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Discuss the US Presidential Election & Education
In 24 hours, many of you will be able to vote. So as we come down to the wire, this is really our last chance to talk about the issues. We've already discussed Health Care, the War, and the Economy. Today I'm opening up the floor to discuss education. Perhaps no other issue will matter more in 50 years. Which candidate will make the next generation smarter?
Nuff said. (These issues are a stimulus to trigger a voting response, and have NOTHING to do with policies that will exist post-election.)
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
...from the other side of the pond, Obama is the right choice. Palin's stance on creationism alone should be enough to decide this particular issue.
Sean Ellis
Follow OfQuack's antics on Twitter.
The federal government really isn't the appropriate place to deal with any kind of primary educational policy.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
We've already discussed Health Care, The War, and the Economy. Today I'm opening up the floor to discuss education. Perhaps no other issue will matter more in 50 years.
I would contend that if "The War" is still going on in 50 years (and I mean the Iraq war, not the "War on Terror" or "War on Drugs") it may well be more important than education right now. I'd like to think that it's not even possible but look at our involvement in the Korean War (or "Conflict"). While we're not losing troops like we used to be (did you know over 36,000 Americans have died supporting South Korea?) it's still going on.
Before anyone interjects with McCain's statements of 100 years in Iraq, get the facts (last section).
Also a quick reminder that people everywhere seem to just tuck away & forget: We're still at war. Americans are still dying on foreign soil. And the most surefire way to stop that is to remove them from that soil.
My work here is dung.
Twas my understandin' them yeller folks done not needin' thems fancy educatin'.
Obama is the right choice. New fresh ideas are needed now, more than ever....
MAYBE Obama will get rid of NCLB, but I don't see him getting away from the typical left position of supporting the teachers' unions goals and just throwing money at education without real standards. We spend more money - under left and right administrations - per student and don't see the results, which means the overall system is broken.
I don't see him actively supporting homeschooling as well, and we know he's going to be against vouchers.
The biggest problem, however, will NEVER be government involvement. I don't care who is in power, but the ONLY real influence on children's education is PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT. It doesn't matter what teachers, principals, politicians, and everyone else does if a parent doesn't care about how well their kid is doing in school - it's nearly too great a hurdle to overcome.
I think that the only thing that I have ever seen that may do something is a performance-based state-sponsored tuition program (like Louisiana TOPS or Georgia HOPE) which is directly tied to secondary school performance with college tuition on the line - there are a LOT of parents in those states that I know of who pushed their kids to get good grades simply because there was a near-free college tuition at stake (it's what paid for my own tuition at Louisiana Tech).
... belongs in the philosophy class, not science. Science is a set of facts seeking a conclusion to support them- Intelligent Design is a conclusion seeing a set of facts to support it.
In a philosophy or comparative religions class? Absolutely- go nuts! Be sure to include a whole bunch of other religious theory, including Hindu creation myths etc. Would be a fun class.
But as science? ... Do not want.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
It's called investing in our workforce to remain competitive in a global economy. I realize long-term planning isn't the Republican's forte; sorry we see things differently.
You sound like a very thoughtful, emotionally-stable person. Just the kind of person who should be choosing the next leader of the free world. When you said "fraud," were you talking about Democrats destroying the economy and pandering for votes by forcing banks to make loans to unqualified borrowers for homes they couldn't afford, and then resisting all attempts by Republicans to INCREASE regulation of Fannie Mae? Just wondering...
Many teachers in positions of power are apathetic after losing wages, 401Ks, supplies, budgets for new teachers, students to gunfire... etc. Even if they get more funding, it won't be enough to correct the pain and suffering they have endured. Many will retire in the next ten years and then the whole thing will go to shit.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
How long before we can do the same with Democrats?
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
If you are concerned about the education in the United States, voice your concerns to your state and local government. The only thing the federal government has authority over concerning education is the ability to tax you and decide how it will spend that tax money. Looking to solve education issues at the federal level is a farce.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Honestly. McCain is all about mud slinging and Obama is all about Change. Whether either of them can pull it off is up in the air, but the person that i'm voting for is the person working on real issues.
Obama 08.
GOP doesn't deserve another term. Not not, now for a long time. Not till they tell the religious fanatics to f off.
Can we vote for a do over all the choices suck?
Neither candidate will make the next generation smarter. Either one might put policies in place to help the next generation get education, but ultimately learning happens inside the heads of the students.
That said, Obama looks a lot more tuned-in when it comes to educational issues. His keynote address to the American Library Association's conference in Chicago (2005) pretty clearly demonstrates his commitment to education, particularly literacy programs and such.
Whereas McCain is, well, not. Remember that McCain proposed a governmental spending freeze as a remedy for the fiscal crisis? With a few exceptions, such as Defense. Well, education was not on the list of exceptions.
Way to butcher the punchline. The proper form is: "Not everything that comes out of her vagina is retarded."
Why should the president, or the government, have a role in "making everyone smarter"? I also don't see how people can be "made smarter" when they are spoon-fed a pre-packaged education and are not driven to learn on their own - something they would be more motivated to do if we moved away from our current nanny-state that lets us get by without being informed about the choices we make.
This election is probably the most important one I'll ever see in my lifetime. The fight is between special interests and society as a whole.
I've been telling people since the start of the race for candidacy that Obama would win because he has the superior machine. But his "machine" is people, organized in smart and flexible ways, largely thanks to the web and what it offers.
To some extent this fight matches the fight between Anonymous and Scientology.
People do not get smarter because they get the right education. This helps but it's not enough. They get smarter because they live and work in more diverse groups, because they have access to knowledge and information, because they can argue, because they don't follow dogma and ideology, but only the merit of social accuracy. We don't need an ideology to know that the Bush regime were a gang of thieves. But when the thieves run everything from the security infrastructure up to the courts, and back down to the vote counting itself, nothing less than a revolution can put things right.
And this is revolution. Quiet, polite, like Americans are. But it's real, it's powerful, and it's going to succeed unless there is a coup.
The outcome of this election proves to the world that the Americans were mainly victims, not supporters, of the Bush junta. It is as important a victory as the ending of WWII and the chasing away (by Americans, for a large part) of another ugly elite of vicious thugs and thieves.
It's been especially heartening - for a European - to see America confront its racism, intolerance, and fractionalism, and turn that into a mass movement for something better.
As for the education system itself... time to move away from the industrial world and into something more suitable for 2008. Mix kids of different ages, give them more freedom to learn in projects online, bring education into the digital age and merge it with digital business and lifestyle.
My blog
At the risk of being moderated a troll, is this a serious question? When have the Republicans ever been right on education? No Child Left Behind is an unmitigated disaster, and the bungling of the Republican administration of the last 8 years has left the US education system nearly dead last in the western world. And it's no surprise that the worst education systems in the country - Louisiana, Texas, South Carolina, Alabama - are in die-hard red states. As a resident of Florida, the state which pioneered the poorly-written standardized tests and laughable "lower-performing schools get less money" idea that NCLB hinges on, if education were my hot-button issue I'd never vote for a Republican. (Now, to be fair, Florida has other problems as well; specifically having to teach English to half the state before they can start teaching math, science, and history.)
Why can't McCain properly defend his education policy? It is the most important issue facing our nation, and it is where McCain is leaps and bounds ahead of Obama!
We have the best private education system in the world. We have the best college education system in the world, both public and private. We have one of the worst public school systems in the developed world. Why? What's the difference between our tremendously successful college system and private system, and our horrendous public school system? Guess what, it's NOT MONEY. Per-student spending in public schools is almost DOUBLE what it is in private schools! Surprised? You certainly didn't hear that in tonight's debate. Only the absolute top most elite private schools cost more per student than we spend on our public schools, and the difference is not much, just 10-20% more. And students at those elite schools get WAY more in return for that extra 10-20%. Oh, and public school teachers earn more than private school teachers, so that's not it either.
So what's the difference between how our public, government-run schools operate, and how our colleges and private schools operate? Here are the differences:
1. No teachers unions in private schools and colleges.
2. School choice: private schools and colleges must compete for your dollars. Public schools don't; the government decides which school you must attend, based on what neighborhood you live in.
Let's go into #1.
The teachers union is the most dangerous organization on the planet. They are more of a threat to our nation than Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea combined. They are ruining the education of our children and destroying our only hope of maintaining our prosperity and peace.
The teachers union has made it impossible to fire teachers for poor performance. To be fired, a teacher basically has to break the law or molest a student. They can't be fired for simply being a terrible teacher. It's gotten so bad that at public schools across the country, bad teachers are paid full-time salaries to simply sit in the teachers' lounge all day and not teach! Schools are forced to do this because they don't want these bad teachers anywhere near their students, but they haven't done anything that the union says they can be fired for.
In private schools and colleges, teacher pay is based on performance. In public schools, because of teachers union demands, pay is based on seniority (i.e. how long they've been working there). You can't pay good teachers more and bad teachers less, and therefore you can't attract and reward the best teaching talent. Public teachers as a whole lose the motivation that drives the private sector to work harder and better: more money.
Finally, the teachers union is 100% opposed to school choice. Why? Because it would force all public teachers to work harder and compete for their job, just like everyone does in every job in the private sector.
And this leads directly into Point #2.
It is school choice, in the form of vouchers, that will save our public education system. The way our system works now, schools tell the government how many students they have each year, and the government funds them with X amount of dollars per student. The way school choice will work is this: instead of the government giving those dollars to the school, that money will be given directly to the parents in the form of a voucher. The parents can then take that voucher and use it to send their kids to any school they want, public or private.
What affect will this have? Competition. The same thing that makes our private schools and colleges perform so well. They'll have to wise up, stop wasting money, become more efficient, and start teaching better, or else they'll start losing students. Parents will choose to send their kids to better-performing schools.
Cue the teachers union yelling "But you'll be taking money away from already struggling schools!". Of course, that's the point, and that's a good thing - because the struggling schoo
and replace it with the Democrat party which will bring more failure, dishonorable behavior, and fraud.
Obama may be a breath of fresh air, but as long as the same career politicians keep getting elected to congress, they will keep acting on their own benefit and not the people.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
4 years and a day.
Let us ignore that most (three out of four) of the faulty loans originated with private investment banks, and not with Fannie Mae or Freddy Mac -- that makes for a much more compelling straw man.
Tell me, how do you "grade" teachers? Why can't you simply go to your PTA meetings and your teacher in service meetings and be a responsible parent and know what your children are doing?
The reason i don't want teacher "appraisals" outside of what a school district does in and of itself is because some people would rate teachers poorly because they're not christian enough, not moral enough or not forcing "family values" enough or other non public educational focused education based issues.
Start by giving teachers livable wages, start by funding real programs that put books, science and math into students hands. Start challenging and teaching kids AT school. Get away from homework, let kids live a life after school and make school about learning.
BTW, if the middle class is doing better, so will the schools. Fix it from the bottom up, not top down.
Obama'08
In terms of education here we have
1) Obama - raised by a single mother to a kenyan father who buggered off, progressed through school and demonstrating ability and prowess at all stages before coming top in Harvard Law.
2) McCain - Rich family with a history in the services, graduated near the bottom of his class, married a richer woman on the second try. Paired up with Palin who things that education is elitist.
Seriously when it comes to education shouldn't we be teaching kids than anyone can become the leader of the country if they work hard and are smart enough not just that you have the right set of bigotry and name-calling to get yourself elected?
Given that in the US education is a State (or lower) level then this isn't a big area for impact at the Federal level, but the best thing the US President could do for the children of the country is demonstrate the value of a good education.
Only Obama does that.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
If I learned anything in high school, it's that in this country "education" no longer means the process of learning. Instead, school has become a daycare for parents to send their kids to until their old enough to move out. I may not be in the majority but I learned very little from actual classes and tests. I received my own computer at the age of 15 and taught myself about hardware and how to program, neither of which my school offered any classes about beyond keyboarding. Now I'm 24 and a senior systems administrator for a large dedicated server management company... thanks to our country's educational system? I think not.
Parents aren't going to give up their free daycare so if I support any educational plan, it's going to be one that involves getting kids who want to learn out of the classroom and into environments where they can use their time more productively.
Does this rag smell like chloroform to you?
Fortunately, it looks like Science and Logic are about to take the stage again. Sadly, here in America, we have upwards of around 20% that believes in creationism of some form. So far, nearly all that I have meet that believe in it, are real whack jobs. When I asked one of my past students about it, he said that James Dobson showed conclusively that Carbon dating does not work. Dobson tested a metal knife blade. When I pointed out that it only works on items that were living before, he said that dobson said otherwise. Sad, sad, sad.
Thank God we are heading back into cooler and logical minds.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Neither candidate will do much for the intelligence of the population at large. I can answer who IS the smarter candidate though, but I don't want a flamebait mod :P
I have spoken'eth.
"Which candidate will make the next generation smarter?"
I think you meant to write: Which candidate will take more money from one group of people, and give it to another group of people.
Because we all know, more education spending = smarter kids. Right? Uh, right? Just ask all those uber-braniac kids in DC, where they spend a ton per student.
The federal "education" empire in the U.S. is much more scary than the military industrial complex ever was.
After years of unsatisfactory experiences in the government schools, we took our kids out to teach them ourselves. We learned there's a thriving and successful community of home-schoolers, who could teach the various school systems a thing or two about pedagogy.
When others her age were getting a (worthless) high-school diploma, our eldest daughter was getting her first associates degree. She earned her second the next year, and will have a bachelors at the age of 20 -- a half-decade or more ahead of her peers. And, while bright, she is not one of those prodigies one occasionally reads about: just a normal student with the advantage of a sensible education.
Of course, home-schoolers are hated by those who perpetuate the regime of government schooling, and, since Obama is firmly in the pocket of the most ardent defenders of the unearned privileges of those who profit from the status quo, we can expect to see home-schooling outlawed in the next few months. After all, children educated by their parents are less likely to be indoctrinated to be ardent followers of The One.
Education would be best left up to the states. Obviously some states will do better in different areas, but having education run from the federal government keeps individual states from trying to improve beyond the average.
It belongs in mythology only. Philosophy????? Not a chance.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If it doesn't kill people, Mccain doesn't support it.
Even better is when I hear right wing christians complain about not being able to be compete on the world stage in math and science then out the other side of their mouths yell about intelligent design.
what.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Tomorrow we go to the polls to elect the next failed administration, and the next failed Congress.
Regardless of who is elected, I feel that both candidates have the wrong attitude towards government. I feel that the role of government is simply to protect our lives and our property from one another. Both candidates espouse statist ideals that want to take away from our self governance or continue policies that take away our power.
Both throw out petty scraps of meat to the people to get them to vote for their demise. This year, they throw the meager pickings of tax cuts. Perhaps four years from now it will be the threat of terrorists again, or perhaps health care.
Both voted for a plan to give hundreds of billions of dollars to failed banks that gave loans to people who deserved none. Let them fail. The consequences of propping up zombie banks are greater than of letting them fail and having the market adjust.
Tomorrow I go to the polls to vote Libertarian, to fight the establishment.
SSC
Promises about improvement in education by federal politicians are pure pandering.
See this chart.
See how small a percent of education is actually funded by the federal government. It should be obvious that even significant changes to federal spending will have an insignificant effect. They spend in a whole year what they spend in Iraq in less than 3 months.
The last time I saw her state her stance, it was this: "teach both in class and let the students critically analyze both." I saw her give an interview where that came up and that's exactly what she said, if not quite worded the same.
Sounds even better to me because it sounds like she's in favor of teaching critical thinking, which is far more important to scientific research and society in general than just learning whatever the establishment says is the best explanation for the origins of life.
If you think science education means always accepting whatever the scientific establishment accepts, then you belong in a priesthood, not science. It's good for young minds to try to tackle such topics.
It is not the government's job to plan things for us. It is hilariously bad at it, anyway. It is the government's job to protect our liberties so we can do things ourselves.
We are perfectly capable of organizing our own local educational systems. Some of them won't be as good as others, but they can learn from the ones that are successful.
Having the government plan it, and run it, will just guarantee that the quality continues to degrade universally.
I joined the military to pay my way through college. My family always stressed the importance of education. After spending all that time getting a bachelor's in IT, I'm worse off than my uneducated parents. I frequently think I would have been much better off being a plumber or an electrician. At least those jobs require a license, some skill and can't be sent overseas. (i.e. manufacturing and IT) What good is an education if no one will pay you to use it?
If you feel that scientific research funding is important to education (or anything at all, for that matter), then you should be concerned about the Science Budget Freezes Proposed by John Sidney McCain III.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
While I intend to vote, not voting is a perfectly reasonable response. In fact, given how little the candidates actually differ, it might even be a more rationale response.
If you vote for one of them, you:
- give them a mandate,
- imply that there are real differences between the candidates, and
- are accountable for your choice.
For example, both candidates believe in a big bearded guy in the sky and look to him for guidance in difficult times. This alone might lead some to not vote for either one based on insanity...
Choose wisely.
I approve this message.
Silly me. I thought the First Amendment allowed me to bitch until my heart is content.
I'm tired of hearing that I can't complain if I don't vote. Who made up this mantra? The people who want you to vote for them.
And the masses have bought it. They think they really have a say in what happens in government. Ha!
By choosing not to vote I *am* making my statement: I don't like the candidates or the system.
Enough with Groupthink.
McCain will be the one that will make all smarter. At least, if you manage to survive his government, you definately will be smart (or very lucky, in the Teela Brown way).
For he can't interpret he real ads out there. Obama is slinging the mud as fast or faster then McCain, it's just hte MSM covering for him. And McCain is apoligizing for the ads that are bad and by people he can't contrl. Obama just waves his hand and "they don't matter", but never calls for them to stop.
No, the parent of this post is not evaluating reality, so mod him down.
In most districts they don't even have to work a full day, and they get about 3-4 months off. I knew a math teacher in high school who taught 3 classes and 1 study hall. What she did was she graded all of her work during down time in class and study hall, and worked a second job when she felt like it. She was single and had plenty of time to use a second job to flesh out her work schedule for the entire year, and consequently, she made a pretty penny. Most of her peers were simply too lazy to follow her example.
You really think the federal government should be involved in the education of our children? There are over 13,000 school districts in the United States, each and every one of them with their own distinct needs and situations. What possible help could the federal government provide for them? The local government knows what is best for its students and should be the sole decision maker for them too. Interference from the federal (and even state) will just gets in the way because they're making decisions for millions of kids instead of just hundreds.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
Paired up with Palin who things that education is elitist.
It sure looks like you aren't too fond of grammar and spelling yourself.
CmdrTaco has found a way to reject discussion of political problems: He controls the subject instead of allowing submissions of stories by readers.
Thank you for once again giving so many people the opportunity to put their ignorance and sheer stupidity on display for the rest of us to mock!
They may have originated with those banks, but because Fannie and Freddie were buying up those mortgages and they had an implicit government guarantee. If Fannie and Freddie didn't exist, those private investment banks would not have had an irresponsible gov't entity to sell their questionable loans to, so they would have had to scrutinize their borrowers more.
Seriously, in a debate about Education,
Let's face it, NCLB was a GREAT idea with a HORRIBLE implementation. The idea to evaluate schools in comparison to other schools and set up some sort of system of national standards is a good one.
Vouchers do very much the same thing, give parents the choice to PICK the school that performs the best. We know government SCREWS it up whenever it gets involved, and the private sector can do things for a fraction of the cost when they want to. At some level, fostering competition between schools is going to produce a better product. So give the parents a CHOICE and watch things improve
Look what Firefox did to the browser market....introducing competition improves EVERYONE. Let's do the same with education!
The only CHOICE the democrats want to give you is abortion, They want to control our education/healthcare/stop smokers/you name it...
Seriously when it comes to education shouldn't we be teaching kids than anyone can become the leader of the country if they work hard and are smart enough not just that you have the right set of bigotry and name-calling to get yourself elected?
First, define "smart enough".
Two, when you start highlighting innate talent, it has a tendency to discourage achievement. It has been found, especially in the US, when kids equate success with innate ability, they give up much quicker than kids who believe that success is the result of hard work. Yes, it's a generalization and it can be taken too far either way, but basically that's what happens.
Over the last 30 years I've watched well-funded lobby groups essentially take over the entire political process. Since these groups are generally better funded when connected to commercial interests, the political process has once again become beholden to big industrial concerns (it was even more so 100 years ago). It's not that lobby groups are bad, pre se, its that they are, by definition, lopsided; they present a single view of the world that may or may no be countered by the "other side" of the issue. As elections become more and more expensive, this process has accelerated to its own quasi-democratic existence.
Obama managed to use Dean's model to rally the individual for his funding. He's still beholden to large groups, but so much less so than any presidential candidate over the last decade or so. This is a wonderful opportunity to mute down the influence of lobby groups, because he won't be committing political suicide by doing so.
And no-one's talking about it. It's completely off the radar.
Maury
Since Fannie and Freddy don't originate loans at all, I'm not quite sure what you're talking about.
How long before we can do the same with Democrats?
This country would be a much better place if both branches of the corporate party would just go away.
Ideally I'd like to see an end to parties in general. George Washington says it best:
"However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion." --George Washington, Farewell Address, Sep. 17, 1796
At the very least if we had parties that put liberty and independence first we'd be better off.
--
"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power" --Benito Mussolini
"The Federal Reserve is a fraudulent system."--Lew Rockwell
End The FED. -
Bought to resell in the secondary mortgage markets, to be precise.
Agreed. It's a curse of our national media that everyone seems to lean on the federal government for everything now.
What have been the big federal initiatives in education lately? No Child Left Behind. The legislation that increases funding by 2x while increasing costs by 3x. The legislation that has killed nearly all external arts funding that can't directly be tied to test scores? The legislation that "pushes" lower scoring schools (ie, schools in poor, inner city neighborhoods) to increase their test scores or lose their funding (and possibly disappear, so that the kids will go where now)?
I realize that not every federal education initiative has to be this big of a clusterfuck, but I have no confidence in their ability to do anything else. The farther away you get from the students the less decisions will be made by someone who cares about something other than their polls and statistics. A local school board is directly answerable to the parents of the students and the community that those students become. They might have a chance to listen to some teachers. Even at the state level, education decisions are more likely to be made by an "education expert" who has never set foot in a real classroom, and will be based on which textbook or test-writing company lobbied hardest that year. Every move I've seen in the last ten years has been away from actually teaching subjects and more towards teaching the language of the current test.
Disclaimer: I don't work in education, but both my parents do, my mother as a teacher in an low income city school and my father as one of those traveling artist/historians that do special programs at schools.
The Constitution has been trodden upon these last 8 years (and more). Here is just one citation, for those who need one. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/13/1830202
Has ANY of the candidates described the steps they would take to roll us back from the Constitutional abyss?
The inference has been that the current administration has been abusing its power in this area. It strikes me as "illogical" that they would take such steps toward setting up a surveillance society, only to hand the keys to the Bastille to "another" administration.
Help me understand.
Problem:
You seem to think that all private is good. That just means that kids in the rich areas get fantastic schools with the best teachers, kids in the poor areas get a trained monkey and a bucket(with a hole in it).
In the interest of trying to give people some sembelance of an equal playing field it can be a good idea to average things out a little in education.
A government protecting your liberties so we can do things yourself is worth nothing, zero, nada, ziltch if you are born into a family with no money which can afford no eduction or healthcare.
Unless of course you consider the freedom to die before your 12th birthday to be a liberty that should be protected.
Seriously......
People need to wake up and smell REALITY!
Our education sucks because it's .01% of the national budget.
Take a few more billion from the _failed_ War On Drugs and spend it on education.
70%+ of our "Societal Problems" will go the fuck away!
We didn't have half the problems we do now when Marijuana was still legal.
WAKE UP AMERICA!
YOUR GOVERNMENT IS NOT IN CONTROL! (it's out of control. They're a bunch of favoritist and money grubbing idiots looking out for themselves and not the people anymore)
Ok, since it is the last chance to talk about it... All you can do is vote for what you believe is the better of two evils. Stand up for what you believe and be politically active. Check out www.politicsapocalypse.com free album download.
Both Sen. McCain and Sen. Obama agree that education needs to be thoroughly reformed.
Who needs education aimed at making the students cram for tests only for the ego of the schools? What good is it if your child forgets everything after them? That doesn't help at all. This, to me, is the core of the issue. Rankings. As an aside, No Child Left Behind makes extensive use of those, to determine which schools should get additional funding.
What I'd like to see is a school system that doesn't focus so much on rankings, fudging scores to get a higher one, pressuring the underprivileged and underscoring to drop out in the process. Those people deserve undiscriminating education too, and equal access to education is something both candidates advocate.
The parents who got complacent will (hopefully) get going with this one, too! Choice quotes from each candidate:
McCain Parental involvement is critical to the success of any pre-K program. Current federal programs will be focused on educating parents on the basics of preparing their children for a productive educational experience. These programs will place an emphasis on reading and numbers skills, as well as nutrition and general health. Reinforcing to parents the fundamental importance of reading to their children as a primary way of expanding their vocabulary and preparing their young minds to learn will be emphasized at every level.
Obama (PDF warning) Investing in early childhood education during the infant and toddler years is particularly critical. Though parents remain the first teachers for our children, an increasing number of infants and toddlers spend significant parts of their day with caretakers other than their parents. In addition to ensuring that child care is accessible and affordable, we must do more to ensure that it is high quality and provides the early education experiences our children need.
Both agree that a child's education starts with the parents' involvement in it. It's common sense to some, I'll admit, but:
Obama Research shows that early experiences shape whether a child's brain develops strong skills for future learning, behavior and success. Without a strong base on which to build, children, particularly disadvantaged children, will be behind long before they reach kindergarten. Investing in early learning also makes economic sense. For every one dollar invested in high quality, comprehensive programs supporting children and families from birth, there is a $7-$10 return to society in decreased need for special education services, higher graduation and employment rates, less crime, less use of the public welfare system, and better health.
The schools have a responsibility in children's education, but then so do the parents! And not just for education, either. Providing healthy food to one's child(ren) is essential to their proper development. Care and affection given to one's child(ren) cannot be replaced by anyone else, and is also essential.
The Govt has a role, but it's not the silver bullet.
(Disclaimer: I'm Canadian, but I'm quite interested in this election.)
False dichotomy. The GP isn't arguing to remove education completely, he wants no federal control over it. Sorry for you his position is consistent with the Constitution.
In the USA, it's called a State/local issue, not a federal one. Sorry, the Constitution doesn't include an education mandate. And the Bill of Rights specifically says that if it's not granted to the Feds by the Constitution, it's not their business.
Note that I am quite well aware that the Federal government has been violating that part of the Constitution (sometimes with good reasons, sometimes without) for two centuries. Nonetheless, what remains of my idealism insists that education isn't a federal issue, till such time as we get an amendment saying it is.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
We know that Obama went to Harvard, and became editor of the Harvard Law Review. Yeah, he's really hiding this stuff so well... :)
As a member of this country's education system, I have to say that any change is good change. Even on the off chance that McCain wins. The only thing that could possibly make this worse is if Palin becomes President. Then we're screwed no matter what we do. But seriously, No Child Left Behind is another way to say No Child Gets Ahead. I personally have no challenge and no drive to go to school other than to get into college. I actually haven't learned all that much in the last few years, I'm sorry to say. My only hope is that the next president will stop the tests and stop the competition. When you can afford to lose some people, competition works; it helps innovation. But this is not a business. The stakes are too high to be risking MY future, and the future of my generation.
Why Obama is wrong for America
As Much as Creationism seems to strike a chord with some people, I've never actually understood why.
I've always looked at creationism historically, as in a "This is what a guy 2-3 thousand years ago though how the universe was made when science rarely existed and wasn't as important as religion" kind of way. That being said, it's not too far off from creationism considering the religious source and the age of the text other than the 7 days thing, but realistically what's 7 days to God? a billion years? 10 minutes? who knows.
Based on that, I believe that it should be taught in schools, but only as an historical reference to how we led to the current evolution theory. Similar to how Spontaneous generation is taught in schools as a previously accepted theory until a new theory proved it was incorrect.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
Obama may be a breath of fresh air,
Obama's "air" is about as fresh as the air coming out of a car's exaust pipe.
McCain is just as bad of a choice, but at least he wouldn't have the benefit of a majority in the house and a filibuster-proof senate.
If McCain wins, we're fucked. If Obama wins, we're really fucked.
It's a real shame that Barr (yes, he was a neocon, but at least he has the balls to admit he was wrong) or Baldwin don't have a chance of winning.
My wife teaches high-school English and she's got stuff to do at home most nights, whether it be grading, making work for the students, dealing with administrative bullshit, committee meetings, or workshops.
Over the summer she's got summer school, the occasional inservice day, and other work.
For this she gets paid only a bit more than I do, and I get to leave my work at work.
which one wants to make us dumber. That has been spelled out pretty clearly...But neither will want us to get too smart... if they want to maintain their power.
What?
You seem to forget that anyone that is in a poor area with horrible schools, always has the right to get out of there and move somewhere that it is better. I grew up in a very small town with a graduating class of less than 90 people. You can get a 2 bedroom apartment there for less than $400/month. Anyone can afford to live there and make better lives for themselves and their family.
"A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers." Hayek
You do know (or would know if you had any ability to use a keyboard beyond typing idle speculation) that Obama graduated Magna cum Laude from Harvard Law so he was in the top 10% of his class. That is enough for me to go on. Does it matter what his Columbia grades were?
Except that the collapse of the financial industry was exactly because they weren't selling to the Freddie and Fannie, who, if you remember, were actually explicitly guaranteed by the government months ago in what was then called a 'big government bailout', although obviously we had to rescale the word since this latest thing came along.
I'd like to understand the mental gymnastics that are required to blame this continuing mess on entities that, at this point, are full of government-backed demonstratively-good paper. We already fixed any possible GSE problems when they got pulled (back) into the government. Everyone who purchased their securities is fine, by law. How exactly are the GSEs causing problems...telepathy?
What actually caused the problem is that banks were taking loans that Freddie and Fannie wouldn't buy, assigning imaginary value to them and getting them magically rated as AAA and then trading them amongst themselves, a market that the Republicans (and Greenspan) insisted was an amazing example of unfettered-by-government free enterprise. The market went south, and they ended up losing more than just the 'bad mortgages'...because they were complete morons who had stopped rating anything and mixed it all together (easier to sell that way), none of them had any idea of what assets they had at all.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
That's right, that booze-guzzling, skirt-chasing, Mary Jo Kopechne-drowning fuckup that the left worships - Ted Kennedy. So before you go trying to drop that in Bush's lap, be sure you have your facts straight. Want to know what education will look like under an Obama presidency? Just look at No Child Left Behind, x10.
Okay, so let me see if I understand you...
My parents immigrated to this country when I was 2. My dad had only a high school education, and my mom a middle school education. My brother and I are the first generation of our family to totally grow up in the US and get college educations.
So, if we become financially successful, and can afford to give our children a better education, you want to deny us that "In the interest of trying to give people some sembelance of an equal playing field?"
That is just immoral.
We went to crappy city schools, and still learned well, because our parents instilled in us a sense of how important our education is. There is nothing the government can do to take the place of that.
Education will never be equal for everyone, and that is the major problem with the ideologues that wish it to be so. It is futile and can only degrade our education system on the whole, not "average things out."
hopefully, we've learned something?
greed, fear & ego (in any order) are unprecedented evile's primary weapons. those, along with deception & coercion, helps most of us remain (unwittingly?) dependent on its' life0cidal hired goons' agenda. most of yOUR dwindling resources are being squandered on the 'wars', & continuation of the billionerrors stock markup FraUD/pyramid schemes. nobody ever mentions the real long term costs of those debacles in both life & any notion of prosperity for us, or our children, not to mention the abuse of the consciences of those of us who still have one. see you on the other side of it. the lights are coming up all over now. conspiracy theorists are being vindicated. some might choose a tin umbrella to go with their hats. the fairytail is winding down now. let your conscience be yOUR guide. you can be more helpful than you might have imagined. there are still some choices. if they do not suit you, consider the likely results of continuing to follow the corepirate nazi hypenosys story LIEn, whereas anything of relevance is replaced almost instantly with pr ?firm? scriptdead mindphuking propaganda or 'celebrity' trivia 'foam'. meanwhile; don't forget to get a little more oxygen on yOUR brain, & look up in the sky from time to time, starting early in the day. there's lots going on up there.
we note that yahoo deletes some of its' (relevant) stories sooner than others. maybe they're short of disk space, or something?
http://news.google.com/?ncl=1216734813&hl=en&topic=n
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/09/23/what.matters.thirst/index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/opinion/31mon1.html?em&ex=1199336400&en=c4b5414371631707&ei=5087%0A
(deleted)http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080918/ap_on_re_us/tent_cities;_ylt=A0wNcyS6yNJIZBoBSxKs0NUE
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/29/world/29amnesty.html?hp
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/06/02/nasa.global.warming.ap/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/weather/06/05/severe.weather.ap/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/weather/06/02/honore.preparedness/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/09/28/what.matters.meltdown/index.html#cnnSTCText
http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/books/10/07/atwood.debt/index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/opinion/01dowd.html?em&ex=1212638400&en=744b7cebc86723e5&ei=5087%0A
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/05/senate.iraq/index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/17/washington/17contractor.html?hp
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/03/world/middleeast/03kurdistan.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
(deleted, still in google cache)http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080708/cheney_climate.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20080805/pl_politico/12308;_ylt=A0wNcxTPdJhILAYAVQms0NUE
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/18/voting.problems/index.html
(deleted)http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080903/ts_nm/environment_arctic_dc;_ylt=A0wNcwhhcb5It3EBoy2s0NUE
(talk about cowardlly race fixing/bad theater/fiction?) http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/19/news/economy/sec_short_selling/index.htm?cnn=yes
http://us.lrd.yahoo.com/_ylt=ApTbxRfLnscxaGGuCocWlwq7YWsA/SIG=11qicue6l/**http%3A//biz.yahoo.com/ap/081006/meltdown_kashkari.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/04/opinion/04sat1.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
(the teaching of hate as a way of 'life' synonymous with failed dictatorships) http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081004/ap_on_re_us/newspapers_islam_dvd;_ylt=A0wNcwWdfudITHkACAus0NUE
(some yoga & yogurt makes killing/getting killed less stressful) http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081007/ap_on_re_us/warrior_mind;_ylt=A0wNcw9iXutIPkMBwzGs0NUE
(the old bait & switch...your share of the resulting 'product' is a fairytail nightmare?)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081011/ap_on_bi_ge/where_s_the_money;_ylt=A0wNcwJGwvFIZAQAE6ms0NUE
is it time to get real yet? A LOT of energy is being squandered in attempts to keep US in the dark. in the end (give or take a few 1000 years), the creators will prevail (world without end, etc..
...facilities then on education should be ...facilities than on education
Sarah Palin doesnt even know the name of Canadian's prime minister. And I bet lots of Americans dont either ... so whoever can at the very least teach them the name of the prime minister of their neighbor would be good =p
I know this question is about which candidate is best for education. However, I think we should also consider that perhaps neither is best. The topic presumes that government's role in education is a given. Why? Name me a government institution that is both effective AND efficient. Then decide if it is government that should be in charge of educating your children. At the risk of sounding paranoid, ask yourself if education is government's ultimate goal. While you're at it, try reading John Taylor Gatto's "The Underground History of Education"
The reason our economy beats EVERY other socialist country that has ever existed is because we are very capitalist at our core. Of course every year we veer more and more to the left. Obama would make a SHARP turn that would likely screw everyone over. Not to mention he seems to think that the government generates and controls wealth in this country. Too "command economy"-ish for me. Why Obama is WRONG for America
Dallas Real Estate
It is difficult to rebut what you say because it is the exact opposite of what I've been hearing and reading, which makes me think it is simply untrue.
If you could show me an article, or something, that talks about large numbers of loans Fannie and Freddie would not buy, then you may be on to something. Right now, it just sounds made-up. I'm not saying that you made it up, or are lying, just that everything I have read contradicts you.
you may better know then me, i am not a US citizen, but i have the overall impression your system been locked up .. what i want to say.. is as long as you need a lot of money to achieve good studies, the son of the rich people are more likely toe have the better job, and run the country in the end, hence locking up the system, and reproducing themselves at high level
your message while they do represent effectively in term of life style and all, a very limited fraction of the US (the rich)
University spending for 1 year study in france : http://www.cidu.de/fr/studieren/immatrikulation/imma_kosten_inhalt.html
A standard curriculum which guarantees minimum necessary education level, schools can customize this curriculum by adding more classes.
Or even better: a set of several curricula for different kinds of schools.
Also: government-sponsored inter-schools competitions with prizes for best schools. More scholarships for gifted but poor students.
And so on.
This seems flawed somehow. Let me see if I understand your approach.
function determineIntellgence {
if (voter.opinion != my.opinion) {
voter.isIntelligent = false;
}
}
Is that about right?
Drop the teach the test idea and put book price caps in place.
The textbook systems is one thing the GOV needs to step in and take some control of.
Correction: President of the Harvard Law Review. Not "just" an editor, in other words.
the human need to name things can sometimes cloud the fact that whoever the people decide to put in power is completely irrelevant to the idea of electing for results. they might have good intentions but its also irrelevant.
The farther away you get from the students the less decisions will be made by someone who cares about something other than their polls and statistics. A local school board is directly answerable to the parents of the students and the community that those students become. They might have a chance to listen to some teachers.
This is truly the case with ALL government decisions. If you want to think of it as a computer system, each level of abstraction obscures the details below it.
This is the reason to be afraid of a New World Order or a One World Government. Religious beliefs aside, the "higher level" at which the decision is made, the less it cares about the underlying details (ie the effects on the "little people")
Huh? No one is saying anything remotely close to that. Maybe if you didn't build your arguments on false premises, you'd actually understand what "the ideologues" are trying to say. Enjoy your vote for Strawman '08.
I believe the proper name for that atrocity is "No Child Gets Ahead Act," which was mandated by Congress, but not funded.
In Virginia, we have standardized testing and state law that requires 100% of students in K-12 to pass the Standards of Learning (SOL) tests. To be able to do so though, we have to reduce the test to the lowest common denominator while still teaching to the curriculum for each grade level. Its a complete mess and very soon we're going to have some very dumb students graduating, rather than being held back to learn the material properly.
Well sure. But don't you have any concept of jurisdiction? Is the idea that different branches and levels of government have different responsibilities and jurisdictions so alien to you that the idea that something is outside of the federal government's mandate is tantamount in your mind to saying that it's unimportant? Is fighting fires unimportant because we have no Federal Department of Firefighting?
You can (and do) argue that for some reason it's better to make educational decisions at the national level. That's a legitimate argument. But it's arguing in bad faith to suggest that people arguing against the proposition therefore think that education is unimportant. "No child left behind" is the ultimate expression of centralized government control over education. It's a bipartisan effort proposed by a Republican President, sponsored (and largely written) by a Democratic Senator, passed by overwhelming majorities of both parties (though with more Republicans than Democrats voting "nay"... supposedly because "long-term planning isn't the Republican's forte"). It is the crown jewel of national educational policy at the expense of state and local control.... how's that working out for us? Do those opposed to the policy oppose education because they think the local governments on the ground actually implementing policy are better equipped to assess and set that policy?
Don't vote.
Voting accomplishes two things:
1) It grants the government legitimacy by demonstrating that the public at large and you in particular believe that important decisions should be decided by a democratic process. This includes things that shouldn't be up for a vote, like whether you are entitled to the fruits of your own labor, whether or not you can decide how to raise your own kids, whether or not you can sex with who you want to and whether or not you can be free from fear and oppression in general.
2) It allows you to use the power of the government to manipulate and control others. Lets face it, no matter what nice things people say about compromise and civic duty, this is really what voting is about. You can tell this is true because people with guns will come to your house if you don't abide by the results of the election, even if you didn't agree to the process by voting.
By voting you are playing the role of the spineless coward and evil bandit at the same time. You are trying to rob and control others by fear and you are consenting to give everything you have to someone who didn't earn it and doesn't deserve it so that you can save your own life.
Once again, please don't vote tomorrow. I just recently realized how terrible voting is. I'm going to try to start a grassroots campaign to get the word out about how horrible this whole thing is before the next election in two years. But in the mean time you can help my cause (and the cause of freedom in general) by not voting.
You seem to forget that anyone that is in a poor area with horrible schools, always has the right to get out of there and move somewhere that it is better.
You need to change the shape of the distribution of wealth, not move individual datapoints around.
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
Private education insist that many greedy and selfish citizens in the USA support a public problematic education system, which is the biggest cause for failure for US culturally and globally.
The greater the disparity of education funding per-child (not overhead BS like desk, sports, building maintenance, school board/admin pay) between public and private education, the greater is the failures of the USA.
Equal education and learning never existed in the USA. The 1960s Civil Rights movement was addressed by expanding "Separation but equal" between the sycophant/religious plutocrat schools of our masters and "We The Slaves" of US. Any arguments from a USA Citizen to this statement, does indicate their probable social-economic birthrights or their dogmatic simple minded madness.
A nation and "The People" cannot be free or great when enslaved by birthrights and dogma. The USA Constitution (for plutocrats) is an old piece of paper with problematic historical implications.
As "We The People" become less educated and informed "Our USA Constitution" becomes whatever the prevailing US Aristocracy (USA) spin would make it. "The USA Constitution" is no longer the ideal/values we (as humans) strive to provide US and humanity, it is now the "USA" little paper memorial to past history and greatness. Let the dogma-patriots wave a flag, let the clerics and USA dictate the rule of US The Pitiable People (PP to USA) as we devolve to a banana/cane republic.
Religious Freedoms become religious pseudo-values to promotion faux-democracy of law, policy, politics, and education by dogma/lies. Mega-church clerics and international corporatist minions provide US palatable slavery with dogma-fear [AKA: BS] reasoning.
Education/learning and News available to the general public are the direct proportional measure of a free people and wealthy society. There should be a law (maybe Constitutional Amendment) that strictly states the quarterly/annual pre-profit/dividends percentage of minimum funding for cable/broadcast/... news programming (not the pay-roles, sets, electronics) . Also, a portion of the percent should go to fund PBS TV/Radio... and the development of national education courses/programs for "Open" education.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
A good educator can still turn this into a chance to teach students a valuable lesson. If they know that a popular position really is bullshit, based on real evidence, they can always steer the class in a way that the students will be able to see the evidence for what it is, but make the students have to put it all together to realize what was wrong.
And you know what the students get out of that? A lesson in critical thinking.
Obama is the greatest fraud the country will ever see run for president.
We don't have his school record, birth certificate, health records, legal clients, or anything about him. He's probably very deep in with Ayers, Khalidi, and Wright still. All anti-semite friends, yet jews are foolishly voting for him. Because we don't know the truth. We are just sheeple who the media is lying to.
And he takes foreign donations on his website, and will use acorn in the general as he did against hillary - to cheat.
I've never been a big-time political activist, and I'd say I have a healthy skepticism of _anything_ having to do with politicians. However, I really do think we'll be better off with Obama in the long run. Here's why:
I'm actually hoping for a bigger social change than any one person can do, but we'll see how well that goes. My hope is that credit will continue to be difficult to get, forcing people to cut back on consumption. Once that happens, people won't be scrambling for that next promotion at work because they need more money to feed the debt monster. People will then spend less time at work, and maybe pay attention to their kids again. Education may improve as a result, or it may not. Long-run, if wages go lower and people spend less, maybe we can actually compete with the foriegn labor markets (at least after you consider things like the time it takes to clean up a project after it's been delivered by an outsourcer.) This would be an extremely harsh transition -- we've been used to having access to anything we want for so long. However, the rest of the world lives this way, so we should be able to adapt.
Anyone who says that the President can't really do anything on his own is correct. But, I think voting in McCain is just inviting more conflict with the rest of the world.
Its not the US governments job to distribute wealth. We work on the notion of "survival of the fittest" not "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need."
"A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers." Hayek
> Today I'm opening up the floor to discuss education. Perhaps no other issue will matter more in 50 years.
50 years from now, when most major cities are being inundated by seal level rise and increasingly violent storms, we just might think that the environment/climate was a bigger issue 50 years ago.
But of course, nobody talks about environment as a political issue anymore. Is that an "education" problem? Do we really have to be taught about the catastrophes that we are in the process of creating?
Scientists have been warning us about warming for at least 40 years, and we're still not listening? It's still not an important political issue? Have you even heard Obama or McCain talking about the environment? Have you noticed that lists of which issues Americans think are important rarely even contain the environment as a possibility? Look at the Issue Tracker section of this page and notice that Environment doesn't even make it above the 2% "Other" category.
It is a shame (though understandable) that the President gets many orders of magnitude more press attention than your county, city, school district, and other local officials. Everyone has an opinion about who the President should be, but the fact is that s/he:
Nowhere is this more true than in education. Local school boards aren't generally as sexy as, say, Sarah Palin, but these people DIRECTLY impact what happens to school budgets, hiring/firing teachers, etc.
I implore US readers to do your due diligence and get your research done today (if you haven't already). Good places to start include Project Vote Smart, your state or county web site and local newspapers.
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana." --Groucho Marx
Both candidates have said they will continue with NCLB and I have to say it's the WORST possible way to get everyone an education. With NCLB there is no way to separate out the 'above averages' from the 'averages' from the 'stupids'. EVeryone is in a single class regardless of ability. In short, everyone gets taught to be mediocre. There is no rewarding someone for ability because that 'hurts the feelings of others'.
It's a complete sham and a joke. My wife is a teacher and I am telling you truthfully, she spends maybe 3.5 hours a day (out of 6) actually teaching) the rest of the time is done in 'assessments' and paperwork for NCLB.
It's a joke and needs to go away. Period.
Pax Vobiscum
Oh that thorny constitution, but education is clearly NOT a federal responsibility.
top level nations --> http://northcoastcafe.typepad.com/north_coast_cafe/2006/08/usa_is_1not.html
So your parents had the money and knowhow to get to the US? Sound like they were already ahead of the curve.
I'm not trying to deny you anything, what I am saying is that there's nothing wrong with competition if people actually have a chance to do something with their abilities.
The children of people living in a ghetto did nothing to deserve being there and the children of people living in mansions did nothing to deserve being there. Unless the kid born in a trailer is Einstein then he'll never get out - by no fault of his own. Unless the kid who grew up in a mansion is a complete idiot he will stay there and even then he's probably alright.
This isn't competitive, this isn't fair, this isn't moral.
If 2 people start off life with some semblance of equality I have no problem with one ending up in the gutter and one in the whitehouse based on personal drive, skill and luck, that's only fair. Making sure everyone has a decent education is only fair, if you want to give your kids an even better one then that's your choice but you have no right to keep their competitions faces ground into the mud.
> they can learn from the ones that are successful
So people who are notoriously bad at admitting they're wrong, will then admit they're wrong in not admitting they're wrong?
What a depressingly stupid machine.
Candidates get paid a lump sum of money per vote they receive, even if they lose. Your vote counts!!!
Hey at least that's how we roll in Canada.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Obama graduated Magna cum Laude from Harvard Law so he was in the top 10% of his class. That is enough for me to go on. Does it matter what his Columbia grades were?
Well if he got into Harvard, he should have graduated with a high GPA, at or near the top of his class in Columbia, right? So what's his GPA? It must have been high enough to get into Harvard Law, so why hasn't it been released, like it has for every other candidate?
What's the harm in knowing? Why is he hiding it? My Bayesian inference-meter is off the charts on this one...
The election has become a video game where the players (candidates) strategize on which states can be ignored.
The hearts and minds should be the battleground. NOT the states!
That should be enough to get the ball rolling.
Gunfire doesn't have to be inside the schools for it to make teacher apathetic. Think of all the gun deaths each year that happen off school grounds, the innocent bystanders and the stray bullets. This really adds to the stress that teachers face because they are really integrated into the lives of their students if they are good teachers and if they are no longer able to reach their kids... they are pretty apathetic from it all. This adds up. Drugs, alcohol, low incomes... other crimes... drunk driving. There are a slew of tragic factors that steal the humanity from our teachers. However, the successful teachers read the classics and understand that existential reality that tragedy breeds comedy, and they use it, but it's pretty tough to make someone laugh when all they want to do is crawl up in a ball and die. Many people are feeling that way now and many are going to feel a lot worse in the next ten years, at the rate we're going.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
You don't seem to have thought this through. People don't choose to live in poor areas, poor areas are just places where rent is low enough for them to afford to live there. For someone with no savings and probably a fair amount of debt moving from a $200 a month room in a ghetto to a $400 a month apartment in a faraway little town is a little retarded.
Course then they also have to pay the local school fees(we are talking about all private schooling here) to get their kids in. Throw some more money on the pile. Course they can get a high paying job to pay for all this but wait, they grew up in some shit hole neighbourhood and got no decent education. Best they can hope for is a walmart job. Back to the ghetto they go with even more debts to their name. And that's assuming they can get someone to give them a loan to do all this traveling in the first place.
Having an accent which singles you out as coming from a bad neighbourhood will pretty much keep you out of most jobs, I've personally gotten an offer for every job I've ever gone for an interview for but that in great part you can be sure is because I grew up with an accent and mannerisms which appeal to employers.
but don't worry, your world view is safe, you can keep believing that everyone else is just like you, had the same chances in life and has the same earning power and education as you.
If there is obvious change for the good of USAll, then I will vote in another four years for Obama.
I am almost 60, and feel like I wasted votes all my life, now I don't waste my time. However, ASA, I will vote in four years to keep Obama in office for four more years, if all of US (at least a majority) is better off than the minority of the last thirty+ years.
Also, in the last eight years how much "$gov$" money has been spent/moved within commuting distance of Washington, DC and K-Street. In another four years will more be moved too the K-Strasse DC area for US. Silly people, why vote....
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
It is no wonder this election is such a farce - nobody understands constitutional responsibilities.
Our media has not reported much of anything about the latest financial issues, especially concerning oversight responsibility. Oversight is the responsibility of the legislature. Chuck Schumer and Barney Frank head the finance comittees and failed miserably to do their jobs. They come from single party monopoly states and have little to no chance of ever being removed from office for their incompetence.
And McCain - what an idiot. He is the one senator who tried to reform Fannie and Freddie, but he sure has failed to get the word out on that!!!
Our media has selectively decided to ignore the facts and the ignorant populace just blames Bush as is usual. I guess we deserve what we'll be getting!
No we don't.
not "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need."
No one said we should.
Thank you for displaying your incredible lack of comprehension skills.
(Note my restraint)
In most districts, schools have a mandatory 165-180 day school year. With holidays and spring break, this makes for a school year of at least 9 months and often closer to 10. I know of no teacher that gets 4 months off for summer vacation. I have to believe you're just totally lying. Add to this, the fact that most teachers require a couple weeks to prepare for the start of the school year.
However, that doesn't really count here, since in most cases they're not paid for it.
I also knew a teacher who taught three classes and a study hall. He was getting paid $18K a year. Most teachers have a mandatory 7 hour work day with a 30 minute lunch. However, its common for teachers to spend 2-4 hours of time after the end of the school day preparing for the next.
I know a few teachers who'd love to show you where to put your head for implying that they were too lazy to try and get a second job to fill out those last four hours of spare time they have a day.
I suspect the real problem here is that you simply don't have a clue what you're talking about. You cherry picked an example which made you bitter and never used another neuron to think about it.
Remember, vote early and vote often.
Chicago machine politics, where the dead voters might outnumber the living.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
This might be a little off topic, but I wanted to state that the Polling places in our county (Johnson County, Kansas) have not been checking driver licenses. I've talk many people who voted early and they all say no one even validated who they were. Very concerning if you ask me!
We don't need someone in washington to lead us. We need someone in washington to listen to the people and act on the peoples requests, not special interest groups. The person we vote for will need to have a solid leadership record and a reputation of being accountable to the people. Which of the two candidates will do this? Which has a stronger record of accoutability? Which has a voting trail on issues? Which one has released all their personal files for the publics viewing? Which candidate has put his life on the line for the freedoms we have? These are the questions we should ask ourselves before we vote. REMEMBER! America is about FOR THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE. Washington is not supposed to be a SOAPBOX for elected officials to place their world view on the people without the peoples consent.
The fact that you think Afghanistan is libertarian illustrates how well you understand libertarianism.
Both sides will throw more money at the issue. And we'll get poorer results. Because it's NOT just a money issue.
*shrugs*
Obama is the greatest fraud the country will ever see run for president.
We don't have his school record, birth certificate, health records, legal clients, or anything about him. He's probably very deep in with Ayers, Khalidi, and Wright still. All anti-semite friends, yet jews are foolishly voting for him. Because we don't know the truth. We are just sheeple who the media is lying to.
And he takes foreign donations on his website, and will use acorn in the general as he did against hillary - to cheat.
Obama is the greatest fraud the country will ever see run for president.
We don't have his school record, birth certificate, health records, legal clients, or anything about him. He's probably very deep in with Ayers, Khalidi, and Wright still. All anti-semite friends, yet jews are foolishly voting for him. Because we don't know the truth. We are just sheeple who the media is lying to.
And he takes foreign donations on his website, and will use acorn in the general as he did against hillary - to cheat.
You were on youtube shouting 'TERRORIST N*****' at last week's Palin rally weren't you?
I'm just wondering, what do you call it when a group of people organize locally to get together to do things (like teach their kids)? It sounds like government to me...
While this comment might be a bit pedantic, I think the solution is not so much dissolving government but redefining what government means to us. It should be the recognition that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and that together we can do more for ourselves and our community. This is what decided my vote for Obama, that it is not who is sitting in the white house who will make the difference, but the hope he has given me which allows me to improve my community.
"how can they call it a MINE if everything here is THEIRS?!?!" -Straight Jacket
Texas has legal disenfranchisement (at least regarding anything more "local" than either your County or Senate race, more details in a second) worked right into the system.
It works like this: IF you are a new resident to a county, or have never registered to vote, you can show up on voting day or "early voting" arrangements, present proof of ID, and cast a provisional ballot (which will be added to the tallies once your residency is verified) for your actual location.
IF on the other hand, your county's voter registrar is a fucktard and the voter registrar's office "forgets" or otherwise fails to update your registration when you mail it in, you will then only find out about this when (a) your voter registration card shows up at the wrong place (if you still hear from your former address) or (b) when you call them or show up at the polls to find out WHY it didn't show up.
At this point, you are "allowed" to vote with your proof of ID... but you are required to vote the ballot of your OLD precinct.
Move from one side of the county to the other, have a local fucktard like Paul Bettencourt (Harris County, TX) mess up your registration, and lo and behold, here's what on the ballot is still accurate:
- Presidential race
- National Senate race
- County Railroad Commissioner
- County Sheriff
- County Judge race
- County (insert position here)
- City Council ("at-large" positions, potentially)
Here's what is NOT still accurate:
- House of Representatives race
- City council district race (if you remained in the same city)
- State Senate race
- State Assembly race
- All Municipal races (mayor, council, etc... if you moved from one city to another)
If you try to vote, and the fucktards in government didn't do their job so you're disenfranchised from half or more of the ballot... what do you suggest? Do I "lose" my right to complain about the asswipe who gets elected my Congressman because I tried to vote in the election but was disenfranchised from doing so?
At least 4 years... :)
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
You completely ignored parental involvement to go into your rant on teachers' unions.
Parental involvement in the education of their children is the primary reason why private schools do better. Those parents are willing to invest time and money into their kids education, and it shows.
Stop trying to champion your anti-union cause and start trying to figure out how to make parents care more about their kids.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Your perspective completely ignores very important parts of reality.
People who cannot afford good housing or neighborhoods with good schools cannot afford to "simply" just move to a better neighborhood, let alone a different town. Don't you think if the problem of moving your family to another location was simple, or affordable (can you afford the rental truck? new jobs lined up?) people would have done it already?
Get real. I went to a magnet program in what would have been a failing Florida high school was it not for students like me. I cannot discredit what the magnet program and its teachers did for me, but the resources which they had to work with were pitiful. To think that somehow the thousands of students at my school could have all been bussed, or moved into the area of the nicest public school in town is ridiculous.
We need to fix the schools that are already here, we need to recognize that we are hurting our all of our communities by failing to educate poor communities. We need to stop running away from the problem by presenting unrealistic solutions like shuffling kids around as if they were checkers pieces and start facing the real issue of education.
"how can they call it a MINE if everything here is THEIRS?!?!" -Straight Jacket
I am lacking comprehension?? You are the one trying to convince people the government exists to take care of people.
"A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers." Hayek
Just google 'big shitpile' to find out more. But it's easier to simply repeat what I said:
All Freddie- and Fannie-issued securities are explicitly backed by the government at this point. They have been for months, this was the 'bailout' of Freddie and Fannie (aka, 'GSEs'), although in actuality it was a bailout of their investors.
So every single piece of paper, every security ever issued by a GSE, cannot possibly cause anyone any harm. If someone bought it, they will get all their money back. They might not get as much as they hoped, and although inflation will suck a bit of the value out, but if they purchased 100 million worth of Freddie Mac, they will get 100 million back, and can get it back at any time. There are people frowning at their pension plan's apparent 0% rate of return, but everyone got a do-over.
So...um...why'd WaMu fail months later? Magic? Bad Karma? WaMu's, and other banks's, only possible interaction with the GSES was a) buy securities from them, which it couldn't have lost any money on at this point, or b) sell them loans, which seems unlikely to bankrupt a company. (You'd think if it was bankrupting them they'd just stop.)
Seriously, this 'blame the GSEs' is looking really absurd at this point. We already fixed them, and bad things keep happening!
No, recent banks failures, and in fact all bank failures, are failing because they looked at what the GSEs were doing, which is buying 'conforming', reasonably good loans (Which did eventually decline in value and screw everything up, but were not inherently 'bad'.) and packaging these loans up and reselling them a securities, with an implied (later made explicit) government backing...
At some point, they started 'insuring' these loans, but not via actual insurance, which would require that the insurance company have enough money to cover the insurance, but through contracts that acted like insurance but, legally, weren't regulated as such. This is why AIG almost went under, it couldn't cover the 'insurance' it had issued on these 'AAA securities' that were total crap.
If you want to know what I'm talking about, google 'big shitpile', which is what bloggers have taken to calling this.
1) Whereas the GSEs, like I said, actually had pretty good loans in there. They ran into problems because of the price drop, not home foreclosures. And even then they weren't actually 'in trouble', it was just that people no longer trusted their securities so they couldn't sell them so they couldn't buy new loans, which had gummed up the entire market.
The topic said to discuss education, and voting for either one of the candidates is a vote for an unconstitutional expansion of powers in this area. The federal government should have absolutely nothing to do with education. It is not an enumerated power given to the government by the constitution, and therefore, according to the 10th amendment, is reserved for the states and the people.
Federal aid to education should be abolished immediately, and the states should be allowed to structure their systems as they see fit. And to those who would argue otherwise, let me state this: we spend more money per student on education than ANY other nation, yet our K-12 systems do poorly. So besides the fact that this system isn't even constitutional, it is also a bad system that doesn't work anyway, no matter how much money the federal government throws at it. There should be no reason at all not to dismantle the federal system and let the states have a crack at it.
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
Eh. I'm unhappy with both choices. Romney in 2012!
If two people with clubs attack a single person with a club, they are likely to win and not get hurt. If two people with guns have a shootout with a single person with a gun, they are likely to win, but it's quite likely at least one of them will get shot.
Besides, who will keep guns out of the hands of criminals? The same government that fails miserably to keep drugs out of the hands of the same criminals?
-- Support a free market in the field of government
Checking a box on a piece of paper isn't an active decision. Deciding to do for yourself whatever it is you're trying to force other people to do for you when you vote is an active decision.
How many times have you shot a gun? They're not that difficult to use. A lot easier than some other lethal devices available to the general public, such as cars.
If you don't think you can carry a gun safely, don't. I don't either, because I have four curious children who are too young to understand that "no" doesn't mean "don't do it when I'm looking". But there is no reason to assume the average driver, who can be trusted with a car, can't be trusted with a gun.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
I don't he's hiding anything, it took me 2 seconds to find it with google:
3.8 GPA ---Columbia Poly Sci major with a specialty in international relations.
4.0 GPA with high honors. ---Harvard Law
Fanatically anti-fanatical
A federal government with limited powers, multiple state governments, county governments (3,000+ as of now), and city governments. Our current problem is that the governments at the top want to dictate what the governments below do. The system wasn't designed for that, but that's how it is now, with the resulting problems.
A clear example is the drug laws. The federal government tries to override the choice of states to legalize certain drugs. That wasn't a stated power of the fed, so the fed has no business dictating to the states.
You guys over in the EU, watch out. Our country was once a collection of sovereign states.
...from the other side of the pond, Obama is the right choice. Palin's stance on creationism alone should be enough to decide this particular issue.
Interestingly, people who believe in evolution in the US average less children than people who believe in creationism. I don't know exactly what this means, but I suspect Palin's children will outvote Obama's.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
I believe that we are all talking about these generic platitudes about bigger government, more intrusion, etc. when in reality there are specific issues we cannot deny.
1. Iraq. People are dying needlessly. Americans and Iraqis. If anything, you can make your vote a referendum on the war. John McCain's supports a longer timeframe in Iraq than even George W. Bush. If you believe we should get out of Iraq, you have a very good reason to support Barack Obama.
2. Taxation. While many of us oppose the idea of increased taxation, I do not oppose the idea of fairer taxation. A simple look at the numbers over the last 2 decades, as highlighted by Warren Buffet's famous $1 million dollar wager for Fortune 500 CEO's to prove their tax burden is higher than their secretary's, reveals that the tax burden has shifted heavily onto middle, working-class Americans. While I would love to see taxes as a whole go down, I have seen both sides of this coin personally and am willing to accept that 3% tax increase. If you think taxes are unfairly balanced against the middle class, you have a good reason to vote for Obama.
3. Intelligence. In previous elections, people have joked about how Bush and Gore were C+ students, and that McCain graduated last in his class. I do want to think that my president is an intelligent, articulate, and thoughtful individual. Barack Obama is unassailable in this department - Editor of the Harvard Law Review, Constitutional Law Scholar and Lecturer, etc. If having an extremely intelligent president matters to you, you have a good reason to vote for Obama.
4. Influence. If you believe that politicians are bought and sold, you should take a look at Obama's campaign. Obama has only $1270 in PAC contributions, McCain has $1,400,000. Obama has a higher full disclosure rate. Obama's biggest donor - University of California employees. McCains? Merrill Lynch.
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/summary.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00009638
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/summary.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00006424
Barack came into office and launched USASpending.gov, where you can see exactly how your money is doled out. While McCain was responsible in part for McCain Feingold, I consider this a wash when pitted against his role in the Keating 5 Savings and Loan crisis.
If you believe in accountability and want an elected official who is financially trustworthy both in perception and reality, you have a good reason to vote for Obama.
I guess this big question is this - how close does a candidate have to be to your issues to garner your vote. Is your measure set in a way that would cause you to almost never vote?
When Obamatons are confronted with obamas ugly truth, they call it negative campaigning and here on slashdot, an obamaton is a slashtard and calls the same, trolling.
In this case trolling is ugly truth about your manchurian candidate
If one removes monetary motivation by lowering local wages with such schemes as outsourcing H1B visas etc you remove the motivation to
learn.
I really don't see either of these idiots helping the situation. They seem to be perfectly happy chopping American workers off at the knees.
Got Code?
To testify, today!
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6600
Correction, per the NYT, Obama graduated without honors from Harvard meaning a GPA below 3.3. He graduated Magna cum Laude from Columbia which has not released his GPA.
Be serious. No one is going to say, "I'm against investing in our workforce." Try to stick to the issue (the parts that are debatable). The question is whether those funds should be collected locally or through federal taxes. I think it is much more efficient locally and parents, teachers, and local and even state government officials will make better decisions than those in D.C.
I almost included a quip along the lines of "Democrats will be punished by being put in charge."
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Education has no business being on their agendas. Education is a state right. They cannot make any laws that directly affect education; all they do is create laws that deny funding if a state doesn't follow certain rules. Stop punishing the educational system with demands in exchange for funding, give all equal funding, and allow each individual state to make their own decisions.
-SaNo
Oops, other way around.
The HLR is not a meritocracy. His selection as an editor (along with 40 others at the time) was in no way based on strong academic standing.
> I'd not mind the electoral college if the reality was that a state that was close (say 49/51 for this
> particular gibberish) sent as close to the percentage of votes in to what that state's citizens wanted.
Bad idea. First off we should understand the original reason for the Electoral College. It is one of the last vestiges of the Old Republic left. It is a reminder that We aren't electing the POTUS and shouldn't, the States do it. The States were also supposed to elect the Senate and things took a notable downward trend when we foolishly changed that.
The Founding Fathers understood human nature and built a system to serve fallen man. They knew that power would corrupt, politicians would tend to be self serving people, etc. So they built a government of checks and balances, where the greed, self interest and stupidity of one set of politicians would be set against another and mostly cancel out. And one where the People itself were equally suspect and balanced against.
Today though, the Electoral College serves a very important function that anyone proposing to eliminate it must address. It is serving as a firewall against election fraud. For example, there will almost certainly be fraud in the local elections in IL, LA (my home state), NJ, etc. But little in the presidential election because there would be little point, none of those states are likely to be swingable. Watch where ACORN is putting the majority of it's troops.
Now imagine a world where the POTUS was directly elected. It would be a nightmare as Florida '00 was repeated in damned near every state every election cycle. Our Republic would fall into a civil war.
Democrat delenda est
Palin is the pinnacle of the anti intellectually curiosity crowd. The intellectually curious crowd, is, of course, what people talk about when they talk about the 'elitists'.
There are conservative and liberal 'elitists', yet these are the people who did well in school and were punished for it. They are still punished today with this label and still get scorn heaped upon them. These elitists are not necessarily smart, but what they do share is a love of learning and a love of thinking. They are easy to kick around.
Palin is not unintelligent and she has a good memory. She doesn't seem interested in knowing anything that's not of the US, and probably not anything that's not rural US.
She is like the kid in class who says "Math is dumb, why should I have to learn it, why would I ever need it?".
YOU have been issued an INTERNET TRAFFIC TICKET by MFH (56).
Please SLOW DOWN YOUR SPEED, and STOP ARGUING on the INTERNET.
The following applies to this ticket:
( ) Have a cup of coffee
(x) Find your "me" place and go there now
( ) Go get laid pls, kthx
( ) Stop downloading so much p0rn.
(x) Go OUTSIDE
(x) Breathe
(x) Think about your statements before making this any worse
(x) Work on that blurting problem
(x) Count to ten
( ) Become more informed about your topic
(x) Realize that mfh (56) did not make his comment with the sole purpose of offending you
( ) Change your angry Religion
( ) Save some money and take a vacation
( ) Get therapy NOW!
( ) DIAF
( ) STFU
(x) Relax
mfh (56) also had this to say about this issue:
( ) I am going to kill you and your family
(x) Dude, take a chill pill
(x) Nobody wins and argument on the Internet
( ) Only lawyers can win arguments, but when they do neither lawyer really loses
(x) Please drive safely!
(x) Buckle up!
(x) Don't drink and drive!
KTHXBYE!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
I've read all the comments of the first page. I did not read a single comment that actually had anything to say about education. Education is probably the #1 most important issue for recovering our economy. Most of the comments were "I'm voting third party" or "Don't complain if you vote/don't vote." or "The system is corrupt!" Great, I've only heard these statements being said every damn political discussion on Slashdot. Seriously, can we stay on topic for just one time and talk about an extremely impoartant issue that our future depends on? Lets be honest with ourselves, one of two candidates will be elected no matter how much we hate the current system. At least do yourselves a favor and compare the differences between the candidate's education plans, and discuss them. Is that too much to ask?
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
Since when has that been important in America? This country has always embraced a national culture of anti-intellectualism. We are taught that smart people think they're better than everyone else. Our current president is perfect evidence of this growing attitude. And look where having "one of the guys" lead our country has gotten us.
For myself, personally, it's made it nearly impossible to finish my graduate degree. Why? Well among other things, the total amount of federally subsidized student loan aid has been cut in half to a measly $9000 a year for graduate students. Good luck making it through graduate school on that and whatever $8.00/hr job you're lucky enough to find.
At this point, this country has made it even more difficult for those of us born poor to improve our minds (and, possibly, our economic outlook) by getting a decent education. I cannot help that I'm an adult on my own; I cannot rely on my parents for financial support. Or my grandparents. Or anyone else, for that matter. It's amazing how many people just don't understand that, even at school.
And not that I'm looking to weasel out of my commitments, but our fabulous administration has even made it impossible to include student loans in bankruptcy claims. Heaven forbid I suffer a serious injury (I certainly cannot afford health insurance right now, either), and am forced into bankruptcy from medical bills. Good thing I'll still be forced into paying my $90,000 in student loans from the cardboard box that will serve as my address.
So it's entirely possible for me to be COMPLETELY irresponsible financially and get myself into an untenable mortgage situation that I can weasel out of via bankruptcy, but I have NO recourse or protection in the event of a financial disaster for attempting to better myself.
During my recent on-line student loan exit interview (see, I had to drop out of school with one class to go to finish my MFA because I couldn't cough up an additional $1,000), I was informed that my options for weaseling out of my loans are - I shit thee not:
1.) I die
2.) I'm completely and permanently disabled and incapable of working
IN THAT ORDER. Nice. I would also like to point out that there's a THREE YEAR period required to PROVE that someone has, I dunno, lost both arms in a combine and can't work anymore.
Again, I'm not trying to weasel out of my responsibility. But the fact that the fucking government will bail my ass out of home ownership but won't provide reasonable alternatives to those of us who lost the Lucky Sperm Game but wish to pursue graduate school and (hopefully) contribute something positive to society chaps my ass.
Education? This administration - this country - and particularly, Republicans, couldn't give a stinking rat's ass about it. Making it so difficult for the poor to get educated is simply another tool the wealthy (overwhelmingly Republican - coincidence?) use to keep the poor impoverished and the wealthy comfortable.
For years we have (mis)used testing. Up until a few years ago, we (sate-wide) used a normed based test to 'judge' how well the students have done. A normed test is where the scores of the students are lined up in numeric order, and the lowest one percent are given a one percentile, two percent get two percentile, and so on until the upper one percent get a 99 percentile. Thus, all the students in a given grade average out to a 50 percentile. However, our state government (under pressure form the feds) asked my school district to raise our scores. The problem is, even if all of the students across the state had a raw score of 75% and up, they would still be ranked in percentile, giving an average of 50 again. Hence, our district never improved, and we got put on a 'bad' list and had some of our funding removed, which cut spending in areas such as after school programs. Our students were missing out because these politicians couldn't do statistics.
The test questions are normed too. Each question is tested on a group for students and rewritten until 50% pass and 50% fail. For example, the test can not just ask to my third graders 'what at the center of the solar system?' It would be rewritten till it looked like this:
What is the orbital foci of Jupiter?
A. Mars
B. Moon
c. Earth
D. Sun
E. None of the above
Most of my class would just guess at this question. About 25% would look at the word 'orbital,' and eliminate A, C, and E and be left with a 50~50 chance. However, the really intelligent/bright/gifted/etc. students would be confused because they know that the planets travel in elliptical orbits,, and have two foci. At one is the sun, and at the other is nothing. They would be split between D and E, and ultimately choose E, the 'wrong' answer because they know the truly correct answer is not there.
This test also has some other interesting effects. Where I live and work is a very low income area. Many of our students have never had some experiences that are 'common.' This became very obvious when a student came and asked me about one of the passages on the test about living in the snow. As a third grader, she had no idea what snow was, where it came from, and what it was like. She couldn't answer some basic questions about the passage because she couldn't fathom the experience as described on the test.
This is typical bullshit from someone not involved in education. One single example does not a statistic make. Siting a single example works for other professions too, "IT professionals are overpaid, most of them just spend their time chatting on IRC and surfing the Web." MAYBE you knew someone who had a lot of down time, but the fact of the matter remains, teachers don't "get 3-4 months off"... that's bologna. Students get out of school and there's another 2 weeks of work for the staff... before school starts, another 2 weeks. Throughout the summer are required meetings and summer courses. Good teacher are always revising lesson plans and spend the summer planning for the next school year. Most of the teachers I work with arrive at 7am and leave at 5pm... some later.
Do teachers make a livable wage? Absolutely it's livable... but for the ACTUAL amount of work that is put into the job, it's surprisingly low paying. Sure they can take a summer job... but most places that pay well won't hire someone who they KNOW will be gone in 2 months. 8, let's say MAYBE 10 weeks of summer work... at $8 an hour (well above minimum wage)... that's about $3200... hardly a "lot" of money.
So give me a break about this bullshit, arrogant assumption.
The only people you can "make smarter" are those who want to learn.
The problem with our current education system is that we keep throwing money at the system instead of fixing the fundamental problems. We force kids to attend bad schools with bad teachers that have no accountability. We spend more per student than any nation on earth, yet we produce the dumbest graduates.
K-12 in the U.S is a joke and we send kids that are not properly educated in basic subjects to university, where many fail or just "get by". College degrees are proving less and less valuable as employers look for more than "book smarts". Obviously, there are certain professions that require advanced education. We already have a shortage of physicians. With the incoming socialization of healthcare, there will no longer be much incentive to pursue a medical degree. The return on investment is quickly disappearing and that rate of diminishing returns is about to increase exponentially when Obama is elected tomorrow.
Because he will undoubtedly set up re-education camps all over the nation. These will be staffed by his Civilian National Security Force.
Topic One, why his plan to bankrupt the Coal Industry was good for the nation despite the rolling blackouts and lack of heat in the winter.
I agree that parents and teachers are responsible for holding students accountable and encouraging them to learn and accomplish, but I question public education (and private schools) goals for their students learning. It seems to me that public school curriculum is designed to bore the crap out of young people and make their heads hurt so that they drop out, stay dumbed down, ready to take on faith, answers they should determine themselves. This results in a large population of "worker bees" that are manipulable due to their disinterest in actual knowing, and lacking of critical analysis skills to problem solve in the real world.
When public school "gets back to basics" by teaching each subject in a sterile and unrelated way to the world at large, it is boring. Young people are naturally interested in how math, english and science are interwoven, not how they exist in isolation. I also am very sad that programming is not something every young person has some mastery at by the time they graduate high school. I blame programming langauge designers for completely failing to provide an adequate programming ecosystem for introductory youth programming. The languages that are avaialble are toys, such as Logo and Squeak. The last great "real" interactive programming languages were BASIC on machines like the Apple II and APL (Ken Iverson) on mainframes and PC's. Unfortunately, modern implementations of these languages are uber complex professional tools that are innappropriate for introductory programming.
But I wandered off topic. What I rant about is how children barely understand the modern world they exist in. They may know how to do basic math and write a formulaic essay, but they have no idea how dozens of natural, man made and life critical systems we all depend on work. Kids get to play photo realistic games of war that require no knowledge or real skill, yet have no way to explore the life cycle of ponds, streams, rivers and oceans as a living simulation that they can nurture or pollute. To young people today, the world is a black box they barely have any interest in understanding, because school is about paper and pencil math drill books, and boring science and history textbooks that are dead, 3rd hand knowledge. If we let kids also learn experientially, through educational simulations that let them experience the systems and interact with them, young people will emerge from school with a broad experiential knowledge of biological and mechanical systems, electronics and power systems, farming, water supply, housing, transportation, political processes, family system and interpersonal dynamics, business operation and management, etc. I wish that all young people graduating from high school would have basic insight into the systemic processes of our world. They would make our population informed voters. What we have instead are people who are in blind allegiance to political parties that don't really know or care about the issues either, and just want to be in control.
I lead the development of two IBM classroom math education products many years ago that gave me a glimpse of where thing might have gone.
I still have a dream,
SimBuddha
I voted for Papoon.
If you post it, they will read.
But with the current shape of the "wealth curve" what you advocate is exactly what we don't have. Rich kids almost can't help but succeed, and poor kids almost can't help but fail - and it has nothing to do with who is "fittest," and everything to do with the resources readily available to them. Sure there will be some rich kids who do fail, and there will be some poor kids who do succeed, but both situations are rarer than they should be.
So forget about fairness, for a moment.
Bright, capable kids WILL succeed, regardless of status. The problem for us is defining success. For our current "wealth curve" for rich kids societally acceptable success is practically assured, and for poor kids it's practically excluded, as I said before. But those poor kids WILL succeed, it's just that they won'd succeed in societally-acceptable ways. For some, "success" may be the next drug score, for others it may be rising to the top of their street gang, and yet others might think it's in stealing the flashiest car. None of those are things that as a society we want to happen, but those may be the only "success" available to those people.
Next, forget about crime, too.
The future of a nation is measured on how well it uses its resources, both material and human. Take a situation where a mediocre-performing rich kid holds some position, then presume there's a poor kid who, given proper education, could have filled that position much better. It's inefficient for the nation. I won't argue that the top 2% can always succeed and the bottom 2% can always fail, rich or poor. But that's only 4% of the population, and we have the other 96% to think about, and that's where the "wealth curve" leads to inefficiencies.
So ignore that.
Now look at China, where they're downright ruthless about all of this stuff. Certainly they're also corrupt, and children of Party mucky-mucks will always succeed, but that's only a 2-4% issue, as above. As for the other 96%, China is evaluating from childhood, making sure the kids with athletic ability get onto the sports/Olympic track, kids with math and science skills get onto the science and technology track, etc.
Compared to that, we're wasting the resource of our children. Now I'm also not going to favor the heavy-handed tracking of the Chinese, but I still believe that there is a sweeter space between where we are today and where the Chinese are.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I've been a Libertarian for a couple of decades, but haven't been doing active politics the last few years. I'm probably voting for Barr, but I might flip a coin and vote for Nader instead. (Lots of things wrong with Nader, especially economics, a few really good things about him, and it's very clear that a vote for Nader is also a vote for None of the Above and against the war in Iraq.)
The LP's been taken over by quasi-Republicans in the last few years. Bob Barr, while he's seriously excellent about privacy issues, still thinks drugs should be illegal (though he's at least realized that the way the War on Some Drugs is being fought has serious problems) - which says he fundamentally doesn't get what Libertarianism is about. And he was one of the crew of divorced Republicans responsible for the Defense of Some Marriages Act. On the other hand, just about nobody else _is_ talking about undoing the civil liberties damage and concentration of power that Bush has done, and hardly any national-level politicians are even trying to get rid of the Patriot Act.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Absolutely, What we need in this country is a parlament with porportional representation. Minority parties can represent and can actually work to become a majority party. The system would be more responsive.
It is not the government's job to plan things for us.
Which things? Roads? Railways? Airports? Infrastructure? Policing? Firefighting? National security? Defence? Do you really think that the private sector can do everything without any government involvement?
Where does this perverse notion come from that everything should be done by the private sector and the nothing by the public sector?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Education.com has a write up on each of the canidates views on education:
http://www.education.com/magazine/article/John_McCain/
http://www.education.com/magazine/article/Barack_Obama/
My parents were poor. My dad came by himself first, and managed to get a factory job at Kodak. While he was here he missed my birth. He saved all the money he could so he could bring my mom and me. I was two years old when that finally happened.
You're contradicting yourself.
You say that if two people start off equal, and one ends up rich while the other ends up poor, you're okay with that. But just before that you said it's not fair that some people are rich and others are poor. The child of that rich man is going to start out rich, and the child of the poor man will start out poor. The rich man is going to want to give his child the greatest education he can afford to give. The poor man will not be able to provide the same, although he can make the child value learning; ultimately, what is possible in one's education is up to the individual. There is nothing the government can do to magically make everyone's education equal.
The fact is that there always have been, and always will be some people who are poor. Some of them will be able to climb out of it, some won't. Any time humans have tried to fix that they just end up making everyone poor.
I have to agree that we are wasting our children as a resource. I graduated from HS in 2004, but didn't really learn anything useful outside of math and science since 5th grade. Children and their parents need to have more options available earlier in life and start their vocational studies much earlier. This general purpose public education until you are 16 when you can drop out or 18 when you graduate is not working. I should have had the option to leave the public school system to take the IT classes I took at 18 and 19 at around 13 or 14.
"A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers." Hayek
I've had some sympathies with the Greens in the past, but this year they are running that absolute whack-job race-baiter McKinney.
I have even more sympathies for the Libertarians, but this year they are running Bob Barr, a decidedly non-libertarian type who wanted to ban Wicca in the military. He belongs in the Constitution Party.
The only way to win is not to play.
Ah, yes, I should have been more specific. I was talking about the Federal government. My point was that local governments are better equipped at deciding what is best for their situation than some distant group of people in DC.
If Obama has inspired you to get involved in your community, then I applaud you.
A basic Libertarian platform: Protection of individual rights, from others and from the government.
Drop the teach the test idea and put book price caps in place.
The textbook systems is one thing the GOV needs to step in and take some control of.
Your schools and universities could fix the book problem themselves by
- demanding lower prices
- choosing cheaper books where there are alternatives
- not changing the books as often (i.e. supporting a second-hand market)
- (for universities) putting the books in the library.
Most of the books I used in school cost about £12 (double a paperback novel). I didn't have to buy any for university, they were all in the library. We complained when a lecturer bought a new edition which wasn't yet in the library, he apologised and put page numbers for the old edition on his website.
Teaching to the test is a bad idea. England has just abolished the standard tests at age 14, in part because of this (Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland had already abolished them).
It is common in science classes to teach a sequence of theories that attempt to explain the same thing. Each theory is inaccurate in some respect. Each new theory is more accurate than the preceding theory. The scientific method is all about formulating theories and looking for evidence that supports one theory over another. Each time a theory is found not to correctly predict the result of an experiment, we learn that the subject theory is not perfectly accurate. Each time a theory does predict the result of an experiment, we gain evidence to support that theory.
An important part of a science education is learning to design experiments to test proposed theories, and learning to design theories that can be tested. An important feature of a scientific theory is that it can be subjected to testing. That is, that some evidence can be found to either support or refute the theory. Some theories are defective in the sense that evidence, either for or against, is not available. Examining such proposed theories can inform the student, and help the student to understand why it is important that scientific theories can be tested.
The notion that a theory from more than two thousand years ago might be taken seriously is, rather silly. But, it might still provide fodder for the course, just as the the theory that all matter is comprised of fire, water, earth, and air. The ancient Greek theory of matter is often mentioned in physics or chemistry classes. Of course, it is usually followed by a statement to the effect that it is of course not accurate.
I'm personally a libertarian, but one of the few things I think the government should be spending money on is education and scientific research. Education is an investment in the future. If we raise the level of education in this country, encourage students to like learning, and really progress we will remain a superpower, if only because we will dominate technology and science in the world.
We need to pay teachers a competitive wage to get the really bright people interested in being teachers. And we need to give them the resources to really inspire the next generation. A good teacher can make the difference in someone's life. We also need to fund programs to give smarter children access to the resources they need to jump to the next level, not just keep them with the average person. And we need to stop pandering to the lowest common denominator - the slowest person in a class should not be dragging everyone else down.
For college, we should be paying students who do well and who aren't going into high paying careers like Wall Street or lawyers. If you offer someone the ability to go to the top private schools for free if they later become a teacher or scientist a lot more people will do that. Higher up, we should be paying more money to graduate students, postdocs, and scientists. Only the most dedicated stay in the field when you get paid so little (disclaimer: I am a graduate student in astrophysics right now, and I've seen plenty of people leave for higher paying jobs in other fields after finishing).
And instead of welfare, we should be getting people educated so that they can work in a more demanding job. I would much rather pay $50,000 for someone to get a college degree and then start working at a good wage then pay someone $20,000 as welfare.
How can I justify this based on my libertarian leanings? Because it's an investment. If the government funds someone's education and it costs $100,000, but then that person is able to make $150k/year instead of $50k, the government will get it's money back in a matter of years. Hopefully there will be fewer criminals because more people will be interested in working instead of doing nothing. Obviously money won't solve everything, but it will be a good start and personally I would much rather see the money currently being spent on social programs invested in the future, not in the present.
The USA's bullying foreign policy has resulted in huge deficits from Offense Spending. I don't want my kids to have to deal with MY problem.
Unlike the whiners and non-competatives, I WANT to pay more. I WANT to pay down the debt. It's the responsible, non-selfish, thing to do.
Blar.
Its not the US governments job to distribute wealth.
Actually, it is. What do you think federal taxes are?
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
Source?
Defense and roads, that's all I would like them to be collected and used for.
"A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers." Hayek
Wow, calm down a little there. You're getting agitated for no reason.
First of all, I really was talking about the Federal government, and I'm sorry that I wasn't more specific about that.
Secondly, at no time did I mention the phrase "private sector," let alone that everything should be done by it.
What I said was that we are capable of organizing our own local school systems. "We" means our various local governments which we use as agents to organize ourselves.
National Security and Defense are properly ensured by the Federal Government under the Constitution. Everything else you mentioned can be dealt with by local and state governments (which are closer to "We, the people"), with some guide by the Federal government when multiple states are involved.
I don't know where the notion came from that I advocate that everything should be done by the private sector, but it is not the case.
We aren't talking about private schooling here, and working at the Walmart you would be able to afford to live there. It was just built a few years ago and they are still hiring and I know many that work there doing just fine, living within their means and enjoying themselves.
"A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers." Hayek
Nothing you said there refutes his point.
And when I'm using my gun to hunt food, how is it a "weapon designed to kill people"?
In the future, don't tell people their argument is "naive" then naively ignore (I'm assuming it's naivety and not intentional) points that directly refute you and make your argument false.
We've had enough of that from your Republican cohorts, thanks.
Sorry if I took you up wrong, but when you said "It is not the government's job to plan things for us" I thought it sounded a bit like you meant that it wasn't government's job to plan anything.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
First, the public K-12 system is terrible. By this, I don't mean every school is uniformly bad. But rather that there's a lot of schools churning out a lot of weak, unprepared students. While more funding probably would help some, that's not going to fix the underlying problem of low accountability and low school choice. I favor the use of school vouchers to produce a market of schools to chose from.
And ironically, at the college level, we have the opposite problem. College level education is vastly overbuilt. There's no excuse for the absurdly high drop out rates at many universities. But the trick is that students are subsidized with considerable financial aid and low interest student loans. So colleges have evolved to consume those plentiful resources. This is especially pathetic when people who are poorly prepared by their public education flail around in a college environment for which they aren't prepared.
That's the question you should be asking yourself. If you can answer it, then you can try to figure out where Barack Obama and John McCain will be compared to that answer.
Here's my answer:
The only amount of socialism that makes sense is the amount that is good for the country as a whole. Specifically, what is this amount? Well, whatever it might be, it accomplishes the following:
- Eliminates crime, because the homeless, poor and lower classes either don't need to steal for food, or don't feel like they are living so much worse than everyone else. I.E. make everyone more comfortable and crime will go down.
- Eliminate health problems. Face it, if we provided some form of health care up front to people who cannot afford it that would pay off later when their health is even worse. I am talking about the concept of basic preventative maintenance here.
- Educate the masses. Yes. I think we should pay for education for everyone *if possible to do so*. I'm willing to pay more taxes if I know that means someone is going to go to school who couldn't have gone before.
Look, these three things aren't the ONLY factors that determine how much socialism is enough, or not enough, or too much.
What I am saying is, there are good things that can be achieved with socialist-type programs. Barack Obama would introduce more of those than John McCain, obviously. But would he go overboard, or would he find a happier medium and a better situation, overall, for the country?
I'm one of those people who will probably take it in the shorts on taxes when (if) Obama gets elected. But I am not sitting here crying about it. I am thinking about the implications, and if tomorrow I decide that it's worth the RISK that he might be going overboard, but also the REWARD that he might be hitting the nail on the head, then tomorrow is going to see me voting for my first Democratic Presidential nominee.
Saludos.
"it's making you come off like a jackass"
That's because I am a jackass.
"First, think carefully, and come up with one way that voting does you actual, honest to goodness harm."
As a result of the voting that's been done over the years, I pay 30% of my income to taxes. This money is used to support social programs I don't agree with and wars that I don't think are worthwhile. It is also used to enforce laws that I don't think are fair and restrict freedoms which I think are important. I think rape is a good metaphor for this process.
discuss!
I'm all for positive political discussions, but this is the lamest attempt to "open the floor" for one I've seen.
It's the capacity of these people for cognitive dissonance.
My wife is an evangelical. She is easily just as educated as I am. We both hold medical degrees. I have had ample opportunity to debate religion with both her, and her friends (her set of friends contains a subset that is equally intelligent and professional), in both social circumstances, and on two Alpha courses.
They are not fanatics, they are moderate. But they all share a common trait ; when you debate with them, there comes a point where they will just refuse to concede. They have no logical argument ; they may think they do, but whatever sophistry they construct always boils down to the equivalent of thumbing their nose and saying "God said so", or "God did it".
This refusal appears to be internal as well as external. My peers at school rated me a good teacher. One friend personally thanked me for his exam grade because he couldn't understand our physics teacher. My wife is clearly not stupid, holding a medical degree and thus a fair understanding of the life sciences.
But she doesn't understand evolution. You cannot teach her the concept, no matter how hard you try. Regardless of how carefully and slowly you explain it to her, she apparently cannot absorb it well enough to be able to explain it back to you.
She's also a creationist. It's as if the establishment of certain ideas require the construction of a mental blindspot that protects you from the truth.
Now, do you really want someone who has such a blind spot governing your country? I'm prepared to guess that such self-delusion is an innate human capacity, not limited to the theists. But they alone have a excuse, one that is accepted and even lauded.
It is not the government's job to plan things for us. It is hilariously bad at it, anyway. It is the government's job to protect our liberties so we can do things ourselves.
We are perfectly capable of organizing our own local educational systems. Some of them won't be as good as others, but they can learn from the ones that are successful.
Having the government plan it, and run it, will just guarantee that the quality continues to degrade universally.
Its not your CEOs job to plan the direction of your company, it's the job of the individual employees. The Janitors are perfectly capable of organizing the engineering group. Some teams won't be as good as others, but they can learn from the ones that are successful.
But seriously, things tend to work out much better with one common ideal or goal (even if it's marginal,) than with a lot of individual ideas working in isolation with varying degrees of potential.
The government shouldn't micromanage every detail, but it should be involved in the scope, passing down responsibility to smaller governing bodies where possible.
DavidTC knows what he's talking about, though I'd through in a caveat that Fannie and Freddie bought mortgages that they knew they shouldn't have thus enabling, indirectly, the real malfeasance being perpetrated by the Investment banking industry.
Here's a link to get you started on your research: http://www.thislife.org/extras/radio/355_transcript.pdf
Please correct me if I am wrong but I think the role of government is to watch for the common good of their people, this includes (in no particular order):
- Defense
- Internal Security
- Health (what good does a government that allows any of their people to get sick and/or die because they have no money for medical bills?)
- Education
In both Health and Education, Republican's dogma is a "you are in your own" system where each one of us takes responsibility and chooses different levels of healthiness (is that a word?) in a "free market". I respectfully disagree with that. The health of the people should not be a commodity. It should not depend on a citizen's expending power (damn, this sounds a little communist, comrade :-p)
Education is a little different but the problem here is economic development. This country is lagging behind in scientific and industrial development because of all the talent that goes to waste on bad education. Education is way too important to test unproven "let the free market take care of it" theories.
On everything else I am a "you're in your own" kinda of guy. I don't want government messing with anything else.
HTML is obsolete. It's time for a new, simpler and richer markup language.
One of the most persistent Republican attacks on Obama is that he's so well educated,
"yer cayn't trust a man wi' too much lernin'"
This doesn't bode well for education under a McCain/Palin presidency.
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
Ignoring your ridiculous government=corporation analogy...
I think history disagrees with you. There is almost never a consensus on what should be done. Our Constitution, out politics, in general, are full of compromises. There will always be competing ideas. The Federalist Papers presents that as essential to liberty. It prevents any one idea or group from gaining a tyrannical majority.
You say that things tend to work out better with a centrally managed common goal, but can you give an example of that?
And on your last point: Our system was constructed from the bottom up. Town, and local governments were established before state ones, and the Federal government was last. The central government only has the authority the people have given it. So how can it pass down responsibility to "lower" levels, when it was never given that responsibility from them to begin with?
Here in California we spend 58% of the budget on education, and still turn out functional illiterates.
So how much should we spend? 70%? 90%? 99%? 110%?
Is anyone in the "spend more!" contingent bothered at all by this? Do you care that we spend multiples of $ per student compared to other countries, and yet receive a fraction of the results? Does anyone care about that?
8 years...at least...
The federal government is not in a position micro-manage education but I do think it is the responsibility of the national government in a democracy to ensure that the population is educated to the point it is capable of performing it's democratic duties. As the decades long decline in campaign discourse have demonstrated the federal and state governments have failed miserably in this area. The idea that education is a privilege that should only be granted to those fortunate enough to have parents who are themselves educated enough to care is dangerous for our country. It affects all of us tremendously to have large swaths of the country ignorant of and uninterested in crucial issues on which they decide the outcome.
I hear this all the time. Did it ever occur to these politicians that not everyone is smart enough to go to college? The world needs ditch diggers, but saying that honest truth won't get one elected.
McCain - 894th out of 899 in his class at US Naval Academy, Palin - BA in journalism with classes at 5 different schools. ... or was this topic about their positions on education?
So you say something demonstrably untrue, and it's not lying.
That's "nuance" I guess.
As to the hostility, you said something tha was demonstrably untrue then argued with me regarding your dishonesty.
Liars get no quarter, ever.
Non-selfish? You sound like a socialist. Everyone knows the good christian thing to do is horde your money and become greatly offended if anyone even suggests giving something back to continue the existence of the country that afforded you your wealth in the first place.
/neocon
As for the main topic of this thread. Isn't it bad enough I have to pay for a educational system that is failing? Has failed. I always here the same line, "the schools need more money." Why? How come the public school system, for double to triple the cost, can't provide as good of an education as the bulk of the private schools? (I'm talking the smaller ones, not the elite ones like Obama uses.)
Govt is rarely the answer, and is almost always the problem.
I'm going to vote for my right to be a stingy and keep my money for myself and my own personal enjoyment, and for the right for everyone else to do the same.
Because they have the right to kick a student out and tell them they can't ever come back. As soon as you tell those private schools they have to deal with the "problem students" and HAVE to take on "special education students", you'll quickly see the same thing all over again.
Did you ever stop to think that maybe it has something to do with parental involvement as well? Like... if you're paying $25k/year to send your kid to a private school, you might take the time to make sure he's actually learning something. And help him when he needs it? Or at the very least pay for a tutor?
These *horrible* problems everyone always talks about with the public school system is always interesting to me. They just don't seem to exists in rural America... you know, where parents are still willing to kick their kids ass if they screw up in school, instead of saying "not my kid, it must be the school's problem!!111"
Now tell us all
Have you stopped beating your wife yet? Yes or no?
I agree that educational planning is necessary, but I also think it should be done in local levels of government. Too local, and you end up with slums with horrible education. Too national, and you end up with slums with horrible education.
States seem, to me, to be the appropriate entities to provide educational foundations. If the federal government wants to perform studies to help determine successful educational practices, I'm all for it. However, the current situation of the federal government controlling each states education system by means of threatened withholding of funds, is appalling.
States need to step up, band together and refuse federal education grants. Lower federal taxes, and let the states raise their own money for education. Then, instead of having to put up with horrible educational legislation, people will be able to influence how their children are educated, because it will be decided much more locally.
I'm sick and tired of the federal government generalizing every topic into two possible sides. There are ALWAYS more than two sides to every issue.
The government exists to provide a foundation for the steady growth of society. Education is possibly the most important piece of foundation we have.
My parents immigrated to this country when I was 2. My dad had only a high school education, and my mom a middle school education. My brother and I are the first generation of our family to totally grow up in the US and get college educations.
...
We went to crappy city schools, and still learned well, because our parents instilled in us a sense of how important our education is.
Given that you went to "city" (public?) schools and in the end were capable of getting a college education, I'd like to question how crappy the schools were in the first place. Apparently you got some useful information out of the process. Do you think that it's possible that your public education could have been worse if your classes had less funding for books and school supplies?
What percentage of your graduating class went on to colleges? Was it a high percentage, indicating that it maybe wasn't so crappy? Was it a low percentage, indicating that maybe your school actually could have used more funding so that more of your classmates could have had received better educations? Early education is important. Your example of why public school funding isn't important isn't doing a good job of convincing me otherwise.
RON PAUL FOR PRESIDENT
How can you rationalize the schools being crappy and getting to go to college. Surely that indicates the school did at least an OK job?
Actually, it is, as documented in your link if you take the time to read it. She did enquire about banning books, 3 times in succession, and a letter was sent to the librarian asking her to resign shortly afterward. She *tried* to have books banned.
What is not true is some allegation of a whole list of books being banned under her tenure (as documented at that link). I didn't make that claim and wouldn't support it - almost sounds like a crazy straw man set up so that the more serious issue (whether she actually enquired about banning books) can be ignored.
Somewhere between 2 and 12 years.
The electorate must complete the process begun 2 years ago of tossing out the Republicans from office who screwed things up so badly. They have abused their power and have transfered a vast sum of wealth from the poor to the rich.
The Democrats will eventually transfer too much money from the rich back to the poor at which point its time to toss them out.
http://www.jackbernstein.org/
iamthewitness.com
nuff said true believers
Neither.
There is no "Holy Grail" candidate in this election (or any other I've seen in the last 40+ years). Being politicians, they all have significant issues. It therefore comes down to what baggage you are willing to ignore in the near-religious fervor that accompanies any US presidential election. This is not about choice, it's about a lack of options.
A huge number of Nobel laureates have come out with a letter that endorses Obama. Nature, one of the top science magazines, endorsed Obama (even though it never had before). You have a guy who is the top of his class vs. someone who was the bottom of his class. You have someone who thinks and another that just acts. If you are going to choose between the two major parties on education, the choice is so easy it is silly. The only people who can't see this are people who watch Fox News and listen to Limbaugh and think they are hearing facts.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
Enjoy having your mod privileges revoked in meta-mod, bitches.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I didn't say public school funding is not important. I said we will never be able to make everyone's education the same, and trying to do it will only degrade the quality of the best schools.
Here is a link to a rating for that school district. Of course, those are current stats and I went to school there quite some time ago, so I'm not too sure how different it is.
I only went there for elementary school, but I was consistently placed in the advanced reading groups, and whatever the had available for the smarter kids. When we did move to the suburbs, I was still in the 85-90th percentile on most tests.
All my teachers in the city schools were great, and I remember them all. The supplies we had were not great, but they were adequate, I'd say. I was the shy kid that didn't get into trouble and learned quickly. Others around me were not. Their parents did not encourage them like mine did.
> I doubt it. Ron Paul could say, "I voted against the war in Iraq; how about you?"
Obama was an early & ardent critic of the war, he just didn't have a vote yet. Also, Ron Paul votes against everything. There's a reason they call him Dr. No.
> He could also claim to have predicted the current financial meltdown mess.
Well, he's always predicting some kind of mess, but did he ever claim that we needed to regulate these loans? Because it's kinda hard to see how one's financial self-interest would prevent one from selling all the worthless derivatives made out of faulty loans to suckers that you could pump out. But I suppose they'd just plug their ears and claim that the CRA "forced" them to write ridiculous mortgages and sell them to suckers (despite most of the banks involved in this not actually being subject to the CRA).
Look, ANYONE can predict that there will be financial chaos in the future. There WILL be another recession after this one (especially if you ever get us back on the gold standard... deflation is not a good thing). You heard it here first! I don't know what will cause them, or when, but if I blame Libertarians & deregulation for them (as Ron Paul would blame government regulation), will you actually believe me when it comes to pass? I mean, my prediction will be just as good, right?
Now, if you want someone who publicly predicted this mess (even calling them "financial weapons of mass destruction" back in 2002), look to Warren Buffet. You know, the guy who has been one of Obama's economic advisers since *before* this crap clogged up our economy.
Because he's one of the few people who actually pointed out exactly *how* things would go wrong ahead of time. Heck, even Greenspan sat there and admitted that deregulation was the wrong approach. He actually did quite well, mostly, but sometimes regulation is far better than the alternative.
My teachers were good. By crappy schools, I mean that most kids perform badly there. They consistently score less than the state average. (Stats are for recent years, obviously were different when I went to school)
I did well because my parents would not allow otherwise. They always made sure I was doing my school work and if I brought home a bad grade, it meant trouble for me.
We did eventually move to the suburbs (my mom got a job housekeeping for an apartment complex and they offered us a much reduced rent), so we did go to better schools eventually. When we did, I was still scoring above average (85-90th percentile). That is because, despite having been at an under-performing school, I still learned well because of the importance my parents placed on my education.
Considering the fact that both of them are dumb enough to run for president in the first place.
my Concern Trolling is off the charts on this one...
Fixed that for you.
There's no way I'd ever vote for Obama. When I found out he was actually for the torture of school children well that made up my mind. (Long story short Obama is for forced foreign language education regardless of result. I went through that shit college and for me it was literally torture and the school has yet to apologize for it. No, I'm not confusing literal and figurative btw. For some victims of this scheme this will literally be torture too.) Not that I feel any better about McCain. (I mean I doubt he's big on science education.) The only bright point is the election will be over soon. (It will be over, right? Oh crap, it's going to the supreme court isn't it?)
Voting is a form of Action. But you can do even more to support education by volunteering in the school systems. Volunteer to help on your school's curriculum committees, and offer to help the technology directors/coordinators understand open source technologies, and the open educational resource movement.
Computing is so pervasive now, that it makes sense to incorporate it more directly into the educational process. There are several ways to do this.
You state "I WANT to pay more. I WANT to pay down the debt." Well, go right ahead. Report that you've had a million dollar profit on EBay and send them a check.
What I bet you really mean is that you want everyone else to pay down the debt too. While I won't say it's a bad idea, I want to eliminate government waste before I volunteer more money. I do agree though that the deficit is a shame.
I think our electoral system disagrees with you. There is never a consensus, but there is always a decision. Once a decision is made, it's made and everyone is expected up to abide by it. We ended up with bush, even though he only had a slim majority of the vote. That system tends to work better than the one we tried in 1861.
The federal government makes decisions for the entire united states, but it leaves more focused policy up to increasingly small geographic ruling bodies. The state makes state policy, the county makes county policy, the town makes town policy, and individual boards within the towns make even more specialized local policy. For example: the President of the united states of America DID NOT decision as to weather or not to hire a new gardener for our local park and recreation district. That was left to the local park and rec board. The park and rec board did not make a decision to go to Iraq. That was best left to the president.
And speaking about Iraq, sure it was a mess. But imagine what would have happened if only the states who supported the war had committed troops?
Since this is all stuff you learned in elementary school, I'm going to assume that I was misunderstood.
A company is a great example of a ruling system. If you've ever seen an employee try to do his own thing without manager approval, you see why governing and consensus is important. The same if you've ever operated without a line manager, or without a clear design document, or dealt with scope creep on a major project.
Things work better when everyone works towards a common goal. Management that makes a decision and sticks to it until the project is complete, or the situation changes generally works better than a management that can't make up it's mind. (This is not a dig on Karry BTW.)
How long it be until Obama gets a blow job from a chubby intern?
~X~
~X~
Between 2004 and 2006, when subprime lending was exploding, Fannie and Freddie went from holding a high of 48 percent of the subprime loans that were sold into the secondary market to holding about 24 percent, according to data from Inside Mortgage Finance, a specialty publication. One reason is that Fannie and Freddie were subject to tougher standards than many of the unregulated players in the private sector who weakened lending standards, most of whom have gone bankrupt or are now in deep trouble.
Surely then it is the parents and not the schools fault. If the school were at fault nothing your parents did would help.
I work in 2 schools in a very poor area, and see the same situation all the time. Parents that dont care about their kids education is the main problem not the schools.
They would meet your underperforming criteria.
In most studies Socio-economic criteria seem to define a schools performance, regardless of the percieved "Quality"
Am I sensing just a little elitism here?
I see a lot of complaining about "having" to pay for the education of others. Quite often, I subsequently see the same people using the lack of an educated work force as their rationale for outsourcing their production - to countries with average education levels that are far worse than America's.
The human mind is a fascinating thing, don't you think?
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
Stop trying to champion your anti-union cause and start trying to figure out how to make parents care more about their kids.
I'm talking about how to improve the quality of our public schools. You're talking about how to improve the quality of the students. I'm talking about changing something that the government actually has the power to do. You're talking about changing something only individuals can do for themselves.
You want the government to figure out how to get parents to care more about their kids? Good luck with that one. Let's focus on reality, on things the government can actually do - including the changes I proposed. And who knows, perhaps giving poor parents the same power that the rich have - the power to decide where their kids go to school - will encourage them to take a more active role in their kids' education.
To clarify, I'd argue it's pretty much impossible for the government to make *current* parents care more about their kids. You see, I don't think there's a causal relationship between parental income and parental involvement in education. The real relationship is between parental education level and parental involvement in their kids' education.
You want parents to care more about their kids? Start with today's kids. Improve our public schools by allowing school choice, among other reforms. Give today's kids a better education. Then when those kids grow up and become parents, they'll care more about their own kids.
Fannie and Freddie only bought approximately 15% of mortgages, so they're big but not nearly enough to explain the entire problem.
Google, LOL
what's your point anyways... we know it was high enough to get into harvard law.
they don't accept the bottom of the class
You're confusing ideas with policy. As human beings we all have differing ideas and opinions. We don't all have common ideas, otherwise we wouldn't really need parliamentary bodies or elections. But out of those ideas we pick the most popular to become policy and follow them.
The reason government is not like a corporation is because, with government, the workers (representatives, senators, executives) are employed by the people, and can be removed by them if they don't follow the will of the majority. The managers of a corporation cannot be voted out by the workers they manage.
The way you explain how the federal government works sounds like this to me: it has ultimate power, and can do anything it wants, but some cases allows regional governments to make decisions because it thinks they would best be suited to deal with them.
If I understood that correctly, I still disagree with you. The federal government does not have ultimate power. If they one day decided "Hey, we think you guys hired the wrong gardener for this park. We're hiring this other guy for you, instead," they could not do it. The local government and the people there will oppose it, and the courts will strike the action down as unconstitutional. Of course, the gardener example is just a dumb example, but it can be applied to pretty much any power that is not given to the federal government in the Constitution. Keep this in mind when you think about what the federal government can do:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." (10th Amendment to the Constitution)
On the war issue, again, people have differing opinions, but once a policy is decided we all have to go with it. Of course we can't let ourselves be divided once the decision is made.
But to make another correction, the Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war, not the president.
No, the government does not give you freedom. You have that naturally. The government can only take it away, and even then only if you let it.
I see, it looks like you're taking exception to the fact that I attributed poor performance with the school itself, rather than the parents. You're right, I didn't mean to imply that it was the school's fault, and I should have phrased that differently.
But it goes back to my original point that trying to "level the field" by throwing more money at those schools won't work, because the parents still won't care.
I didn't mean to sound elitist, but I think I can see why you would say that. Thanks for pointing that out. I guess I'm just proud of my parents for caring about my education (among so many other things). I will try to be more careful about that in the future.
"For being an absence it sure does get people riled up as if it were a statement."
Amen to that. But you HAVE to vote! You're not accomplishing anything by not voting. You non-vote doesn't matter. Your opinion doesn't matter if you don't vote.
If these things were true, people wouldn't get so upset when I tell them I'm not voting.
Obama has several kinds of experience with the education system going for him, since he's been through it a lot more recently than McCain, he worked at a university, and he's got daughters going to school right now. McCain is so old that I can't help but feel he's out of touch with how education works in America now.
http://www.tenjou.net/
Wow, my apologies, did I have the wrong end of the stick!
Some years ago, I had to give up full time, high stress, on the road tech work due to disability, and decided that if I was going to work in a low paid part time govt job, I would do it in an area where my skills could benefit the less fortunate. I retrained myself as a Network admin.
I have put a lot of work into improvements of IT and AV infrastructure at my schools, and at least at one of them, where I came in with a new principal has improved a lot, but mainly because the govt spent 4 million rebuilding the 35 year old buldings.
This school looked like stalag 13 when we started.
The second school, of about the same vintage still, (apart from IT) has not changed at all, in terms of attitude of parents/students.
Don't underestimate the value of money spent on decent buildings and equipment, the improvement in the attitude of the parents and students at this school has been remarkable.
Sometimes money well spent can make people feel more valued by the society they live in. This has many positive flow on effects too.
The real issue is of course, as my boss and I discussed at the start, we need to educate/heal the communtiy as well as their children.
You are a credit to those schools you attended, which were obviously capable of good work given the right material!
Perhaps one day you could visit them sometime and give the kids there an example of a successful person from their school.
If Obama is elected with enough democrats in congress we won't last 50 years. We will be impoverished and enslaved by our own government, and too weak militarily to withstand an invasion by Monaco.
Why are people not seeing that this man wants to destroy a free USA?
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
1/150,000= 0.00000666667
That's the percentage of your influence in Wyoming (x100).
3/528=0.005576208
That's the percentage of Wyoming's influence on the electoral college. (x100)
(1/150,000)*(3/528) = 0.00000004
That's your influence on the electoral college if you're from Wyoming and vote.
1/110,000,000= 0.00000000909
That's your influence over the popular vote.
Therefore, your influence over the election as a voter in Wyoming is nearly 4 times greater than that of your influence over the popular vote.
In other words, the OP is probably correct (if his figures and assumptions are right). Certainly having 4 votes to the electoral college is vastly superior to most states.
McCain is going to win: 429,000 hits.
I am voting for McCain: 77,200 hits.
Obama is going to win: 1,100,000 hits.
I am voting for Obama: 97,800 hits.
The all seeing Google predicts Obama.
Intelligent people are not subject to irrationality. They are rational and logical.
What you have done is redefined "intelligent people" to be morons.
Truly intelligent people do not vote purely for self-interest and bias. Morons do.
The problem is that intelligent people are the largest minority in the country. Ever seen a bell curve?
Xyrus you ignorant slut, his wife is better looking than Hilary so it could be some time.
I see. So basically, he ended up at Harvard because he did poorly, and when he did even worse, he became president of the HLR?
Because he was president of the HLR, not just an editor.
Guess I'll have to vote for this Barack tonight: https://www.weinquelle.com/fotos/s719.jpg
actually if you trace back the thread it was about someone claiming that schools shouldn't be run by the government. ie that they should be run by local communities. which is bullshit if the local community is poor as fuck.
How much is walmart paying now days? I was under the impression that is wasn't enough to raise a family which actually eats and lives under a roof without stealing a great deal from the store.
He's not contradicting himself at all.
What is being suggested is that the rich man should spend his money on giving the entire future generation the best education not possible, not just his own child. This is whats best for society and as someone who has benefitted from society and done well for himself it is incumbent on the rich man to do his best to improve society.
Every child should have equal rights but whilst some people are able to take away those rights by using their wealth that wealth should be redistributed to ensure they are not putting their own children at an unfair advantage.
I didn't contradict myself in the slightest.
I said it's perfectly fair for one person to end up rich and one person to end up poor from the same starting block.
I said it's unfair when one person starts with the deck loaded against them and has no real chance of getting to a better position and another is handed everything on a silver platter and they end up in the predictable situation of one remaining in the gutter and one remaining on top and their actual abilities and drive being utterly irrelevant.
Yes you want to give you children everything. But they haven't earned it. If they've been handed it all. they are no more deserving of it than any random ghetto kids. If they do well in life, if they win over others who haven't been given a decent education or upbringing then they haven't won on their own merit, they've won because you've given them help or their competition has been hobbled.
Your children are not you, they are separate entities but they benefit massively from your success. Other children suffer horribly due to their parents failure in the same way, not their own.
It is the way things are that they get handed an advantage for(from their point of view) free.
This is not conductive to an efficient competitive environment. Weaklings do well because they've been pushed and the capable fail because they're being held back.
Now of course in practice there's no way to stop this, people being free to spend their money how they like and all.
The more generations the worse it get.
Take this to it's conclusion over many many many generations and you get an inept nobility who are held aloft by their inherited money and can almost never fall.
Looking at history this is a bad idea and a massive waste.
Give everyone a good grounding and a decent education so that they can, if they have the drive, compete with the kids of successful people even if their own parents were complete wastes of skin.
Where I live university places are purely merit based, it's considered the same as first or second level education as an essential.
The details aren't important but students score between 0 and 600 points.
Everyone does their exams, everyone gets points, everyone lists their university preferences.
if their are 100 places in the course and 200 people apply then the 100 people who have the highest points get the places.
University tuition is paid for by the state just like high schools are paid for by the state.
There are still complaints that high income families tend to do better due to better private schools yada yada yada but the effect is more limited.
It works great.
Want a good job? then to get into a relevant course you have to work hard. Daddies money won't buy you a degree.
Fail a year?
you pay your tuition yourself for the repeat to stop wasters from sponging off the system.
Want to do more than one degree?
Again on your own head, the state only pays for 1 3rd level course.
Its efficient and ruthlessly fair. The most capable and driven people get the courses, wasters be they from a rich family or a poor family fall behind.
We also aren't talking about raising a family, if you can't afford to have a kid, you shouldn't have had a kid. Adoption would have been a good option, if you had a kid and do not have the money, time, or knowledge to raise that kid.
"A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers." Hayek
"Which candidate will make the next generation smarter?" You think a government can do that? You think a government should even be thinking about trying to do that?
The mere fact of asking that question means you've already bought into the nanny state 100%, all that remains is a pleasing arrangement of the deck chairs as you steam toward the iceberg.
Get a grip, dork! Its your brain, you fucking well feed it yourself! You have kids, you take care of them. All a government is going to do is get in your way and probably eat your lunch too. That's all they ever do.
Well, I'm not an expert on the subject, all I did was Google and read the first dozen or so entries, but yeah that's about how it looks.
I'm not going to go on record as saying that he's the Affirmitive Action HLR president, but considering how closely his selection coincides with a massive political campaign at Harvard to get minorities into power at Harvard law I can't say it's completely out of the realm of possibility given that his grades getting into Harvard were well below their standards and his selection to editor was only possible after they removed the academic basis for it.
I voted for him either way, but it doesn't look like this is one of his strong qualities.
"Libertarian," like most political labels, can encompass a wide range of ideals. Here in the US, the Libertarian Party is closest in philosophy to Classical Liberalism. Under libertarianism, slavery would be illegal because it violates the rights of the slave. The person is inviolable until he violates the rights of another, and prevention or punishment of rights violations is the only reasonable use of force. Drug prohibition is considered to violate the individual's right to decide what he does to his own person. Religious laws such as against adultery and homosexual activity violate freedom of association and of the person. In such a system, which is wholly supported by the US Constitution, the government's main domestic role is to ensure that nobody's rights are violated.
Basically, in the US political spectrum, libertarianism rejects the nanny state, religious right, world police, corporate subsidies and many other current activities of our government. The current economic meltdown wouldn't have occurred in a libertarian-leaning government because the banks wouldn't have been ordered and pressured to make all of those bad loans.
The problem with libertarianism is that it would require a complete reworking of the mentality that big government has gotten us into. Too many expect BigGov to make us safe, make our big decisions for us. Decisions made according to sound bites and 30-second commercials are safe. Libertarianism requires people to think and make informed choices.
Responsibility for your own actions. What a concept.
It sounds like you've almost described the situation as it already is.
For "poor" families (like mine, parents are divorced and my mom makes less than $19k supporting 4 people), government aid will fully pay for tuition and maybe even a little more. If your family makes enough, you pay your own way. I guess that is the difference, but I think that is pretty fair.
I put "poor" in quotes because poor people in this country are not really all that poor compared to poor in other countries. And we certainly weren't that bad off, I have no complaints.
Pffft, if they hadn't bought the subprime mortgages they did, the banks would have just packaged those up too and dumped them in the big shitpile. :)
But, yes, the GSEs did not behave 100% responsibly, and we need to make sure they do in the future...but, like I said...we already cleaned up their mess when we guaranteed their securities in July.
Absolutely nothing that happened after their bailout can possibly be pinned on their behavior. We corrected all investments in them, we explicitly guaranteed the securities we had implicitly guaranteed before, all was made right with them and their investors.
Eventually there needs to be an accounting for their behavior, and we possibly need to rethink the whole idea, but they are, for now, 'fixed', and so are any possible problems they caused.
And then banks kept toppling, and we had to bail everyone out with almost a trillion dollars.
And people still ranting about them are, frankly, GOP lunatics who desperately want this mess to be someone else's fault and are hoping people haven't noticed they can't possibly have caused any problems since July, and any problems they did cause were fixed in July.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
You can use it to write "none of the above". There. If you think all the choices are evil, you've voted against evil.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Various government figures here have been trying to get rid of free college fees . They're gradually eating away at the setup. another 10 years and we'll be back in the old situation...
you're a clueless little bitch. why don't you just shut the fuck up? you're a disgusting fucking communist. go move to a country that thinks that way if it's what you want.
They have more numbers than the rich. The government enacted the law to get banks to loan them money. ACORN was a culprit, staging demonstrations and sit-ins to try to force banks to make risky loans.
Then with that foundation and regulatory scheme in place some greedy businessmen figured out they could make lots of money convincing poor people (or just people with poor fiscal responsibility) to take these risky loans and passing the risk on to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and other institutions who had to show the they had so many of these loans on the books to get the government off their backs. Meanwhile, the likes of Bush, McCain and especially Ron Paul were raising alarms, but nobody, especially the paid-off Democrats like Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, was listening.
Yet for some reason Democrats only remember the greedy businessmen, not the Democrats who laid the foundation.
That's very nice, but you don't understand the mathematics involved. It's not psychology; it's game theory and Nash Equilibriums and statistics. Here are some links for further information on this topic:
Duvergers Law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger's_law
Plurality Voting System
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Past_the_Post_electoral_system
If you vote third party and vote for the Green Party, the only thing you'll do within a Plurality Voting System (aka a Winner-Takes-All system, such as we have in the US) is that you'll wind up with a two party system between the Greens and the Democrats, or a two party system between the Greens and the Republicans. The equilibrium of a plurality system settles on a two-party system. Doesn't matter if you vote for a third party, and it doesn't matter what the psychology involved is. The equilibrium is for two parties in a winner-takes-all election, and voting third party simply changes the two parties involved. It doesn't create a three party system.
He wasn't. Quite the opposite. He picked one single black editor, if I remember correctly. He outraged liberals by picking several conservatives. Everyone expected Obama to push liberals and minorities. He did not. He picked the people who were actually qualified.
Not editor. President. Obama was the one who picked the editors!
Say what? Because he's black you can't believe he did it on his own merits, so you conclude that this is not one of his strong qualities?
Amazing.
1. Government tells banks to make risky loans to people they normally wouldn't loan to.
2. People take those loans in massive numbers.
3. The loans go into default, ruining the banks.
That is the solid connection, the Law of Unintended Consequences operating on yet another well-meaning social experiment. The situation was made worse by greedy businessmen, ACORN bullying, a housing bubble and both parties resisting tighter regulation. Unfortunately on the latter, the tighter regulation is basically fixing a problem the government started in the first place, but repealing that would have been called racist.
And, yes, I can blame the poor and fiscally irresponsible for their part in this mess. If you can't afford a house and don't have the financial reserve and fiscal responsibility to keep it, don't try to buy one! I guess it's too much common sense to ask for.
It's blame it on the Democrats pandering to the poor. It's no insidious conspiracy, it's plain-old pandering for votes. As usual, those with a grand scheme to change our society did not remember the Law of Unintended Consequences. The consequence was that they set up the perfect environment for the crooks to thrive. They are just lucky it came to fruition during a Republican administration so they could deflect all of the blame instead of taking on their fair share.