President Donald Trump

[Sour Masher]

What would you expect from someone who has declared bancruptcy (or his companies...same f'in thing) multiple times. He probably figures he can just declare US bankruptcy, and erase all the debts to foreign nations.

This made me laugh initially, before reflecting that you may actually be right. One of my big fears is that Trump will fail to see the difference between running a company that can be bailed about by a government and a country that cannot.

[chancellor]

I'm up for the debate in education and promise to be respectful of any individuals. Policies...not so much.

[cardboardbox]

Fair enough on voting against HRC. At this point, I don't think it is productive to defend her or get into which was worse and why. I'm more interested in why a lot of folks here seem to be pretty chill about Trump and what he is doing, when I think in a lot of ways his policies will harm our country and most of us living in it.

I don't get the sense that lots here actively support him and all of his decisions, but then again, the GOP folks seem a lot more interested in baiting DEMs about more frivolous and ancillary issues than in engaging on real issues related to a Trump presidency.

Is it being a snowflake for me to be concerned about the impact of his policies on my disabled mother on SSD, or my sister who is a single mother of three who is likely to lose healthcare for herself and have her taxes increased? Or myself and my colleagues in education who may have our lives greatly impacted by decisions made by a women who doesn't even know about basic debates in education, or seem to understand the issues related to turning public education into a free-market system? How about we talk about any of these things in an honest, respectful way rather than continue to talk about the election at this point? Trump is POTUS now. It actually happened. And now we are seeing him make decisions that will impact our lives. We should care about and discuss that, I think.

talking about elections is a lot more interesting when your side is winning or at least competitive. I will admit I didnt like talking about elections at all in 2009 or 2013.

I dont like Trump much at all but this is the first time in my life that my pick for prez won the election. As bad as he is, I am kind of happy about it, or perhaps relieved is a better word. My mindset right now is, it could have been worse, and that will influence my thoughts/opinions on many things going forward.

[baldgriff]

There have been many of us that have been saying that our deficit spending has to stop. The reply is almost always framed up as a choice between "the broken and down trodden vs. the military".

Why is that?

[Sour Masher]

I'm up for the debate in education and promise to be respectful of any individuals. Policies...not so much.

Great. What do you think of DeVos being a champion of charter schools and voucher programs, seemingly to the exclusion of addressing or even knowing about any other education related issues? Here is a link to an article that covers some of my concerns. I realize linking to a Slate article doesn't help my cred with those that may disagree with me, but this particular author, Sarah Carr, seems credible, and her article touches on issues I know are valid from reading about them in more academic sources, specifically that charter schools don't work, that their performance is often poor, that they can and do exclude many students, and that overall, such programs, while well intentioned, have hurt student performance.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/schooled/2017/01/betsy_devos_big_education_idea_doesn_t_work.html

[cardboardbox]

There have been many of us that have been saying that our deficit spending has to stop. The reply is almost always framed up as a choice between "the broken and down trodden vs. the military".

Why is that?

for the past 8 years, democrats have told me any deficit is Bush's fault.

[Sour Masher]

There have been many of us that have been saying that our deficit spending has to stop. The reply is almost always framed up as a choice between "the broken and down trodden vs. the military".

Why is that?

I think that is an important question that all of us need to hold our politicians to task for. I do think that is a false binary, and I'm sure cuts can be made to both entitlement programs and military spending to help reduce our debt. I do argue that the cuts to the military are easier to start with, because our military spending is so, so much higher than any other nation on earth, by leaps and bounds. So much of it is obscene waste, in the form of fat contracts to make military equipment costing billions that we will NEVER use. That pisses me off as a tax payer.

So much of the spending seems outdated and fails to realize the changes in warfare we engage in these days (like cyber-warfare). Why can't we cut that stuff? In large part it is the way Washington works. Trump promised to change that and drain the swamp, but I'm not getting any indication that he actually will do that.

[overkill94]

Since I don't follow politics closely I have an honest question - what actions/policies did Obama enact that have so many people ecstatic that he's no longer in office? And what changes do they hope Trump will make that will positively affect their lives?

[nots]

Since I don't follow politics closely I have an honest question - what actions/policies did Obama enact that have so many people ecstatic that he's no longer in office? And what changes do they hope Trump will make that will positively affect their lives?

I don't necessarily agree with the premise of your question. While a small, vocal minority of folks maybe glad Obama is gone, his favorability hovers between +15 and +20. That's pretty strong.
I'm not sure there are any actual Trump supporters here to answer the second part of your question ( lot of anti Hillary folks like me). I was pleased to see him dump the TPP, but that is more likely to be a hit with Sanders people rather than the GOP.

[DMT]

Since I don't follow politics closely I have an honest question - what actions/policies did Obama enact that have so many people ecstatic that he's no longer in office? And what changes do they hope Trump will make that will positively affect their lives?

It all started with ACA.

[chancellor]

Great. What do you think of DeVos being a champion of charter schools and voucher programs, seemingly to the exclusion of addressing or even knowing about any other education related issues? Here is a link to an article that covers some of my concerns. I realize linking to a Slate article doesn't help my cred with those that may disagree with me, but this particular author, Sarah Carr, seems credible, and her article touches on issues I know are valid from reading about them in more academic sources, specifically that charter schools don't work, that their performance is often poor, that they can and do exclude many students, and that overall, such programs, while well intentioned, have hurt student performance.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_a...sn_t_work.html

Sure, I’m up for this one. And I know Sarah Carr – she wrote for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel about 10 years ago. I’d not consider her an unbiased source, but let’s talk DeVos’ knowledge and views on accountability and Ms. Carr’s former home city charter/voucher performance.

Betsy DeVos became involved in the charter school issue since, despite being a top-10 state in education spending, Michigan’s schools are a disaster – with less than 50% of their K-8 students being proficient in ANY subject, and less than 20% of high school juniors are considered prepared for college or careers. Now, let’s throw out the issue of standardized testing, and concede a percentage of those are just bad test takers…but even if we say 2/3rds of K-8 students being proficient in ANY subject and 40% of all high school juniors being ready for college or a career, that’s still a disaster. I’d say her knowledge of Michigan’s performance in education is rather fact-based.

Carr is wholly incorrect in passing along Kate Zernike’s fake news from the NY Times that Betsy DeVos is against any regulation. DeVos supported many steps passed by the Michigan legislature to increase charter school accountability – including mandatory shuttering of schools in the bottom 5%, mandatory accreditation standards, and failed charters being banned from obtaining another charter. As a note, I’ll add she did this based on real data coming in that too many charter schools were failing in performance, especially in the Detroit area…which public school administrators have not only not done, but fought at every step.

And DeVos’ views are hardly partisan. Here’s some key quotes on charter/voucher programs:
“An all-voucher or all-school choice system would be a shock to the educational system, but the shake out might be just what the system needs,” and…
“The whole concept of ‘the Beverly Hills schools’ or ‘Newton schools’ would die out,”
Those quotes are from Elizabeth Warren. The former comes from her work with her daughter on the book “The Two-Income Trap”. Now, whether her views have “evolved” or “changed due to political chicanery” will certainly differ based on your political point of view. But even Vox headlined an article as recently as 2014 titled “Elizabeth Warren wants to kill the neighborhood school”.

And there’s Jonathan Alter. Best link here: http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...r-schools.html

And New Orleans is hardly alone. Milwaukee’s charter/voucher schools continue to graduate almost twice as many students as their public school counterparts, and in the most recent ratings, received consistently higher ratings even when adjusted for income. Another report on Milwaukee charter school success: http://archive.jsonline.com/news/edu...296798931.html.

Are there frauds in the voucher/charter system? Absolutely. And they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

[chancellor]

All that said, I'm actually pretty indifferent to what DeVos does relative to charter schools. What I'm really hoping she does is slashes and burns federal regulations of schools - which is tied to wholly inadequate funding for every single regulation. Federal regulations have led to a glut of burden-adding administrators who add virtually no value to education - heck, likely detract from value since they burden overworked teachers with paperwork they're ill-equipped to handle.

As a result, costs have gone up for educating students - we can argue about specifics, but everyone I've read agrees costs have escalated far faster than inflation. And that's not teachers faults.

[Redbirds Fan]

It all started with ACA.

I have a pretty good recollection of the events of the time. It all started well before the ACA.

[nots]

All that said, I'm actually pretty indifferent to what DeVos does relative to charter schools. What I'm really hoping she does is slashes and burns federal regulations of schools - which is tied to wholly inadequate funding for every single regulation. Federal regulations have led to a glut of burden-adding administrators who add virtually no value to education - heck, likely detract from value since they burden overworked teachers with paperwork they're ill-equipped to handle.

As a result, costs have gone up for educating students - we can argue about specifics, but everyone I've read agrees costs have escalated far faster than inflation. And that's not teachers faults.

Great post

[chancellor]

It all started with ACA.

I disagree. While I did not vote for Obama, I had hopes that he'd live up to his commitments on privacy, executive privilege, and transparency. Once he passed Darth Cheney on diminuation of privacy rights and executive privilege (ahem, even Cheney didn't advocate assassinating US citizens, reference for Obama's administration doing so and the "legal" reasoning: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/24/u...laki.html?_r=0), I realized we had simply a left-wing version of Dick Cheney.