I’ve always felt that George W Bush’s place in history would be as the president who accelerated the end of the post-colonial era, the time when the West in general and the US in particular had structural advantages in geopolitics and economics. Trump’s flagrant moves speeding this further obscure the extent to which the US’s standing was already weakened by the Iraq War and the 2008 fiscal crisis, which itself was the biggest factor in the collapse of legitimacy that’s driven the rise in authoritarian nationalism. Trump is deliberately taking a jackhammer to pillars Bush heedlessly weakened.
NOTE: This is meant as a reply to John O'Neil but the Post button doesn't work in the Reply.
I would add that neither Biden nor Obama did even the slightest thing to hold the powerful accountable which hasn't helped our current situation.
Obama made it very clear from the beginning of his Administration that it would not even investigate financial malfeasance, much less indict anyone, letting the crooks get away with fraud on a massive scale. Allowing white collar criminals to get away with ripping off people and on top of that not only letting them keep the vast majority of their ill gotten gains but also scoop up the vast majority of the government bailout money was a kick to the gut for middle class people who played by the rules. It sent a very clear sign that rich and powerful people are above the law. Worse, it sent the message that ripping people off is hugely profitable.
And it was clear to most people from the beginning (everyone but Marcy Wheeler anyway) that Biden's AG, Merrick Garland, had no appetite to prosecute Trump for his many crimes. He was dragged kicking and screaming mostly because his hand was forced by the 1/6 Congressional committee and all of the evidence it made public, but by the time he finally moved it was way too late.
Not holding powerful people accountable is a big part of why we are here and that will, I think, be their very bad legacies. That we just elected the biggest crook, again, to ever hold the office of POTUS is, well, pretty fucking ironic.
Strike that last line. Ironic is most definitely not the word. More like inevitable. Not holding rich and powerful people accountable for their crimes made it inevitable that a crook would be elected to the highest office in the land.
And I get that not holding the rich and powerful accountable did not start with Obama or Biden. But, both men missed huge opportunities to show the world that, at least sometimes, they are held to account.
There is far more danger to the international reputation of the US, which isn’t that strong anyway, in its continual support for Israel and its refusal to accept the ICC, than the anti immigrant rhetoric or the attitudes in the US to its own academic ideologies - which themselves are not popular anywhere within or without the US, outside a few bubbles. They definitely aren’t taken seriously.
One of the fascinating aspects of MAGA-land is how so many members seem to feel that they are partaking of Trump and participating in his being, in some sense. This goes from Elon who clearly believes he is now something like a co-president and a distinguished political thinker, out to folks like Rufo who believe they're going to be setting policy, and onward into the most distant reaches of MAGA-folk who seem to think they're suddenly empowered with the Essence of Trump. The laws of physics haven't been repealed, Trump is still a rapidly aging guy with serious personal issues, the people around him are still the same set of outstanding folks, the angry old white guys I know are still mad. Trump voters have agency. It was a narrow win, but elections have consequences, and they're going to get what they asked for, even if they didn't fully comprehend what it was. Now let's just hope those of us who tried to stop him come through ok and the country survives mostly intact.
"forcing schools to advertise the earnings of graduates from specific programs so students understand their risks when they enroll. If students default on their loans, he says universities should have responsibility for paying some of it back."
This is not a bad idea from a Human Caputal (Economics) theory point of view.
------------
Plus, they should ride if multiple choice exams as they serve no pedagogical putpose at all except help examiners avoid marking exams manually.
The department of education does this now. If he kills the DOE, who will force the schools to report this? If the states will be the new distributors of title IV funds, who will be able to hold that money over the schools’ heads?
I also think that both the public and private sectors ought to create a vast database (no names) regarding job prospects, salaries, etc. in any current or future profession that is available online, esp. to pupils at any level.
So we are going to replace the functions of the federal ED with 50 separate departments. Got it.
Currently, high school seniors can go to one website to search, compare, and price any university in the country that accepts federal dollars. This data is collected and provided in an easy to use interface by the ED. This also will be where the FVT/GE info can be found. I guess next year seniors will have to search every state separately- assuming states have been collecting this data and can build a searchable database by the fall (stage whispers: they aren’t and they can’t).
Perhaps America's structural power is declining because of the endless stupid decisions our foreign and military policy elites have made in the post Cold War era, the endless interventions we have made that have ended disastrously, beginning with "Gulf 1", which, among other things, drove one million Kurdish refugees into Turkey after George H. W. encouraged the Kurds to rise up against Saddam even as his adminstration planned to keep Saddam in power. I wonder if that had any relation to what has happened in Turkey since then. I wonder if the Biden administration's blind support of war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu is hurting America's credibility around the world. I even wonder why Dr. Drezner keeps forgetting to address this issue in his blog.
Donald Trump in his blundering is not leading us away from foreign involvement in any real manner. He is as likely to get us into war by accident as his predecessors did on purpose. But there are reasons why a man as awful as Trump should not only be elected but re-elected, and one of them is the repeated foreign policy disasters engineered by a bipartisan gang of the best and the brightest. Dan Drezner, you should read Dan Larison. You might learn something.
Rufo is a genuinely awful person, and even if he does something good, I assume it's for bad reasons. But this part Rufo's plan isn't bad. "forcing schools to advertise the earnings of graduates from specific programs so students understand their risks when they enroll. If students default on their loans, he says universities should have responsibility for paying some of it back" aren't bad ideas. I get that the idea is to gut liberal arts, but if done in a fair way (in which I have no confidence), such as giving wages a decade out (as opposed to one year out) I don't think it would have the effect of turning everyone into business majors. Still, I wonder if he gets that making schools payback defaulted loans would put the proprietary schools that prey on vets, the poor, and other out of business.
Many years ago I ran a small non profit or Boston called the workforce solutions group. As a Sox fan you might also recall my blog Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME. Anyway predatory education was a top issue for me, but we could never get traction. I remember meeting with hospital execs and asking how many nurses they’d hired out of devry or some such and they said “none. We would never hire one.” So people were taking out huge debt, federally subsidized, to pursue a degree that they were statistically unlikely to finish, and even if they did finish, it was worthless. Broke my heart. Obama made some real improvements on that front, but the Rs fought it tooth and nail. Not sure why that would change now.
Funny you should mention this reporting. It’s called Fair Value Transparency/Gainful Employment. It’s something Obama’s Department of Education started in order to curb the for profit education industry. It was killed by Trump the first time and resurrected by Biden. The deadline for reporting is Jan 15. They wanted to make sure the data was collected in case he won again. The framework will be there to start again in 4 years.
In short, the names of anyone who took title IV loans from the DOE are sent to the school and they confirm the person graduated. Then the gov compares their income reported to the IRS with people who did not go to college. The focus is on certificate programs, but also applies to all degrees. Colleges are afraid of what it will mean for the humanities programs.
Not sure about the Jenga tower analogy. I fear it is too static. More like a steady corrosion that gradually turns quantity into quality. Far more than education, all the post-Bretton Woods institutions, the rules-based order -- particularly trade and the UN Security Council and specialized agencies, and amorphous key factors like US credibility, all eroding, while DC pretends it is still 1991.
Complete aside, but I've always read a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction, and the ones that always hit me the hardest were the ones where things slowly become shittier and shitter, there isn't some sudden toppling of dominoes, because they always seemed the most realistic.
I’ve always felt that George W Bush’s place in history would be as the president who accelerated the end of the post-colonial era, the time when the West in general and the US in particular had structural advantages in geopolitics and economics. Trump’s flagrant moves speeding this further obscure the extent to which the US’s standing was already weakened by the Iraq War and the 2008 fiscal crisis, which itself was the biggest factor in the collapse of legitimacy that’s driven the rise in authoritarian nationalism. Trump is deliberately taking a jackhammer to pillars Bush heedlessly weakened.
NOTE: This is meant as a reply to John O'Neil but the Post button doesn't work in the Reply.
I would add that neither Biden nor Obama did even the slightest thing to hold the powerful accountable which hasn't helped our current situation.
Obama made it very clear from the beginning of his Administration that it would not even investigate financial malfeasance, much less indict anyone, letting the crooks get away with fraud on a massive scale. Allowing white collar criminals to get away with ripping off people and on top of that not only letting them keep the vast majority of their ill gotten gains but also scoop up the vast majority of the government bailout money was a kick to the gut for middle class people who played by the rules. It sent a very clear sign that rich and powerful people are above the law. Worse, it sent the message that ripping people off is hugely profitable.
And it was clear to most people from the beginning (everyone but Marcy Wheeler anyway) that Biden's AG, Merrick Garland, had no appetite to prosecute Trump for his many crimes. He was dragged kicking and screaming mostly because his hand was forced by the 1/6 Congressional committee and all of the evidence it made public, but by the time he finally moved it was way too late.
Not holding powerful people accountable is a big part of why we are here and that will, I think, be their very bad legacies. That we just elected the biggest crook, again, to ever hold the office of POTUS is, well, pretty fucking ironic.
Strike that last line. Ironic is most definitely not the word. More like inevitable. Not holding rich and powerful people accountable for their crimes made it inevitable that a crook would be elected to the highest office in the land.
And I get that not holding the rich and powerful accountable did not start with Obama or Biden. But, both men missed huge opportunities to show the world that, at least sometimes, they are held to account.
There is far more danger to the international reputation of the US, which isn’t that strong anyway, in its continual support for Israel and its refusal to accept the ICC, than the anti immigrant rhetoric or the attitudes in the US to its own academic ideologies - which themselves are not popular anywhere within or without the US, outside a few bubbles. They definitely aren’t taken seriously.
Absolutely right. And add crypto, which undermines the dollar, Euro, and other reserve currencies
Crypto undermines nothing. It’s not even a currency.
One of the fascinating aspects of MAGA-land is how so many members seem to feel that they are partaking of Trump and participating in his being, in some sense. This goes from Elon who clearly believes he is now something like a co-president and a distinguished political thinker, out to folks like Rufo who believe they're going to be setting policy, and onward into the most distant reaches of MAGA-folk who seem to think they're suddenly empowered with the Essence of Trump. The laws of physics haven't been repealed, Trump is still a rapidly aging guy with serious personal issues, the people around him are still the same set of outstanding folks, the angry old white guys I know are still mad. Trump voters have agency. It was a narrow win, but elections have consequences, and they're going to get what they asked for, even if they didn't fully comprehend what it was. Now let's just hope those of us who tried to stop him come through ok and the country survives mostly intact.
"forcing schools to advertise the earnings of graduates from specific programs so students understand their risks when they enroll. If students default on their loans, he says universities should have responsibility for paying some of it back."
This is not a bad idea from a Human Caputal (Economics) theory point of view.
------------
Plus, they should ride if multiple choice exams as they serve no pedagogical putpose at all except help examiners avoid marking exams manually.
The department of education does this now. If he kills the DOE, who will force the schools to report this? If the states will be the new distributors of title IV funds, who will be able to hold that money over the schools’ heads?
Probably the States' DOEs.
Or some other 'market' driven mechanism.
I also think that both the public and private sectors ought to create a vast database (no names) regarding job prospects, salaries, etc. in any current or future profession that is available online, esp. to pupils at any level.
So we are going to replace the functions of the federal ED with 50 separate departments. Got it.
Currently, high school seniors can go to one website to search, compare, and price any university in the country that accepts federal dollars. This data is collected and provided in an easy to use interface by the ED. This also will be where the FVT/GE info can be found. I guess next year seniors will have to search every state separately- assuming states have been collecting this data and can build a searchable database by the fall (stage whispers: they aren’t and they can’t).
Well, if Trumpf gets his way, then in the short term that will be the "solution". In the long term, things may even out.
Anyhow, in the long term, maga will be dead.
Perhaps America's structural power is declining because of the endless stupid decisions our foreign and military policy elites have made in the post Cold War era, the endless interventions we have made that have ended disastrously, beginning with "Gulf 1", which, among other things, drove one million Kurdish refugees into Turkey after George H. W. encouraged the Kurds to rise up against Saddam even as his adminstration planned to keep Saddam in power. I wonder if that had any relation to what has happened in Turkey since then. I wonder if the Biden administration's blind support of war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu is hurting America's credibility around the world. I even wonder why Dr. Drezner keeps forgetting to address this issue in his blog.
Donald Trump in his blundering is not leading us away from foreign involvement in any real manner. He is as likely to get us into war by accident as his predecessors did on purpose. But there are reasons why a man as awful as Trump should not only be elected but re-elected, and one of them is the repeated foreign policy disasters engineered by a bipartisan gang of the best and the brightest. Dan Drezner, you should read Dan Larison. You might learn something.
Rufo is a genuinely awful person, and even if he does something good, I assume it's for bad reasons. But this part Rufo's plan isn't bad. "forcing schools to advertise the earnings of graduates from specific programs so students understand their risks when they enroll. If students default on their loans, he says universities should have responsibility for paying some of it back" aren't bad ideas. I get that the idea is to gut liberal arts, but if done in a fair way (in which I have no confidence), such as giving wages a decade out (as opposed to one year out) I don't think it would have the effect of turning everyone into business majors. Still, I wonder if he gets that making schools payback defaulted loans would put the proprietary schools that prey on vets, the poor, and other out of business.
I agree with you! Done right, there is some merit to the idea -- particularly if it's extended to for-profit universities.
I have zero confidence that this will be done right. Also, it should be noted that there are multiple rankings and reports that already do some version of this. See, for example, https://washingtonmonthly.com/2024-college-guide/ and https://freopp.org/whitepapers/does-college-pay-off-a-comprehensive-return-on-investment-analysis/
Many years ago I ran a small non profit or Boston called the workforce solutions group. As a Sox fan you might also recall my blog Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO THE GAME. Anyway predatory education was a top issue for me, but we could never get traction. I remember meeting with hospital execs and asking how many nurses they’d hired out of devry or some such and they said “none. We would never hire one.” So people were taking out huge debt, federally subsidized, to pursue a degree that they were statistically unlikely to finish, and even if they did finish, it was worthless. Broke my heart. Obama made some real improvements on that front, but the Rs fought it tooth and nail. Not sure why that would change now.
Funny you should mention this reporting. It’s called Fair Value Transparency/Gainful Employment. It’s something Obama’s Department of Education started in order to curb the for profit education industry. It was killed by Trump the first time and resurrected by Biden. The deadline for reporting is Jan 15. They wanted to make sure the data was collected in case he won again. The framework will be there to start again in 4 years.
In short, the names of anyone who took title IV loans from the DOE are sent to the school and they confirm the person graduated. Then the gov compares their income reported to the IRS with people who did not go to college. The focus is on certificate programs, but also applies to all degrees. Colleges are afraid of what it will mean for the humanities programs.
Not sure about the Jenga tower analogy. I fear it is too static. More like a steady corrosion that gradually turns quantity into quality. Far more than education, all the post-Bretton Woods institutions, the rules-based order -- particularly trade and the UN Security Council and specialized agencies, and amorphous key factors like US credibility, all eroding, while DC pretends it is still 1991.
Complete aside, but I've always read a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction, and the ones that always hit me the hardest were the ones where things slowly become shittier and shitter, there isn't some sudden toppling of dominoes, because they always seemed the most realistic.
Exactly.