If you really believe Tillerson has absolved all of his holdings and won't benefit, I have a hotel on Columbus Circle to sell you. His $500 billion oil deal with Putin was interrupted because of Obama's sanctions and now he's Sec of State and the Trump administration is all buddy buddy with Russia? Come on.

>A 'hiring freeze' on government staff is not entirely irresponsible wherein there is bloat. The highest media wage in the US is - guess where? Washington DC. The bloat in DC is epic. At least the sentiment to want to do something about that is reasonable.

First off, I highly doubt it is the clerical / less-unskilled staff that is making those numbers so high and those are the type of jobs that will be mosty affected by the freeze. Is it really "bloat" if it's giving people livelihoods and jobs? Almost all white-collar jobs are "bloat", there are very few actually essential duties that need to be taken care of. If anything, federal employment it's one of the best support infrastructures and safety nets we have since our welfare is in such disarray.

> Allowing parents to choose schools is not 'defunding' public schools, it's allowing people to take public money allocated to their students and put it into the school of their choice.

"School choice" is just the rhetorical term used by the right to indicate the rise of private and charter schools, which don't need to follow those pesky federal regulations. Again, I also don't take the term at face value - did you even watch the Betsy DeVos confirmation hearing? It was pathetic.

>Most of the items on this list are reasonable. People are getting in a huff about it because it's 'Trump' and they can't stand that. If he can do just 'the better 1/2' of that list, America will be in much better shape.

Yea they are so bent out of shape that a thin-skinned narcissist rapist wants to basically loot the country with his cronies. The nerve of some people!

"If you really believe Tillerson has absolved all of his holdings and won't benefit, I have a hotel on Columbus Circle to sell you."

Tillerson has also made a deal whereby he can't work Oil and Gas for the next 10 years.

The deal is with the State Department - are you saying the State Department is lying?

There is also specific Congressional oversight for Tillerson (which does not apply to Trump, by the way).

So enough conspiracy theories - either put up some evidence of your claim that somehow Tillerson will not sell his shares - or don't make the comment.

"Is it really "bloat" if it's giving people livelihoods and jobs?"

Wow ... Yes! The very fact that you'd leave aside government workers actual ability to be productive, and just assume that 'giving people money' is somehow a 'good thing' for governance, makes me question the premise of your rebuttal.

""School choice" is just the rhetorical term"

Except it's not. When people can take their government vouchers to the schools of their choice, this is 'choice'. Not 'defunding public schools'. You're the one making the rhetorical leap here.

"Yea they are so bent out of shape that a thin-skinned narcissist rapist wants to basically loot the country with his cronies"

Take this kind of stuff to Huffpost, you'll find like minded people there.

I don't really like Trump, but the list is not remotely unreasonable.

"Tillerson has also made a deal whereby he can't work Oil and Gas for the next 10 years."

Well, he has a job for the next 4-8, so... either a vacation afterwards, or, I'm sure, he can work in a "consulting" role somewhere...

"When people can take their government vouchers to the schools of their choice"

Private and charter schools are not obligated to take any particular student, but still receive baseline and per-head funding.

So if your child isn't as promising as others, oh well, they'll get to go to a "lesser" school.

>So if your child isn't as promising as others, oh well, they'll get to go to a "lesser" school.

Get rid of Common Core. Force schools to compete. Now, every schools will have to teach their students better.

"Force schools to compete" I don't think this is it.

'Competition' is definitely not the right word for education.

The best education systems in the world: S. Korea, Finland - are not competitive in the least.

If you have good students (re: good parents), decent teachers, a classroom, textbooks and a chalkboard - you're going to get a good education.

The 'choice' issue I think is important when it comes to alternative and special interest schools - in particular those in hard-up places: they have Charter Schools with very special types of programs geared towards kids from rougher districts etc.. Or maybe an ethnic/religious slant i.e. 'Ukranian school' or 'Catholic School' - neither of which would be entirely different from a public school, other than at a 'Catholic' or 'Ukranian' school there would be a 'Christmas Concert' instead of a 'Winter Concert'. But still, culture is important.

Forcing schools into heavy competition I think will just have them focus on the wrong things, marketing themselves, inflating numbers, managing perception - and that's wasteful.

And as long as the 'common core' is not too onerous - I think it's probably ok as well. I mean, who'd be against basic reading, writing and arithmetic?

>who'd be against basic reading, writing and arithmetic?

No one's against it. In fact, we can do better than Common Core. We can do better than just the basics.

> Yea they are so bent out of shape that a thin-skinned narcissist rapist wants to basically loot the country with his cronies. The nerve of some people!

Speaking as a non-american who strongly dislikes Trump and his plans... could you please, kindly not stoop to the level of his tweets when arguing politics? You're ruining your own arguments by doing that.

Why should my tax dollars get to fund religious schools? I don't want to have to support religion and I don't think the federal government should mandate that I have to pay tax to do that.

I'm a lifelong atheist and it doesn't bother me. The public education I received was rather subpar in my opinion and I probably would have fared better in an environment like a catholic school. If a voucher program was implemented I might even consider sending my future children to one. The primary points of contention between the atheist and the religious person are how the universe was created and what happens after you die. Both have very little effect on actual day to day living.

"The primary points of contention between the atheist and the religious person are how the universe was created and what happens after you die."

No, totally not.

Do you know who conceived of the 'Big Bang'?

It was Father David LeMaitre - a Catholic Priest - and Physicist.

The Catholic Church is 100% behind the 'big bang' and 'evolution'. There's little dissonance between the church and science.

The 'difference' between atheists and religious types - should be better described as the difference between 'materialists' and 'spiritualists'.

'Materialists' (atheists are usually de-facto this) - believe that the material world is all there is, and that's that.

'Spiritualists' believe that life is an expression of something greater.

'Science' is actually rooted in Metaphysics, which is the trunk of the tree below 'Physics' (see Descartes). The problem with most scientists/rationalist/atheists today is that they have forgotten their metaphysical underpinnings ...

"Both have very little effect on actual day to day living."

I see what you're saying - but maybe not.

If you believe in something greater than you, you might be more inclined to think much more long term, make sacrifices for the greater good, for the community, for future generations.

If one believes that 'this is all there is', then one might be inclined to simply pursue highly selfish and hedonists endeavours, because after all 'sympathy' and 'empathy' are just 'emotions' - and in a purely material world there is no 'right and wrong' etc.

It'd be nice if all schools at least taught metaphysics in high school, i.e. the underpinning of how we think about the universe. As it stands, most public schools teach a very materialist viewpoint by default.

And yes, there are tons of atheists in 'Catholic Schools' because they tend to be very good. You should wonder why all those crazy religious catholics basically invented common education as we understand it, and established most of the best universities (100% of the Ivy League, Cambridge, Oxford etc. etc. :) :) (mostly not Catholic, but religious nonetheless)

Anyhow - it'd be nice for people to have a little more choice in education, without having to entirely deconstruct public education, which is important.

P.S. I'm not Catholic :)

This is my point. We all want food in our bellies, a roof over our heads and a safe place for our kids to play. The metaphysical world plays no role in that. Thus, it isn't all that important in the grand scheme of things.

Carl Sagan was able to explain how I feel better than I ever could when he commented on this image:

http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/56c03accdd08950d408...

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves."

"Why should my tax dollars get to fund religious schools?"

Why should religious people have to pay for your kid's secularist education, which may include elements that are totally inconsistent with their moral worldview?

Public schools are important, but so is choice.

Vouchers are a reasonable idea, and they just might be one of the key ways to help developing communities improve - as many of the best schools in hard-up areas are 'Charter Schools' which could use the funding and students to do a lot of good.

Because if you take the word 'secular' away, you have a base which is remarkably the same: "secular education" versus "education".

When you do the opposite, in direct contradiction with some of the founding principles of the country, you get "religious education".

What's the difference, you ask? Religious education oftentimes teaches things we _know_ to be _factually incorrect_, many of those around creationism being the most obvious, but not the only.

> Why should my tax dollars get to fund religious schools?

They already do: your public school taxes fund schools which advocate a particular way of life & looking at the world — i.e., a religion.

Far better, I think, to let all parents determine which religion they wish their children to be brought up in, than to only allow that privilege to those wealthy enough to afford it. Coincidentally, school choice & vouchers are likely to lead to improved educational outcomes, because parents will be able to choose schools that (they believe) are better.

One negative outcome would be that schools would be forced to advertise & market themselves, which means that a school which is academically better but markets less will be perceived to be worse than it is. I don't know how to solve that problem, but I think it's less of a problem that the current set of problems.