I am generally in favor of throwing in with the conspiracy retard right, because we need the votes (nationally). People don't remember what it was like prior to Trump, when these guys would either vote Democrat or more likely not vote at all. We simply don't have a winning coalition (nationally) without them, and I am happy to ally with them at the cost of nonsense like Candace or an 85-IQ grassroots. There is a different archetype of voter that exists in the rust belt that does not exist here to any meaningful extent, and some of the "dumb" stuff hits differently up there.
However, we wouldn't have to do that here, because the GOP majority is strong enough to run a more effective and boring candidate and win. In fact, in this state our boring guys tend to overperform Trump, so it could work, but I think the same sort of retarded circus acts that carry the day (nationally) bleed over here too, and I would still gladly make the trade even if it affects us here in the ways outlined above. But I also think it is good to call it out.
The political landscape is due to significantly change in 2030, when thanks to electoral reapportionment, we arguably don't even need the blue wall states at all anymore (assuming we'd keep Ohio or revert back to winning VA), and after this point we may revert back to saner candidates without the conspiritard baggage in the mold of Kemp or Youngkin, assuming we can withstand the inevitable Democrat attempt to change the rules at the last minute. But one valid point of criticism on the part of the tards was that respectable politicians got us nowhere for so long, so I don't even know if that would be a good thing.
Right now I am just happy we have Trump, and we'll take the bad with the good.
Trump's accomplishment for the year is what, exactly? The porkfest BBB bill that continued Biden spending levels? Adding 2 trillion to the debt? The endorsement of nearly every piece of crap Republican RINO we all hate? The current trajectory to deport 1/8 of the illegals Biden imported? Every DOGE promise getting blown to bits in the first 3 months? Epstein files? J6 accountability?
The only Trump quasi-wins I can think of are the J6 pardons and the narrative pushback on the DEI nonsense, and even that I think is more the pendulum swinging on it's own than Trump's doing. Legally, I think he's done nearly nothing about it.
Yes, in fact, having Trump 45 and now Trump 47 is much better than having 8 years of Hillary and a permanently-entrenched DNC welfare state due to uninterrupted 3rd world Democrat vote importing.
"Better than this other trainwreck" is his best accomplishment. Congrats to him. We jumped off the 98'th floor with Trump, instead of the 99'th with Kamala.
Re: Tommy's issue with school choice: the issue isn't with school choice, though. It's with immigration. If you don't want Islamic schools, then push harder on immigration issues, not school choice.
I have my own issues with the school choice program, but it's mostly around the fact that the voucher, in terms of $ value, may as well be $0. True school choice would result in vouchers valued at the actual cost per student, which is almost certainly much higher than the $2k(?) vouchers that they're doing now.
If they give the voucher at "actual cost per student" why doesn't the same thing happen with the young kids that happened with the universities? i.e. University students were basically guaranteed loans for absolutely any subject matter. The students ability to pay for education went through the roof. The schools recognized it and they raised prices to coincide with the students increased ability to pay the cost.
I'd argue that universities are an entirely different beast than primary schools. For starters, the primary school curriculum is set at the state/federal level, so there's not really an equivalent of guaranteed-loans-for-useless-degrees (which subsidizes tuition increases). Universities also make a considerable amount of money from the federal government in the form of grants and other patronage schemes, enough that when Trump threatened to turn the spigot off, they felt genuinely threatened. There's also the whole credentialism aspect of universities that gives them leverage over pricing elasticity (e.g., high-achieving students are going to go to UT within a high-range of tuition prices because the UT name/brand carries weight).
There's a lot more to it, but unfortunately, I'm too lazy to research and write-out every single detail that makes the two systems different beasts. What it ultimately comes down to, though, is that it's a lot easier to change schools at the primary level. If your local public school sucks, then, under a voucher system, you pull your kids out and send them to e.g., Alpha School. If Alpha School starts raising tuition under the same auspices that universities raised theirs ("well they're guaranteed $12k from vouchers, so why not raise prices to squeeze out an extra $100, they can surely afford that"), then you pull the kids out of Alpha School and go to a competitor that isn't raising prices. With the rise of AI/edtech, there will be more and more competition that makes the competition even greater.
In my opinion, in a voucher system where kids receive actual-cost-per student in the form of school vouchers, that $ amount would end up serving more as a ceiling, whereas with the universities the guaranteed loans serve more as a floor. The primary schools are incentivized to give you as much as possible within the bounds of that voucher so that you send your kids there instead of elsewhere. With guaranteed loans + credentialist culture, the universities are incentivized to raise prices as much as possible while maintaining the same level of branding/prestige, regardless of actual academic results.
I realize I'm kind of falling back on a lolbert argument, but I think in this specific case, they're actually spot on. Milton Friedman had many interviews/essays about school choice/vouchers that made the argument a lot more eloquently that I can.
tl;dr is that universities and primary education are two completely different systems subject to different economic pressures, and vouchers are a different system than guaranteed loans, which makes the university example you gave an apples-to-oranges comparison, imo.
Maybe. I dont follow the issue closely. I'd think the general rule is anything subsidized by government gets more expensive and I would have guessed the kid's voucher would act as the floor price... short of government price fixing. If it's free money for the parent to direct, they don't have much incentive to avoid forfeiting the full amount. Maybe I'll try to track down what Friedman was saying, he was good usually. Thanks.
I am generally in favor of throwing in with the conspiracy retard right, because we need the votes (nationally). People don't remember what it was like prior to Trump, when these guys would either vote Democrat or more likely not vote at all. We simply don't have a winning coalition (nationally) without them, and I am happy to ally with them at the cost of nonsense like Candace or an 85-IQ grassroots. There is a different archetype of voter that exists in the rust belt that does not exist here to any meaningful extent, and some of the "dumb" stuff hits differently up there.
However, we wouldn't have to do that here, because the GOP majority is strong enough to run a more effective and boring candidate and win. In fact, in this state our boring guys tend to overperform Trump, so it could work, but I think the same sort of retarded circus acts that carry the day (nationally) bleed over here too, and I would still gladly make the trade even if it affects us here in the ways outlined above. But I also think it is good to call it out.
The political landscape is due to significantly change in 2030, when thanks to electoral reapportionment, we arguably don't even need the blue wall states at all anymore (assuming we'd keep Ohio or revert back to winning VA), and after this point we may revert back to saner candidates without the conspiritard baggage in the mold of Kemp or Youngkin, assuming we can withstand the inevitable Democrat attempt to change the rules at the last minute. But one valid point of criticism on the part of the tards was that respectable politicians got us nowhere for so long, so I don't even know if that would be a good thing.
Right now I am just happy we have Trump, and we'll take the bad with the good.
Trump's accomplishment for the year is what, exactly? The porkfest BBB bill that continued Biden spending levels? Adding 2 trillion to the debt? The endorsement of nearly every piece of crap Republican RINO we all hate? The current trajectory to deport 1/8 of the illegals Biden imported? Every DOGE promise getting blown to bits in the first 3 months? Epstein files? J6 accountability?
The only Trump quasi-wins I can think of are the J6 pardons and the narrative pushback on the DEI nonsense, and even that I think is more the pendulum swinging on it's own than Trump's doing. Legally, I think he's done nearly nothing about it.
Yes, in fact, having Trump 45 and now Trump 47 is much better than having 8 years of Hillary and a permanently-entrenched DNC welfare state due to uninterrupted 3rd world Democrat vote importing.
"Better than this other trainwreck" is his best accomplishment. Congrats to him. We jumped off the 98'th floor with Trump, instead of the 99'th with Kamala.
Re: Tommy's issue with school choice: the issue isn't with school choice, though. It's with immigration. If you don't want Islamic schools, then push harder on immigration issues, not school choice.
I have my own issues with the school choice program, but it's mostly around the fact that the voucher, in terms of $ value, may as well be $0. True school choice would result in vouchers valued at the actual cost per student, which is almost certainly much higher than the $2k(?) vouchers that they're doing now.
If they give the voucher at "actual cost per student" why doesn't the same thing happen with the young kids that happened with the universities? i.e. University students were basically guaranteed loans for absolutely any subject matter. The students ability to pay for education went through the roof. The schools recognized it and they raised prices to coincide with the students increased ability to pay the cost.
I'd argue that universities are an entirely different beast than primary schools. For starters, the primary school curriculum is set at the state/federal level, so there's not really an equivalent of guaranteed-loans-for-useless-degrees (which subsidizes tuition increases). Universities also make a considerable amount of money from the federal government in the form of grants and other patronage schemes, enough that when Trump threatened to turn the spigot off, they felt genuinely threatened. There's also the whole credentialism aspect of universities that gives them leverage over pricing elasticity (e.g., high-achieving students are going to go to UT within a high-range of tuition prices because the UT name/brand carries weight).
There's a lot more to it, but unfortunately, I'm too lazy to research and write-out every single detail that makes the two systems different beasts. What it ultimately comes down to, though, is that it's a lot easier to change schools at the primary level. If your local public school sucks, then, under a voucher system, you pull your kids out and send them to e.g., Alpha School. If Alpha School starts raising tuition under the same auspices that universities raised theirs ("well they're guaranteed $12k from vouchers, so why not raise prices to squeeze out an extra $100, they can surely afford that"), then you pull the kids out of Alpha School and go to a competitor that isn't raising prices. With the rise of AI/edtech, there will be more and more competition that makes the competition even greater.
In my opinion, in a voucher system where kids receive actual-cost-per student in the form of school vouchers, that $ amount would end up serving more as a ceiling, whereas with the universities the guaranteed loans serve more as a floor. The primary schools are incentivized to give you as much as possible within the bounds of that voucher so that you send your kids there instead of elsewhere. With guaranteed loans + credentialist culture, the universities are incentivized to raise prices as much as possible while maintaining the same level of branding/prestige, regardless of actual academic results.
I realize I'm kind of falling back on a lolbert argument, but I think in this specific case, they're actually spot on. Milton Friedman had many interviews/essays about school choice/vouchers that made the argument a lot more eloquently that I can.
tl;dr is that universities and primary education are two completely different systems subject to different economic pressures, and vouchers are a different system than guaranteed loans, which makes the university example you gave an apples-to-oranges comparison, imo.
Maybe. I dont follow the issue closely. I'd think the general rule is anything subsidized by government gets more expensive and I would have guessed the kid's voucher would act as the floor price... short of government price fixing. If it's free money for the parent to direct, they don't have much incentive to avoid forfeiting the full amount. Maybe I'll try to track down what Friedman was saying, he was good usually. Thanks.