Found 7 bookmarks
Newest
Dismantling the Department of Education.
Dismantling the Department of Education.
So, we’ll “defund” the department, but the money will “keep flowing.” We’ll “dismantle” it, but really redistribute its programs across the government. We’ll “eliminate” it, but actually reassign its various responsibilities to other agencies. When you add that actually eliminating ED will require an act of Congress and 60 Senate votes (as Ramesh Ponnuru wrote under “What the right is saying”), what actually ends up happening is not at all clear to me.
Defund ED? Who would teach? Who would create curriculums? How would our public schools stay funded?  I was subsequently surprised to learn then that ED has very little to do with curriculum or employing teachers, and that its role in funding public schools is fractional.
The Department of Education is responsible for about 14% of all funding that goes to our K–12 schools, and at the same time the department’s reach into state and local education has gone incredibly far. Through the power of the purse, the Education Department now wields a great deal of influence over how parents, teachers, and schools behave. At the same time, a lot of what ED does could be easily moved to other departments (for instance, I think it’s pretty easy to argue that ED’s Office for Civil Rights could move to the Department of Justice).
Some writers, like Cato’s Neal McCluskey, have made straightforward arguments that we don’t need a federal education agency when the federal government isn’t allowed to regulate education, and that the department itself is neither competent nor effective. At the very least, I think one of ED’s biggest responsibilities — its federal student loan programs — has gotten completely out of control. When higher-education costs have exploded and the president responds to those costs by forgiving hundreds of billions in student debt, moving that responsibility somewhere else makes sense. Writers on the left and right have made the case that the Treasury would be better suited to manage and oversee student loans, and I’m inclined to agree with them.
my general view is that ED is not really emblematic of a thriving, successful expansion of federal government — and while trying to “delete” it with Musk-level tact or care would be a disaster, I also think Congress (if it wanted) could significantly reduce ED’s role in American life, turn over its responsibilities to other federal agencies, and streamline a lot of the work it does as a department.  The problem with the current debate is that doing so wouldn’t really reduce the size of the federal government — and it wouldn’t save us all that much money, either. Instead, the administration would just create a whole lot of disruption, risk interrupting popular services, and probably lose the political debate in the public square — all to simply pass on one department’s responsibilities to others.
·readtangle.com·
Dismantling the Department of Education.
Judith Butler, philosopher: ‘If you sacrifice a minority like trans people, you are operating within a fascist logic’
Judith Butler, philosopher: ‘If you sacrifice a minority like trans people, you are operating within a fascist logic’
Identity is, for me, a point of departure for alliances, which need to include all kinds of people, from trans to working people to those taxi drivers that J. K. Rowling is worried about. Identity is a great start for making connections and becoming part of larger communities. But you can’t have a politics of identity that is only about identity. If you do that, you draw sectarian lines, and you abandoned our interdependent ties.
·english.elpais.com·
Judith Butler, philosopher: ‘If you sacrifice a minority like trans people, you are operating within a fascist logic’
Wow. BRUTAL words for her fellow liberals from Democratic strategist on CNN:
Wow. BRUTAL words for her fellow liberals from Democratic strategist on CNN:

“I’m going to speak some hard truths...We are not be party of common sense, which is the message the voters sent to us...When we address Latino voters...as Latinx, for instance, b/c that’s the politically correct thing to do, it makes them think we don’t even live in the same planet as they do. When we are too afraid to say that, hey, college kids, if you're trashing the campus of Columbia University b/c you’re unhappy about some sort of policy and you’re taking over a university and you’re trashing it and preventing other students from learning, that is unacceptable. But we’re so worried about alienating one or another cohort in our coalition that we do not know what to say when normal people look at that and say, wait a second. I send my kids to college so they can learn, not so they can burn buildings and trash lawns, right? And so on and so forth. When we put pronouns after names and say she/her as opposed to saying, you know what, if I call you by the wrong pronoun, call me out. I am sorry. I won't do it again. But stop with the virtue signaling and speak to people like they’re normal. There is nothing that I'm going to say to Shermichael that I’m not going to say to your or I’m not going to say to somebody else. I speak the same language to everybody. But that’s not what Democrats do. We constantly try to parse out different ways of speaking because our focus groups or polling shows that so-and-so appeals to such and such. That’s not how normal people think. It is not common sense and we need to start being the part of common sense again. Joe Biden is not responsible for that, neither is Kamala Harris. That is a problem that Democrats have had for years. I’ve been banging the drum on this for I don’t know how — probably ten years on this. We need to get back to being the party of common sense that people look at us and say we understand you. We appreciate what you say because you speak our language. And, until we do that, we should stop blaming other people for our own mistakes.”

·x.com·
Wow. BRUTAL words for her fellow liberals from Democratic strategist on CNN:
As the Daily Wire Publicly Negotiated a Debate with Candace Owens, it Secretly Sought -- and ...
As the Daily Wire Publicly Negotiated a Debate with Candace Owens, it Secretly Sought -- and ...
Boreing said: "your story is inaccurate to the point of being false," though he did not specify a single inaccuracy, nor did he deny that the Daily Wire had sought and obtained a gag order on Owens at the same time they were publicly posturing as wanting a debate with her. The confirmation we obtained of all these facts is indisputable. Boreing added: "I’m sure you can appreciate how fraught a high profile break-up like this is. For that reason, we are trying to resolve our issues with Candace privately."It certainly seems true that the Daily Wire is attempting to achieve all of this "privately." Nonetheless, Ben Shapiro has constructed his very lucrative media brand and persona based on his supposed superiority in debating, a reputation cultivated largely as a result of numerous appearances at undergraduate schools around the country where he intrepidly engages with students who are often in their teens or early twenties. Both Shapiro and the Daily Wire have also predicated their collective media brand on an eagerness to engage in free and open debate with anyone, and to vehemently oppose any efforts to silence people, especially those in media, from expressing their political views.
·greenwald.locals.com·
As the Daily Wire Publicly Negotiated a Debate with Candace Owens, it Secretly Sought -- and ...
An open letter to J.K. Rowling - Mermaids
An open letter to J.K. Rowling - Mermaids
The claim that simpler gender recognition will lead to unsafe changing rooms and toilets is further undermined by a strange and ignominious chapter in North Carolina’s history where, in 2016, these exact concerns led to the introduction of a law demanding people only use toilets which correspond to the gender stated on their birth certificate. The new law not only caused a rise in transphobia, it also opened up the possibility of increased harassment of women in public restrooms who weren’t transgender but who didn’t dress or present in a ‘feminine’ way. It also meant that transgender men were being forced to use women’s toilets. In the end, a federal judge got rid of the dangerous and unworkable legislation in 2019.
“…often cite fear of safety and privacy violations in public restrooms if such laws are passed…No empirical evidence has been gathered to test such laws’ effects…This study finds that the passage of such laws is not related to the number or frequency of criminal incidents in these spaces.
Men who prey on vulnerable women are a worldwide problem, but this has nothing whatever to do with trans people. On the contrary, trans people are generally far more worried about accessing toilets and changing rooms than cisgender women, because they fear being verbally abused or attacked by people who don’t think they should be there.
It would be useful to know of the evidence you have that trans rights are affecting education and/or safeguarding. Trans rights do not affect either, just as the right to equal marriage did not affect the rights of cisgender heterosexual people to marry
We do not consider it a crime for women to express concern. We do however consider it abusive and damaging when people conflate trans women with male sexual predators, impute sexual criminality to trans identities, suggest that support of a trans child is parental homophobia and misogyny, and share uncorroborated and inaccurate information which severely damages the lives of trans and non-binary people.
·mermaidsuk.org.uk·
An open letter to J.K. Rowling - Mermaids
Can a universal basic income help address homelessness? | Hacker News Discussion
Can a universal basic income help address homelessness? | Hacker News Discussion
The number one thing UBI doesn't handle well is rent inflation. You hand out $1000 dollars per person monthly, expect rents to go up by about $1000 monthly as landlords realise there is all this extra disposable income in peoples' hand right now.However, this is just an exaggerated effect of monopolies sucking out all aggregate disposable income out of economy that is already happening. Monopolies by definition don't have price down pressures, so they always price expand to capture anything people might have extra. Since landlording is the biggest aggregate monopoly in the world, landlords capture any disposable workers' income. No matter if they get a raise from their boss, the landlord always takes it away.
One of the biggest strengths of UBI is that it eliminates the beurocracy and waste associated with determining who "deserves" assistance. The dominant model in the US is expecting homeless people with drug problems to solve both their addiction and homelessness at the same time by themselves before they are deemed worthy of being helped, which needless to say is barely assistance at all. Having a gaurenteed income stream would make it easier to gain a foothold.
·news.ycombinator.com·
Can a universal basic income help address homelessness? | Hacker News Discussion