The Trump Presidency

[sturg33]

The media should be the opposition party, irrespective of who's in power, because it's their job to be interrogating power and speaking truth to it. Any journalist rankled by that particular message from Trump's administration hasn't understood what their role in society is meant to be.

It's also a nice tacit admission by Bannon that he was never a member of "the media", at least the media qua journalism. He was an unofficial propagandist, now he is an official propagandist; comments like these seem to reflect that he knows this.

The problem I see is the media no longer has high standards for what is news and what is truth these days. They know Trump is click bait... and I see a lot of headline hysteria that turns out to be nothing. And that's the best case scenario.

The worst case scenario is that they are spreading something patently false - and it goes viral really really quickly and it's happening all the time. There was one today about the WH photoshopping the President's hands to make them bigger in a photo. That was shared over 30,000 times before it was corrected as a false story. The media has proven to be not trust worthy - and people are starting to not trust them. That's what's going to happen

Meanwhile, I don't remember a similar scrutiny to Obama - but more of an agreed upon relationship. But perhaps I'm biased

[jpx7]

I have always said teachers should make more but this isn't a problem money will solve and if you add more money to the system the bureaucracy will grow and swallow more of the money.

Again: more and better. You're eliding the "and better" part—as you (and many others: not trying to single you out on this) often do when discussing how "the left" thinks government can "solve all problems".

And while I don't think government can (or should, really) solve all problems, I do think government can (and should) solve a lot of problems: that is (or should be) its core functionality. Likewise, I don't think the route to improving government functions is to simply eliminate them; but I definitely think our governments—local, state, and federal—could grow a hell-of-a-lot better at performing those functions. (The ACA is, coincidentally, a good microcosm of this: I'm definitely not pro-repeal, but I'm damn sure pro-replace-with-something-better.)

[sturg33]

Again: more and better. You're eliding the "and better" part—as you (and many others: not trying to single you out on this) often do when discussing how "the left" thinks government can "solve all problems".

And while I don't think government can (or should, really) solve all problems, I do think government can (and should) solve a lot of problems: that is (or should be) its core functionality. Likewise, I don't think the route to improving government functions is to simply eliminate them; but I definitely think our governments—local, state, and federal—could grow a hell-of-a-lot better at performing those functions. (The ACA is, coincidentally, a good microcosm of this: I'm definitely not pro-repeal, but I'm damn sure pro-replace-with-something-better.)

I would say the government's track record with education is enough evidence for me to not to give them a longer leash

[jpx7]

The problem I see is the media no longer has high standards for what is news and what is truth these days. They know Trump is click bait... and I see a lot of headline hysteria that turns out to be nothing. And that's the best case scenario.

The worst case scenario is that they are spreading something patently false - and it goes viral really really quickly and it's happening all the time. There was one today about the WH photoshopping the President's hands to make them bigger in a photo. That was shared over 30,000 times before it was corrected as a false story. The media has proven to be not trust worthy - and people are starting to not trust them. That's what's going to happen

Click-bait is a problem; but exaggerated, misleading, or outright too-quick-to-the-presses false headlines have always been a problem (like that one time Dewey defeated Truman). Part of the responsibility lies with the press—with ownership, with editorial staff, and with the journalists that accede too easily to the demands of the first two—but a lot of the responsibility likewise lies with consumers, who sadly are tasked with being more savvy and skeptical until we can trust our media to be more savvy and skeptical for us. Click-bait only sells because people click it; partisan-slanted news—whether its Fox News or MSNBC—only thrives because we encourage it; and pointless, distracting tales of photo-shopped hand-enlargement and jowl-reduction only spreads because we spread it. We have to demand better journalism, not just throw our hands up and say, "It's not good enough, so let's just forsake all of it."

I think The Intercept is an outlet that is, for the most part, a good example of the sort of journalism we need to encourage—and it's probably a good sign (and a good litmus test, generally) that their reporting was held up as belligerent, over the course of 2016, by both (R) and (D) establishment partisans.

Meanwhile, I don't remember a similar scrutiny to Obama - but more of an agreed upon relationship. But perhaps I'm biased

As I said up-thread, regarding standards of scrutiny, "if they were less so under the previous administration, then they failed at their job. But the answer is not to be less adversarial now." I personally think, as President, Obama received a lot of undue scrutiny from certain corners (birth certificate, religion, the ACA), and not nearly enough scrutiny from other corners (drones, corporate mergers, drug policy, the ACA).

[Runnin]

Does he look Presidential enough yet?

[jpx7]

I would say the government's track record with education is enough evidence for me to not to give them a longer leash

It's not a sterling track-record, but it's much better than the track-record of for-profit education.

[Oklahomahawk]

It's not a sterling track-record, but it's much better than the track-record of for-profit education.

Do you guys find it odd that everybody agrees our educational system is broken and is in need of some serious overhaul but nobody EVER seems to ask a teacher what needs to be done? Am I the only one who thinks it's more than a little effed up that everybody who isn't a teacher knows better how to fix the problems than those who are teachers?

[sturg33]

It's not a sterling track-record, but it's much better than the track-record of for-profit education.

The correlation of our education scores and advancement along with the creation of the department of education would be cause for dismissal 20 years ago in the private sector... But the public sector just doubles down

[thethe]

Do you guys find it odd that everybody agrees our educational system is broken and is in need of some serious overhaul but nobody EVER seems to ask a teacher what needs to be done? Am I the only one who thinks it's more than a little effed up that everybody who isn't a teacher knows better how to fix the problems than those who are teachers?

100% agreed.

[Krgrecw]

Do you guys find it odd that everybody agrees our educational system is broken and is in need of some serious overhaul but nobody EVER seems to ask a teacher what needs to be done? Am I the only one who thinks it's more than a little effed up that everybody who isn't a teacher knows better how to fix the problems than those who are teachers?

I don't think you can fix it. The system is so big you can only hope it works.

[sturg33]

Do you guys find it odd that everybody agrees our educational system is broken and is in need of some serious overhaul but nobody EVER seems to ask a teacher what needs to be done? Am I the only one who thinks it's more than a little effed up that everybody who isn't a teacher knows better how to fix the problems than those who are teachers?

That is exactly what libertarians advocate. How can a central office in Washington DC know what is best for kids in Fargo, North Dakota?

Let localities decide the proper education.

[thethe]

Do you guys find it odd that everybody agrees our educational system is broken and is in need of some serious overhaul but nobody EVER seems to ask a teacher what needs to be done? Am I the only one who thinks it's more than a little effed up that everybody who isn't a teacher knows better how to fix the problems than those who are teachers?

100% agreed.

[jpx7]

The correlation of our education scores and advancement along with the creation of the department of education would be cause for dismissal 20 years ago in the private sector... But the public sector just doubles down

This just returns to what I said upthread: "I don't think the route to improving government functions is to simply eliminate them; but I definitely think our governments—local, state, and federal—could grow a hell-of-a-lot better at performing those functions." Is there a lot of work to do to improve education in the United States? For sure. Should we disband public education entirely, and move to for-profit schooling (as Betsy DeVos would like)? Hell no. And like I said: the ledger of for-profit schooling in the US, in terms of educational outcomes, is downright terrible. And even the track-record for private, non-profit schools is dubious.

That is exactly what libertarians advocate. How can a central office in Washington DC know what is best for kids in Fargo, North Dakota?

Let localities decide the proper education.

That's not really "exactly what libertarians advocate." Restructuring public education to give more leeway and license to individual, state- and county-level localities, or even directly to municipalities, is very different than moving to a private, profit (or even "non-profit") model of education that decimates or eliminates publicly-funded education. Maybe some libertarians advocate the former, but plenty agitate for the latter.

[Oklahomahawk]

The correlation of our education scores and advancement along with the creation of the department of education would be cause for dismissal 20 years ago in the private sector... But the public sector just doubles down

I'm not sure you understand the private sector, at least in this case, as well as you think you do. Go ahead and ask me why the private sector/private schools answer won't work either (by the way I"m agreeing that to a large extent the current setup isn't working, as you rightly point out)

EDIT: By the way that "let local school districts decide what to teach is what brought us the recent TX change in textbooks that are full of "alternative facts".

[sturg33]

I'm not sure you understand the private sector, at least in this case, as well as you think you do. Go ahead and ask me why the private sector/private schools answer won't work either (by the way I"m agreeing that to a large extent the current setup isn't working, as you rightly point out)

I didn't suggest taking education to the private sector. I said that the private sector would not put up with the incompetence that the dept of education has produced.

I'm in favor of all methods of education. Which ever the local governments prefer, I would support

[thethe]

This just returns to what I said upthread: "I don't think the route to improving government functions is to simply eliminate them; but I definitely think our governments—local, state, and federal—could grow a hell-of-a-lot better at performing those functions." Is there a lot of work to do to improve education in the United States? For sure. Should we disband public education entirely, and move to for-profit schooling (as Betsy DeVos would like)? Hell no. And like I said: the ledger of for-profit schooling in the US, in terms of educational outcomes, is downright terrible. And even the track-record for private, non-profit schools is dubious.

Of course it is. The system is built so that they can't succeed.

[sturg33]

I saw that idiot Bernie Sanders went on a rant during Tom Price's testimony.

He said that "America is not a compassionate country."

I know he doesn't understand math... but you would think he could at least be directionally accurate.

American private citizens (not government) donated $400B dollars to charity and churches last year. That is as big as the entire GDP of compassionate socialist Venezuela, whom Bernie said we should strive to become.

[Oklahomahawk]

I didn't suggest taking education to the private sector. I said that the private sector would not put up with the incompetence that the dept of education has produced.

sturg, this isn't about or against you, you just made the last comment of a conversation that was going on between multiple people, in other words you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. ;)

OK cool, but what would you say if I told you that in the past 6 months I have been told by the Vice President/Academic Dean of one university that I teach online courses for that I could only deduct 10% for outright plagiarism from assignments turned in (because they were complaining because I was being too mean by awarding them a zero for that assignment UNTIL they went back and fixed it and resubmitted it) and by some high and might asshole at another university that I teach online courses for that I could not require my students to provide a turnitin/plagiarism report with their assignment because that was not fair to their students. By the way I've had students tell me that my course was their 7th or 8 course with that university and I was the first instructor that made them in text cite their sources. In fact half of them didn't even know what the hell that meant until they got into my course, and I"m not even an English teacher. Here's the fun part, one of those schools was a "for profit university" and the other was supposedly a "non profit university". Can you tell the difference by what I just told you? Neither can I. Both are driven by kissing ass and not offending students, many of whom desperately need offending because they get to college horribly fooking ignorant about damn near everything, and both of the highly placed assholes who told me I was too harsh and demanding were simply scared students would get their feelings hurt and drop out of their POS school and transfer to another school and they would lose their highly placed highly paid job. This is why it's so dangerous to let people who don't know anything about the education process make important decisions about reforming it. Oh there's no doubt it needs reforming, but by people who actually want to make it better, not just pump some sunshine up the backsides of the public, the parents, and the accrediting agencies so that they think a sow's ear really is a silk purse.

I'm in favor of all methods of education. Which ever the local governments prefer, I would support. I know you're an idealist sturg that isn't a bad thing, but if you've met as many dumbass people on school boards and in superintendent's offices you might think better of "whatever the locals decide". Didn't the locals do enough to convince you in the last election that many of them didn't have sense enough to pour piss out of a boot with the directions written on the heel? Didn't they stand up and cheer and push with all their might that we should all vote for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton without ever even stopping to realize they were really demanding that people vote for either sucky or suckier (in no particular order)?

.

[Oklahomahawk]

I saw that idiot Bernie Sanders went on a rant during Tom Price's testimony.

He said that "America is not a compassionate country."

I know he doesn't understand math... but you would think he could at least be directionally accurate.

American private citizens (not government) donated $400B dollars to charity and churches last year. That is as big as the entire GDP of compassionate socialist Venezuela, whom Bernie said we should strive to become.

Hey, I heard almost all of that $400B donated to charity came from the top 1% in this country. Not sure if that's true but I read it here so....

Oh and even though I like Bernie, you're right about Venezuela being a pit from hell in just about every way. I wonder if Bernie has it mixed up with Argentina. As someone who has taught Geography for years trust me when I tell you more people make that mistake than you might think. ;)

[Hawk]

Should we disband public education entirely, and move to for-profit schooling (as Betsy DeVos would like)? Hell no. And like I said: the ledger of for-profit schooling in the US, in terms of educational outcomes, is downright terrible. And even the track-record for private, non-profit schools is dubious.

I'm OK with vouchers provided the government responsibility which is removed in the public to private transfer is then correspondingly re-appropriated to a oversight of the for-profit enterprises (be that via educational standards, tuition caps, or selective diversity measures). I don't see school choice as a 'decimation' of publicly-funded education, but more as a kind of reformulation.