Comment by stephancoral | Hacker News Reader

Comment by stephancoral | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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