Oh, that's disappointing. However, it's social sciences and history combined, and we don't know what the percentages are of the BS degrees. You can't count this as a downside for Bernie based on that.

History is not STEM either, and it's not very important. We only need very limited knowledge on history; most history is useless to modern society, or nothing more than curiosity.

We can count history as neutral if you want, but that still makes it overall a negative.

If some countries can afford it, why can't one of the richest countries in the world?

Ask an economist. These are not assumptions we can make.

The other countries seem to be doing a lot better than us, perhaps because being burdened with student loan debt stifles the economy.

Or for completely different reasons. Or maybe they aren't doing better; maybe this is bankrupting them.
Ask an economist. Or better yet, a panel of them.

The Supreme Court can't overturn them based on precedent if it overturns Citizens United.

If Citizens United is overturned, local laws will be unnecessary.

Scalia died a few weeks ago. The reason why I said the next POTUS is likely to replace him is because, as usual, Congress republicans are sitting on their hands and won't let Obama's nominee (Merrick Garland) through, with the (absurd) 'justification' that Obama's term is almost over.

Well, Trump is against corporate money in politics too, so I don't really see the difference there. It's easy to replace a judge.

Maybe, but they're pretty old, and there's a good chance they'll die when Sanders is President even if they don't retire.

What are the statistical odds?

As the federal government’s top litigator, Kagan herself led the government’s defense in Citizens United. In that case, she argued on behalf of the FEC that the government had a right to regulate the speech of corporations.

So yes, she is against it.

Of course she did, that's her job. That doesn't mean she agrees with it. Lawyers argue for or against things they believe all of the time. I've seen it argued that the nature of her arguments against Citizens United provide evidence that she supports the Citizens United ruling, because the arguments were poor and halfhearted.

From what I've read of Trump over the past couple days, I think he'll probably do the same thing with regard to getting corporate money out of politics.

Maybe, which shows that he doesn't actually have any principals.

That's a GOOD thing. It means he's more likely to follow the public and the evidence instead, since he has no preference either way. He just wants to go down in history as a good president who saved the country, so he'll let experts do the work instead of making shit up based on his own principles

If Sanders had no principles, I wouldn't worry about him throwing a monkey wrench in nuclear power, damaging the reputation of GMO and harming the environment and human food security and health, and promoting alternative medicine.

Principles are terrible in politicians, they're dangerous things, because politicians are not experts on these things and the principles they have are usually wrong.

Making public college tuition free would, according to the US Department of Education, post 62.6 billion dollars a year.
We can afford it just factoring in military alone (not to mention higher taxes on the rich and fixing the loopholes on corporations).

Or we could cut the federal deficit, and spend the money on something useful instead.