why did the right decide Grover Norquist was their god?

[Truthmatters]

Taxes: What people forget about Reagan - Sep. 8, 2010



Two bills passed in 1982 and 1984 together "constituted the biggest tax increase ever enacted during peacetime," Thorndike said.

 

[Kuros]

Grover Norquist Rules The GOP Without Ever Being Elected! More Tyranny On The Right!


"I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."

Norquist believes in tax cuts and deregulation, so much so that the only two things that the federal government should be a part of are the miltary and police protection. That means that Norquist is against:
•government involvement in education
•environmental controls or regulation
•FEMA
•Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid
•regulations or consumer protection that control any aspect of business or banking
•the CDC, the Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration

When I saw the title of this thread I thought I would be ROFL with your explanation of Norquist's position, but you actually got it right.

I agree exactly with it, BTW. Now explain why it's wrong.

Except for FEMA, certain water environmental regulations, and regulations on Wall Street, is there any good, concrete reason we couldn't leave these functions to the individual States?

 

[Truthmatters]

Elimination Lost: What happened to abolishing the Department of Education?

the right has tried to end the DoE

 

[Antiderivative]

He is not so much a god as he is a medium who channels the spirit of St. Reagan.

Reagan would not have made the cut

Norquist idolizes Reagan.

 

[Kuros]

Elimination Lost: What happened to abolishing the Department of Education?

the right has tried to end the DoE

Can you defend the DoE? Its a Federal organization. The bulk of education funding is State and Local.

What if the United States cut income taxes by 1% and States raised income taxes by 1%? You could dissolve the DoE and give education totally back to the interplay between States and Localities.

Why should a bureaucrat in Washington, DC decide what our children should learn? I only see problems with that.

 

[Truthmatters]

United States Department of Education - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Functions

The primary functions of the Department of Education are to "establish policy for, administer and coordinate most federal assistance to education, collect data on US schools, and to enforce federal educational laws regarding privacy and civil rights.[4] The Department of Education does not establish schools or colleges.[5]

The Office of the Inspector General has a unit of enforcement agents who conduct investigations and raids in connection to student loan defaults and fraud.[6]

Unlike the systems of most other countries, education in the United States is highly decentralized, and the federal government and Department of Education are not heavily involved in determining curricula or educational standards (with the recent exception of the No Child Left Behind Act). This has been left to state and local school districts. The quality of educational institutions and their degrees is maintained through an informal private process known as accreditation, over which the Department of Education has no direct public jurisdictional control.

The Department's mission is: to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.[7]

 

[Kuros]

United States Department of Education - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Functions

The primary functions of the Department of Education are to "establish policy for, administer and coordinate most federal assistance to education, collect data on US schools, and to enforce federal educational laws regarding privacy and civil rights.[4] The Department of Education does not establish schools or colleges.[5]

The Office of the Inspector General has a unit of enforcement agents who conduct investigations and raids in connection to student loan defaults and fraud.[6]

Unlike the systems of most other countries, education in the United States is highly decentralized, and the federal government and Department of Education are not heavily involved in determining curricula or educational standards (with the recent exception of the No Child Left Behind Act). This has been left to state and local school districts. The quality of educational institutions and their degrees is maintained through an informal private process known as accreditation, over which the Department of Education has no direct public jurisdictional control.

The Department's mission is: to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.[7]

Totally superfluous. Really. I'm being generous. Look at what student loans have done to education costs.

The Student Loan Bubble

After the burst of the Real Estate bubble, student loans are now the easiest loan to receive in the U.S., and total student loan debts now exceed credit card debts. The government gives out easy student loans to anybody, regardless of grades, credit history, what they are majoring in, and what their job prospects are. NIA believes it is illegal for the U.S. government to be in the student loan business because the U.S. constitution doesn't authorize it. Just like how the U.S. government created Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make housing affordable, but instead drove housing prices through the roof; the U.S. government, by trying to make college more affordable, is accomplishing the exact opposite and driving tuition prices to astronomical levels that provide a negative return on investment.

 

[Truthmatters]

Yes and they help protect students.

Just not under Bush

 

[Truthmatters]

Education Dept. Official Who Oversaw Federal Student Loan Program Is Resigning - NYTimes.com

 

[Kuros]

It doesn't matter who is the President. And the student loan "reforms" under Obama merely make the creditors the gov't instead of private banks.

But its still debt slavery. The cost of education has exploded in the past ten years. So student loans have become NECESSARY to get an education.

You do understand that while new entrants to the economy pay for student loans, they are unable to pay for other things, such as houses, cars, consumer goods, etc. Basically, this is eating into economic performance.

This is not a Bush or Obama problem. This is a systemic failure.

 

[Truthmatters]

How is ending the DE going to stop the rise in cost of higher education?

 

[Truthmatters]

Investigations by lawmakers and by attorneys general led by Mr. Cuomo uncovered evidence that lenders paid colleges and universities in exchange for loan volume and gave financial aid officials gifts, trips, consulting arrangements or stock.

At many of the colleges, the lenders were placed on the lists of companies recommended to students.

Critics have warned that the department has been too cozy with lenders, choosing not to provide guidelines on permissible inducements to university officials.





The Bush team turned it into a profit game

 

[Kuros]

How is ending the DE going to stop the rise in cost of higher education?

Student loans need to be restricted. Do you understand the connection? I linked to an article that explained it.

When the gov't finances education through loans as it does, the colleges and universities have no incentive to keep costs down. Education is (rightly) seen as an unqualified good, so gov't encourages access to education. So far so good. The problem is, education costs have become divorced from market forces. There are no natural market pressures to keep colleges and universities competitive. They simply raise tuition 5% every year, no matter that the cost-of-living overall has stalled over the past decade. Because students have open access to education because of the loans, they just accept the tuition increases. The education bubble is similar to the housing crisis, where a great deal of liquidity flushed into the housing market and caused unsustainable price appreciation, until the collapse.

But students will have to pay off those loans.

Yes, I am aware of the Bush era education scandals. It doesn't really help your case, but it certainly doesn't damage mine.

 

[Londoner]

Except for FEMA, certain water environmental regulations, and regulations on Wall Street, is there any good, concrete reason we couldn't leave these functions to the individual States?

The GOP loves a big powerful fed more than anyone. This has been true for a long time. I remember when Bush sent the feds into California to shut down medical marijuana facilities. I also remember when he wanted to send the national guard into Buffalo. I also remember when he created the Patriot Act and Homeland Security Department, which gave the fed vast new powers to intervene in the states.

How do you think the Bush fed got Spitzer? http://harpers.org/archive/2008/03/hbc-90002589

I remember when Reagan chose to grow the Pentagon beyond anything imaginable so Washington could manage multiple continents for the purpose of protecting/expanding the global market system. For a party that preaches decentralized control of the economy, the Reagan Revolution was doing the opposite globally, i.e., creating a unitary global framework so American capital could access all the world's labor and resources. Go ahead, ask your typical GOP voter about what has been done to preserve the dollar as the world's currency, or the oil currency. Ask about the kinds of massive centralized power Washington needed to impose its will across several foreign economies, exchanges, and political structures. Or ask them about the kind of regulatory infrastructure required to sustain just one small futures market - and I'm not even talking about global monetary exchanges, as if these things just kind of spontaneously occur and could be managed directly by a few small shop keepers on main street, like in Adam Smith's day. Ask a GOP voter any of this and you will see Norquist's influence. You will get a blank stare. Oil currencies? Huh? They cannot speak articulately about the vast machinery that runs the world - much less how markets happen, and what it takes to manage them.

The problem with states rights, is the same problem with free markets.

They are myths that no party supports (or could support), especially Republicans.

But, in principal, sure, I'm actually with you 100%: I'd love to see the states handle more stuff. Which is why I fear for 2012, when the GOP Fed on steroids marches back into every state to impose their will on matters of drugs, marriage, and security. Watch for the new biometric ID cards which the War on Terrorism crowd has been quietly preparing -- waiting for the right moment to wrap themselves in the flag, using fear and national security to take away more freedoms. Watch how they re-grow Homeland Security to penetrate state legislatures and procedures. The scary thing is that the party who preaches most about states rights is (and always has been) the party who grows government the most. The problem with our country is that Democrats are too weak to stop the GOP from growing their own version of Big Government (around Big Military, Big Law Enforcement, and Big Surveillance - all unified brilliantly in the Patriot Act and Homeland Security). And we can't look to the GOP voting base to discipline their party because conservatives LOVE their Government leaders - they always have. Look at their Love of Reagan. On the other hand, the radical Left told LBJ to go to hell. You would never see the Right do this to dear leader. Never. This means that the leadership on the Right will always have an easier time growing government.

(and they're coming back in 2012)

(You ain't seen nothing yet)

(War on Terrorism 2.0 is going to knock your socks off laddy)

(help)

 

[bripat9643]

Except for FEMA, certain water environmental regulations, and regulations on Wall Street, is there any good, concrete reason we couldn't leave these functions to the individual States?

Why should we keep FEMA? Also, environmental problems can be handled by tort law.

 

[bripat9643]

Elimination Lost: What happened to abolishing the Department of Education?

the right has tried to end the DoE

Yes we have, and we'll keep trying.

 

[bripat9643]

It's totally useless, in other words. It has utterly failed at achieving its stated mission.

United States Department of Education - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Functions

The primary functions of the Department of Education are to "establish policy for, administer and coordinate most federal assistance to education, collect data on US schools, and to enforce federal educational laws regarding privacy and civil rights.[4] The Department of Education does not establish schools or colleges.[5]

The Office of the Inspector General has a unit of enforcement agents who conduct investigations and raids in connection to student loan defaults and fraud.[6]

Unlike the systems of most other countries, education in the United States is highly decentralized, and the federal government and Department of Education are not heavily involved in determining curricula or educational standards (with the recent exception of the No Child Left Behind Act). This has been left to state and local school districts. The quality of educational institutions and their degrees is maintained through an informal private process known as accreditation, over which the Department of Education has no direct public jurisdictional control.

The Department's mission is: to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.[7]

 

[bripat9643]

Yes and they help protect students.

Just not under Bush

"Protect" students from what, getting an education?

 

[bripat9643]

How is ending the DE going to stop the rise in cost of higher education?

It won't, but ending student loans and other government subsidies would. Ending to DoE would help improve the quality of K-12 education. The less the government interferes in Education, the better it gets.