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Even if you have within-state income inequality, that can be solved at the state level. You need whole states who can't pay for their kids before you need a solution from a federal ...
Oh my. I was going to write "Dep. Ed." because "DoE" is ambiguous with Energy, but I decided to look it up and apparently the official abbreviation, at www.ed.gov, is in fact ED? "Son, I'm afraid you've got ED. I'm prescribing the Tenth Amendment, but be sure to call us immediately if you get a school board election lasting more than four hours!"
In theory, you could just make up for it with the extra state taxes that everyone can afford once the taxes which paid for the federal funding are reduced. In the short term, it could be a hell of a transition in the meantime. In the long term, I suspect the question of budget changes stemming from federal debt problems will dwarf budget changes stemming from how much interstate redistribution we do for schools.
I don't think anyone would conflate the Department of Education with Erectile Dysfunction as you imply.
One is an irritating and frustrating affliction most men would love to eradicate for good. The other is erectile dysfunction.
ED—especially when primed by a discussion on education-related administration, bureaucracy, and government transfers—more reminds me of those with "Doctorates" in Education (although Eating Disorder gets a nod). It's like Stolen Valor: They're trying to co-opt the prestige of PhDs, especially STEM PhDs, to lend themselves some notion of being sophisticated Experts on the right side of Science. This has not gone un-Noticed even among the general normie population, hence the "Excuse me! It's 'Doctor'!" versus "Call me Bob" meme.
Just an aside, but is there a name or term for this particular variety of joke?
I’d call it a switcheroo joke, a species of paraprosdokian phrase. There may be a more precise technical term, but even Bing’s GPT-4 believes it to be the latter, citing a stand-up comedy site.EDIT: Found it. It’s a bait-and-switch joke. Cognitohazard: here’s a list of them on TVTropes: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BaitAndSwitchComparison
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