Slashdot Mirror

You think standing matters to ICE or Border Patrol?

How credulous can you be?

All of which have dropped significantly as a proportion of spending.
For example, from 1960 to 2015 food costs as percentage of disposable income have dropped by 43%.

On the other hand, healthcare costs have increased dramatically because we've capitulated to the corporations.

I call BS on that.

I know a lot of people, many with guns, that have had no gun violence. (excluding the police officers I know)

I've even lived in a place with a white population under 10%, and gun violence still rare, and you would have to know the ones doing the violence with the guns to know that many.

https://www.npr.org/sections/g...
With gun deaths at a high of 3.85 deaths per 100,000 people. Lets go a head and times that by 100, that's still .38%, lets pretend you know 1000 people, means ~4 of them, if you know 100's, then you know the wrong kind of people, prob the exact kind of person who commits those crimes.

Yes. This is utterly obvious.

"My doctor says not to drink coffee, now that I have (cancer|high blood pressure|been infected by a xenomorph)."

So many crap studies show the same thing. Same with wine, same with beer, etc. Often the studies aren't crap, but the reporting on them is.

See the chocolate study hoax as an example: https://www.npr.org/sections/t...

cisgender

All credibility goes out the door when we reveal our desperation... and relying on catchy, made-up phrases is desperate indeed.

Anyhow, "gender identity" has absolutely nothing to do with sexual orientation; whether you're gay, straight, bi or asexual, when your brain starts telling you that you're in the wrong body (whether you "think" you're supposed to be in the body of the other sex, another animal or what), that's called schizophrenia. and just because stupid and/or unethical surgeons are willing to take your money in return for cutting off your bits doesn't make it valid.

The truth hurts.

So Lynn Conway is schizophrenic? Call me when you have more than a teaspoon worth of her brain!
Two people where I work are trans and smarter, nicer, saner people you won't meet.

Cisnormative Mac (who does carefully screened trans surgery) ;-)

cisgender

All credibility goes out the door when we reveal our desperation... and relying on catchy, made-up phrases is desperate indeed.

Anyhow, "gender identity" has absolutely nothing to do with sexual orientation; whether you're gay, straight, bi or asexual, when your brain starts telling you that you're in the wrong body (whether you "think" you're supposed to be in the body of the other sex, another animal or what), that's called schizophrenia. and just because stupid and/or unethical surgeons are willing to take your money in return for cutting off your bits doesn't make it valid.

The truth hurts.

You should learn to use Google.

The problem with social programs—of which we have many already—is that the cost of management and verification and validation eats up money that could actually just go to people that need help. That sort of bureaucracy is well intentioned but is exactly endemic of the kind of useless 'government waste' that conservatives work themselves up over. For instance, it turns out that just giving homeless people homes works better than trying a bunch of other schemes (Utah: https://www.npr.org/2015/12/10...) and ends up being cheaper because you know exactly where everyone is that needs help. The cost of tracking them down, etc. is real money that nobody contends with.

We clearly agree on the broader point, so I'll just point out that I'm awfully far left on the political spectrum. To me, this is exactly the kind of government intervention that government was intended for and the benefits both to individuals and society far outweigh the costs. (The ancillary costs of poverty and homelessness are sufficiently high that while this kind of program might not break even in the long run analysis, it's probably the case that the 'true' cost is much less than the value of the money paid out when you account for healthcare and bureaucratic savings. That doesn't even take into consideration that people with money spend it on goods and services and prop up a lot of businesses.)

Additional, somewhat related reading:
https://www.vice.com/en_us/art...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Before you spout off your "facts" you might want to look at that alt-right Trumpist media apologist, NPR for some other information.

https://www.npr.org/2018/06/19...

I'm sorry it doesn't reinforce your rage-aholism.

Most of those are actually false (1,4,6) or at best distorted. This is not surprising as Breitbart is an awful source of any news and Steve Bannon basically helped dictate this immigration policy.

1. He's enforcing the most draconian option. They claim the kids are unaccompanied but by prosecuting the adults criminally instead of civilly -- they obviously have that right -- they can isolate both the parents and the kids. This is even happening to people trying to claim asylum at ports of entry.
2. Many do. The vast majority arrive with an adult. The trafickers posing as a family account for .61% of kids.
3. Many, if not all, of these children have been apart from their parents for more than 20 days. Even a cursory google shows this is heinously out of context.
4. This is just unmitigated bullshit. It's child abuse (per pediatricians AND psychiatrists) and nothing DHS says has been independently verified. Either way being separated from family and put in a detention center is certainly not GOOD treatment
5. People are generally not jailed for misdemeanors. Children certainly aren't seized and they get preference in their bail hearing if they are the sole caregiver.
6. This is just unmitigated bullshit. He kept families together.
7. Ignoring the fact that DHS has started turning people away from ports of entry, yes they are actively being turned away and sometimes seized. This is, once again, easily findable via basic google. Some actual sources WITH SOURCES!
https://www.texasmonthly.com/p...
https://www.npr.org/2018/06/19...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0...

Even if you don't like NYT or NPR, there are other outlets that report it as well, even websites like Snopes and politifact. Basically that was a shit post for covering an awful practice and an even bigger shit post because it was so laughably bad and fake,.

Please moderate the Parent GP posts correctly by verifying the truth of those posts before you moderate up or down.

It is easy:

1. Go to the slashdot summary. There are three links in that article. Verify that the third link is to this article.

2. Scroll down in that article to, about the 17th paragraph, which begins "It turns out approximately 14 percent of the more than 7,400 study participants hadn't "

3. Compare that paragraph and next to the quoted paragraphs in the GP post to confirm that they match, confirming that the GP truthfully quotes an article linked in the /. summary.

4. Read the sentence in the parent post which states "Please kindly refrain from making up random bullshit and pretending you are quoting the article". Because in the previous step you have verified that the GP accurately quotes a linked article, yet the Parent emphatically and profanely states the opposite, conclude that the author of the parent post is a troll.

5. Moderate the parent post accordingly. It belongs at -1, Troll, down with the goatse posts.

6. Moderate the GP at least back up to what it default to when originally posted at, +2. Unless, using our own judgment, you can find a compelling reason otherwise to object to its content.

7. Consider moderating this post up as you see fit. In the humble opinion of its author, it makes a helpful point: with little effort moderators can improve /. by assessing the truth or falsity of posts before assigning mod points.

@raymoris: The quote is accurate, just not from the source article you quoted, but from the second/last one in the post from NPR which is the original source: https://www.npr.org/sections/h...

The Slashdot story has 2 separate articles that covers the topic. One from Quarts and the other from NPR which was one of the sources used for the Quarts article.

The Quarts article quotes the NPR article, but it failed to include what @Nothingburger mentioned which I agree, makes for a misleading summary and should have been included, but does not change the fact that the paper has been retracted.

I would say it that with the additional analysis that was offered by study's main author that excluding the nonrandomized people, the results were the same would imply that the paper's conclusion could still stands, but will probably need to be resubmitted with the changes to be accepted since the original submitted paper does have some issues as-is due to the nonrandomized people being included in the results.

First, some background:

Statistical methods are based on what are known as "stable distributions". A stable distribution is one where a subset of examples, selected randomly, will have the same characteristics as the full set. Normally this refers to a bell curve, so if you have a bell curve population and you select a sample at random, then the sample mean will tend towards the population mean and the sample width will tend towards the population width.

It is this characteristic that lets us extend measurements of characteristics from a subset to the characteristics of the whole population.

(There are a couple of other distributions that are stable, but they are fairly rare in the real world. IIRC, Nile river flooding follows a Levy distribution, and was the first instance of a stable distribution that wasn't a bell curve.)

This only works if the subset selection is random. If the selection isn't random, then the results can be skewed towards randomness (you won't see an effect that's there, the most likely outcome) or phantom effects that aren't really there.

That is the defect in the Mediterranean diet study, that the participants were not placed on one diet (or the other) at random. In particular, husband and wife participants were both placed on the same diet, and in one case an entire town of participants were placed on the same diet.

Of note: When the flawed placements are deleted from the data, the Mediterranean diet still stands and there is still a clear effect indicated by the data.

"This affected only a small part of the trial," says Martínez González. When the researchers reanalyzed the data excluding the nonrandomized people, the results were the same, he adds.

So the conclusions of the study are still strong: the diet correlates well and strongly with reduced heart attacks.

Out of an abundance of caution and professional ethics, the study was adjusted with softer language in the conclusions.

And yet, our noble MSM is reporting only that the study was retracted, comparing it to 50-ish other studies that were similarly flawed.

With predictable results, such as the post this is in reply to.

(Exercise for the reader: Is the MSM doing more harm than good here, or is it the other way around? Many, many other articles report the news with an opinion, such as "Trump meets with Kim, but it won't result in anything useful". Why couldn't NPR have a similar headline for *this* article, such as "Diet study retracted, despite being accurate"?)

HAS BEEN FULFILLING CAMPAIGN PROMISES AT A STARTLING RATE.

Could you please provide some proof for this because it is simply NOT true..

It's mostly behind the scenes. Not the huge flashy stuff like banning Muslims or building the wall, but with the sort of social culture wars he has been fighting for. I suggest reading/listening to this interview from reporter Dan Diamond, about Trump's appointments at the Dept. of Health and Human Services. We're talking about abortion rights, "conscience protections" for doctors and pharmacists, reductions or eliminations for any protections for gay people, etc. He mentions interviewing Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council, who says that "from a policy standpoint, [Donald Trump] has delivered more than any other president in my lifetime." As in, Trump has done more for Christian conservatives than Nixon did, than Reagan, than both Bushes. That is why Christian Conservatives flocked to Trump during the election, because they feared the sort of judges that Hillary might appoint.

That is why they overlooked his rather un-Christian temperament, his corrupt (professionally and personally) past, and that is why they are still on board the Donald Trump Express.

Mike Pence used a private server while governor of Indiana which is
legal in Indiana , it isn't legal at the federal level and he didn't do so exclusively as Hillary did. He doesn't do so as VP.

Regarding Kushner, from NPR, that noted right wing organization:

"Mr. Kushner uses his White House email address to conduct White House business. Fewer than a hundred emails from January through August were either sent to or returned by Mr. Kushner to colleagues in the White House from his personal email account. These usually forwarded news articles or political commentary and most often occurred when someone initiated the exchange by sending an email to his personal, rather than his White House, address. All non-personal emails were forwarded to his official address and all have been preserved in any event."

So some people have his personal account and he gets emails there but he forwards them to his official account so they are properly tracked and recorded. I just started a new job and folks here still have my personal email address as the first one to popup in their Outllook when they send me an email so I've received a couple of sensitive documents outside the company. Every time it happens I let the sender know so they correct it. Does that mean I'm doing company business on a personal email address?

You really need to try harder if you're going to try to find hypocrisy, your arguments are too easily knocked. Here, let me help you:

Donald Trump was attacked relentless for not denouncing David Duke, a man he never met, and someone he and Pence did denounce, yet the same media and Democrats haven't demanded that any of these 7 Democrats denounce their actual ties with Louis Farrakhan. They even buried the photo of Obama standing with him so it wouldn't come out while Obama was in office. Now that is a proper example of hypocrisy.

The highest storm total rainfall, found in Nederland, northeast of Houston. Rainfall within a tenth of an inch of that total was recorded in Groves, a neighboring community. These both exceed the previous U.S. rainfall record of 52 inches, set by Hurricane Hiki in Hawaii in 1950.

I had to wade out of my apartment in chest-deep water during Harvey. Those 50-60 inches of rain amounts happened over 3 days, not 1 week.

So, Snowden has taught the terrorists to evade detection, and you (among others) swear to not aid in finding them. What could possibly go wrong?

Hopefully not coming soon to a neighborhood near you:
Mogadishu Truck Bomb's Death Toll Now Tops 500, Probe Committee Says

The terrorists are proud of their attacks. You're proud of refusing to help develop methods to stop them. Aren't there proverbs about pride?

This is fucking amazing, should be on every front page, everywhere.

It is and it is :-).

At least it's front page on:
http://www.abc.net.au/news
http://www.npr.org/sections/ne...
http://www.theguardian.com/uk

Democrats have been slowing down the confirmation process, so that Trump has many fewer people in place than other presidents at this point in their term.

Nope, actually, it's Trump's lack of nominees.

Good little lemming on blaming Democrats. Like for the embassy. You know, for the country that disinvited him.

Admittedly, it's within the rules and an aspect of Democratic resistance that is actually succeeding.

Kinda your own practice really.

Not exactly a success though.

That kind of ruling is what causes Civil Wars.

It's hurts the country but it does slow down Trump's agenda, and that's what matters most.

Actually, Trump's agenda of trying to put crazy shits in office is what's going to hurt the country.

Fortunately for him, his base is more concerned that heattacks the people who don't stand for the national anthem.

It's ok, he doesn't actually have any need to govern. He can just demand apologies.

See here:

https://www.npr.org/2018/05/10...

Stop publicizing school shootings!

You don't agree with me? Here's my reasoning: First take a look at this article and see what the shooter had to say in his videos before the shooting took place. He's clearly looking forward to the attention and notoriety he's going to get from it. This is the way the minds of these sick fucks work: they think they've been wronged, they think the world owes them, they think that they're going to be 'heroes' when they commit their act of mass murder, and even though they're likely going to either be shot to death by police or die in prison, they're basking in the attention and the idea that they'll be the stars of the press for weeks and months. Each school shooter that is publicized is enabling the next shooter, and so on, and so on, as they all want their shot at fame and glory; WE NEED TO DENY THEM THAT.

There needs to be a gag order in place on these. The press needs to be denied access to information. The arrests, the trials, they all need to be closed-door with gag orders in place so the proceedings are entirely secret. When they put them in prison, it needs to be done silently, they need to be put in solitary permanently, not allowed to talk to ANYONE so there's no leaks. If there is no payoff to the shooters then my theory is most of the shootings won't happen because there won't be any reward for doing it.

Per NPR, the Trump Administration is blocking appointment of judges at the WTO. The WTO's 7-judge panel is down to 4 members, 2 more are leaving, and the panel can't meet its minimum to hear appeals of WTO decisions.

Transcript:
GONZALEZ: OK, but there's one thing I want to get in here. Yes, the U.S. is making things difficult for the WTO. They're screaming at the referees on the soccer field. But the U.S. is still on the field. They are still playing against other countries.

AZEVEDO: The United States itself is bringing disputes to the system even under this administration. So why bring a dispute to the system if you don't want to observe the system or if you don't want the system at all?

GONZALEZ: So you're saying under the Trump administration the United States is coming to the WTO and making claims against other countries?

AZEVEDO: I'm not saying that. That is a fact.

SMITH: I feel like the United States is saying, WTO, can't live with it, can't crush your trade opponents without it.

Per NPR, the Trump Administration is blocking appointment of judges at the WTO. The WTO's 7-judge panel is down to 4 members, 2 more are leaving, and the panel can't meet its minimum to hear appeals of WTO decisions.

Transcript:
GONZALEZ: OK, but there's one thing I want to get in here. Yes, the U.S. is making things difficult for the WTO. They're screaming at the referees on the soccer field. But the U.S. is still on the field. They are still playing against other countries.

AZEVEDO: The United States itself is bringing disputes to the system even under this administration. So why bring a dispute to the system if you don't want to observe the system or if you don't want the system at all?

GONZALEZ: So you're saying under the Trump administration the United States is coming to the WTO and making claims against other countries?

AZEVEDO: I'm not saying that. That is a fact.

SMITH: I feel like the United States is saying, WTO, can't live with it, can't crush your trade opponents without it.

Yup...see the European map here.
https://www.npr.org/sections/t...

Exactly...see the map here.
https://www.npr.org/sections/t...

I don't wanna sound racist or anything, but unfortunately I think China will have a very long way 'till it gets even close to western countries on this matter, which is still not ideal.
Setting US aside, let's consider some european countries and whatnot. There are very few countries that are really getting there, but still not quite.

Currently, China as a society has evolved at unprecedented speeds in comparison to the history of evolution of other societies.

I still remember a time when China was mostly rural, exporting mostly primary resources, and didn't have much in the way of technology to talk about. This was the case not that long ago. If you are too young to remember this, probably your parents will know.
Over just a few decades, less than a lifetime, China went rushing through industrial revolution, raising extremely modern metropolis in cities formerly pretty run down and primitive, and now the country is activelly participating at the forefront of technology and research in some areas.

Some people might not realize this, but it's because lots of people don't really know China. There are cities there that are basically on par with Japan in terms of technology, public transportation, technology in common spaces and whatnot. There are research areas like biomedicine and genetics that China is arguably ahead. Read some of the recent news... China just launched a communication probe in space to aid a mission that will be launched still this year to explore the dark side of the moon.

It's crazy how fast it has evolved. It almost doesn't make sense when you think about the comparison on how technology evolves versus societies.

But all that has a huge side effect. China did not evolve uniformly, these transformations had and still has huge costs, and of course things are not that simple.
It became a country of enormous contrasts. You have cities that look like Tokyo or modern european capitals, while you have towns in the countryside with people starving and living a life of subsistence. You have billionaires and huge investment groups that are among the richest in the world while you have multitude of workers slaving away to a state they prefer suicide instead of living like that. Most of western societies also have huge wage gaps and inequalities, but it kinda pales in comparison to China when looking at extremes.

Sexism can't be seen and treated in isolation, and people should not have some fantasy that it's gonna be solved anytime soon there because there are major shifts yet to happen before it even starts being addressed.

Remember people, China is a country where not that long ago, baby boys were hugely favored over baby girls. And this is a cultural phenomena that endured over decades.
https://www.theguardian.com/wo...
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/0...
This is a huge problem that cannot be solved in few years time, and it has massive cultural effects. Because it effectively created an artificial distortion... there are way more men than women in China when compared to proportions of other countries.
It's not only China too, it's just something that happens a lot in poor countries or developing countries all over the world.
https://www.npr.org/sections/g...
http://www.ibtimes.com/deadly-...
Even though some of these countries don't necessarily have a majority of people of faith in patriarcal religions and systems, it's just a matter of favoring boys because of base manual labor necessities and a prejudiced view that comes with it. The concept also became ingrained in culture, so up to this decade the tendency still remains.

Th

Yeah, the people who walk miles carting jugs to get their daily dose of clean water probably feel so sorry for you with your "lifelong student loans, horrible salary" and "money for computers and phones just to stay in society". Consider your personal riches the next time you turn on a faucet with running water.

The $20bn figure is made up and rebuked by the pentagon. See the end of the article for the real costs. Here

is not research. That said, as of this year you're right. See here.

Most cops went into the job because ... , washed out of the military ...

I seem to remember reading or hearing about that cops who were former military were less likely to shoot someone and generally did a better job. Yup it appears that I did read that so I would prefer to have more ex-military cops given the available evidence.

the Corporate Ideal is "Work FOR free!"
https://www.npr.org/2017/06/13/532816915/despite-falling-unemployment-u-s-wages-stay-stagnant

Seems to be they sided with the Law and court Precedence.

"Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch said that the 1925 Federal Arbitration Act trumps the National Labor Relations Act and that employees who sign employment agreements to arbitrate claims must do so on an individual basis — and may not band together to enforce claims of wage and hour violations.

"The policy may be debatable but the law is clear: Congress has instructed that arbitration agreements like those before us must be enforced as written," Gorsuch writes. "While Congress is of course always free to amend this judgment, we see nothing suggesting it did so in the NLRA — much less that it manifested a clear intention to displace the Arbitration Act. Because we can easily read Congress's statutes to work in harmony, that is where our duty lies."

NPR

Monstersanto has created this negative climate by going after farmers and even people who aren't using their seeds

That's an urban legend has been busted for a long time:

Myth 2: Monsanto will sue you for growing their patented GMOs if traces of those GMOs entered your fields through wind-blown pollen.

This is the idea that I see most often. A group of organic farmers, in fact, recently sued Monsanto, asserting that GMOs might contaminate their crops and then Monsanto might accuse them of patent infringement. The farmers couldn't cite a single instance in which this had happened, though, and the judge dismissed the case.

In fact, Monsanto has publicly pledged that it won't do that:

Why does Monsanto sue farmers when Monsanto seed blows into their fields?

We don't sue farmers who have accidentally ended up with trace amounts of our seeds in their fields, and we've made a commitment that we never will.

Imagine this: plume of water vapor erupts from deep within Europa, hundreds of miles high. Most of that never leaves the vicinity of Jupiter, but a little of it manages to escape, freezes, and floats around the solar system for a while.. eventually coming into the gravitational influence of a young Earth. It makes it through the atmosphere, eventually finding it's way into Earths' oceans, carrying the seeds of primitive life..

On the other hand, people have also been imagining we be Martians...

Of course, maybe the Martians came from Europa... ;^)

Well Wallas are Beltas... Pashang fong!.

Except they didn't vote for him in the primaries.

The DNC spoiled for Hillary every step of the way. What would the vote have looked like if they didn't do that? The polls said that Clinton couldn't beat Trump. The polls said that Sanders could. What if the DNC had embraced leftist ideals, and actually supported Sanders? Some 10% of Sanders supporters ended up voting for Trump. These are people who want change, and imagined that they would get it from Trump. That's dumb, sure. Any change Trump produces will be for the worse for anyone but him, and his ilk — career criminals, con men who profit from taking advantage of the weaknesses of others.

The DNC knew that Hillary couldn't win, and supported her anyway. At best, they're partisan to the bitter end. At worst, they literally threw the election. I don't know or care which, frankly; the remedy is the same either way. Repair or replace as needed.

From my perspective it's Israel's opponents in the region who are out routinely killing journalists but you are not allowed to say such things.

Your perspective includes blinders. And these latest killings are just part of a long tradition.

Contrary to what one might imagine, I'm not a big fan of Palestine. I'm just not a fan of Israel, either. I have little use for religious "logic", or anyone's justifications for genocide. What am I a fan of? Facts. And it's a fact that Israel kills a lot of journalists.

This was an ICBM: https://www.npr.org/2016/09/15...

Also, a good audio production of the same: https://www.thisamericanlife.o...

NPR ran a story about it on Saturday.

I suppose their job is to comment on cultural phenomena like this, but I could really do without pieces that amount to nothing more than an ad for some product.

Let's hope other countries do the same thing too.

Remember, agencies of the US government regularly attempt to influence elections overseas, and, oppose the natural desires of their electorate

Below are a selection of links about the same, from across the political spectrum that are quite well-documented.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0...

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

https://www.channel4.com/news/...

https://www.straitstimes.com/w...

https://www.telesurtv.net/engl...

http://www.latimes.com/nation/...

https://www.wnyc.org/story/his...

http://www.truth-out.org/opini...

https://www.foreignaffairs.com...

https://www.thenewamerican.com...

https://www.npr.org/2016/12/22...

https://www.politico.eu/articl...

https://www.strategic-culture....

Believe it or not it has to do with sand.

Sand with sharp edges.
Sand from the desert is round and is not good for cement.

So stop worrying about the CO2, energy, etc needed to make cement. we are running out of sand.

https://science.slashdot.org/s...
http://www.spiegel.de/internat...
https://www.npr.org/2017/07/21...

IOW: we are fsked. Roads, buildings, bridges, etc will have to be built with something else and nobody cares to even worry.

It's a myth that you can solve problems in education by just giving schools more money. It's not the amount of money that schools have, it's how they spend the money they have.

Spending more money doesn't improve quality.
https://www.americanexperiment...

Schools actually spend more on minority students than white students
https://www.brookings.edu/blog...

The GAO has something to say:
https://www.gao.gov/products/G...

Even NPR came to the conclusion that simply adding more money doesn't neccasarily help:
https://www.npr.org/sections/e...

"Money alone does not guarantee success any more than a lack of it guarantees failure. Paul Reville, the former Massachusetts education secretary, says not all districts there were able to translate funding increases into academic gains. Often, the difference was how they spent the extra money."

This is a map of spending per pupil by school district:

https://www.npr.org/2016/04/18...

And here is SAT scores per state:
https://www.qsleap.com/sat/res...

And here is the average cost per student of PRIVATE education:
https://www.privateschoolrevie...

It is LESS than what we spend on public education. Process that. Actually think about it. Give yourself a full 10 seconds to muse that over.

What you can see here is zero correlation between spending and scores.

Now, am I saying teachers shouldn't be paid more? Nope.

Am I saying that teachers should have to pay for school supplies? Nope.

However what I am saying is "more money =/= better results for kids".

That's just an empirical fact. Look at the data and concede the reality. Done. Anyone that comes at me with that argument is saying 1+1=5. It is a confession of ignorance of the facts, stupidity interfering with an ability to understand the facts, or a lack of integrity causing someone to lie even though they know better.

Now, as to how to help kids? Well, if money isn't the issue and it empirically isn't. Then we have to look at other causes of problems.

1. Not all families are equal. Some families have drug abuse issues, poverty issues, criminal behavior issues, etc. You can't conflate kids that don't have those problems with kids that do. And throwing money at the problem without actually adjusting your teaching style to try and mitigate the problem isn't going to help.
1a. One thing you can do is provide after school programs for kids. Basically the less time the kid spends in a toxic environment and the more time they are exposed to positive role models the better. Here someone will say "then why are you against more funding." I'm not against funding if it is actually going to go to something productive. So the money would have to specifically go to after school programs and music programs and possibly some vocational training.

2. Some school districts are themselves toxic. A good indication of this is if people with money to send their kids to private school send their kids to public school anyway. If locals that have money make a POINT of not sending their kids to public school then there is an IMPRESSION right or wrong in that city that private is better. Naturally some parents with money are going to send their kids to private or public school. What I'm saying is if statistically they almost always send the kids to private. That says the parents don't have confidence in the public system. They would rather pay for the public system through their taxes, get no benefit from it, and pay more to send their kids to private school.
2a. Addressing this is where Charter Schools come in. Teacher's unions don't like them but parents and students do like them. If I have to side with the teacher's union or the kids, I'm siding with the kids. And anyone that says otherwise is either an ideologue that would sacrifice children to advance a political cause or confused.

3. We have to acknowledge that some kids have unique problems that are not common in other parts of the country. For example, some kids come from households where English is not spoken at home. This presents unique problems for those students and you have to adapt your teaching styles to take that into consideration.
3a. Something as simple as giving kids more social interaction with English speakers and possibly additional remedial help without making them feel or suggesting that they're mentally deficient.

4. We have to also acknowledge that we have some bad teachers. The vetting on teachers is often not great and getting rid of a bad teacher is legendarily difficult sometimes. Simply paying teachers more without at the same time purging bad

https://www.npr.org/sections/a...

YOU have won ONE BILLION dollars! - payable at the rate of US$0.01 per decade. Enjoy!

$65/year is about $5.50 per month, a relatively small sum even for someone in pretty bad financial shape. OTOH even a cheap computer will cost a couple of hundred... in one lump. in many cases that ain't happening https://www.npr.org/2016/04/24/475432149/could-you-come-up-with-400-if-disaster-struck

You can argue that no one should allow themselves to get into such a state, ( i might tend to agree...) but that is irrelevant. A significnt number of people are not in a position to junk old hardware even if they would prefer to do so.

Sorry Boss, I can't complete my assignment; the boot drive got corrupted during a power failure, and I have no restore disks... Oh... ... pick my personal effects up at the security station .... yeah, I understand ...

Yea, still not a good thing, look at how society reacts to just being a suspect, you are now mostly guilty until proven innocent. Wives will divorce husbands, working fathers will be fired from good jobs, people that know them will ostracize and avoid them, they could lose access to their own children.

People are so hell bent on getting the bad guy they will happily grind up innocent people along the way with little remorse. This is not even considering things like this...

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/u...

20,000 convictions dropped. Heck people have gone to jail over donuts!
https://www.npr.org/sections/t...

Lets face it... law enforcement and quality testing are just not friends. They happily rely on shoddy results and questionable evidence to go full assault on someone in their pursuits to apprehend "the innocent criminals."

I have a nice quality of life with income well above the top 25%. I'm also not callous enough to pull the ladder up behind me, and not stupid enough to think I'm more then one health disaster away from destitution.

I wouldn't say it's "easy" to make it, but it's easy enough to do the right things and most people who do so will make it. It's also easy to fail.

NPR's Planet Money took a look at the ransom issue. Episode 792 "The Ransom Problem".

[Noelle] KING[, host]: And he looked at how government policy works out in real life. So OK. There are two groups. There are the no-concessions countries, the United States, Canada, the U.K. And then there's a second group. These are countries that will make a deal - the French, the Italians, the Spanish, the Swiss, the Germans.

[Bryant] URSTADT[, host]: They don't go around advertising it, but these governments pay ransom. They deliver cash, and they mark it in their budget as foreign aid. So the world has been running this kind of horrible experiment. And here's what Peter Bergen found.

[Peter] BERGEN[, journalist]: The outcomes for Americans were twice as bad as they were for every other Westerners. And the only people who came close in terms of bad outcomes were the British.

URSTADT: And when you say twice as bad, what are you saying?

BERGEN: Well, double the number of Americans proportionately were killed by their captors.

KING: Americans are twice as likely to be killed in captivity. This could mean killing Americans in and of itself has value. It has propaganda value. Or it could mean that Europeans paying ransom gets people home. Or it could mean both of those things. But either way, if not everybody sticks to the same policy, it's a problem.

It's not about ability, it's about race. I think you know you're full of crap because you don't seem to have read the ProPublica article about the criminal sentencing program which also suffers from racial biases. It has nothing to do with what skills happen to be commonly found in what ethnic groups, it has to do with programs making wildly different decisions between people who have very similar relevant data when only race proxy information is significantly different. People who are arguing in good faith don't ignore information and harp on about strawman points like that.

Although your shameless use of textbook "model minority" arguments and colorblindness suggests that you could indeed be utterly clueless, mindlessly supporting scientific racism through sheer ignorance.

But then you also suggest that race "isn't why people are poor or rich" right in the face of a history of slavery and systematic oppression of black people primarily for the benefit of white people. It's hard to be that wrong by accident, suggesting darker intent.

You do realize that the Republicans sent a recommendation for prosecution [house.gov] to the AG for Hillary Clinton,
James Comey, Andrew McCabe, and Loretta Lynch, right?

And the Justice Department under Jeff Sessions put it right in the circular file where it belongs. There will be no charges.

And also note that Rep. Dana Rohrabacher claims to have physical proof [breitbart.com] that the Russians did not hack the DNC.

You mean the Dana Rohrabacher who the Kremlin has considered an intelligence source for the past two decades and so important that they gave him a code name? THAT Dana Rohrabacher?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/1...

https://www.npr.org/2018/03/11...

https://www.vanityfair.com/new...

http://thehill.com/homenews/ca...

Fuck you and your anti China lies.

Chinese troll detected.

Virtually NO coal plant in America would pass Chinese regulations,

Go on, pull the other one.