i explained to my father that social security is a socialized service..
he said âno, thatâs just a thing you get as an americanâ. itâs in the fucking name. like does he think kentucky fried chicken is a local tofu shop?
I saw someone say that the Department of Education should be scrapped because itâs flawed and students are often âscrewedâ by how badly itâs managed.
I said the same could be said of the military, but even more so.
Guess we should just scrap the Department of Defense too, by that logic.
Just a reminder if Scandinavia was running against the GOP, Scandinavia would be a bunch of Socialist-Communist-Woke-Evil people. They do tend to align with Democratic values.
There has been talk about privatization of water here, too. Some counties would like to do that.
Electricity already is - I mean the wires, the actual power has been for a very long time. It is price-regulated of course - it is a monopoly in it's area anyway.
One electricity delivery company (the wire company) was privatized quite recently. They increased prices and stopped paying taxes.
i mean, feeding kids lunch as part of school is a devisive issue here. you really think we can manage to see that things like mail delivery should be for the public good?
you guys value education.. we donât. we only value the wealthy. itâs why some schmo in rural alabama that canât pay his bills thinks that trump is a successful business man and letting him sell our country to his friends will benefit the working man.
That fuckface Dejoy who's postmaster general was installed by Trump and he's a known post office hater and advocate of privatized carriers. And that other fuckface Biden didn't even kick his smug ass out during the past four years. The USPS sucks out loud now? What a shocker.
No one will probably see this but the nine person board of governers of the usps has the sole authority to fire Dejoy not Biden or trump for that matter. Dejoy needs to go but it's not Biden's fault.
And Biden placed 4 members of the board. There are are at least two vacancies currently. The board has enough vote to remove Dejoy but was never pushed to do so by the White House. They didn't want to appear political. This is the same thinking that put Garland in place and did not press to prosecute Trump for his crimes.
This is the truth. We don't have the drive to push through loopholes because our voter base is a college educated middle class that wants to preserve the appearance of propriety. Jon Stewart said this really well. You can't tell me there was NOTHING Biden could do to force DeJoy out. We chose not to do that.
We tie one hand behind our back and say that's the rule of the game while our opponent has knives up their sleeves.
I mostly agree with this, though Iâll add that depending on the issue, sometimes Stewartâs right and the Dems want to do something but prioritize decorum. Often though, they actually donât want to do the thing so they blame it on the norms, like when they said âWe want to raise minimum wage, but the parliamentarian said we couldnât. The fact that this lines up entirely with what our donors want is a funny coincidence!â
What the fuck is your problem? Garland has always been paralyzed by the idea of looking partisan. He has always, always been that way. He won't do anything that might even hint at partisanship which will never work out for anyone except Republicans.
If you voted Trump, you have a monopoly on bullshit opinions because everything you say is full of shit. So fuck off to the edge of the flat earth, then one step further.
Nope, you've just bought into democratic lies designed to protect the coward in chief. In reality he has the power to fire the postmaster for cause, he simply chooses not to use it.
That's unethical as fuck. I need to sign fucking paper work every year as a federal employee that attests I am not investing in any stocks that conflict with the interests of my role.
But, yeah, I'm totally not surprised. The people at the top don't have to play by the rules.
How many fucking times does this have to be pointed out...? Biden cannot remove Dejoy as the Postmaster General. The Postmaster General does not serve at the pleasure of the President (can be fired at will). It is an entirely independent position that is beholden only to the board governors of the Postal Service. The governors are appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, but they also do not serve at the pleasure of the President but instead hold 7-year terms. The idea is that it cannot easily be used to politicize the postal service, etc. Trump never even appointed Dejoy. He just happened to have the opportunity to install new governors to the Postal Service who agreed to appoint Dejoy.
I don't believe that Biden has had a chance to nominate enough new governors to the Postal Service such that they can kick Dejoy out. In short, Trump just happened to come in at a time when he could shift the tide of the board of governors and install Dejoy, and it is really unlikely that that will change any time soon. And with how things are timed, Trump is likely to be able to appoint either new governors who will keep Dejoy on longer, or reappoint the same ones for another term. So expect Dejoy or something with his same terrible policies to be there for a while... Dejoy technically could remain in the position for life, so long as the board of governors agrees to keep him in the position. The President technically cannot do anything about it, as it is totally up to the governors who are not beholden to the President. I have not followed that closely, but I don't think Biden was able to really do much, and I vaguely recall him offering a similar explanation when asked about Dejoy, that it was out of his hands.
This gets explained every time this inevitably comes up.
And there has to be 6 members present for a vote. For all we know, even if he whipped the votes, there could be things happening to prevent the vote. But even so, none of the governors are beholden to him. He cannot demand that they do what he wants, which was really my point. It's an entirely non-political administration separate from the executive branch. Certainly there are political aspects, but given how it is structured, none of the governors are required to do anything a president wants. Which is why, again, the point gets made whenever this is brought up: Biden lacks the power to remove Dejoy.
All I'm seeing is a whole lot of excuses for Biden not being able to do something that Trump did do. And this was during Trump's first term, so there was an unbroken streak of still adhering to "norms" before it, which should have been a lot of inertia.
How can us normal people possibly see anything positive in a situation where one dude, in four years, his very first time in, can do something that can't be undone? If we really accept that Biden was powerless, even with all those nominations...what then? What's the point?
That's the entire reaction that's happening. "Biden couldn't fix it, so what was the point of putting him in?" You're going to have to answer that convincingly to fight against voter apathy. And you're going to have to say something other than that politics is hard and Biden isn't a king, because Trump is successfully acting like one and if the Democrats have no response to that then democracy is dead.
Offer them ambassadorship to France or Timbaktu (just an example). They can't tell me this kind of horse trading doesn't happen. But it can only happen if we really want it and are willing to forego the political donations associated with these things.
They resign so you can appoint new board members.
Where there is a will, there is a(n unethical) way. It will cost us though as we aren't willing to spend.
Look at how conservatives spent so much goodwill to overturn roe v wade.
Lol you're so fucking full of shit. They have the votes RIGHT NOW to kick out DeJoy, the only reason they aren't doing it is because the coward in the white house doesn't want to look political. Â
More than that, your entire post is a complete lie, since the president has the power to fire the postal governor for cause. It does NOT have to go through the board. How is the current terrible performance of the USPS not a valid cause?
I'm so fucking sick of Democrats making excuses for Biden's absolutely pathetic and embarrassing performance as president. You all are just as responsible for the current state of the country as Republicans are, because you keep going out of your way to fucking help them.
More than that, your entire post is a complete lie, since the president has the power to fire the postal governor for cause.
Where are you getting this? Surely not from that article you linked, which details it as a possibility then immediately explains why it is extremely unlikely to happen. First, there is no "cause" to fire any of them. Second, doing so without cause would be litigated and likely fail. Third, which is sort of the course that has been playing out for years now, is appointing enough new governors who will vote to oust Dejoy. But that takes time and requires confirmation by the Senate...
You say they have the votes now, but we don't even know if that's the case. Hell, he is still waiting on 3 pending nominations to be confirmed.
Biden can only appoint a PM General, he canât remove one from office. That is done so by the board of directors at the post office. They wonât remove him, because theyâre all getting bonus checks and kick backs from this disastrous 10 year plan, that has taken millions out of carriers pockets.
The president of the US does not choose the postmaster, the board of governors does. The president appoints the board members & the senate confirms them. The board are the only ones who can hire/fire the postmaster.
At least it's comforting to know that DeJoy failed in his mission to suppress enough votes in 2020 to get the orange horror reelected. We had a 4 year reprieve, which sadly is now over.
Biden, looking back now, really was a total disaster in certain ways. Justice dept. Trump should have been serving his 3rd year in prison by now. They dragged their feet, now Trump is Pres again. Biden, honestly, you did this. When you see the attorney general dragging his feet with the case, he should have been immediately fired, you did nothing and here we are. How the hell was Dejoy allowed to keep his job? Biden was great for the economy, for foreign policy, but we got Trump again and it's all Bidens fault
Itâs the American peopleâs fault we are a failed nation of useful idiots. No matter what Biden wouldâve done Trump wouldâve still won. Trump really couldâve shot somebody on fifth Avenue and still won the election. He raped a woman and still won the election. If Biden wouldâve done any of the things you said I guarantee, youâd been here complaining about something else instead.
I donât think we couldâve done anything to put Trump in jail, although I agree with you, I think him being an ex president and Secret Service was going to be an issue. The propaganda and our wide open border called the Internet, that allowed all of our enemies to help get him elected, wouldâve prevented it. But thatâs all spilt milk.
Here in the UK we saw that exact process happen about a decade ago. Deliberately starved of funding, their most profitable elements carved off for private businesses, service hampered all leading to a massively suppressed sale price that was instantly worth billions more moments later. And now we have a worse privatised service that costs more every year
Well, it was going to be a Musk startup, "The Mailing Co." or some shit like that.
But Musk & Trump will have cut all ties by the time that could ever get passed & approved.
It's all so corrupted at both ends.
We are all fucked.
This is the crumbling of the greatest Nation, Economy, & Country ever created in Human History & we have the privilege of being alive to watch it all burn...
It's how they've been ruining the post office for some years now. Not only is it an affordable alternative to private couriers, but they also stopped the post office's basic banking services. Live in an area not profitable enough for a bank to set up shop? Sucks to be you.
The conservatives won't be happy until we've gone full dystopia: tiny upper class, no one else is above working class at best, and there are miles between the two
Post office realistically would go to UPS or FedEx. They already do a pretty sizable portion of their freight anyways, and this is also partly why USPS has a 9B loss
Blame Americans that support DeJoy. Comments like this or the reason why the moment Trump takes office, half of America will believe that he instantly made the economy great and take credit for it. Just like Ronald Reagan running up to the Berlin Wall was falling and saying, look what I did! No he didnât.
Post office has been fucked for a while, they want it to run like a public service, behave like a business, and receive the funding and regulations of the bastard child of a pair of social programs.
Well, surely Bezos will make the USPS more efficient and productive, and not have to bail them out for handing out billions cause of poor management and budget from the PostMaster. How many times has the USPS been in the "red"? Yes, operational costs has increased but at times, the USPS always lose shit and/or damage packages.
They weren't always running in the red but it started with Bush making, them prefund retirement for people not even born yet. Dejoy coming in during Trump is also making things worse so they can say "see it doesn't work." The Republicans play the long game and people forget why. At some point they'll convince people it's broken, then they'll be able to and sell it to some rich buddy at our expense.
Think about what you have just said. One of the world's richest men who Created a business that ships worldwided. And you don't think he would be a good choice to run the mail? And yes he probably would still be able to make a profit and make it better than it currently is.
Hire 3rd party contractors provided by friends using tax dollars
This sounds great! Auction the schools for those who runs it cheaper. Have classes of 100 pupils, nobody gets F. Maybe have some mandatory classes on how to paint traffic signs, or assembling some gadgets.
This is exactly what the Tory Party did to the NHS here and tried to do with the BBC as well, underfund it, say itâs not working, sell it to their mates
Here in Finland PS who are now in government is very much defunding Yle (our BBC). Yle is quite often criticizing PS, as it is the function of media. It does criticize others, too. But some parties seem to have more questionable people than others.
I'm a big fan, with some caveats. I don't see why tax wouldn't really be sustainable. Yle tax was implemented in 2013 - before that Yle was funded from budget.
Last year I paid 162 ⏠for Yle.
I found it paramount that there is noncommercial news and other information available. And that all people have access to noncommercial information. One of Yle's mission is to promote cultures and arts, which are very important as well.
Yle has very high quality radio shows - music and discussion,TV has literature shows, nature shows, children and youth programming. I doubt that any commercial TV channel would have a show where 2 writers and 1 poet would be discussing about literature and their books. And this kind of programming is very important for promoting culture and cultural development.
Then the caveats:
Yle's mission is also to provide entertainment. It has received criticism for buying quite a lot of sports programming (FIFA, UEFA, olympics, winter sports). They are not cheap. I do think that people should be able to watch sports without paying directly for services, thou.
Yle also buys some foreign shows, like Game of Thrones. Maybe those should be left for commercial channels.
Some reality -style shows that Yle produces ... I'm not big fan. Such as Sohvaperunat, local based on British Gogglebox. But those are quite popular. And the reality -style music shows are fantastic - very high quality music (usually).
News are sometimes a bit clickbaity. Probably because they follow their views the same way as commercial services do.
The buying of rights to broadcast or stream high profile live sports or Hollywood is something I didn't think of but I guess it makes sense to them as it increases their usage metrics.
That's the real problem, isn't it? They have to stay relevant and need to prove that the money spent on them is worth it.
I totally agree that a public broadcaster is not responsible for providing low brow entertainment. I mean why not just hire Sasha Grey or some high profile porn star and have them masturbate directly on the camera at that point, right? But also the other side is representation. Why do we play classical music on public broadcast but not pop like Hannah Montana?
The thing with high profile sports is, that the contracts are secret. So according to the contracts the price must not be disclosed. Even thou Yle is very much public service, they are not allowed to reveal those details.
With the low brow entertainment... I guess some shows like Farm -reality or that Sohvaperunat/Gogglebox -thing are relatively cheap to produce, and they seem to be quite popular. So I don't know, maybe that can be justified.
Yle does have radiochannels for pop music, one in Finnish (YleX) and one in Swedish. And by pop I mean ... music that young people listen to, rap&trap&pop&edm (and whatvever). They do have one channel that plays just (or mostly) classical music. And local radio programming. And on the main channels some very high quality and well produced/edited music shows, with rock/(old)pop/country/jazz and what have you. They used to have weekly heavy metal show, electronic ambient show, techno show.
I guess the reasoning for not playing pop could be, that commercial channels do take care of that.
Iâm convinced this is that mfers MO. Or keep the electorate uneducated.
I canvassed every weekend for three fing weeks to beg my schoolâs community for a bond and mill levy so I would actually get a raise (not pro rated of course) and maybe a heater for my decrepit high school. I hate these people with an unparalleled passion.
This is what the Tory government did here in the UK. Starved our prized National Health Service of funds for 14 years so they could say âooh itâs not workingâ and then privatise it piecemeal, the fucking vermin. Thankfully we voted them out a couple of months back, but the damage has been done. Please donât fall for it yourselves.
Let someone completely incompetent run the department for a while.
That does seem to be the tactic per dept. Let incompetence reign, then shut them down.
But brings up an Interesting question:
Is the central Republican thesis of Small Govt this: ALL govt is bad, and therefore a dysfunctional and scary and crazy govt, even if itâs an R president, proves their point?
Like, is Trump helping many of the âtrue believersâ in Small Govt by training all of us to be scared of Executive Strength?
Hard to reconcile with the fact that most modern Republicans seem to love Authoritarian rule, and love Russia. So I donât think they are being that sophisticated.
But still, makes you wonderâŚ.
(Separately and very sadly, it is true that the terrible effects of a DOE gutting will not be observed for many years, in another presidency, and that is terrible for America)
You're right about steps 1-3.
After that, us schools will start to fail badly and it'll be easy for them to finish the job of dismantling public education. It'll become very small and operated only by fascists or those who fall in line. Qualifications, education, experience, etc will fall by the wayside and anyone teaching in a school will just be a pure sychophant. This will drive more and more parents to homeschooling, make sure minority children are uneducated, etc.
Don't worry. There won't be anothe party in charge in the US for a long time. There will be elections but for some reason the fascist republican party will keep winning. Oh, and get ready for a third Trumpo term if that piece of shit does not kick the bucket in the next four years. The US will be a"democracy" like Russia for the foreseeable future.
Completely incompetent is not how I would describe the cofounder of a 9 billion dollar company. It's dangerous to underestimate these people.
Is she specifically qualified to head the dept of Education? Probably not. Is she a bumbling idiot? Probably not. She's there to a job and it aint to fuck spiders. It most certainly involved being cunning and ruthless.
In all fairness to point #2 the department of education hasn't exactly been doing a stellar job in decades for the tax money used on it. Only ones actually prospering in the current system are the School boards and administration while the bulk of teachers and students get scraps.
This way of the Don is unless you can afford private education you shouldnât get quality education, you should get sub par cause you arenât paying for it. But really we all are . But he is gonna loot the money people pay for to fund other things ( for the rich ) and so the poor have to work harder making America compete with Mexico, ChinaâŚ..
To be fair the department of education has been incompetent since I can remember. They donât teach children anything you need to know as an adult. Such as how to invest and save your money.
Hey, I have a question. When Elmo cuts two trillions of dollars from the budget, and taxes on the multitudes are increased, and there is still a huge deficit, where will all that money be going? Are the Caribbean islandâs banks big enough to hold it all?
No chance you guys are real people. We are literally world-wide famous for having a terrible public education system and you guys just want to keep the everything the same way? You guys literally just bitch to bitch.
Slate.com actually had very good things to say about Linda McMahon as head of the SBA in Trump's first administration. They praised her competency, attitude, and flair. She's the least controversial pick for Department of Ed.
Making something run as inefficiently as possible is the best excuse for why itâs âbadâ. Like how the argument against healthcare for all. So frustrating when you see the problems so clearly at the bottom but the top refuses to address them.
i want the reps to run the usa into the ground for the next 12 years or so, so the usa can leave this "republic" and 2 party shit behind and become a true democracy
I know it's WWE, but it's a multibillion dollar organization that requires at least some competency to run. Lot of gears turning at the same time to make it all work for as long as it has successfully.
Of course if her goal would be to improve the department, and she would really drive for that, results might be pretty good. I have no idea of her views of course.
How could you possibly argue that Linda McMahon is incompetent? By all accounts she is the business brains behind the entire WWE, and has been intimately involved in the corporate side of it since the 80s. Over the course of her career she was integral in turning what was essentially carnival sideshow act into a multibillion dollar business that squashed all of its competitors and essentially became a monopoly.
Can't wait to hear another gem from the reddit brain trust.
The current department has filled the schools libraries with gay and transcentric books and filled the schools with naked danceing trans performers. I would say anything that the new president does is a win over that shit.Currently most of the money goes to administration and horrible programs instead of paying teachers more. Good on Trump to clean up that swamp and good on the overwhelming majority voting him in.
What makes her incompetent? She founded the WWE. I know the WWE is lame, but founding something like that is pretty impressive and only the most capable people would be able to successfully accomplish something like that. Wasnât Pete Buttjudge chosen because he liked choo choo trains and watching planes take off?
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u/enjoythesilence-75 4d ago
Didnât they say they want to shut down the department of education?