Trump and the Dept. of Education
- Thread starter Loyal Coug1
- Start date
I’m going to pass on your offer for a MSNBC premium podcast subscription.
And as predicted, this is where you exit.
As predicted your idea of news is cable tv and rightwing propaganda sites.
"A day after signing the executive order, Trump announced the Small Business Administration would take over the department’s student loan portfolio, while the Department of Health and Human Services would handle special needs and nutrition programs."
And:
"When parents of disabled children are unable to resolve issues with a school district or state, many resort to filing complaints with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, advocates said.
But that division was hit hard by layoffs, with the Trump administration closing seven of its 12 regional offices."
Yeah, let's put RFK Jr. in charge of special needs funding. And nutrition. I visualize shark heads appearing on children's lunch plates nationwide.
And shit, screw all those hungry and disabled/challenged kids. Cut all that out. They can get jobs.
And:
"When parents of disabled children are unable to resolve issues with a school district or state, many resort to filing complaints with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, advocates said.
But that division was hit hard by layoffs, with the Trump administration closing seven of its 12 regional offices."
Yeah, let's put RFK Jr. in charge of special needs funding. And nutrition. I visualize shark heads appearing on children's lunch plates nationwide.
And shit, screw all those hungry and disabled/challenged kids. Cut all that out. They can get jobs.
Whoosh
My first house cost $37,000 in 1975. Zillow shows it is worth $755,000. Talk about failure.
You made the same point several posts ago (I believe anyway). Was DOE funding required to exceed inflation in order to provide better outcomes? Especially in light of funding from state and local governments? Increased funding hasn’t lead to better outcomes, but the solution is supposed to be more funding? If funding is the key, why not dismantle the bureaucracy and (hopefully) get more bang for the buck?
Did you whoosh yourself?
And of course, maybe throwing more money at it isn’t the solution.
Does Parent Involvement Really Help Students? Here's What the Research Says
Parent involvement can lead to improved student outcomes, research shows, but some forms are more helpful than others.
www.edweek.org
Well, since it takes $8 today to get the same value as $1 in 1970, and education spending is $2.45 per $1 spent in the 70s per you, with the same result, I can’t believe I have to explain why that’s not such a bad result. Are you really that stupid, or is this some trick you learn in law school when you’re losing an arguemnet.You made the same point several posts ago (I believe anyway). Was DOE funding required to exceed inflation in order to provide better outcomes? Especially in light of funding from state and local governments? Increased funding hasn’t lead to better outcomes, but the solution is supposed to be more funding? If funding is the key, why not dismantle the bureaucracy and (hopefully) get more bang for the buck?
Did you whoosh yourself?
And of course, maybe throwing more money at it isn’t the solution.
Does Parent Involvement Really Help Students? Here's What the Research Says
Parent involvement can lead to improved student outcomes, research shows, but some forms are more helpful than others.
You’re assuming funding is the only factor for improved outcomes. History has proven that incorrect. To use your words, I can’t believe I had to explain that to you.
And you keep blowing past the state and local funding.
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I can just see you in court. “You’re Honor, I’m too lazy too make my own case. I insist you make opposing counsel make my case for me.”
Trump already pulled the trigger. No need to make a case.
And you’re drifting into Ed and Loyal level laziness where you demand spoon feeding. How many links have I posted compared to you?
You’re the one who said spending was out of control. You robe it, you lazy asshole.
Robe it?
You’re the one that insists funding is all that matters and doesn’t bother posting a thing. Who’s the lazy one here?
Don't drag me into this. I do shitloads of research and post lots of pertinent links. And I read all of the links you provide. Even give you props for some of them and laugh at some of the others that when you READ them, contradict whatever inane point you were trying to make. So why the F- would you say such a thing? And I consider your lumping me in with Ed (sorry Ed) as an insult. So you are 100% today on insults in posts.
Do you want to explain why educational funding must keep up with inflation? What other nations have kept educational spending even with or above inflation. Especially considering that US spending per pupil is third in the world, with outcomes significantly worse than third.
Wages are the most significant slice of educational spending. Something like 2/3 or more. So yes, that should keep up with inflation.
Sure there's waste and bloat as there is in every sector both public and private.
Why do Republicans want to suppress wages?
Show me something that indicates Republicans want to suppress wages. Might want to take a look at real wages over time, especially for the Obama and Biden presidencies.
And the DOE does not fund teacher salaries. So, that’s a whiff.
There are numerous examples of how the Republicans policies and actions suppress wages. Here are a few recent ones, but you could cite a lot more...
Republicans have consistently promoted right to work laws, and it's well documented that right-to-work states have lower wages and less union participation. Between 2011 and 2017 five republican controlled (at the time) states, passed right-to-work legislation: Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, West Virginia, and Kentucky. Michigan later repealed this legislation under Democratic leadership.
Republicans have repeatedly blocked efforts to raise the federal minimum wage above $7.25 per hour.
During the first Trump administration, overtime rules were changed to lower the wage threshold for overtime eligibility costing some 8 million workers more than $1 billion in wages annually.
Republicans have consistently opposed increasing funding for the National Labor Relations Board. The NLRB has not seen a budget increase since 2014 even though it's had a rising case load every year.
Republicans have targeted laws like the Davis-Bacon Act, which mandates prevailing wages (often union-scale) for workers on federal construction projects. Project 2025 calls for the repeal of the Davis-Bacon Act.
Senate Republicans filibustered the passage of the PRO Act in 2021. Passing this would have imposed penalties on employers for union-busting and would have ended mandatory anti-union meetings, directly boosting workers’ bargaining power. By blocking it, Republicans maintain an anti-union environment that suppresses wages.
Again, this is just a short list of items that I am aware of, but there are numerous other examples if you wanted to do a deep dive on the subject.
When was the last time that minimum wage was raised?
Jesus Christ, you f#ckers are so unbelievably myopic.
Minimum wage can be raised at the state level -which is where it should be.
A blanket minimum wage BELOW what each state economy can support is the proper approach. If you're saying that statutorily it should be raised to whatever is the lowest min wage at the state level, that's fine too.
I might even argue that the state minimum wage should be set at the county level to reflect the challenges of a particular local economy.
History of Washington State's Minimum Wage
lni.wa.gov
So, that's Washington. Are you trying to say that minimum wage should be the same nationwide?
The last time the minimum wage was raised was January 1, 2025.
Real wages:
Employed full time: Median usual weekly real earnings: Wage and salary workers: 16 years and over
Graph and download economic data for Employed full time: Median usual weekly real earnings: Wage and salary workers: 16 years and over (LES1252881600Q) from Q1 1979 to Q4 2024 about full-time, salaries, workers, earnings, 16 years +, wages, median, real, employment, and USA.
fred.stlouisfed.org
And no comment on the ED funding teacher salaries.
There has been a federal minimum wage since 1938 for a f#cking reason. DGibbons said, "Show me something that indicates Republicans want to suppress wages." Refusing to raise the federal minimum wage for 16 years is a pretty f#cking immutable sign that you are suppressing wages.
Y'all can play word games and talk sh!t about "state level" decisions but you only play that sh!t when it works for your f#cking agenda. California passes laws and you piss and moan like a bunch of b!tches and say that Trump should use executive orders to override them. New York or Ilinois does the same and suddenly the federal government should be involved.
Your hypocrisy and willful ignorance never end. Republicans actively work to suppress wages and wealth for lower income people every single day.
I guess I missed the last 16 years of Republican majorities in the House and Senate with a Republican in WH.
Edit- And how about those Republicans in California....
California voters reject ballot measure to increase the state's minimum wage
The defeat marks the first time a ballot measure in any state that proposed raising the minimum wage has failed since 1996.
www.nbcnews.com
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It's not hypocrisy. It's economics. A federal minimum wage in excess of an amount a particular state's economy is able to sustain is irresponsible and, in fact, regressive.
Let's say a federal minimum wage of $16.28 was imposed (Washington state's current minimum wage). Mississippi's current minimum wage is $7.25. A mandated $16.28 minimum wage would have massive impact Mississippians reliant on minimum wage albor (assuming some forms of agriculture or food service), some of which would have to go out of business. Which, in turn, means no tax revenue is generated by said business which further plunges Mississippi into deeper economic straits. Some people will lose their minimum wage job.
Go ahead and justify how or why a mom or pop business in Mississippi (who probably are just hanging on anyway) can remain in operation when basic labor costs increase 225% just to keep pace with the Jones.
A minimum wage is just that, not a liveable wage. In our country, additional skills, education or experience are required to be employed in a 'liveable' wage job.
It's a state issue.
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Do you concede my points are relevant, fully true, and fair?Real wages:
Employed full time: Median usual weekly real earnings: Wage and salary workers: 16 years and over
Graph and download economic data for Employed full time: Median usual weekly real earnings: Wage and salary workers: 16 years and over (LES1252881600Q) from Q1 1979 to Q4 2024 about full-time, salaries, workers, earnings, 16 years +, wages, median, real, employment, and USA.fred.stlouisfed.org
And no comment on the ED funding teacher salaries.
Is your point of posting the link to the St. Louis Fed that CPI adjusted wages have risen modestly in spite of efforts by the Republican party to suppress wages?
I'd also point out that CPI does not consider all all expenses, and that even as worker productivity has risen, laborers have not seen their wages rise in a manner that would show them participating in the gains from increased worker productivity. This is one of the reasons explaining the huge transfer of wealth to the top 1% and .1%.
DoE does not fund teacher salaries that I am aware of; perhaps there are grants that helped with this issue in low income areas? I'm no expert on DoE.
However, it would stand to reason that if a benefit is being paid for at a certain rate, that the benefit would deteriorate over time if it does not continue to be funded at the same rate relative to inflation.
Our national averages in education rankings are a bit of a misnomer. Education is largely funded at the local level. Impoverished areas spend a lot less on education than the national average. And education outcomes in those areas are poor, bringing down the national average. In wealthier areas, more money is spent per student and education outcomes are much better. We are never going to compete with a country like Finland, on a national average basis. Countries like this are largely homogenous, meaning the students all speak the same language and share the same culture and religion (or above 90% the same anyway). They also are much smaller and have a national curriculum and spend more on teacher salaries, where the profession is viewed as prestigious and held in higher regard. Cutting the DoE on this basis doesn't make a lot of sense to me, and will likely hurt our impoverished areas the most, which are the areas making it look like our education system isn't working.
Federal minimum wage hasn’t been adjusted since 2009. It currently sits at $7.25 an hour, which is $15,080 per year (before taxes and withholding) for a full time job (2,080 hours).
Federal poverty line for an individual is currently $15,650. That’s basically what someone makes working a minimum wage job, 40 hours per week, with zero days off all year. Not very realistic.
Also not very realistic is the idea that someone can live on $15,650/year.
The argument tends to be that minimum wage age employees are people like high school kids who don’t have expenses. Thats partially true. BLS indicates that 45% of minimum wage employees are under 25, which is the largest block by age group. But for the 55% who are above 25, the argument doesn’t really hold up.
At $15K/yr (again, before deductions) people are forced into multiple jobs and communal living, and if anything goes wrong they can’t afford to fix it. Even basic car problems or buying tires is unaffordable. It’s not a “living wage,” it’s a “just barely surviving wage.”
I think they should assess based on 2,080 hours - not assuming anyone can work every day. One way or another, everyone’s going to end up with 2 weeks of days out of work. Then, get them over $20K. It’s still not much, but at this end of the wage scale that $5K per year will have a lot of impact. That means making federal minimum about $9.60.
How do we pay for it? Pretty easy, really. We’re only talking about direct impact to 1M employees who are at or below minimum. To account for those who are also below $9.60 and would be due a smaller increase, let’s say it’s 3M employees. To make the math easy, let’s just say it’s $5K for each of them…so it’s $15B total.
Where can we find $15B? Should be pretty easy if DOGE is really doing the work they say they are. Or, we could adjust the corporate tax rate by 0.05%. Or, we could reduce fractionally the subsidies paid to oil companies or ag conglomerates.
And of course, states could still set their minimums above the federal, but that bottom line number for the US has to be higher.
Federal poverty line for an individual is currently $15,650. That’s basically what someone makes working a minimum wage job, 40 hours per week, with zero days off all year. Not very realistic.
Also not very realistic is the idea that someone can live on $15,650/year.
The argument tends to be that minimum wage age employees are people like high school kids who don’t have expenses. Thats partially true. BLS indicates that 45% of minimum wage employees are under 25, which is the largest block by age group. But for the 55% who are above 25, the argument doesn’t really hold up.
At $15K/yr (again, before deductions) people are forced into multiple jobs and communal living, and if anything goes wrong they can’t afford to fix it. Even basic car problems or buying tires is unaffordable. It’s not a “living wage,” it’s a “just barely surviving wage.”
I think they should assess based on 2,080 hours - not assuming anyone can work every day. One way or another, everyone’s going to end up with 2 weeks of days out of work. Then, get them over $20K. It’s still not much, but at this end of the wage scale that $5K per year will have a lot of impact. That means making federal minimum about $9.60.
How do we pay for it? Pretty easy, really. We’re only talking about direct impact to 1M employees who are at or below minimum. To account for those who are also below $9.60 and would be due a smaller increase, let’s say it’s 3M employees. To make the math easy, let’s just say it’s $5K for each of them…so it’s $15B total.
Where can we find $15B? Should be pretty easy if DOGE is really doing the work they say they are. Or, we could adjust the corporate tax rate by 0.05%. Or, we could reduce fractionally the subsidies paid to oil companies or ag conglomerates.
And of course, states could still set their minimums above the federal, but that bottom line number for the US has to be higher.
Two other things I think need to change:
The assessment testing is just wrong. There’s too much emphasis on test results and outcomes, reducing kids and districts to numbers. It’s doesn’t work, and it’s not meaningful - especially when our answer to falling scores is to make the test easier. Create a standard, make it the minimum. Have a basic skills test - see if the kid can read and do math. Can they do basic problem solving (this will be a HUGE hurdle for a lot of them now)? Once they pass the test, they can have access to more advanced, technical, and varied classes. If they don’t pass, they don’t graduate.
Second problem is actually the likely source of the first. Putting lawyers and accountant in charge of education is dumb. Thats why we’re trying to reduce kids to numbers, that’s where assessment testing come from. The people in charge should have some background in education in the first place. It doesn’t matter how many dollars we’re spending to gain 2 points on assessment tests when those points don’t mean anything anyway. Even the kids know the tests are meaningless, and they don’t care (which is part of the reason for bad results). Better measures would be how many kids are reading at grade level and how many can balance a checkbook.
Edit to add: I’d be tentatively on board with splitting the minimum wage, allowing for the youngest workers (under 18) to be paid less. However…we make it very difficult for high school kids to make money, with all of the myriad child labor laws, so I’m not sure that it’s really right to also pay them less.
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It's interesting to see your concern for small businesses in Mississippi when you are trying to justify suppressing wages. What it ignores is that across the board, minimum wage increases have not caused any widespread economic issues for any states that have done so. In fact, the states with the highest minimum wage laws tend to be the most prosperous states and it could be argued that the raise of the wage floor is one of the main reasons. It can lead to a reduction in low wage paying jobs that are available, but overall, economic prosperity is higher with higher minimum wages.
As far as the "liveable" wage discussion.....that's just a bullsh!t excuse for abusing low wage employees. My daughter worked at McDonalds when she was in high school and almost half the staff working there was over high school age. The notion that it okay to f#ck over low wage employees because they should get more education if they don't want that kind of work is elitist bullsh!t. Elon Musk and Donald Trump would find that their lives would be more difficult if not for all the little people that they abuse and ignore on a daily basis.
That said, I firmly believe that you should get rewarded with more income if you employ skills that make you unique, but I also think that we live in a culture of extremes. It's ludicrous that Elon Musk is worth hundreds of billions and you are opposed to someone making $30k per year.
Regardless, you f#ckers are all about wage suppression if it makes things cheaper for you. That was the original discussion and Republicans around the country do that sh!t on a daily basis......and that was the original discussion, whether it is at the local, state or federal level. In fact, we've seen state level legislators pass laws robbing local municipalities of the right to have their own minimum wages, because hypocrisy and greed never stops in the MAGA world.
IMHO the federal $7.25 minimum wage is pathetic. I mean shit - at least make it $9 or $10/hour. On the other hand, Wahington's ever-increasing minimum wage is equally crap. Now $16.66/hour. Just stop with the COLA increases and leave it there.
Impact? I dunno, but $16.66 is silly for some 18-year-old flipping burgers. $7.25? equally silly. So what if your Big Mac costs an extra quarter. You want to dine on fast food? Fine - pony up. Although with RFK Jr. now in charge of HHS, I predict a major set of nutritional standards applied to restaurant foods. Have you ever looked up the nutritional info on Big Macs, the Whopper, etc.? I have. Some of these burgers contain your daily "limit" of fat, cholesterol, calories and salt. I'm forgetting something here. A little exaggeration, but not much. That's one burger. Throw in some fries and there you go. As Tim Mcgraw sang - "Another supper from a sack, 99 cent heart attack".
Anyway, get ready for Tofu and vegie burgers. Although those vegie burgers contain a shitload of salt. I'm not sure what the nutritional value is for shark heads and dead bear cubs, but they are probably filled with brain eating worms. I'll have to ask RFK Jr.
Technical difficulties.
The operative term was "suppress wages." Still haven't seen anything that shows me Republicans want to suppress wages, as in press downward because that is what suppress means. Or suppress teaching wages since this thread is about the DOE. The NBC news article includes that California rejecting the minimum wage increase was the first time that occurred since 1996. Since minimum wage is somehow driving this discussion, whoever those Republicans were suck at their jobs.
Real wages declined almost the entirety of Obama and Biden's presidencies. That was something that actually happened. It wasn't talk. Despite some folks sensitivity to words, I think you need to focus on what politicians do or don't do, rather than what they say because many on both sides of aisle say all kinds of shite. Here's a "do" that I would not call suppression (again, not sure why minimum wage is taking center stage in this discussion):
Republicans unveil two minimum wage bills in response to Democrats' push
Senators Mitt Romney and Tom Cotton set $10-an-hour target while Josh Hawley promotes tax credit scheme
Also, please help me reconcile some basic Republican/conservative philosophy to the so-called suppression of wages. Monopsony is where a BUYER dominates the market and can do something like set a wage. Republicans' basic philosophy is free markets, competition, etc. In theory that undermines creating or encouraging monopsony, where wages could really be suppressed. More competition for your services in theory leads to higher wages.
Back to the actual point of this thread. The US has a decentralized funding model for education, with the DOE popping up in 1979. Other developed countries have a centralized system of funding and regulating education (or at least much more centralized than the US). The DOE has not been working. Those impoverished districts have not been improving. Test scores are not improving. Adding a federal agency has done what? I see no reason to continue doing the same thing but expecting a different result. I'd be fine with centralizing the funding and specifically and education in general too (doubt that would go over well, but it least it wouldn't be repeating a failing effort).
Are you passing on why educational funding must keep up with inflation? And telling us what other nations have kept educational spending even with or above inflation?
I agree that the liberal states have gone too far in the opposite direction. In some respects, the market takes care of itself. Kansas follows the federal minimum wage, but most fast food places are paying $12 per hour here. Any place under $10 is a place that no reasonable person should work at. Of course, the whole reason behind a minimum wage is to prevent predatory employers.
In the end though, I agree that it shouldn't be raised past a reasonable amount.
You guys are the ones saying, "Prove that Republicans suppress wages". When it's proven, you pivot to, "Well...yeah....but that should be a state issue so that doesn't count".
