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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   33992 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025

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Update on the continuing dramatic saga of DOGE: apparently the Department of Education no longer exists.

Now this could be a sensationalist media headline, but if not I am shocked that the DOGE team and Trump's cadre et al are going this hard, this fast. They must basically be saying they're going to get a ton of legal challenges anyway, so they might as well do as much as possible and keep up the momentum, destroying everything before the dust clears. It's a bold strategy, and frankly as a spectator it's incredibly exciting, I must admit!

Curious for people's thoughts on the Dept of Education getting shut down? Personally I think it's a good thing - our education system has had terrible outcomes with no accountability for far too long.

In other related news, FEMA send $59 Million dollars to house immigrants in luxury hotels in NYC last week, and Social Security has been sending money to dozens of people over 150 years old, among other issues like the system for SSNs not being re-duplicated.

I must admit Musk has really invigorated the news coming from the US. My wildest ideas of how Trump could gut DoE that I wrote on The Motte no longer look so far-fetched. Elon is driving a bulldozer through every Chesterton's fence he can find in D.C.

If he manages to roll out a biometric national ID card to digitize access to government benefits before the end of Trump's term I'll start a petition to make his position of the man behind the curtain permanent.

If he manages to roll out a biometric national ID card to digitize access to government benefits before the end of Trump's term I'll start a petition to make his position of the man behind the curtain permanent.

Hmmm I personally would hate this, why are you so for it?

And yes I agree, I appreciate that a politician who got elected on downsizing the system is ACTUALLY doing that for a change. It's incredibly refreshing.

Why would you hate it? The only downside I can conceive are trivial relative to benefits.

It's a step towards national ID for everything / internal passports. Not that we aren't precariously close to that already with REAL ID (I use a passport card, which is indeed a national document) and nowhere-near-the-border papers checks.

That scarcely seem to me like something to worry about. We already need IDs for many normal activities. Having those issued on federal level would not change much, and in fact would probably be an improvement for reasons like Voter ID.

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