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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?
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
That is, frankly, because your libertarian views are stupid.
No, seriously. "Libertarianism' is a scam invented by the rich, who want the government to only do things that benefit them and no one else. (Like run a police force and court system, to keep people from stealing their shit or living on their land for free.)
They hide this by making claims about the 'original' purpose of government, which is, in fact, exactly that, to protect the rich, although they won't come out and say that.
More to the point, they then make the rather absurd claim that they should get this while paying as little taxes as possible.
While a large percentage of Americans haven't figured out the premise of the party and have a sort of grudging respect for it as the underdog, under no circumstances do they actually want to implement those policies.
Thus libertarians who actually show up and debate on their views for the general election get smashed, and that normally applies to the primaries too, although we saw a fun exception with Ron Paul doing pretty good with some viewers because the GOP has gone so spectacularly off the rails in a different way.
But if Ron Paul had show up against Obama, he would have been crushed. Probably more than McCain, even with the advantage of being able to actually present himself as separate from the Republican Party and without making such a dumb VP choice.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Hmm... As someone who's served the country to ensure you have a right to vote I have to agree. You have a right to vote, even an arguably moral reason to vote, but the electoral system is so fraught with insanity that your vote truly means little.
This does not, in my mind, absolve one of their duty to vote. I consider it my duty to vote (and at least bitch enough in the many emails that I send to my congress critters) and hope that the remainder of the citizens feel the same way. It's a false hope, let's not go there. Allow me some shards of hope.
I do discount the opinion of those who don't vote. I don't go so far as to say that they're not entitled to an opinion. I just say that I'm entitled to not listen to their opinion or to not give their opinion as much weight as I would if they'd shown themselves to be an active participant in this so-called democracy.
Voting doesn't do shit in the larger scale other than give us the illusion of having accomplished the task of making our opinion known. This is, to me, true and yet I still vote. I'm all for changing the system but until it is changed I will cast my vote.
On the idea of accomplishing something...
Voting and protesting...
Letters and marches...
Emails and lobbying...
Those haven't done much in the past few years.
A million man march wouldn't even phase Washington D.C. these days. So... I've been thinking, a dangerous act, and I have a solution but we might get arrested.
Get a million people WITH cars together. During rush hour, downtown, when they're breaking for a holiday, drive into the city from the direction you came from and drive as far as you can into it until the gridlock stops you. Get out of our vehicles and stand there or simply sit in your vehicle and hold your horn button down. Do so until we have press coverage.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
And yet, when two countries are on the brink of war, we use diplomacy to come to a mutually agreed outcome, not voting. Huh. It would be absurd to vote - what if the population of one country was twice that of the other? How come in that situation it is instantly obvious that "winner takes all" voting is unfair, while within a country it's seen as fair?
My preference is not for laws to govern millions of people, anyway. It is for localised governance at a scale that people can join in and actually have a say that makes a difference to their own community. As a country expands and a population increases, the size of each council should stay the same, but there should be more of them. So you don't have one law for the entire country - so what? Many of the problems in society are due to the fact that there is nowhere else to go - everywhere is the same. I'd like to live somewhere with sane drug and privacy laws, and I don't want to have to leave my country to do that. We need to wake people up to the fact that laws are made up, and we can change them if we want to.