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I'm a "live and let live" libertarian. I shouldn't be able to take your possessions or labor and you shouldn't be able to take mine. If you make it or build it or buy it, it's actually yours and you shouldn't have to rent it from the government every year, or continue to buy it over and over through the decades.
Things should be taxed once at the point of retail sale and not before or again afterward.
Edit: This cartoon appeals to me. Reposted for emphasis. The agencies could use their "raison d'etre" examined.
How do you determine the value of an agency? By its name? By its intended function? By its budget? Or by its actual fruit?
"By their fruits you shall know them."
Last edited by sixshooter; Feb 20, 2025 at 08:44 PM.
Let's see if we can find common ground. Let me know if you agree with any of the following statements...
1. I think that any public official who's net worth increases far faster than what their salary would realistically allow should be investigated. Along these same lines, politicians should be barred from trading individual stocks.
2. Money and politics should be separated. The Citizens United decision should be overturned.
3. Miatas are lightweight and fun to drive.
I was thinking about this on the drive home this afternoon. I'd like to expand upon what you've said, and perhaps explore an angle which you may not have considered.
Facts, for the most part, are pretty straightforward. Fire is hot, granite is hard, bears **** in the woods... all pretty straightforward.
Truth, on the other hand, starts to get complicated. Because what actually IS truth, if not merely the world created inside each of our own minds by our own PERCEPTION of facts?
Let me give another statement, for the purpose of illustration: 21% of US adults are functionally illiterate, up from 18% a decade ago. 54% of US adults demonstrate literacy at BELOW a 6th grade level. Of US adults lacking literacy proficiency, 66% were born in the US; only 34% are immigrants. In Canada, 99% of the adult population are functionally literate, and in Mexico, the adult literacy rate is 95%.
Now, that is quite frankly shocking, and yet it should not be controversial. I'm sure that if you dig deep enough there are probably some adult-literacy-deniers, but they're gonna be a tiny minority. Regardless of who we voted for in the past several elections, I think that most of us can accept the statistics above as factual.
But here is where, for Americans in 2025, two paths diverge:
... and yet TRUMP wants to DE-FUND the Department of Education!
... which is further proof that the Department of Education has failed, and needs to be dismantled.
I'd wager that most people who have a strong opinion about DOGE and its activities will more or less align themselves with one of the two "truths" above. And, significantly, they will be not only resolute in their certainty, but also flummoxed by how some people can be so ignorant / brainwashed as to believe the obviously false and absurd other thing.
And this is why it can be difficult for people who hold strongly dissimilar beliefs to have meaningful conversations about controversial issues. And why it is so common for such encounters to quickly devolve into name-calling, mud-slinging, straw-manning boondoggles of smug self-righteousness from which no constructive outcome can possibly emerge.
“The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”
The EO states - “Therefore, in order to improve the administration of the executive branch and to increase regulatory officials’ accountability to the American people, it shall be the policy of the executive branch to ensure Presidential supervision and control of the entire executive branch.”
Sounds strangely like asserting that the President will be in charge of the agencies of the Executive Branch. Shocking! - unless your job dealt you the misfortune of dealing with any of those agencies.
I was thinking about this on the drive home this afternoon. I'd like to expand upon what you've said, and perhaps explore an angle which you may not have considered.
Facts, for the most part, are pretty straightforward. Fire is hot, granite is hard, bears **** in the woods... all pretty straightforward.
Truth, on the other hand, starts to get complicated. Because what actually IS truth, if not merely the world created inside each of our own minds by our own PERCEPTION of facts?
Let me give another statement, for the purpose of illustration: 21% of US adults are functionally illiterate, up from 18% a decade ago. 54% of US adults demonstrate literacy at BELOW a 6th grade level. Of US adults lacking literacy proficiency, 66% were born in the US; only 34% are immigrants. In Canada, 99% of the adult population are functionally literate, and in Mexico, the adult literacy rate is 95%.
Now, that is quite frankly shocking, and yet it should not be controversial. I'm sure that if you dig deep enough there are probably some adult-literacy-deniers, but they're gonna be a tiny minority. Regardless of who we voted for in the past several elections, I think that most of us can accept the statistics above as factual.
But here is where, for Americans in 2025, two paths diverge:
... and yet TRUMP wants to DE-FUND the Department of Education!
... which is further proof that the Department of Education has failed, and needs to be dismantled.
I'd wager that most people who have a strong opinion about DOGE and its activities will more or less align themselves with one of the two "truths" above. And, significantly, they will be not only resolute in their certainty, but also flummoxed by how some people can be so ignorant / brainwashed as to believe the obviously false and absurd other thing.
And this is why it can be difficult for people who hold strongly dissimilar beliefs to have meaningful conversations about controversial issues. And why it is so common for such encounters to quickly devolve into name-calling, mud-slinging, straw-manning boondoggles of smug self-righteousness from which no constructive outcome can possibly emerge.
(I feel like I'm getting pretty good at these.)
Small point, but I was under the impression that DJT wanted to close the Department of Education and then send those funds directly to the parents of the kids. The funds "follow the children" to other schools, home schooling, private schools, etc. I'm not sure it's all been decided yet, but Jimmy Carter's Department of Education experiment would go bye bye....but not the funds.
Small point, but I was under the impression that DJT wanted to close the Department of Education and then send those funds directly to the parents of the kids. The funds "follow the children" to other schools, home schooling, private schools, etc. I'm not sure it's all been decided yet, but Jimmy Carter's Department of Education experiment would go bye bye....but not the funds.
Because the legislature voted to capture those funds, and the executive branch (which includes the Department of Education) is charged with dispersing them, they could be given to the states or the people. Usually, the Dept of Ed takes a hefty cut to keep for themselves to have a fancy piece of real estate in a very expensive part of the country and to pay non-educators to live in an expensive part of the country and shuffle paper from cubicle to cubicle. It was an unconstitutional federal power grab when DEd. was created and to this date and has educated not one single child.
Power to the people.
(During the 1960s in the United States, young people began speaking and writing this phrase as a form of rebellion against what they perceived as oppression by the older generation, especially The Establishment.) -from Wikipedia
Being a parent, I can't imagine any department of education under anyone's watch do anything to improve a child's education. It all starts at home and if parents don't give a **** about their kid's education, no gov't agency will be able to do so either.
Imagine a parent that doesn't care about their child's education and then getting to send their child to the best schools around. Unless the schools have high learning standards and boot the child as soon as they start failing, the downward spiral of that good school being good will begin. And this is what has happened.
Gov't accountability is an excellent thing. So should parental accountability.
And this is why it can be difficult for people who hold strongly dissimilar beliefs to have meaningful conversations about controversial issues. And why it is so common for such encounters to quickly devolve into name-calling, mud-slinging, straw-manning boondoggles of smug self-righteousness from which no constructive outcome can possibly emerge.
(I feel like I'm getting pretty good at these.)
Not to mention the difficulty of conveying tone and intent online, especially when discussing topics that people are so passionate about. IMO these conversations are way better in person, assuming all of the involved parties are willing to actually discuss/debate the topics.
But here is where, for Americans in 2025, two paths diverge:
... and yet TRUMP wants to DE-FUND the Department of Education!
... which is further proof that the Department of Education has failed, and needs to be dismantled.
I'd wager that most people who have a strong opinion about DOGE and its activities will more or less align themselves with one of the two "truths" above. And, significantly, they will be not only resolute in their certainty, but also flummoxed by how some people can be so ignorant / brainwashed as to believe the obviously false and absurd other thing.
And thus the problem with useful idiots.
The democratic party platform precariously rests on top of an ivory tower/moral high-ground. DOGE/MAGA is attacking DOE! He hates children and education! WE MUCH RISE UP!
meanwhile:
The department is designed to provide material and political benefits to the teachers’ unions, not to improve student outcomes.
Looking at the department’s spending priorities confirms how the department was meant to address the material and political concerns of the unions.
As the pork-barrel politics of the Department of Education are laid bare, the survival of the department will depend on the political influence of the unions.
[...]
Over half of the 1980 appropriation for the Department of Education was devoted to elementary and secondary education, with the two largest programs being Title I and special education. While those programs are intended to provide resources for the education of low-income and disabled students, the money is distributed by formula to districts without any requirement that they provide an accounting of whether those funds were spent only on those services. Federal cash for Title I and special education pours into districts’ general coffers and can be spent on whatever districts may need, which in 1980 was offsetting the loss in local tax revenue to prevent schools from closing and teachers from being laid-off.
Four decades later, Title I and special education remain the two largest federal programs serving K-12 schools. They have also been the fastest growing. Looking at appropriations to the Department of Education in 2019, before COVID money was added, Title I has grown 79 percent and special education has grown 348 percent since the department’s original 1980 budget, after adjusting for inflation.
In addition to these two programs representing 73 percent of federal spending on K-12 schools, the department has added two other sizable initiatives to reward their union benefactors. One provides more than $2 billion in grants to support teacher professional development. Unions love money spent on professional development because their members and allies often become the providers of that training. And teachers enjoy getting paid while taking a break from having to be in the classroom while receiving professional development.
The other major new program provides more than a billion dollars for “21st Century Community Learning Centers,” which expand the set of services provided by schools to include doctors, nurses, dentists, social workers, and psychologists. The unions love this “Broader Bolder” vision of education, as they call it because it allows them to add a whole new set of staff to their union rolls. Having maxed out on organizing teachers, the unions would like to recruit health and social workers. The Department of Education obliges the unions by paying for schools that employ more non-teaching professionals.
It is also revealing to note which programs in the Department of Education have actually shrunk in real terms over the last four decades. Appropriations for career and technical education have fallen by 50 percent after adjusting for inflation between 1980 and 2019, from $2.54 billion to $1.27 billion. Many career and technical training programs are run by community colleges and businesses whose staff are not members of the teachers’ unions.
Appropriations for Indian education have declined 27 percent and impact aid for schools serving military families has dropped by 41 percent between 1980 and 2019, after adjusting for inflation. The unions prefer formula funded programs that pour money into districts’ general coffers over grant-based programs that would actually obligate them to serve discrete communities.
Perhaps most surprising, appropriations for civil rights enforcement by the Department of Education have also fallen 16 percent between 1980 and 2019, adjusting for inflation. The unions may talk a lot about protecting the rights of minorities, but actually sanctioning civil rights violations would involve punishing schools and teachers, which the unions would rather avoid.
Anyone who thinks it is essential to have a Department of Education to protect civil rights or to deliver programs to disadvantaged groups, like Native Americans, hasn’t looked at the department’s budget trends. They also don’t understand who the department is meant to serve. The Department of Education was created as a political payback to the teachers’ unions and it is designed to advocate for the material interests of the unions and their members, not to serve the needs of minorities.
As the pork-barrel politics of the Department of Education are laid bare, the survival of the department will depend on the continuing political influence of the unions. Unfortunately for the unions, their influence over the Republican party has largely evaporated as they went all-in on backing Democrats. And even among Democrats, their influence will shrink as the new Baby Bust reduces student enrollments and the number of unionized teachers serving that declining pool.
The Department of Education may not be dismantled during the next Trump administration, but its days are likely numbered. And when it is eventually dismantled and existing programs are reallocated to other departments, no one will really miss how the department advocated for increased spending for a narrow constituency other than the direct beneficiaries of that spending. Naked power politics is a double-edged sword. The unions could extract resources when they were powerful political brokers, but those resources disappear when their power declines.
The solution on the left is to ALWAYS do that same thing. always. without fail. no exceptions. There are no creative/alternative solutions proposed by the left ever. Just use the army of useful idiots to attack to their supposed enemies and appeal to the moral high ground, while exacerbating the problem and lining pockets.
Small point, but I was under the impression that DJT wanted to close the Department of Education and then send those funds directly to the parents of the kids. The funds "follow the children" to other schools, home schooling, private schools, etc. I'm not sure it's all been decided yet, but Jimmy Carter's Department of Education experiment would go bye bye....but not the funds.
This is actually a really fascinating example of the point which I was attempting to make.
My whole post was about different people can interpret the same facts in different ways, and how this creates different versions of "truth" which seem perfectly valid to them. And then about how this then leads to unproductive conversations which devolve into pedantry, name calling and strawman-based arguments.
Now, to illustrate all of that, I semi-randomly chose the example of the US Dept of Education, as that is a topic which is presently very hot and very controversial, and with which most people who are strongly-opinionated on matters of MAGA / DOGE politics are likely familiar. I tried to make it clear that I was not attempting to debate the merits of the DofEd itself, nor the way in which Trump, Musk, et. al are approaching it. I was merely using it to illustrate how two very different interpretations of the fact "21% of US adults are functionally illiterate (etc...)" can lead to two very different reactions to DOGE-centric proposals regarding the DofEd's funding and future.
And Cordycord completely ignored all of that!
Instead, he made a strawman argument, which interjected a new opinion about what might be done with some money which isn't spent of the DofEd, despite the fact that this wasn't even remotely related to the overall theme of the post.
He did the exact thing which I lamented so frequently happens when people of differing ideologies are afforded an opportunity to discuss a topic of topical and controversial significance.
Cordy, I'm not attacking you personally here, but I am criticizing the way in which you reacted to my attempt to have a really meaningful conversation about a way in which people perceive things differently.
Some good points posted in the last 24 hours, I can't keep up!
Regarding Joe's argument
I agree and this is one of the main things that has frustrated me so much about politics in the USA since Trump took over the show. Everything is far too politicized and driven by media attention. As a result, important issues are regularly overshadowed by drama. One of my biggest criticisms of trump is that he loves to engage in petty pot-stirring for seemingly no reason other than his desire for attention and his knowledge that his base will eat it up. It is not behavior that I want to see out of the leader of my country and it brings out the worst in people. Once things devolve to emotion fueled reactions, logic tends to take a back seat. At that point, like Joe said, a constructive outcome is unlikely. The president should be working to unite the country, not the opposite.
Regarding the Department of Education
I hope that we can all agree that we want what is best for the kids in this country. They are the future and if they are not taught the tools they need to succeed, we are all in trouble. Based on pretty much any education metric you can find, the USA is behind compared to other developed countries. It is clear to me that the Department of Education needs to experience some drastic change, but I don't think eliminating it altogether is the answer. States would be left to completely handle things on their own at that point, and while that might work out for some states, others would be in trouble. At the end of the day, it is the kids who would suffer. A child should not be condemned to a life of struggle just because they were born in a low performing state.
Correct, I was solely commenting on the king remark. I've never heard of a congestion tax until yesterday. Traffic isn't bad enough here (yet) to need something like that or toll roads.
Glad to see you admit that your TDS affliction has blinded you to real world problems and plights of actual US citizens.
This is exactly why useful idiot gets its name.
The problem here isn't " oh traffic is so bad we need tolls"
It was implemented more or less to fund MTA, not reduce traffic. MTA has a 600 million a year shortcoming due to fare evaders; MTA is trying to collect 15 million from these damaging tolls -- sticking it to small business and commuters in the main business and retail area of Manhattan. And only spending 20% of that on improvements, the rest on day to day paychecks and debt. So only 3mm of the 15mm collected from mostly lower class. Sounds like a horrible investment when they could easily make up some of the 600mm in stolen fares. Reducing that by just 0.5 % would achieve the same
There's little defense to the tolls.
The biggest supporters for the toll live outside the toll zone to the north and toll evaders. They are only concerned with themselves because rich Democrats love inequality.
It negatively impacts everyone else. Many people are praising the presidents intervention in getting rid of the tax. Hail to the king.
Glad to see you admit that your TDS affliction has blinded you to real world problems and plights of actual US citizens.
This is exactly why useful idiot gets its name.
The problem here isn't " oh traffic is so bad we need tolls"
It was implemented more or less to fund MTA, not reduce traffic. MTA has a 600 million a year shortcoming due to fare evaders; MTA is trying to collect 15 million from these damaging tolls -- stocking it to small business and commuters in the main business and retail area of Manhattan. And only spending 20% of that on improvements, the rest on day to day paychecks and debt.
There's little defense to the tolls.
The biggest supporters for the toll live outside the toll zone to the north and toll evaders. They are only concerned with themselves because rich Democrats love inequality.
It negatively impacts everyone else. Many people are praising the presidents intervention in getting rid of the tax. Hail to the king.
Imagine calling someone an idiot because they don't want to comment on something they know nothing about. You should probably take notes from the other people in this thread and try to stop being so ignorant (wishful thinking, I know lol).
Trump has done several things that I think are good for our country, but unfortunately I believe the bad far outweighs the good when it comes to him.
Imagine calling someone an idiot because they don't want to comment on something they know nothing about. You should probably take notes from the other people in this thread and try to stop being so ignorant (wishful thinking, I know lol).
Trump has done several things that I think are good for our country, but unfortunately I believe the bad far outweighs the good when it comes to him.
Useful idiot is a term.
A useful idiot or useful fool is a pejorative description of a person, suggesting that the person thinks they are fighting for a cause without fully comprehending the consequences of their actions, and who does not realize they are being manipulated by the cause's leaders or by other political players.
Not that it's anything new at this point, but a trump supporter saying someone else "does not realize they are being manipulated by the cause's leaders or by other political players" is wild.
trump - "I don't care about you, I just want your vote."
This is actually a really fascinating example of the point which I was attempting to make.
My whole post was about different people can interpret the same facts in different ways, and how this creates different versions of "truth" which seem perfectly valid to them. And then about how this then leads to unproductive conversations which devolve into pedantry, name calling and strawman-based arguments.
Now, to illustrate all of that, I semi-randomly chose the example of the US Dept of Education, as that is a topic which is presently very hot and very controversial, and with which most people who are strongly-opinionated on matters of MAGA / DOGE politics are likely familiar. I tried to make it clear that I was not attempting to debate the merits of the DofEd itself, nor the way in which Trump, Musk, et. al are approaching it. I was merely using it to illustrate how two very different interpretations of the fact "21% of US adults are functionally illiterate (etc...)" can lead to two very different reactions to DOGE-centric proposals regarding the DofEd's funding and future.
And Cordycord completely ignored all of that!
Instead, he made a strawman argument, which interjected a new opinion about what might be done with some money which isn't spent of the DofEd, despite the fact that this wasn't even remotely related to the overall theme of the post.
He did the exact thing which I lamented so frequently happens when people of differing ideologies are afforded an opportunity to discuss a topic of topical and controversial significance.
Cordy, I'm not attacking you personally here, but I am criticizing the way in which you reacted to my attempt to have a really meaningful conversation about a way in which people perceive things differently.
I had higher hopes.
Wasn't trying to 'attack' you either. My point was to get to what I thought was the actual point--the money. As a parent, that is what's important as it could give me more freedom and flexibility to educate my kids. Edit--it's not a straw man; it's what I thought was the most important point.
Speaking of money, apparently our tax dollars have been going so guys in Washington can circle jerk off, together.
Not a peep from these guys in this thread during the time Captain Incoherent was in office. Now all of a sudden, they care, and want us to believe they don't have political biases and are not lashing out at Trump because of TDS but because he is genuinely bad for our country. Nothing from 1/2021 to 1/2025. The country was not in trouble then. Leaders from other countries called these ******* out for lambasting them for going after political opponents while doing the exact same thing. And yet here you are now crying out that our DEMOCRACY is in peril!
As many have pointed out before, there is already precedent for what Trump can do. He was president for four years already so give it a break. The media and dems and crooked republicans and crooked fbi agents and other crooked-*** people in power did everything they could, and plenty of it illegal, and they still couldn't get **** on him. And you know what happened? The media has no credibility, nor do most federal three letter agencies. And they deserve it because they are crooked as hell and do not care about the population of the USA. The country saw through it! People understood that they were being lied to on a whole different level.
And not people like you who only vote blue. And not people like me who only vote red. It was the 1/3 of the voting population that has no party identity that saw the propaganda for what it was. These voters decided to go with the guy that was being persecuted by crooked politicians, the guy that tried to keep his campaign promises when they weren't being blocked by those that opposed him all costs, the guy that didn't start conflicts. They voted for the guy that showed for four years in office he was on the side of the American people, even if he has a repulsive personality and a terrible comb-over.
So please, keep using this place as therapy for your TDS. We've been here before. We knew it was coming, and how long it will last.
Not that it's anything new at this point, but a trump supporter saying someone else "does not realize they are being manipulated by the cause's leaders or by other political players" is wild.
trump - "I don't care about you, I just want your vote."
brain - "you got it daddy <3"
Whoever coined the term got it perfect as we can see.
This poor example of a quote you gave is another clear illustration that you've never once heard a Trump speech, nor have any idea why he's one of the most beloved/popular political figures in history.
Plenty of supporting evidence suggests Trump does care about the American people and doesn't just care about votes; I cant say the same about the vast majority of political figures.
But you will never understand this as your TDS has blinded you. I understand why Obama was so adored -- despite being one of the worst, most destructive, race-baiting, communist/globalist presidents in US history.
All the left has anymore is to ridicule there opposition -- this is their MO.
"trump only wants your vote"
"trump is racist"
"trump hates disabled"
"trump drinks with two hands"
"trump overfeeds fish"
"trump is going to start wwiii"
"trump is a dictator"
"trump is going to pardon his entire family"
"trump isnt going to leave office"
"trump is too old for office"
"trump is an election denier"
"trump is a xenophobe"
"trump is a russian agent"
"trump is a chinese agent"
"trump likes golden showers"
"trump walks slowly down wet ramps"
"trump drew on a map"
"trump said ***** are fine people"
"trump is a warwonger"
"trump hate immigrants"
"trump separates families"
"trump said to drink bleach"
"trump just cant declassify on a whim"
"trump has nuclear secrets"
The noisy minority has no platform to stand on anymore all they have left is defamation.
the FACT is Trump is the most effective conservative president in decades and gave rise to the silent majority who are tired of being poked and prodded, and being called racist for the last almost 20 years.
You wont address this straight on, because you simply can't. You're young and groomed. It's not your fault, but it will be all right, everything will be all right, the struggle is finished. You had won the victory over yourself. You love Big Brother.
Regarding the Department of Education
I hope that we can all agree that we want what is best for the kids in this country. They are the future and if they are not taught the tools they need to succeed, we are all in trouble. Based on pretty much any education metric you can find, the USA is behind compared to other developed countries. It is clear to me that the Department of Education needs to experience some drastic change, but I don't think eliminating it altogether is the answer. States would be left to completely handle things on their own at that point, and while that might work out for some states, others would be in trouble. At the end of the day, it is the kids who would suffer. A child should not be condemned to a life of struggle just because they were born in a low performing state.
How much funding comes from the fed vs state?
Why would the state having to handle things on their own be a necessary bad thing?
How exactly would they "be in trouble?"
How exactly would kids "suffer?" Do kids in low performing states not suffer now despite the DOE?
if the DOE cant currently prevent kids from suffering, why is the solution keeping the DOE and not eliminating the DOE? Why does the DOE have to exist in order to prevent kids from suffering?
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