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California Moves To Block Texas' Textbook Changes
eldavojohn writes "Yesterday the Texas textbook controversy was reported internationally but the news today heats up the debate as California, a state on the other side of the political spectrum, introduces legislation that would block these textbook changes inside California. Democrat Senator Leland Yee (you may know him as a senator often tackling ESRB ratings on video games) introduced SB1451, which would require California's school board to review books for any of Texas' changes and block the material if any such are found. The bill's text alleges that said changes would be 'a sharp departure from widely accepted historical teachings' and 'a threat to the apolitical nature of public school governance and academic content standards in California.'"
If you can't fight them... Put a fence around and let them devolve in peace.
"apolitical nature of public school governance"
Say what?
It's nice to see some politicians actually are looking out for the best interests of their society. I'm sure he's corrupt in other ways but, in this regard at least, he's doing the right thing. I hope more follow suit.
Is he seriously implying that current curricula was set with political blinders on. Not that I agree with the slant Texas has put on history, but to imply that the current histories taught do not have one is disingenuous.
"a threat to the apolitical nature of public school governance and academic content standards in California."
"apolitical"? Huh?
There's no such thing in an organization that exist solely via government, aka "public schools".
Interesting idea, but it seems to put the onus and cost on California's school board. I'm not American but I was under the impression that they are not currently awash with money. Would it be better to put the onus on publishers tending for California's schools? Maybe also they should be required to publish an addendum if any of this revisionist history fond its way into the books.
Because something that is widely accepted is always true.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
recall our ambassador to Texas.
If the liberals that are ruining the USA are fighting the conservatives that are ruining the USA then the rest of us can have some peace and quiet for a while.
Brrring...hello Texas? This is California...umm...you're black. I offer into evidence the California teacher spouting off a few days ago about how California is "stolen occupied Mexico". Guess that guy never heard about the Mexican American War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican%E2%80%93American_War) which Mexico lost. Apolitical? How about historically accurate? Try that for once.
Texans seem to want it one particular way. Thats fine, they can vote and agree to have it that way.
California doesn't want it that way. THATS FINE, they can vote and agree to have it THEIR way.
Thats the advantage of having state laws rather than federal laws for things like this. People can dictate how THEIR community is ran and thats perfectly fine within reason. While you and I may not agree with it, the majority of Texans do so let them do what they want and stop trying to push your agenda on to them.
If you don't like it, live somewhere else or get enough Texans to agree with you to change the law.
One of America's biggest problems is everyone in it thinking their way is the only way and that everyone else in America should do and act the same way.
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Textbooks should assumedly be 'politically neutral'. Who decides what is neutral? Isn't that an incredibly powerful position politically, because all deviations from neutrality will be erased by default unless enormous prestige in the face of strong opposition to partisanship is faced down?
One of the changes that was found non-neutral is that the textbooks will include a 'suggestion' that the McCarthy anti-communist policies 'may' have been justified. Should textbooks similarly not include what may be interpreted as a 'suggestion' that the French Revolution 'may' have been justified (e.g. "lots of people were poor and poor people tend to get upset when others are extremely rich" - a pure bona fide justification for the bloodbath)? Or what may be seen as 'suggestions' that the Soviet or Maoist uprisings 'may' have been justified? If there are _existing_ suggestions of this kind, is it OK for Texas to remove them?
Should they include a 'suggestion' that hatred against the US and violence against US citizens in the Middle East 'may' be justified? Or is this banned already?
History education as a whole is terrible and really all too often is used to teach an agenda.
A great example is the Atomic bombing of Japan. A good friend of mine went to a very good college. When she told me about what she was taught about WWII was was shocked.
It seems that the the US was racist and that is why we nuked Japan and that we treated the Germans with much more respect.
When I asked her about the Batan death march she had never heard of it.
When I asked her about the rape of Nanking. She had never heard of such a thing.
When I asked her about the threats to kill all the POWs in Japan if the US invaded she never heard of that.
But she did tell me that they told here Japan was willing to surrender before we dropped the bomb if we would have promised them that they could keep their emperor. "BTW that is a myth. The goal of negotiations was to prevent the occupation of Japan and not to just preserve the status of the Emperor".
It doesn't matter it is all slanted.
The teacher brought in a old woman that was a child when the bomb was dropped... That will help bring balance.
Truth is that with the exception of Japan and Germany in WWII the villains tended to not be as bad as history teaches and the heroes then to not be as pure. Notice that I left Italy out. Frankly they where just your average tin pot dictatorship and not really all that evil. The just fell in with a bad crowd. Oh and yes Stalin was just as bad as history says. Heck the only reason that Germany really lost on the Russian front was because Hitler was the on person on the planet that treated the Russians worse that Stalin did!
I get the feeling that all too often History is taught as a way to make use feel superior to those that went before us. Frankly that is a dangerous and stupid thing to do.
I would love to see a history class about the atomic bombing where they actually tried to teach the students to understand why Truman thought dropping the bomb was a good idea. What information he had and what was going on at the time.
Maybe then we could actually start learning form history instead twisting it to make us feel so much more enlightened than the historical figures from that past.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Thats a really freaking ignorant statement.
You think everyone should see it your way. Unfortunatly you are a minority of one because no one else sees it exactly your way. Everyone has their own views and opinions.
If Texans have a way they want to do something, LET THEM, and don't live there if you don't like it.
Wow ... just fucking WOW ... there is absolutely nothing correct about any part of that entire statement. Get a clue.
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Yes, textbooks are dangerously biased so lets set the elementary aged kids loose to learn everything from the internet. Seriously? There's so much noise that gets thrown around the web that most adults have trouble identifying what is and isn't real (if I had a dollar for every email I get telling me that cleaner X is going to kill my pets and babies I wouldn't have to worry about the mortgage). Letting someone run free to learn on the internet is like saying "go find information that you agree with", that's all that 99% of people are ever going to do.
I realize you specifically call out primary sources, but do you really think that such sources aren't just as politically bent as modern sources. I guarantee you that you can find primary sources that describe the Kent State incident as everything from a horrible accident, to an violent demonstration, to murder of innocent college students. There's no way that a young kid is going to be able to sift through it and find the facts of the situation, that's why we pay professional historians to gather the facts in the first place.
I would suggest that those "probably largely responsible for most of the failed mortgages" would be the US Government. By forcing banks and lenders to loan money to people without the ability to pay it back or face stiff penalties.
(sarcasm) YAY trying to legislation equal results! (/sarcasm)
Texas pays more to the feds than it gets back (http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/266.html).
Well, technically the part about him being dumbed down is still correct. :-)
The next time a southern state wants to secede from the union.... LET THEM!!!!!!!!
'Cause we always wanted a third world country comprised of gun-toting Rednecks led by religious whackjobs right on our border.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Texas has some insane textbook rules, but do you actually know what you're talking about?
Texas gets back $0.98 for every $1 of tax money collected. In other words, the state is giving tax money to poorer states. It also had one of the lowest failed mortgage rates in the country. That was due to a strange case of strong regulation of the industry within the state (one of the very few cases of any sort of effective industry regulation in Texas, which doesn't stop most of the ass-clowns in the state from railing against regulation in other industries).
Why don't we simply get rid of textbooks? With the internet primary source material is -very- easy to find and would teach children how to think rather than how to be brainwashed by the Right/Left. A teacher would guide discussions and offer hints about what primary material would be on tests, but really, textbooks by nature are not "apolitical" they have human editors with human biases. Perhaps 20 years ago the argument could be made that it was too hard to find primary sources, but today? One look at Google Books shows thousands of relevant, historical material for free.
I thought at first you were advocating getting rid of textbooks in physical form, but then I realized you meant paper, online, audiobook, everything. I don't think we should go that far.
Although it can be useful to examine primary sources, it may not always be practical. For instance, you might expect to be able to teach a subject to a child even though the primary material is beyond their reading or comprehension level. For that matter, it might not be written in a child's native language or even one he/she could be expected to study.
I'm also not certain that primary information is as available as you suggest. Not all subjects are equally well documented on the internets in primary form. And some that are are behind paywalls. Plenty of science and medical journals require a subscription or per-article fee to access them. Probably others as well. Maybe you could overcome this by making sure that your school has a subscription to just about everything a student might be expected to need. But then you're back in the filter business like you were before with the textbooks.
I think we'll continue to need textbooks in one form or another.
I am not a crackpot.
Hopefully he doesn't have another law for dealing with people who misspell his name.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
With the internet primary source material is -very- easy to find and would teach children how to think rather than how to be brainwashed by the Right/Left.
Yeah, there's no way to get brainwashed by the left or the right on the internet.... ;)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
None of this would matter if the government didn't control education. What a waste of money.
Yeah, that's why that San Francisco school sent home the students for wearing American Flags on Cinco De Mayo. Completely apolitical.
Because what primary source material you get directed to has a lot to do with what secondary or tertiary sources you go through to get to them... and the internet is full of second, third, and fourth-hand sources with agendas who selectively filter information. If you don't already know how to think before you come to the internet, you're pretty much doomed.
These days, a person can spend their whole life on the internet and never have to come across information that they don't want to accept. The ability to pop up and expand the echo chamber is limitless, and a lot of people want that, which is the problem.
Sure, the internet can help get straight information directly to people, but they still have to know where to look and know why they want to go there. But even if people got info directly from LOC, National Archives, and the NSF, there's still going to be "people" who think it's doctored info from the government trying to scam us. And, who knows? From time to time, they may be right. The problem as I see it is that there really aren't any pure sources of straight facts, and that truth in a philosophical and practical sense isn't and can't be the sum of the facts. Peer-reviewed textbooks that have a bit of curatorship from experts are supposed to be trusted sources of information. Then the politicians get into it, and they ruin everything.
I have no real ideas on how to fix it though. I'm not sure it can be fixed, just made differently broken. I suppose we have to aim for 'good enough,' but one thing is for sure, screw Texas.
Yep, people hate when you point that out to them.
that joke map showing canada absorbing the west coast and the east coat down to maryland, calling the south and the middle "jesusland" was a funny internet meme at one time, but as of late, is looking more like a serious cause
i admire canada's healthcare, it's sober banking rules, it's pragmatic international policies. and meanwhile i am stuck in this country with these fucking morons in the south ruining this country with neocon presidents, religious fundamentalism and ignorant libertarian wish fulfillment fantasies of the market just taking care of itself with unicorns and rainbows
give the south and the plains their assault guns and their abstinence education leading to lots more pregnant teens and their creationism denying leading to ignorance of basic science, and let them sink into the third world hellhole they so fervently desire to be
canada: give them alberta for the northeast usa, pretty please?
i honestly feel more affinity with canadians, in terms of morality and values, then i do with faux news zombified morons in the lower regions of my own country
i seriously, seriously have a major problem with some of my own countrymen who live in some sort of medieval parallel universe of prideful ignorance
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Good idea. Let's start in Arizona and go east until we hit ocean.
:)
I'm in Arkansas
Learn about Photography Basics.
This is the same thing I said yesterday: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1654076&cid=32232668
and they are also probably largely responsible for most of the failed mortgages.
Next time look up the facts before spouting your bullshit. Florida is the only Southern state in the top 5 for foreclosures, isn't typically regarded as part of the South in any event. The worst of the meltdown happened out west -- California, Nevada and Arizona.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Yeah! Because Detroit is kicking some serious ass right now.
Detroit's a state now?
I resent the notion that certain of the southern states would be a third world country if left to their own devices.
Texas has a computer industry (TI, Dell, NCSoft, iD), universities with good computer programs (U-Texas), good technical programs (Rice, A&M), leading medical research universities (Baylor).
The Bubbas don't speak for everyone down there, they just seem to get the most coverage.
'Cause we always wanted a third world country comprised of gun-toting Rednecks led by religious whackjobs right on our border.
"Now you know how we feel." -Random Canadian dude
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
As the most populous state in the union vis à vis the largest textbook market, it seemed odd to me that California would lose out to Texas in deciding what content textbooks should contain. How about giving the rest of the US a choice between Texas-styled and California-styled editions of textbooks? Although one version is obviously most cost effective for publishers, two versions isn't as bad as fifty separate editions. -Joe
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
"It's an urban myth, especially in this digital age we live in, when content can be tailored and customized for individual states and school districts," said Jay Diskey, executive director of the schools division of the Association of American Publishers.
--
Three companies are responsible for about 75 percent of the country's K-12 textbooks, Diskey estimated. Representatives for two of them--Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and McGraw-Hill--on Friday referred inquiries from The Associated Press to Diskey. The third, Pearson Education Inc., did not respond to a request for comment.
--
For now, California's curriculum will not be subject to any modifications, Texas-influenced or otherwise. Last July, the Legislature suspended until 2013 the statewide adoption of new educational materials to give cash-strapped districts a break from buying new textbooks.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
"I reject your reality and substitute my own." -- Adam Savage
When politicians are involved, everyone loses.
> By forcing banks and lenders to loan money to people without the ability to pay it back or face stiff penalties.
That's just stupid racist nonsense.
All the feds did was to outlaw redlining. Banks were simply forced to use the same standards regardless of the skin color of the applicant.
The fact that banks chose to throw out well established standards is another matter. No penalty is going to force a bank to write bad paper. The only thing that will encourage a bank to write bad paper is if they can sell it to some other sucker.
Banks that did not resell loans did not make bad loans.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
By forcing banks and lenders to loan money to people without the ability to pay it back or face stiff penalties.
Libertarian urban myth. Banks and lenders were not forced and there were no "stiff penalties."
but there's a major difference between recognizing that bias is a permanent aspect of media and history no matter how hard we scrub it... and purposefully going out of your way to stick truly outrageous bias into your history/ media with no shame at all
it's also a form of dangerous idealism to equate the inevitable shades of bias in history with an outright propaganda whitewash of history
an analogy: there will always be crime in society. you can bust your ass fighting crime as hard as you can, but there still will be some crime. you'd have to magically remove human free will to prevent absolutely everyone from making bad choices that lead to a life of crime. but is that the same as completely stopping the fight against crime? to just let it go unimpeded?
obviously not. in the same way, accepting the inevitable slight bias in all of history and media is NOT the same as accepting complete propagandistic whitewashing. to equate them is idealism
that you cannot have the impossible (crime free society, unbiased history/ media) is no reason to accept the truly terrible (run away crime/ outright propaganda)
somethings in life you can never achieve. but stopping to work hard to get as close as possible to the impossible to achieve, is simply worse
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
In Peru, in the 80s, there was a group of maoist nutjobs called the "Shining Path," who vowed, among other things, to surround the cities from the countryside. What they were and are is a rural terrorist organization.
I've traveled in rural Texas recently. What you have there are a lot of poor, uneducated, disenfranchised white people sporting racist tatoos buying knives and swords at stands by the side of the road. The gun trade is a bit more private but still quite active. The textbook changes just reflect a wider change in worldview in the rural south. What they are poised to do are to become the next generation of terrorist nutjobs fobbing bombs at wealthier people, mostly in cities. They're just waiting for the next corn-pone Hitler, which the networks that gave us the Becks and Palins of the world will be all too happy to provide.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Nonsense, the primary responsibility for the irresponsibility in home loans is...the American people. They signed papers they didn't understand and reveled in being ignorant, they bought houses they could not afford, they bought second houses, they took out the equity in their current dwelling, they did everything they could think of to make a buck before the game of economic musical chairs stopped. Now that they got caught holding the bag, they are looking for scapegoats.
That doesn't mean they were not enabled by the federal gov. and by Wall Street securitizing loans and thus removing the connection between risk and collateral. They were ill-served by builders, realtors, local banks, mortgage companies, rating agencies, etc. All that, yet no one put a gun to the American dolt's head and said sign here or else. They did that all by themselves and I (being one myself) do not believe we should let us off the hook for cleaning up the mess.
So what? If this the United States or the Union of States Interested in Only Themselves? Texas wouldn't have the economy it does if it were not for the rest of the U.S. regardless of whether when they count their pennies they give and get from the feds that it comes out equal.
To imply that Texas can make these changes without impacting the education of the rest of the nation is to be completely ignorant of the way in which textbooks are produced.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
There are departures from fiction, and there are departures from fact. The geocentric model of the universe was not arrived at through modern skeptical scientific inquiry.
But this issue goes much deeper. It's not just that they are removing references to the progress America has made intellectually, socially and culturally, but they are replacing these references with inferences of their own, alleging that America is a Christian nation, recognizing the accomplishments of pro-slavery confederates and rationalizing McCarthyism as justified by some of the results.
However, it's not liberal bias to say that America is not a Christian nation. It simply isn't. There is not a single reference to the words "god", "Bible", "Jesus", "Christian", "religion" or "Church" anywhere in the Articles of the Constitution, and the single reference to religion in the Bill of Rights is the Establishment Clause which prohibits Congress from enacting any law concerning religious institutions, Christianity being one of them. This isn't a liberally-biased viewpoint. It is a fact. Just like evolution is a fact. We can debate how precisely either occurred, but that they are is a fact.
The problem with certain appeals to emotion, such as the "equal time" argument is that all opinions and arguments aren't equal. Some views, such as Intelligent Design, have zero scientific merit whatsoever, at least in the manner in which their proponents have presented them.
I know that we live in the Age of Entitlement, but no... not all opinions are equal. Some are substantiated in fact far better than others.
Yep, so we should always choose to teach truths and leave out the "historical teachings". I have a machine here which will tell you which ones those are so we never will have errant text books. For what I assure you is a small amount of money, I will let you use my machine. Just leave the money in small bills in the dead of night on my doorstep. You'll always be assured of the truth from now on.
Studying stuff you know you will never use seems unappealing enough. Now students will understand that their studies are not only useless, but a load of half-truths made to fit whichever political agenda is in control.
Just memorize stuff long enough to regurgitate it on the exam, and if you can get away with it: cheat. I mean, why not? It's nothing but a lot of useless lies anyway, right?
Maybe, just maybe, subjects like math will not be overly politicized. But that stuff is all being offshored to the world's "best and brightest" i.e. cheapest.
Summary: "Wouldn't work."
Guess what? You're wrong. I know of several high schools and at least one college that does exactly what you describe - they let the children go to the source material and read the actual words. Of course the teacher doesn't let them "flounder" around the internet. She assigns the reading material.
The advantage is the students learn the ACTUAL words of the historical figures, rather than have it filtered (and censored) by textbook writers. The students read Jefferson's words about how he thinks the Church is corrupt, but he still believes Jesus was the messiah, rather than a textbook summary that falsely-claims Jefferson was an atheist (or deist).
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
This is exactly the kind of thinking and behavior that leads others to do things like, I don't know, threaten to secede. They assume the rest of the country knows absolutely nothing about them and is completely willing to disparage them for no reason, and it's usually due to willful ignorance like the kind you're displaying.
You've obviously never been to the south and have only seen it on television. Not everyone is a redneck or extreme conservative, the percentage of people who have guns is comparable to the rest of the nation, the foreclosure rate is comparable to the rest of the nation, we pay taxes like everyone else. Educational standards are similar to other parts of the nation, and yet it's true that there tend to be more dropouts, but it's not because the kids are stupid. It's because they're told their whole lives that they'll never be anything but dumb, failed rednecks by bigots like you. (That's right, YOU'RE the bigot here.) Try having that shoved at you, day in and day out, by the media, other Americans, even politicians. It certainly doesn't make most people want to go to school and be an overachiever just to prove everyone in the world wrong, because they're not going to recognize it anyway. Southerners will still be dumb old hillbillies who don't do anything for this country.
But you know, next time you think about some place where you imagine people ride on 4-wheelers all day with guns, who live on welfare and are willing to live with intolerance for those not like them, I'll point to this entire country, because you go an hour outside of any major metropolitan area in the U.S. and you can find people who are exactly the same. And you can come here, to the south, and see beautiful cities, people who work hard for nice things, people who vote based on how they feel, not how their preacher tells them, all those things. Because not everyone is the fucking same.
I don't disagree with anything you stated.
After all, this fact is probably one of the ones the Left has eliminated from the text books over the years.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
there were a giant wall separating texas from the rest of the usa
but as it is, what texas decides to do has an effect on me. thus, i have a right to say on what texas decides to do. if texas is going to unleash a bunch of propagandized holy warrior children into the usa, i want to clear my throat and say "no, texas, you don't get to whitewash history and zombify your children, because the influx of propagandized morons affects my life: these people vote, they make decisions, large and small, in loca, state and federal government, that affect my quality of life, and you will not drag me and my country down to third world status"
the lie is that state rights somehow have a superior advantage to federal rights. they only valid rights wall exists between the individual and society. the idea that state rights has some sort of validity is a false construct, that somehow the decisions a state makes is somehow superior or less superior, in terms of trouncing on indivudal rights, or upholding them, as compared to federal decisions
in other words: individual rights is the paramount issue, correct?
in that regard, how is it possible that what a state decides can somehow protect the individual, or trample on the individual, to a better or worse degree than a federal decision? on what logical basis is that possible?
state's rights ia c ontrived false construct, if you are truly motivated by the only morally and intellectually defensible cause: individual rights. state's rights cuts both ways. it is neither more for individual rights, or more against them. its a red herring to confuse the two concepts
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Florida is the only Southern state in the top 5 for foreclosures, isn't typically regarded as part of the South in any event.
I learned this the hard way: I asked for sweet tea in Daytona Beach and got a blank stare from the waitress. If they ain't got sweet tea, they ain't southern.
LoSCOTUS of SBOErg.
So basically, they can't afford the books no matter what is in them till 2013. That's good stuff right there, don't care who ya are.
Indeed they are. Unfortunately, it's their own ass.
Hmmm. Considering in California red is the new green in finance and whole neighborhoods of houses sit empty and derelict I think you are misinformed sir.
The game.
[quote] "a threat to the apolitical nature of public school governance and academic content standards in California."[/quote]
That's funny. The only standard applied to California education is mediocrity.
.sig? Get your own damn
If you stop to think about what the U.S. would be like without the former members of the Conderacy..what a fine place it would be! Given demographics from the 19th century etc. you'd have something that was a cross between Great Britain and Scandinavia. The U.S. today would likely be like Denmark on a massive scale, a social democracy that works and everyone is happy.
As a German I've wondered why Germany was able to move on, more or less, from devastating defeat to become a modern country. Whereas the states of the former Confederacy seem mired in the past, even though the American South was also devastated in losing their war. And both National Socialist Germany and the Confederacy could point to impressive military achievements (Rommel the Desert Fox, General Lee, etc). As an outsider I see these differences though:
1) In the American South, the former slaves (the raisin d'etre of the US Civil War) were present and part of life after the war. Whereas the countries Germany tired to conquer were far away from the lives of average Germans. It is probably an unfortunate part of human nature that when you have been oppressing someone, and that person is now free and you see him every day, that constant reminder brings guilt, which brings unhappiness, and eventually anger and resentment. Rather than contrition
2) Germany was actually lucky to not have a slave-based economy (despite the best efforts of the National Socialist regime and Albert Speer). The German blue and white collar workforce was able to easily build things that the world wanted. So, for Germans the war's end meant: keep working that drill press, keep making those precision optics. Whereas I think for the whites in the American South, they did not have many skills to fall back on when the black slaves were freed. If you have been primarily a slave watcher, when the workers are gone, you are pretty much hosed.
Longer term, for the American South to move on to modernity, I suspect a big part of the answer will be for Southerners to acquire a new identity to be proud about. Today I think only New Orleans has a culture that is desired and liked. I think many parts of the South have tried to rely on American football as an outlet for a drive for excellence, but that is really not enough. The American South really needs something about its culture, or something about the work they do, that would be "world class" enough to let them cut their ties with the baggage of hate and resentment from the Confederacy. Either that or the former Confederacy will prove to have been indigestible by the United States, and the U.S. will turn away from science, and it will indeed cease to be a great power. Which would be a travesty! The U.S. has so much potential, if only the crazy haters in the geographical basement could be reset somehow.
From 1981-2005 (latest year data is available) Texas PAID more Federal taxes than received in Federal Spending - EVERY SINGLE YEAR. That's not true of California or Massachusetts.
The Tax Foundation
If you look at foreclosures adjusted for population then Texas is not one of the problem states. You might want to start by returning California to the Russians.
Texas is large and diverse. Are there things that the state government does that embarrass me? Of course. Are there any states where that is not true?
The next time a southern state wants to secede from the union.... LET THEM!!!!!!!!
This is literally one of the most ignorant things I've read on slashdot in a good while. The fact it was moderated "insightful" makes it all the more frightful.
Unlike most southern states, Texas is an extremely wealthy state because of oil, gas, water ways, and ports (imports). Texas is also a "second California" when it comes to the technology sector. The fact is, Texas contributes its share of taxes and is a major contributor to the US economy. It is these very resources which causes so many problems for Texas politics. Realistically, the people are not than much different from the rest of the country - excluding California and New York. The problem stems from lobbyists having huge sway over Texas politicians. Its not so much the people but rather the special interests who have bought and paid for Texas politicians, which cause the majority of the screwiness in Texas politics.
Unlike most states, because there was once a Republic of Texas, Texas does maintain the right to legally secede. Having said that, Texas' talk of succession was nothing but lip service for political, albeit questionable gain. No one was serious about succession. There may have been a nut job here and there but by in large, most Texans laughed at the prospect.
Another interesting note which many don't know, Texas is actually MUCH smaller than it once was.
And another odd ball fact, Texas actually has fewer gun rights than most states. This is particularly interesting because when most think of Texas they think of oil wells, tumble weeds, desert, the wild west, and especially guns and gunslingers. Simple fact is, current Texas laws on the books are both state and federally unconstitutional with regards to gun rights. In fact, Texans have been actively working to re-obtain their gun rights which the state and federal constitutions are supposed to protect. So much for either Constitution protecting anything...
Gotta love the evil conservative hyperbole there.
No one is implying that all conservatives are evil. That's why it said this:
The alterations and fallacies made by these extremist conservatives are offensive to our communities and inaccurate of our nation's diverse history.
Frankly, if you've looked at the changes suggested, anyone in favor of these is an extremist. The best you could say is that they're not truly a conservative, as they're advocating wholesale revision to the point of making shit up. Here, TFA sums it up neatly:
The Texas recommendations... include adding language saying the country's Founding Fathers were guided by Christian principles and a new section on "the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s." That would include positive references to the Moral Majority, the National Rifle Association and the Contract with America, the congressional GOP manifesto from the 1990s.
The amendments to the state's curriculum standards also minimize Thomas Jefferson's role in world and U.S. history because he advocated the separation of church and state, and require that students learn about "the unintended consequences" of affirmative action and Title IX, the landmark federal law that bans gender discrimination in education programs and activities.
If you don't already see that for the steaming pile of bullshit it is, let me break it down for you:
the country's Founding Fathers were guided by Christian principles
"Lighthouses are more useful than churches." -- Ben Franklin.
Thomas Jefferson had some stronger words about the Christian faith in particular, but I couldn't find them offhand. No, these men were largely deists, making this an outright lie. The most charitable interpretation you could make is that they were guided by Christian principles, even if they weren't Christian, but that's obviously mistaken at best -- the Bible itself is clear about submitting to authority, that any Earthly authority (like, say, the British King) was placed there by God. No, they were guided largely by ideas floating around the world at the time, many dating back to the Greeks -- books like Plato's Republic, not the Holy Bible.
...a new section on "the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s." That would include positive references to the Moral Majority, the National Rifle Association and the Contract with America, the congressional GOP manifesto from the 1990s.
Hardly nonpartisan. I suppose you're going to tell me that the books are currently favorable to modern liberals? I'd say that this is pretty damning evidence of these being not just extremists, but conservative extremists.
The amendments to the state's curriculum standards also minimize Thomas Jefferson's role in world and U.S. history because he advocated the separation of church and state...
Can't have that, can we? It's only one of the pillars of the Great American Experiment, a prerequisite for religious freedom and expression. I very much doubt anyone writing this is a current member of the Church of England, are they? Then they owe their freedom to practice their current religion to Thomas Jefferson.
...and require that students learn about "the unintended consequences" of affirmative action and Title IX, the landmark federal law that bans gender discrimination in education programs and activities.
Are they really suggesting that banning gender discrimination was a bad idea? If you needed an example of why Yee said, "some Texas politicians may want to set their educational standards back 50 years," this is it.
I have to imagine that most conservatives would be ashamed to be associated with drivel like this. In light of that, I think the sentence you quoted is entirely true and warranted, as written:
The alterations and fallacies made by these extremist conservatives are offensive to our communities and inaccurate of our nation's diverse history.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Who calls it the War for Southern Independence? Everyone in the south knows it as the War of Northern Aggression :)
Like biological evolution and the wall of separation between Church and State, eh?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Texas is net-negative to the Fed in terms of income taxes (of course, so are most states). It has the 2nd largest GDP of any state (behind California). On a personal note, the public high school I went to was one of the finest schools in the country (public or private): almost all of my teachers had masters or doctoral degrees. Also, for some reason "South == racist" even though the most prevalent (and strongly racist) individuals I know come from the Midwest and the Northeast. Perhaps the few hundred/thousand people I know in Texas/Oklahoma/Louisiana are exceptional.
Little known fact: Texas was a Democratic state from the 1870s until the 1990 census (by then only 40% of Texans were Democratic, but the Democrats had been gerrymandering the voting districts; although ... the Republicans aren't any better on this score, either).
Lovely. Zero to 'racist' is 4.3 seconds. What a lovely rhetorical tool! Almost as good as tossing out "nazi" or "Hitler".
Let's not have an honest discussion...
Some background
Re: CRA
You:
Way to totally ignore the amendments to the CRA -- particularly those made during the late 80's and early 90's. It set silly and arbitrary targets lenders must make by location and race. CRA forced lenders to lend to uncreditworthy persons to satisfy the CRA.
Now, I'm not suggesting the CRA was the SINGLE cause -- but it certainly was a major contributor. As well as many other points of government involvement.
Do you REALLY want to discuss? Or just be an ignorant name-calling prat?
Dumb Fucking Asshole:
http://themortgagereports.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/foreclosures-per-household-201004.png
Twenty One States that are not in the South have higher default rates than Texas.
In fact, 8 of the top ten are not Southern states. CA is fourth,
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Oh, so the measurement of how much goes the feds vs. how much comes back to the states is only an issue when the Libs use it to disparage Red States?
I see...why am I not surprised?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Pearls before swine is more like it.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
To expand on this, do some research on how much power California and Texas both have in determining the content of textbooks in the US. My understanding is that between the two of them they can pretty much write the book (literally) for the rest of the states. The only thing we have going for us is that they ARe on the opposite ends of the US political spectrum.
NOTE: That is US spectrum, not the complete spectrum.
The areas covered by that legislation has better-than-average foreclosure rates now -- as in, fewer foreclosures. Not to mention that the legislation did not actually require banks to lend money to people without the ability to pay it back.
Lovely. Zero to 'racist' is 4.3 seconds. What a lovely rhetorical tool! Almost as good as tossing out "nazi" or "Hitler".
16 minutes, actually. But who's counting? Counting is for Nazis.
Yeah... let a lender lose it's CRA rating and see how well it does...
Oh, that and various amendments to the CRA made in the 90's:
But it's a "libertarian urban myth", right? Feh.
that what texas forces the individual to do is no different than what the feds force the individual to do
what does texas, or the fed, force the INDIVIDUAL to do? only at that interface is there any meaning
the logical failure is to suppose that texas is any more or less inclined to do something wrong to individual rights than the feds. that somehow texas is looking out for your interests in a superior, or inferior fashion, than the feds. on what basis can you say this?
both the feds, and texas, are capable of violating your rights. therefore, the idea of state rights as some sort of protector of your individual rights, to any worse or better degree than the feds, is a false idea
what i am saying is that the idea of states rights is a false hope. the state legislator or police can violate your rights just as easily and just as horribly as the feds (and in fact, does). so why look to the state as a protector of anything?
the only morally or intellectually valid criteria is violation of, or upholding of, individual rights. any measurement of states rights is a completely false idea in regards to individual rights. so what is the point of talking about states rights at all if individual rights are your concern? why do some people equate states rights with individual rights? such an equation is logically incoherent
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
What ad?
Right..... so that's why there were real estate crises worldwide? Are you claiming the US government caused the real estate crisis in Spain? How in the word did this get modded insightful? (Also note the vast majority of failed mortgages were totally private party and had nothing to do with the FHA or govt)
It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man.
It was not a major contributor at all. Most failed mortgages had nothing to do with the CRA... look it up and stop getting your "facts" from Glenn Beck
It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man.
White Texans = Shining Path??? Wow, your ranting about everything from Beck and Palin or Hitler and the Shining Path only shows how little you know about Texas. I'll just point out one small thing for you: The same road that brought you into Texas will also lead you out. Feel free to take that path and not return.
The amendments made in the 90s *DID* force bank to lend to people without the ability to pay it back. Not directly, but by forcing arbitrary "numbers" (based on race and location) that the institutions *MUST* meet or be found in non-compliance and penalized under USC 1818. This went well past the original function of the CRA which basically just said "all things being equal, you can't red-line an area if the applicant otherwise meets all lending criteria.
The left has been manipulating the textbooks for years but now they whine because the right is doing the same thing. I don't agree with some of it (evolution , etc) but as everyone keeps pointing out, elections have consequences.
He and other CAREER PARASITES need to stop wasting tax payers money and take a long hard look at where they dragged our (Californian) schools down to. Leland Yee is an attention whore, and this is not about Texas, he doesn't give a rats ass, his entire legacy has been attention whoring and sucking up public's money to unsure his job and jobs of his fellows bureaucRATs. California's schools are in a pitiable state and need help, NOT LIP SERVICE and sure as hell not more layers of costly bureaucracy.
the northeast is trying to move towards canada, and texas and the rest of jesusland is trying to move towards haiti. cut the morons loose, let them revel in their faux news and their religious fundamentalism, and in a few decades, let canada (including the northeastern former usa) provide humanitarian relief for their resurgent diseases (since science is the work of the devil) and their crumbling buildings and highways (since government regulation and taxes is anti-libertarian). all the while their propaganda and rewritten history will keep the southerners happy: their poverty and their ignorance means they are good god-fearing folk, and the decadent north lacks morals and values and only has money because of (insert random historical propaganda humility)
you can have your jesus and your gutted government and your guns. enjoy your trip to poverty and suffering, reactionary morons
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Yes, textbooks are dangerously biased so lets set the elementary aged kids loose to learn everything from the internet. Seriously?
The internet is simply the means. Most sites are as biased as textbooks. However, it would be expensive to give every student a copy of The Federalist Papers when studying the constitution, with the internet it is there and free.
The teacher would still assign readings, it would just be using the real material. Imagine if rather than reading Shakespeare, Dante or any other great author, we would only read summaries by someone else. Rather than reading Romeo and Juliet (or watching it being performed) we would just have a small paragraph describing the plot. Such things would be disastrous and pointless. However, we do the same thing with textbooks.
There's so much noise that gets thrown around the web that most adults have trouble identifying what is and isn't real (if I had a dollar for every email I get telling me that cleaner X is going to kill my pets and babies I wouldn't have to worry about the mortgage). Letting someone run free to learn on the internet is like saying "go find information that you agree with", that's all that 99% of people are ever going to do.
Those are not primary sources though. What the internet could let you do though, is find a study done by a university somewhere linking Cleaner X to cancer.
I fail to see how having kids read the actual words said by our founding fathers with the internet as the medium is terrible.
I realize you specifically call out primary sources, but do you really think that such sources aren't just as politically bent as modern sources.
They are, however, they are less prone to misinterpretation and revisionism that is prevalent and more dangerous in our world. Look at the Bible, over the years it has been interpreted as being pro-slavery or anti-slavery depending on who is reading it. It has been interpreted as being pro-segregation and anti-segregation over the years, etc. Same thing with historical documents, today we like to think of the US as having the moral high ground in everything, after all Lincoln was the greatest president, the US civil war was fought over nothing but slavery and everything falls into the right side (the victors) and the wrong side (the losers).
Teaching thinking through primary sources though is key because they are A) Free/Cheap (it would cost a fortune to have 2 contradictory textbooks, it is free to show documents from the federalist side and anti-federalist side, the confederate side and the union side) B) encourages thinking and debate C) show how important sources are.
There's no way that a young kid is going to be able to sift through it and find the facts of the situation, that's why we pay professional historians to gather the facts in the first place.
But they need to try because otherwise our society will fail. Any democratically run society depends on people who can think for themselves.
The problem is that yes, young kids might not be able to do this, but they are never taught to do things when they are older. Look at the primary 2 voters in the US:
A) The irrational liberal
B) The irrational conservative
No one seems to think for themselves. We've let editorials masquerade as news and we aren't teaching children how to think rationally. We live in an emotionally driven world, where logic is out and doing things to "feel good" is the only thing that matters.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Its a mess, but I don't see any better way to do it without making a bigger mess.
The only way I could see to do this is to get some kind of National group together from all states and forcing them to come to a consensus, possibly weighing states based on their population. But I couldn't see this happening without serious intervention at a federal level and then we just have national level politics involved instead of state level.
The fact of the matter is, Deleware is never going to be able to dictate to textbook publishers and will have to be content with whatever Texas and/or California come up with.
Maybe a bunch of the smaller states could get together and form a conglomerate to get a third (or even fourth) voice into the discussion.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Even a cursory examination of the changes shows that they are largely:
1. Adding more topics.
2. Removing specific call outs to Liberal and Conservative pet issues.
3. Generalizing the goals of objectives which will give the teachers more leeway in curriculum.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
No, it's a straight.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
And how many teachers have the time & willingness to make this happen?
Most don't, since they can do it now and still don't.
Not that it's a bad idea, it's just more work for the teachers. However, it's a great idea for parents to help their kids understand the differences between facts & reported facts, how subtle phrases can clearly change things, how history isn't apolitical, how the founding fathers were mostly Christian yet wanted no religion in government, etc.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
The Spanish/Mexican upper class enslaved native population of their conquered territory. But to be fair - the French and English in Canada and the US also took Native American slaves, as did many Native American tribes. That's the problem with history, if you care to look at all of it, there is always something that taken out of context can be used to support or demean someone's opinion. History, like science should be viewed critically not politically, if you wish to learn. Those who scrub the data are seeking to obtain an advantage over you to restrict your liberty for their own gain.
I've heard the 'big states set standards for textbooks' line for years.
Is it -that- much more expensive for a smaller state to find a different textbook publisher? Is the selection of textbooks so very small, and the marginal cost for a smaller order so very large, that there's absolutely no free market solution to this problem?
The whole point of having states manage their own education is that California shouldn't care what Texas does or doesn't want to teach. Having a big inter-state brawl over what should be taught is exactly what the system is supposed to avoid.
There has got to be an opportunity for smaller publishers here.
What state will it be in in a few years with these morons running the educational system?
"you don't need to know no science, this stuff about guns'n'bombs is good enough"
"Capitalism is a dirty word, let's call it Free Enterprise"(*)
(*) See the new state ship, the Herald Of Free Enterprise.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
It's not all that hard to get the info from LOC.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/jefferson_papers/mtjtime1.html
Or elsewhere.
http://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/default.xqy?keys=TSJN-print-01&mode=TOC
Tinfoil (or paper) hat conspirists will never be happy, so why try.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Trade Zetterberg!
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
however, i have a problem with you if you equate the ignorant bias that is currently in our history books with the outright attempt at propagandization that is going on in texas
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Teachers are hired to teach, not to sit in the back of the classroom, print off worksheets from purchased curriculum, run a few scantrons and then give a final.
If a teacher refuses to actually -teach- fire the teacher. Simple. With all these education budget cuts, teachers are now a dime a dozen.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Only you're completely and utterly wrong: (1) the majority of subprime loans didn't originate with lenders subject to the CRA; (2) commercial loans, which are not governed by the CRA, are facing the same problem; and (3) neither the CRA nor 12 USC 1818(i)(2) proscribe the civil penalties you mention; the CRA simply establishes that the government will prepare reports detailing how well the bank serves the community, and 1818(i)(2) simply prescribes penalties for actual violations of rules relating to the FDIC.
And, after a little bit more research I note that the justice department came to the same conclusion I did after reading the text of the statute:
Here. They should give me a job.
Texas wasn't WON, it was TAKEN from the mexicans
Mexico wasn't WON. It was TAKEN from the Spanish. (Who had taken it from the Indians.)
The US wasn't WON. It was TAKEN from the English.
We can do this all day.
And you'd love it if we did, wouldn't you? Great job hijacking the discussion away from what raving lunatics Texans are being today, and refocusing it on an historically irrelevant distinction. Wow. I am in awe of your propaganda skills.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Define Messiah. Jefferson certainly didn't believe that Jesus was the divine son of god, but he valued Jesus' philosophical contributions.
I'm also interested to know how you define deist. If he believes in God, but rejects Jesus' divinity, what does that make him?
I don't disagree with your theory, but have you actually been in an elementary or middle school classroom in years? Budget cuts mean classrooms of 35 or so kids who don't have extracurricular activities and too much energy. Oh, plus unions means no firing of teachers. This all adds up to too little energy to put into teaching beyond the given curriculum for most teachers.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
There should be nothing obligatory in government schools, except math, natural sciences (theory of origin of anything excluded), English and athletics.
History, economics, sociology, literature, music, dances, etc should not be obligatory and should not affect any national grades
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
i agree completely. look at how well political parties whose names aren't democrat or republican fare.
The Bubbas don't speak for everyone down there, they just seem to get the most coverage.
They also seem to get the most votes for State Board of Education.
Call up Dell and TI. Tell them to vote these morons out.
Learn something new.
I live in Florida. The attitude for the whole state seems to be "we're the southern most northern state". People around here don't seem to realize that Florida was the third state to leave the Union during the Civil War. But there's lots of rednecks, if you leave the cities. And sweet tea, if you can stand that crap.
Learn something new.
If they were only concerned with history books, you might have a point. But these asshats are trying to rewrite SCIENCE books too.
Learn something new.
And the changes to the CRA in the 90's forced banks to make bad loans.
There are arguments on both sides of the fence. I've looked up the facts and I've drawn my conclusions. Any reasonable person can look at the facts and say that CRA *DID* contribute -- but argue on the degree. I believe that the crisis was caused in no small part to lending practices forced on lenders by the CRA -- and made difficult to get out of by those mortgages getting broken up and mixed in with securities. And further compounded by congress blocking a review of Fanny and Freddy in 05.
Of course, if it makes you "feel" better to dismiss "me" by saying the words "Glenn Beck" and putting the word "facts" in "quotes", be my "guest". Says more about your reasoning ability than anything else...
Review this.
The expectation was that people would somehow automagically be changed by home ownership -- that they would start paying their bills on time, save for or insure against a catastrophic event -- in generally, act financially responsible.
This is the probably the first statement I've ever read on the internet that actually made me mad. Congratulations on the troll, if that was your intention. I am from the South. I am college educated, intellectual, and liberal. I feel real pride to have been raised here, despite the fact that, yes, there are many idiots. Please sir, go fuck yourself.
My other sig is clever.
I'm a Christian, and a Creationist. Yup.
If you want to know if I believe God created all we are aware, if, yes, I believe he did.
If you want to know if I know HOW he did it, well, I dunno. If evolution explains it suffuciently for science to make sense of it all, I'm fine with that.
Here's the details of my belief;
1. God declares himself to be omnipotent, omnipresent, and omnisicent. This means, to me, that he can do anything he wants, and he can be anywere, in fact everywhere, and know everything, even the future. All of this depends on him being omnipotent. You don't have to agree with me to understand my belief, ok?
1a. God also declares himself to have existed for all time. This gets complicated to some, but if God created the Universe, he existed outside of it (making something implies you are not PART of it, it did not exist until you made it, therefore you existed before it, be it a cake or the Universe.) Again, you can disagree, this is my expression of what I believe. And yes, I beleive I am correct, but I'm making these points so you might understand better why I make them, and my conclusions.
2. If God is in fact onmipotent, then he can indeed create anything he wants - including the Universe.
3. If God is onmipotent, then he can also create the Universe as he wishes. This includes creating it all at once, over the span of a week, or billions of years. And he can choose to make all of this appear as if it were made in a week, billions of years, or even instantly. Yes, he can make fossils, create artifacts that appear ancient to us, or he could have made Earth billions of years ago and work the processes to give us this world we see today.
4. The Bible, in the book of Genesis, does state that God created the world (and the Universe according to most scholars) in six days. We can have a frank discussion on what a day is to God, and if this is a literal translation of a 24-hour day or not, but in the end, my point 3 explains my belief that if he wanted to do it in six days and make it look like billions of years, he could.
In light of these beliefs, I am not compelled to challenge evolution as a viable scientific theory. I am not threatened by teaching it as established fact, though of course we still call it theory - science calls many things 'theory' that are settled science. However, I am somewhat dismayed that the discussion has devolved into an 'either-or' choice. A single paragraph in a science text, pointing out that many religions have other explanations for the creation of the Universe and of life on Earth would satisfy me. Christianity isn't the only faith that has a creation story. And offering minimal challenges to evolutionary theory doesn't seem to me to be a big deal, though this needs to be presented to students when they can grasp the concept of alternative views and competing theories. In other words, teach our children to think and excercise critical discernment, and this will not be a problem.
The Texas Board of Education does need correction in this matter. I am not the one to offer it to them. And we probably need some way to print more than one version of a science text. In this age of books-on-demand, electronic delivery, and the many other advances in printing, we can do a lot better. The textbook publishers are the problem here, not a bunch of self-serving administrators in ANY state of the Union.
Sheesh.
ps- From what I've seen over the past 3 decades, history texts in particular have been edited in the direction of a definite liberal/leftist bias, with blatant re-writing of historical events and slanted descriptions and conclusions. I don't want to see it turn to the right - I want it history taught as HISTORY, facts and reality, with opinion and conclusions labelled as such. Get the facts right first, please.
A good example of this would be to teach the reality that many of the men who founded our nation (the U.S.) were devout and active Christians, and their faith influenced thei
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I think the important thing to note is that publishers will not be able to simply adopt the Texas standard in all their textbooks in order save publishing costs. They will have to produce two separate textbooks unless they want to lose the huge California market. Meaning the smaller states will have a choice instead of being stuck with the Texas revisions.
"Thbbft!" - Bill the Cat
Very good points.
I'm often irritated by people who like to say "the founders were Christians so the USA must be a Christian nation". The founders did not have a completely homogeneous notion about the role religion in government in the first place, but I find it particularly errant when people talk about Thomas Jefferson's ideas about the USA being a Christian nation. Jefferson was a Christian and he was deeply absorbed in matters of faith--yes, he did publish his own edition of the Bible that was focused on the works and wisdom of Jesus Christ. These facts are evidenced by a large volume of his own writings.
The fact that he Thomas Jefferson was a Christian doesn't say ANYTHING about how he thought a government should work.
Jefferson's position on the role of any religion (Christian or otherwise) in government has been explicitly defined in his published writings. He knew that any institution of man is vulnerable to corruption and his objectivity allowed him to see that both governments and religions are institutions of man. He saw the influence of religion on government as a cancer to any free society. You can see this fact very clearly in the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which was authored by Thomas Jefferson, that says it is not the right of the government to leverage religion and vice-versa. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Statute_of_Religious_Freedom
Jefferson, in particular, was a Christian and a founder who knew that intermingling of governments and religion was an abomination against both and he said so. To deny this and argue that the USA was founded as a Christian nation is to betray Jefferson's stated ideals and those of many other founders.
+= E
Racist? Did I...did the meaning of racist change?
Oh God, it's starting! Texas changed the meaning of racist to mean prejudice against businesses! GOD HELP US!
it is exactly that. their creator. your creator. my creator. joe the plumber's creator. it is who the individual believes their creator is. you'll note that the declaration doesn't say that they are endowed by God or Jesus with certain inalienable rights, or even endowed by their god with certain inalienable rights.
Except that was written in 1994 -- which misses discussion of the amendments made in 1995 onward which actually address this.
No... they shouldn't.
They take all our tax money and return nothing. They dumb down the rest of the nation, and they are also probably largely responsible for most of the failed mortgages.
Wow ... just fucking WOW ... there is absolutely nothing correct about any part of that entire statement. Get a clue.
Actually, there is something correct about that assertion, because the conservative "red" states use more social services, all while having have higher rates of rape, murder, etc.
It's too bad this is modded as flamebait since it is, more or less, both relevant and in need of discussion. With regard to the "take all our tax money and return nothing" statement, however, Texas is actually a donor state according to the most recent numbers I've seen. It pays less in federal taxes for what it receives than most, but still only gets about $0.94 for every dollar they put into the federal budget. So Texans contribute less than most, but it's just incorrect to say they contribute nothing.
here is the article from last year.
http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/03/30/0151221/Mixed-Outcome-of-Texas-Textbook-Vote
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/24/1835255&from=rss
and others
http://www.google.com/search?q=texas+textbook+site%3Aslashdot.org&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
lose != loose
there is still a struggle
if you pretend all struggles can be solved dispassionately, passion still exists
the effort to reach an understanding has it limits, and if the understanding is not reached, then the conflict continues in baser ways
as soon as you erase passion (and all the good things that affords in this world), you will also erase all the bad things passion produces. since this is a fool's errand, you simply need to accept that we are human beings, and we have our limits, and if we have a a passionate belief in something, the struggle can get ugly at times
so brace yourself and stand aside, there's no magic wand to make this all go away, the struggle gets mean, and the cause is worthy
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
proof? Believe it or not Einstein http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialogue_Concerning_the_Two_Chief_World_Systems . Come to think of it I don't think I ever read in a history book about the pope being Galileo's college drinking buddy.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Sounds like sufficient cause to invade and drive them into poverty and disorganization for the next century. Plus bonus oil!
" . . . the primary responsibility for the irresponsibility in home loans is...the American people."
I think your weighting of responsibility is seriously skewed. As an aside, I think it starts with the Federal Reserve and a decade of loose monetary policy. If I had to name ONE "primary" culprit in this whole financial mess, The Fed is public enemy #1.
On the home loan side of things however, you correctly point out one major flaw in the process. The ability to transfer risk through "securitization". That allowed bankers to KNOWINGLY transfer high risk mortgage pools to unsuspecting investors. This used to be called "fraud" and people used to go to jail for it, but things are different in the new U.S.
The borrowers might have made dumb decisions, but it is the bankers that ultimately decide who does and who does not get a loan. As professionals, the bankers clearly knew, or had the ability to determine a borrower's credit worthiness. A homeless person can come into a bank and request a loan, but the bank makes the final decision. That's why they, not the borrowers, should bear the most responsibility for bad mortgage lending. The bankers made loans with clear knowledge that the loans would end up in default. They just assumed that they could collect their fees and pass the risk on to somebody else, OR, they bought into the idea that property prices would keep rising, and they could foreclose on an asset that was worth more than the loan.
In a world without bailouts and fraud, these bankers would be forced into bankruptcy. The bad mortgages could then be sold to the highest bidder (at a market value substantially lower than the original value) and the new owner could then re-negotiate terms with the borrower so that the borrower could afford the new mortgage, and the responsible lender can make a profit . . . But this is the new U.S. where bailouts and fraud are a way of doing business.
You're missing the point, which is right under your nose. The Declaration didn't say. It makes no claims as to the nature of the creator that endows such rights, only that whatever created people also created free will and the right to use it.
+= E
Except that was written in 1994 -- which misses discussion of the amendments made in 1995 onward which actually address this.
Only my original statutory interpretation was based on the current text of the CRA and section 1818, and the material language addressed by the memo I linked to is still there. If you have any actual law supporting the idea that a CRA substantial noncompliance rating gets you civil penalties then why not link to it?
Nice of you to leave out the Declaration of Independence. Or just who is this "their Creator" person?
Umm, that wasn't a document establishing our government. It was a statement of rebellion against England. We even had a government established after the war and before our current government.
As for who the creator is, you'll notice he makes other reference to "the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them" with "nature's god" being a phrase heavily associated at the time with the deist movement that believed in a god, but not necessarily the same one the christians did. That's not to say he did not have some christian leanings as he did write his own version of the christian bible where he emphasizes the philosophy of Jesus but removes all mention of the supernatural and all references to Jesus being divine.
California is in nearly as bad an economic shape as Greece; they may not have enough money even to do book reviews. That leaves the US Department of Education, but I bet they won't touch the issue as it would be a perfect gift-wrapped present to Republicans throughout their spectrum ("Commie Muslims taking away local control of our schools!!!").
I really don't have much to say about most of your comment. While I disagree with much of what you say, it is a perfectly valid way to look at the issues. However, one comment gets to the root of the problem "rationalizing McCarthyism as justified by some of the results". McCarthyism was a minor blip in American history that gets much more attention than the consequences of what went on had on anybody. McCarthy was a nutjob whose excesses had a greater impact on him and his career than any of his actions had on anyone else. As a matter of fact, it was the excesses of McCarthy that led to the end of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. More attention is given to McCarthy than to the resegregation of the Federal government by Woodrow Wilson, which had a much greater negative impact on a much greater number of innocent people than the various activities lumped under McCarthyism (some of which were conducted by private entities with no government involvement at all).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
No, but at least we'll have someone closer that we can bomb. Imagine the savings on fuel!
You're missing the point that's right under your nose. The Declaration doesn't say anything about the nature of this creator, only that whatever created people also gave them free will and the right to use it.
+= E
So you're saying that they shouldn't get to do what they want because they have a majority?
You do realize that we live in a majority rules society (well, thats the theory anyway) right?
You do realize that a few states can band together and they will have more buying power than Texas ... right?
The rest of the nation has multiple ways to get what they want.
Its really silly to say that 'the minority disagrees, so the majority shouldn't be allowed to do what they want'.
I'm going to make an extremely exagerrated statement to show my point so bare with me, I know its not realistic ...
By that logic, murders shouldn't be punished because the rest of the world disagrees with it. Its not fair for the rest of the world to push its agenda on those poor murders.
Of course thats a retarded statement, and so is yours.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
I take issue with your "most people go to church on Sunday" statement. The percentage of people who say they go to church in Texas is 49% percent, above the national average of 42%. It is not "most people", not even a majority. Sure, the rural texans probably have a higher church attendance than people in Houston or other metropolises but there's another point that's more important: about half those people who say they go to church lie about it. This site has a good run down of actual church attendance versus claimed church attendance, it's about half. So even if the majority of rural texans claim they go to church, it's a good bet that only about a quarter of them do.
The conclusion is that the good old-fashioned red-blooded church-going "real" america that people like you (and Sarah Palin) go on about is a lie, it doesn't exist. Similar arguments can be made for the rest of your statement, but I'll leave that to what the others who have responded to your comment have said.
And the real question here is that why is it that 51% of people in Texas are allowing the minority of people who go to church to dictate their educational curriculum?
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Oh man, reading that line of bullshit just cracked me up. Listen to this politician: "We don't let politics interfere with education in this state, that's why we, your elected, political leaders, are enacting laws to prevent it." The very action he is undertaking falsifies his claim. His own claim falsifies itself merely by coming out of his mouth! You would have to be a complete idiot to buy into this nonsense.
Seems to me California would have more important things to worry about.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
So the only proof of your claim here is that poor people in Texas have racist tattoos and buy knives and guns? You know, that is not a new phenomenon. Poor people have to entertain themselves too. It's the rich people in the cities who are changing the textbooks, BTW.
i believe in the sovereign sanctity of the usa. i have to, i have ancestors who died in the civil war (both sides), and the revolution. probably killed by tory bastards who fled to britain (what is now canada, but was britain: i can't put much stock in the national pride of country who has the face of some bitch from another country on their money: how can you be proud of an identity you so readily subsume to someone else's identity?)
now i'd like you to take a good hard look at state's rightists: they are the one talking about redrawing borders. not international borders, but for the sake of their agenda, they might as well be, so incompatible they are with american values (by which i mean real american values: separation of church and state, solid education, etc)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
blaming delay for the mortgage crisis is not a pull it out of your ass statement.
I googled tom delay mortgages and got lots of hits. It is hard to say exactly, but it looks like Barney Frank pinned the blame for the meltdown on Delay. It appears that Delay was House majority leader at a critical time, so it is credible that he bears a lot of responsibility.
Personally I start out pointing to Nixon in 1971 and Summers in 1999, but pretty much everything ended up deeply bipartisan.
So I figure the poster is a rabid dem and you are some sort of rabid republician. Why would anyone expect any truth to make it through all that crap ideology on both sides?
It easily has the population to be one, has more people than a handful of states. For the purposes of conversation it's not all that unreasonable to bring it up. If you don't like it, then just s/Detroit/Michigan/, the rest of the state isn't doing all that much better...
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
I'm amassing firepower because I've seen what "you" do to people who are unarmed.
The key point about the Waco and Ruby Ridge episodes is that these were sepratists who retreated from society. YOU WENT AFTER THEM TO MURDER THEM.
That's what I'm afraid of.
Your post encapsulates the entire mindset perfectly. People like you are why people like me get this way. The idea that somebody, somewhere, might think differently, _and_ might want to defend themselves, is cause to decimate them? Really?
If you don't have anything but contempt and disgust for what your government did in Waco and Ruby Ridge then how are we supposed to talk about anything?
I beleive that I am born free, and that i have the right to arm myself however i like and for whatever reasons I choose. Until such time as I initiate force or violence against you, I'm a free and civil man who's done you no wrong; you have no reason to either be afraid or upset.
You, apparently, disagree.
Well, I'm right; you aren't; and when you come for me, I'm going to shoot back.
It's that simple.
So don't come.
The idea of ever having to use a gun for its intended purpose is terrifying and abhorrent. I hate to contemplate it. THe only thing that is more terrifying is _having_ that purpose and not being so equipped.
I've done my part. I've moved out of your city, where you have nothing to be afraid of.
Leave me alone.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
They take all our tax money and return nothing.
For every federal tax dollar that Texas paid to the US in 2005, Texas received 94 cents. Texas ranks #35 among the 50 states and DC:
http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/22685.html [Scroll to page 43]
They dumb down the rest of the nation
Various measures of academic ranking are subjective, but this one puts Texas at #25, almost right smack on the national average:
http://www.morganquitno.com/edrank.htm
and they are also probably largely responsible for most of the failed mortgages.
In 2007, the mortgage foreclosure rate in Texas was 1.21%, compared with 1.33% in the West South Central region and 1.69% nationally:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/housing/2007-12-06-delinquency-chart_N.htm
I have to admit: you may have set the record for the most ignorance shown in a single post on Slashdot.
Even better, in TFA he follows it up with:
Gotta love the evil conservative hyperbole there. I really wish people would vote for people with less of a flair for the dramatic.
Exactly; when in doubt just ad hominem.
The reason that Texas has so much clout is that the State of Texas (or its school boards, under state supervision) actually BUYS the textbooks and issues them to the students throughout the state for use during the academic year. Perhaps if other states set similar standards and were similarly active in actually putting their money where their mouths are, they would be able to overcome the unique position that Texas finds itself in. It's one thing to bitch about how Texas chooses to make their educational decisions; it's quite another to actually put up or shut up when it comes to laying out actual state dollars to provide the children of the state with their textbooks.
I do not know about racists one way or another, but the fed encouraged fannie mae to guarantee and buy all this bad paper, so the fed, by your analysis, had something to do with the paper being written.
Now say 2005 Ortzag and some other incompetents ( including some sort of Nobel prize winner) were asked to see if the reserves freddie and fannie has were adequate to the increased risk. My, his numbers were that there was a 1 in 500,000 to a 1 in 3 million risk of a fannie default. No increased reserves were needed.
Doing a little ad hominem, this is the guy who did the obamacare economic design. Big in the obama admin. Don't you get lots of warm fuzzies?
There's so much noise that gets thrown around the web that most adults have trouble identifying what is and isn't real
However, that's a very important skill. That's why you should learn it as early as possible.
In the Internet it's easy to look for both side of the coin (that's what you call noise), I don't see how that's dangerous.
If they could, they'd probably introduce a version or the burqa, but with a different, less Muslim name -- "Victorian Modesty Clothing", for example.
It's things like this that make one thankful for the 'separation of church and state' language in the US constitution. Now, we just need some work to enforce that language.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
I didn't learn history in High School; I learned the accepted myths which may well have had some factual basis. Covering nuance would confuse too many people so there are items that get smoothed over and simplified. Texas wants to put its own mythology out in front. This is a long-standing Texas tradition because, in my experience, people from Texas often look and act like people from anywhere else until something happens which makes them feel obliged to defend the honor of Texas, the honor of Texas women, or any one of a dozen or more of the basic precepts covered in "What it means to be a Texan" which is part of the unwritten curriculum of every Texas public school. Texans generally believe that the USA is God's chosen beacon to the world because Texas can't do it all by themselves. But they don't want anyone doing anything that threatens their sense of Texanhood so they will have their own books if that's what it takes.
I seriously just spat my tea on my keyboard. Thanks for saying what I was thinking before I even knew it.
-RCD.
We emerge from our mother's womb an unformatted diskette; our culture formats us. - Douglas Coupland
To try to find connections between the Bible and modern government is ludicrous. Take this moment and read a random page out of Leviticus. Try not to laugh out of discomfort. Old Testament not your thing? The New Testament never condemns slavery and actually tells you how to keep slaves. The South was on the winning side of the theological argument for slavery.
Furthermore, to quote Sam Harris... "I've read the books. God is not a moderate. There's no place in the books where God says, 'You know, when you get to the New World and you develop your three branches of government and you have a civil society, you can just jettison all the barbarism I recommended in the first books.'"
Why do people still believe in Christianity? It is 2010. Must we propagate this insanity any further? All the sane people need to keep standing up and being heard.
I must say, modding this guy flamebait for an honest query about the usefulness of textbooks in a modern society is especially poetic given his signature line.
Changa hates change.
To me that suggests that he was a politician taking actions to shore up public relations in an area where he perceived himself both weak and under attack.
It doesn't say anything about what he believed. Beliefs should be judged by actions more than by words.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
This has nothing to do with Libs or Red States, why the hell are you bringing up those red herrings. This is about whether we are going to somehow have a balance scale where every state gets back what it contributes to the federal purse. Let's forget about what the Feds do provide. It is simply a stupid argument that shows the ignorance of how a modern economy functions.
gun-toting, slaver appreciating, free market shilling, bible thumping, evolution refusing, gravity ignoring rednecks ?
but why ?
Read radical news here
I am just pointing out that this canard is used again and again by people when it is convenient for them to bash the "Red" states.
So clearly, many people on the Left consider it a Red State/Blue State issue.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Democrat Senator Leland Yee...
"Democrat" is a noun, not an adjective.
The Federal Reserve did have flaws with loose monetary policy. They are not public enemy number one, however. The Fed was only an enabler. They also enabled Congress to overspend. The overspending was the fault of the American people, and their representatives...which strangely enough the American people voted for...hence the American people are also responsible for the huge deficits as well as signing on to debt they had no conceivable hope of repaying.
The bankers are enablers, you are arguing the criminal isn't responsible for his crime because the goods were simply there to taken. You are absolving the American people of responsibility, something that has happened for way too long leading to the current economic crisis...which by the way won't be easy to fix because the American people will complain bitterly when government takes away the baubles they cannot pay for.
Making bankers pay isn't as easy as it sounds. When banks are big enough to imperil an entire system, the system itself needs reform before we allow banks to fail. And the highest bidder wouldn't be asking for a dime less than the original bank note he bought when he purchased the original bank, the homeowner will pay as per the contract he signed.
you're talking to me, over the internet
which means you have SOME sort of belief in the power of words
now simply understand that those words are all that you are entitled in your dealings with me, or anyone else in this world
when you introduce guns in the equation, then me, or anyone else, has a right to introduce guns as well
so why don't you calm the fuck down, lose the fucking guns, and TALK TO SOLVE YOUR PROBLEMS. or admit that you're a halfwit who NEEDS guns to solve their problems. then you get this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbeville_Standoff
some fuckwits picked up a gun rather than opened their mouth to solve their problems
so what is wrong with this world?
THEY ARE
YOU ARE
these sorts of situations: "i'll solve my problems with a gun," are not the fault of the government, THEY ARE THE FAULT OF THE VIOLENT SEPARATIST NUTBAGS LIKE YOURSELF WHO SHOOT RATHER THAN TALK
if you use your gun to back up your words, rather than simple logic and reason and an open mind willing to concede that sometimes you might be WRONG, then you've put yourself on an unerring collision course with a body bag, in your near future. YOUR CHOICE
USE YOUR FUCKING BRAIN, NOT YOUR TRIGGER FINGER, RETARD
or i will be seeing you in the newspaper soon, another pointless death due to an idiot who couldn't use words, but had a gun
IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE THAT WAY
back up your words with THOUGHT, not LEAD
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
i kind of enjoy ideological bloodsport
and i do detest those who will sit in their ivory towers and issue condescending cold edicts, and never get out in the mud and roll up their sleeves and actually fight for what is right
what i'm saying is: yes, it is possible to succumb to passion and lose your higher faculties
but its also possible to sit in coldness and never actually fight when it is necessary to do so, and thereby lose the world to those who will fight, regardless of their actual legitimacy
what is that saying? "all that is required for evil to prevail in this world is for good men to do nothing" or something like that
violent passionate flat out WRONG people will always exist. and sometimes a good word won't defeat them
what i'm saying is you should be prepared to fight. not because you want to, but because sometimes the ugly fight is bought to you no matter how good your intentions
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I agree that it is primarily MY responsibility to raise MY children. I can honestly say that I take an active interest in what my children learn in school and I constantly try to encourage independent thinking, especially considering my children also go to a "redneck" school. Because of the area we live in, I have no effective influence over what textbooks they buy, in fact they would likely buy those books BECAUSE of the nonsense they contain.
My concern is for those children whose parents do NOT do this, and the effect this will have on a country that already made the mistake of re-electing George W. Bush due to a prevalence of "redneck thinking."
(Please don't get all outraged about my use of the word "redneck." I grew up and live in a rural area. Some would undoubtedly consider me "redneck." I just honestly don't know what else to term the groupthink that seems to dominate some of these rural areas, especially in the south.)
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
slap in the face to these hard working people who for the most part just want to be left the hell alone.
And collect checks from the Federal Government.
Most of the states from which you hear the most noise about "government encroachment" and "getting rid of Government" get more in Federal expenditures than they pay in taxes. Montana, from which you hear lots of whining, gets $1.47 back for every $1 they pay in taxes. Alaska gets $1.84; they're pigging out on Federal tax money. New Mexico is the biggest pig of all, at $2.03. And those "liberal" states? They pull their own weight. New York only gets back $0.79 for every dollar they pay in taxes. California gets even less, $0.78. Massachusetts gets $0.82.
Texas gets $0.94, so they're paying their way, but not by much.
I'm getting to the debate late, but I'd like to share my experiences as a dependent of a parent in the US Army through the 80s. Much of my childhood I went to DoDDS (schools for military children overseas) and got a very right-wing flavored version of American history. Much of it you see almost mainstream today. I learned that hippies protesting is what caused us to lose in Vietnam, Ronald Reagan was the greatest President and ended the Cold War. I also learned nothing about Iran/Contra and his involvement in selling weapons to a terrorist nation to support drug dealers peddling crack in America. I later learned that all the objects to Gulf War I was nothing but wussy rants from a new age of hippies trying to lose another war for the US. In turn, I did NOT learn that the US gave permission to Saddam to invade Kuwait.
It took about 10 years, but I managed to unlearn much of the propaganda I had pumped into my head back then.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Not quite. The mechanism for Texas's admission to the Union was a joint resolution of Congress. The terms of the resolution included language to the effect that it may be convenient at some future time to create up to 5 states out of the territory of the then Republic of Texas. However, this language is pretty much meaningless - per the US Constitution, you can't merge or split states without the consent of both the state(s) involved and Congress. The constitutional language would obviously trump anything in the joint resolution, and the prospect of both houses of Congress and the Texas state government agreeing to such a division is more or less nil. It appears as if the intent was to allow Texas to split into several states at the time of annexation, but Texas did not take the US up on that offer.
For more fun facts, see the main Texas article in Wikipedia. It's pretty much true that annexation to the US was the plan of the Texas revolutionaries all along, and the only reason it took so long was that the addition of a huge new slave state was vastly destabilizing to the delicate political balance between north and south... so it took 10 years to get Congress to approve of annexation.
This is true.
The problem is that CRA loans were something like 15% of all subprime loans in 2006.
There's an awful lot of misinformation about the housing crisis out there. To be brief, homeowners were irresponsible, but not nearly as irresponsible as the lenders. It wasn't bad mortgages that made the economy crash, it was crazy derivatives and zero-sum bets on those derivatives that were the problem. (Compounded by the fact that these financial products were deliberately designed to be so complicated that it was impossible to accurately rate them.) Even with no change in the quality of mortgages issued, there would have been no financial collapse if not for the CDO (collateralized debt obligation). The banks would have taken some losses, sure, but the real problem was hedges against hedges and insurance on insurance. It's pretty simple, if you don't think a loan is worth offering, don't offer it - not offer it, sell it, bundle it, buy insurance against it, then bundle it again this time including the insurance. (and again CRA loans were a tiny fraction.)
Seriously. Read this. And let me know if you still think that the housing crisis was caused by over-regulation of the banking industry.
want rational wall street regulation? How's this: No Zero Sum bets. Zero sum bets don't provide an economic benefit, and and exist solely for the purpose of allowing money managers to place large bets with other peoples money.
The size of the subprime mortgage market is ~ $1.3 trillion.
The losses from the subprime mortgage currently stand at ~$850 billion and stand to grow to ~$1.5 trillion. No, not the losses to the economy as a result of the financial crisis, the write-downs on sub-prime mortgages.
Read that again. The losses in the market are currently at 65% of the size of the entire market. Do you think that >65% of subprime borrowers defaulted? And remember they've made some payments, and the house is worth something. And it's growing. It seems likely that at the end of the day the losses are going to be larger than the original market. That means that if every single sub prime mortgage holder failed to pay the first cent of their mortgage and if every single foreclosed sub-prime house had an actual value of $0, that won't explain all the eventual losses.
How then do you explain the losses? Zero-sum bets (bad ones). On $1.3 trillion of mortgages there were $4 trillion of zero-sum credit default swaps. When a few sub prime mortgages started to fail the amount of money somebody owed somebody else started to explode, and it had little to do with the homeowner.
The free market works!
That is all.
society, progress, civilty, education, progress: none of this is possible with the state
throughout history, various kinds of states have existed that have wrought great injustices. the usa was the first modern state to say "hey, lets rule by consensus". for simple matters, like taxes, to build your roads, it was expected of everyone to contribute. not contributing means you were freeloading. so then the issue is to come ask "why are you not contributing?"
but certain extremely excitable types like yourself would interpret the knock on the door, the men in suits, as armageddeon, and respond with gunfire of your own: self-fulfilling prophecy, you fail to see your violence as the trigger for their violence. you could have simply chatted, and said "i don't believe i am a part of society, even though i enjoy fruits from it" or "i have no cash currently, could we come to payment plan?"
but no, you overeact violently. this is the contents of what you wrote above
what is an example of such violent overreaction? well, howabout sharia law: you steal a loaf of bread, we cut your hand off. or: you don't bow to the king? then you lose your head
in other words, the injustice you see coming from the state is exactly what you deliver. you look at history and you see injustice from the state, when by your own words and actions, you are revealed to function exactly as such states did: the way you act is exactly how injust states act
meanwhile, the usa, even with rule by consensus, still has its injustices. but the point is to get rid of those injustices, perfect the state. surely you can see that NO state is far worse than the state you live in, even a bad state, no? no state is like mad max or somalia. you do have enough sanity to see we need a state i hope
so to have a just state, without violence or injustice, i ask that you join with us and speak with us and work on ironing those injustices out, to perfect the state, to make a more perfect union of what makes the usa a better (not perfect) country: rule by consensus rather than force
because we are a democracy. we rule by thought, dialog, consensus. we don't rule by force. really, that is genuinely the truth. to believe otherwise is to insist your delusions are more true than plain matter of fact simple facts of the construction of the state known as the usa
rule by force rather than consensus, that is the realm of injust states
and you
stalin fears being overthrown: send millions to the gulag or the cemetary. feds knocking on my door: respond with shotgun. same violent overreaction, same source of injustice in the world
you currently suffer from a massive hypocrisy: you complain about something, and then YOU DO THE SAME THING. you don't reply to violence with violence, you ARE THE ONE INJECTING THE VIOLENCE
you are the villain. you are exactly what you hate
tyrant: know thyself, and go oil your gun, one who complains about force... while implementing it
massive hypocrisy
i sent you a link, a narrative of a separatist shooting in 2003 in south carolina. in that narrative of events is the overreaction i am talking about. you tell me who the villain is in that narrative. now examine your narrative of massive overreaction
look in your heart: you are the tyrant you fear
check yourself before you wreck yourself, paranoid schizophrenic fool
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Is this saying nobody reviews new book purchases at these schools? I would have assumed at least one person from a school district department actually reads through and reviews the text. If that was the case they would notice any added craziness anyway and not order more. This kind of legislation would be a complete waste of time then. How naive I am?
At least you're not bigoted.
that's the problem. this is why clinton and reno PROTECTED us from an apocalyptic cult. it is not possible for civilian society to peacefully coexist with armed cultists. why?
You are one dangerously ignorant fool.
If you actually care about how ignorant you are on the topic, I'd recommend This is Not An Assault by David Hardy. He goes into plenty of detail on how "dangerous" Koresh's group was as well as how they were systematically murdered - and provides plenty of evidence.
However, I suspect you don't really care - as long as the government kills Americans you don't like, you don't really mind. If they kill Arabs in foreign countries, though, I bet you get seriously pissed.
We libertarians don't approve of either.
"It's an urban myth, especially in this digital age we live in, when content can be tailored and customized for individual states and school districts," said Jay Diskey, executive director of the schools division of the Association of American Publishers.
Yes he is right and flat wrong. As California is not buying books for the next couple of years to save money, Texas buys new books every year and it is the same book across the state. The choice of book changes every year. Texas is the biggest market by far for school books, so Bio and Social Studies tend to get slanted towards Texas far to the right mentality esp in Local government. So yes books are not tailored individually, but on a whole they are tending to be more focused towards Texas's biases in an attempt to get more sales there as CA is not buying books over the next few years.
---In a time of Chimpanzees I was a Monkey.
I find it funny that this thread is actually an argument over authority, not whether a Christian government is good or not today but whether some figures long dead were Christians and hence America now should be like them.
You behave as if the "Founding Fathers" were some kind of revelating prophets, which sounds quite odd if you claim to follow Jesus or nobody.
Personality cult? Civil religion? Idolatry?
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
"If Texans have a way they want to do something, LET THEM, and don't live there if you don't like it."
Not if their decisions shapes text books all over the country. Not if they are receiving any Federal funding for their schools.
If they want to blur the line between church and state, and between facts and politics, then surely they won't mind the Federal Government taking away funding. After all, the Church will pick up the slack, right:)?
I have to admit though, living in an ultra-blue state (Oregon), it would be amusing to see my communities reaction to receiving a K-12 set of "Texanized" books.
Yet history has shown that complex legal, financial, or other areas are perpetually beyond the ability for average people to navigate. That is why you have a mortgage broker hopefully explaining things to you, or a banker hopefully explaining that "hey, just remember we reserve the right to double your loan payment for any reason!".
People, on average, will never have a level of understanding that matches bankers, credit card companies, lawyers, etc.. who make up the rules of the game, so that they win, and the consumer loses.
Once you admit to yourself that the average person is basically always going to be ignorant of legal and financial matters, and once you admit that if enough people get taken (by a big push for home loans, a big push for more credit cards, whatever) the economy will crash, the next logical step is admitting that the people need protection and clarification, and big business needs regulation.
But in theory, you're right. Person A takes on bad loan deal X, it is person A's fault. But that alone would not have caused any economic harm. A real bank would stop giving out loans to a certain economic class if it started to lose money. The major harm was allowed to occur because of regulations removed during Regan and Clinton's presidencies. (Glass-Stegall, etc...)
They're not traitors if they've got the right to secede, which they did. On the other hand, support for secession wasn't close to universal, and may not have even been the majority; it was primarily the rich slave-owning land-holders who were represented in government.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Apparently the Mexican's tend to call the Texas part of it "Santa Ana's War", and not with respect for his competence.
After the 1846 war ended, the original surrender terms proposed by the Mexican government not only included the northern states that are now most of the western US, but also the states of Chihuahua and Sonora, so we would have ended up with a lot of Indian territory that the Mexicans hadn't begun to conquer successfully. By the time the dealing was done, they weren't part of it.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I lived in the US south for many years and I think you are on the right trail. Tied in to your second point, when met with failure, a common psychological defense mechanism is to blame that failure on some external factor-- other races, the government, atheists, liberals, gays, Catholics, Jews, the French, the damn yankees, and etc-- instead of blaming oneself. Southern churches capitalize on this human weakness by teaching that gays, atheists and liberals are sick. Republican politicians are capitalizing on the weakness too, they stir up the southern hatred of government and dream up all kinds of enemies to hate. And now, religion and Republican politicians have teamed up to take advantage of the rednecks. I'm pretty sure politicians in WWII Germany and religious leaders in the Middle East today did/do pretty much the same thing to manipulate the masses. How did Germany solve this sort of problem?
http://www.marxist.com/
Absolutely. Well said. To take this further, last year the Wall Street Journal had an excellent editorial that showed the majority of foreclosure issues were not sub-prime mortgages, but normal, prime mortgages. The real culprit was "zero money down". It appears that the need to spend well outside one's means was not limited to people with bad credit.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124657539489189043.html
I am surprised that these studies haven't been taken further. One would hope that if we were to try and prevent such a crisis from recurring, we would analyze the the actual root cause of the problem and devise a solution for it
Maybe, just maybe, subjects like math will not be overly politicized.
Obviously you haven't heard of things like the New Math, where math curricula were suddenly changed to emphasize abstract math concepts at an earlier age, supposedly in order to prepare more students to go to college in science and math. Why? Because of the Space Race and the Soviet threat.
So, unfortunately, math curricula are not immune either.
You might think that such moves are less distressing, since students are still getting good information in math classes, just a different emphasis. The problem is that in most states the math curriculum never recovered. Students today tend to learn very little practical math that might actually be useful in their lives (which was something distinctly emphasized earlier in the 20th century). I say this as someone who taught high school math and science for a few years. There were "application" courses for math that were supposed to teach practical skills, but they were thought of as the "dumb classes" and usually were taught by the worst teachers.
Meanwhile, some of my algebra II students could barely do basic arithmetic. (By basic, I mean things like 5 + 7.) Out of 140 or so students I taught my first year, only 2 of them knew what compound interest even was. Certainly none of them understood how it actually worked, or how it affected savings plans, loans and mortgages, etc. Many of these students were seniors in high school. Unfortunately, because of the state curriculum, I was forced to teach them a bunch of useless higher math skills (like putting the equation of a hyperbola in standard form) -- six weeks on abstract manipulation of conic section equations, but nothing in the curriculum that stated that exponential equations should cover practical issues like loans, interest, etc.
Most of this is the way it is because of the "new math" reforms... all because of politics. And how many people aren't able to manage their finances today because they are innumerate as a result of emphasizing abstract math over practical application?
the cop who shot a seven year old was not acting in the name of the state, he was a confused soon to be ex cop asshole
meanwhile, there are other wackjobs who actually INTEND to kill:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Abbeville,_South_Carolina_right-of-way_standoff
that's the source of violence: random asshole wackjobs
the state needs a security edifice, or some timothy mcveigh moron is going to kill innocents
the state is a protective mechanism, not the perpetrator
question: is paranoid schizophrenia ever going to go away? no? then we need security from the crazed loonbag. thus, the state. which sends you into a hysterical tizzy only if you have some sort of bizarre persecution complex (which you obviously do)
the usa rules by consensus. you vote, you elect. if you don't like your officials, you vote for new ones. this is in contrast to states like china and iran, which rule strictly by fear, not via consulting with its citizens. that makes nondemocratic governments illegitimate and it makes democratic ones legitimate. the us government, and many others, are legitimate because they genuinely consult the will of their own people. this makes what they do, in the name of the state perfectly acceptable and reasonable. if they fuck up in a way that pisses off the people, they're thrown out of office. yes, really. that's actually the goshdarnit truth. try to fucking understand the fucking rock of gibraltar truth, please
next you'll tell me the media controls all of our brains or its all corporate dollars and everyone who votes is brainwashed. which puts you further into paranoid schizophrenic territory
i am a free man. you? you're not free. you're a slave to demons. not of the state, but in your mind
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
>>>Teachers are hired to teach, not to sit in the back of the classroom
I think the best teachers don't teach at all. They direct the students down a path, and the students teach themselves as they read the text, solve the math problems, or whatever. For me there's nothing more boring than a teacher that won't shut up and let me THINK on my own.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Instead of going all ape-shit and complaining that the Texas School Board is re-writing history for all of the US, boycott those texts and go for something more balanced. You don't *have* to buy those textbooks, you shouldn't sacrifice quality education just to save money. The texts used by Texas public schools have such a large influence on other states' curricula because they all buy those texts, so all those consumers are partly to blame for Texas's influence. If you don't like what they're putting out, you don't have to buy it. If the Texas School Board feels that education in Texas should be taught a certain way, that's their prerogative (insofar as what kind of powers were given to them when they were elected/appointed to the board).
To sum up, Texas School Board can "screw over" the education in Texas if they want. Everyone else can choose whether or not to follow suit. Texas is not responsible for the curriculum in California, and they're actually taking that to heart.
History is by it's nature political and is always taught with bias. That is the truth about history. Sure you can memorize facts, learn about why things are the way they are, but you can never have it taught to you without having something either intentionally left out or by having the "facts" changed by the person doing the teaching. Even if you are reviewing first person accounts of historical events, you are still learning from a biased perspective. This is the first thing that should be taught to every student who has to study history (which should be a requirement for every high school and college graduate).
Texas does not represent a majority of the US. The only reason they have this kind of power is because they are the largest state, not because they are a majority.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
That's a good question you raise, and it made me think. I believe (just instinct, not data here):
1) Under the National Socialist regime, Germans had been whipped up into an emotional frenzy for so long, their appetite for emotional extremism was exhausted by summer 1945.
2) The idea of hard work as penance for your sins is deeply rooted in the Protestant German psyche, so hard work as penance, plus abundant technical skills, meant a population doing things that fit the needs of a successful occupation and recovery like a hand fits a glove. I would say that for many Germans, it's accurate to say that a guiding principle for life has been "if in doubt, work harder". That is less true for my generation, but it does help as a guide.
3) There was the threat of worse...although the western Allies took out a bit of understandable anger, blowing up large factories and so on after the ceasefire, there were nods of humanitarian gestures, such as the Marshall Plan. Whereas western Germans knew that not far away the Soviets were ready to take over if the western area didn't work out.
Perhaps #3 was decisive. It would be interesting to know, what would have happened in the American South after 1865, if there was good reason to believe that if the Union army got fed up with Southern behavior, the hammer would really come down?
Well, that explanation would confirm, that, at least, the rest of the nation was very Christian, whether the politician himself was or was not... If we weren't a Christian nation, then in front of who did Jefferson "pretend" to be a good Christian (sincerely or not)?
I do see a trend here... The deniers of Christianity's role in America seem to have two conflicting arguments: they reject the religion's role in our history, while at the same time lament its "undue influence"...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.