And I absolutely do hope that things will improve. I think the American spirit is still alive and well, it’s just going through a bit of an episode right now. I agree with a few of the things Trump is doing (cutting waste and trying to uncover fraud), but I absolutely hate the way he’s going about it, and I disagree with the apparent longer term plans.
I sincerely hope we all survive this and the next admin can undo the worst of it while keeping most of the good changes. We’ll see. I feel like the next few months will be incredibly important.
What Trump says they’re doing and what they actually are doing are complete opposites. “Getting rid of fraud” while pillaging public coffers with huge conflicts of interest and corruption. “Efficiency” while cutting people illegally and indiscriminately, then paying them to come back and do nothing. It will take a long time to recover from this.
Here’s a big one: cuts to Dept of Education. We’ve spent a ton on education since 2000 w/ nothing to show for it, while at the same time making college more expensive. I blame fed student loans on making college more expensive, because it increased ease of access to funding (thus increasing demand at colleges), without actually preparing kids for school better, so we ended up w/ tons of kids either dropping out or getting useless degrees and being saddled w/ debt they can’t discharge in bankruptcy.
Trump isn’t actually fixing the core of the issue though, he’s just moving student loans to the Treasury. Ideally we’d completely end the program, increase Pell Grants a bit, and leave access to education to the states.
Great point, I will always regard it with a wistfulness.
And I absolutely do hope that things will improve. I think the American spirit is still alive and well, it’s just going through a bit of an episode right now. I agree with a few of the things Trump is doing (cutting waste and trying to uncover fraud), but I absolutely hate the way he’s going about it, and I disagree with the apparent longer term plans.
I sincerely hope we all survive this and the next admin can undo the worst of it while keeping most of the good changes. We’ll see. I feel like the next few months will be incredibly important.
What Trump says they’re doing and what they actually are doing are complete opposites. “Getting rid of fraud” while pillaging public coffers with huge conflicts of interest and corruption. “Efficiency” while cutting people illegally and indiscriminately, then paying them to come back and do nothing. It will take a long time to recover from this.
Right, which is why I said:
Some of the changes are good, and but many are just outright cronyism.
What I mean is that I can’t think of any changes at all that are good.
Here’s a big one: cuts to Dept of Education. We’ve spent a ton on education since 2000 w/ nothing to show for it, while at the same time making college more expensive. I blame fed student loans on making college more expensive, because it increased ease of access to funding (thus increasing demand at colleges), without actually preparing kids for school better, so we ended up w/ tons of kids either dropping out or getting useless degrees and being saddled w/ debt they can’t discharge in bankruptcy.
Trump isn’t actually fixing the core of the issue though, he’s just moving student loans to the Treasury. Ideally we’d completely end the program, increase Pell Grants a bit, and leave access to education to the states.
So then what is he doing here that is good?
Mostly signaling where the problems are. Ideally we’d be fixing issues with legislation, not EOs though.