I don’t think it has that much power, honestly. In a way, it might be the least damaging place for a no-nothing to be a secretary of.
Hemlock is too harsh for me, but consider, exile is essentially the Roman word for a forum ban.
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I am truly concerned about the damage that can be done by one parent. Perhaps that job has too much power as well.
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Airline pilots have too much power!
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That is at the core, isn’t it? Making sure that the RIGHT sort of parents are able to have total control over the first 18 years.
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Yep. And that the right(wing) schools are able to have total control over time that children spend away from their parents.
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Look - there is not black and white answer to a balance of power. But remember when BB posted about “You have X days to dismantle the domestic intelligence stuff before Trump takes office.”? So suggesting certain branches of government have too much power is a fair point to be concerned about.
I think how much power the government has directly IS an important thing to consider, as even if the current people in power are cool, that might not always be the case.
And I am not talking about the DOE specifically, just a skeptic eye in general. The DOE is probably a decent example of being balanced out. Sort of a coordinating department between states.
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But just think of your cut of the profits if you become a distributor, and sign up 10 more school supply distributors!
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I think there’s a notable difference in the argument that the position has too much power vs. the position in unqualified hands will be damaging.
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True. I was just trying to get across that “people are truly concerned about the damage that can be done” isn’t a good place to draw the line of “this job has too much power.”
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Maybe that’s the point of the DeVos nomination? To get Democrats to back abolishing the department?
Wheels within wheels?
(Not really, they’re all a bunch of fucking morons)
I believe it’s more like Trumpers are trying to find partners after their previous ones dumped them for supporting Trump.
Well, I think that’s going to the be effect of this pick, right? Rich states will fight federal control and try to go education on their own because the DOE is too messed up. Like I said above, you might guess this pick was made for the purpose of getting blue states to welcome the end of the DOE (though there’s a good chance it was just fucking dumb).
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In the real world, sometimes people who have a 180 degree opposite view of things from you will sometimes get control of the levers of power. Learn to live with and accept that, or try to reduce the mechanical advantage of the levers.
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It’s not the 180 degree rotation around the z-axis that I have an issue with. I can work with that, and at least make an effort to create a curriculum that we can both agree meets basic needs for functioning in reality, with discussions over the particulars.
It’s the -90 degree rotation around the x-axis that’s the problem. You can’t meet common ground with nihilists.
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In the real world, people get hired based on their qualifications. Do you care to summarize why DeVos is qualified to run the DoE?
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I think its point is instead another right-winger shibboleth: Big Gubmint = Baaaaad!
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I think this whole way of thinking is what has caused the current problem. You can find lots of other countries where people have much more faith in their governments to do a good job, and that faith ends up being justified. The trick is they vote for people who represent their interests, and abandon candidates and parties that go against their interests.
The idea that it is necessarily to limit the power of politicians to prevent them from doing bad things means that everyone has the assumption that politicians will do bad things and end up preferring gridlock to action because all action is bad action.
In a democracy, the government is the people, and the system needs to run on trust and good faith. One day your democracy will fall apart and be replaced by tyranny and you can’t write down a law on a piece of paper that will change that. Trying too hard to stop that from happening ends up making things worse. I think that’s what we need to learn to live with.
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There’s no way to prevent a judge who thinks murdering toddlers is awesome from causing problems. We can reduce this, not by abandoning all judges, but by holding them accountable and putting in place a system to keep toddler-murderers from being judges.
What you’re seeing right now isn’t the absence of a system to reduce damages, but that system failing. This doesn’t mean the department of education has too much power like you are disingenuously pretending, it means the Republican senate is using its newfound power to break whatever safeguards it can. “Historic first” should have been your tip-off on that.
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If you don’t work your way up to 16 tons gradually, it’s hard on the back.
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Pretty much. Trump is way too big government for me.
