And during those couple years, we'll just have to deal with a system that combines the worst parts of public and private education?
Tell me, when it comes to the environment and global warming, do you believe we should act immediately, even if our actions end up being meaningless, or wait until it is scientifically proven that we're causing it before we act? If we should act immediately, why shouldn't we act immediately to do something to fix our children's education? Their education will have a far greater impact on the quality of their life than the amount of carbon in the air and a degree or two of temperature increase. So let's sit back and just keep the status quo because you're afraid of that "p" word. Why is it that the party who calls itself pro-choice is so against it when it comes to everything but abortion?
Same difference. The end result is that the vouchers aren't as useful as they first appear, because you have no guarantee that you can actually exchange one for a seat in any school.
So again, we should do nothing. We're only watching millions of kids furthering their ignorance but hey, we'll do nothing because you believe that one particular approach isn't "as useful as it appears" and can't solve the problem in entirety by itself.
In Washington State, where I live, it's more like $9500 per student. $2000 is a number I just made up. But you can't directly translate per-student spending into voucher amounts unless you want to pretend overhead doesn't exist, which leads to the "drastically underfunded public schools" problem I mentioned: just because the state is spending, say, $10 million for 1000 kids doesn't mean you can cut it down to 500 kids and only spend $5 million to achieve the same results.
Of that overhead, do you know how much of it is useless fat because there is no competition in the system? My school district has dozens, perhaps upward of 100, of classrooms sitting vacant for half the day. They were built at state prevailing wage (read: above what they could have actually hired the contractor for) and have continuing heating, cooling, cleanup and other maintenance costs. Those costs alone count for about $6.5 million of our $30 million budget this year. We're pretty lean on administrators (compared to other schools anyway) and only spend about $2 million on administration. Larger districts spend expotentially more there as well. Schools have a LOT of room to cut the fat, only they don't have to because they have a guaranteed income every year and can increase that income at their will. You say you're averaging $9500 per student... we're around $15000 per student here (and this is western NY, not NYC... the cost of living is far cheaper here, though the taxes will kill you and the economy has been in the toilet for decades (which is why housing is dirt cheap)). Surely we can cut $5500 for vouchers for each kid if you're operating that much cheaper than us and having better results.
You still haven't answered the question of what happens to the kids who are rejected by private schools. Do they not get an education at all? Or do they have to stick with their local public school, which now can't even keep the lights on because the other students have left and taken their funding with them?
They can apply to the future private schools that will open. Yeah, it's going to take a year or two... in the meantime, they'll continue to be saddled with the same (lack of) education that you're intent on them having in the first place. As for the school not keeping it's lights on, please... like the schools are 100% efficient and have no room to tighten their budgets. Also, if there are less kids going there, there will be less need for teachers at that school (which is the single largest expense in a public school budget). If you have 400 teachers for 2000 kids at an expense of $20 million per year and lose 1000 kids, you now only need 200 teachers at an expense of $10 million per year.
That's an interesting theory, but it flies in the face of basic economics. If you suddenly increase demand (give every family $2000 to spend on tuition) without increasing supply, prices go up to keep the demand under control. Now the education that used to cost $2000 will cost $4000 instead, because the school doesn't have enough space or staff to accept every student who shows up with a voucher in hand.
Supply WILL increase. There will be an incentive to create new schools because kids who couldn't afford to attend non-public schools otherwise will have the money to do so. Will it happen overnight? Probably not... it'll take a couple years for it to all shake out.
And again, there is nothing that says a private school HAS to take all students who apply. They could limit the size of each graduating class.
And where do you live that public education is only costing $2000-4000 per student? Public education is closer to $15,000 each here (western NY). Spending has already doubled in the last 15 years and there is nothing to show for it except a higher dropout rate and a diploma that no longer means you can make change.
should we saddle those kids with a near guaranteed bad education or should we give them the same opportunities that the rich kids have?
False dichotomy. There's another alternative, which is to study the public schools that work and apply whatever it is they're doing to the ones that don't work.
The public schools that work are run more like private schools. Limited acceptance, parental involvement, etc. Those that are open to anyone tend to be in better towns with more affluence and parents who care what their kids are doing. School's can't copy that, it starts at home. You want a solution there? Tie the welfare benefits to the children's success in school (yes, I know it's far wider than a welfare problem... but I'd venture that 90% of the children receiving welfare are involved with dropouts and low grades).
There's no reason why you can't put an income cap to receive vouchers either if that's what you're worried about.
Well, there is one reason: it goes against the principles that are supposedly behind vouchers in the first place. If it's wrong to force people to pay into a school system they aren't using, then what does income have to do with it?
What I'm worried about is not that rich folks will be able to take advantage of vouchers -- it's that (1) vouchers won't actually make private schools much more accessible, (2) to the extent that they do make private schools more accessible, they'll also make them perform worse, because their performance has more to do with exclusivity than efficiency, and (3) "competition" from vouchers will make public schools worse, not better, with dire consequences for the students who still attend public school.
I'm trying to find middle ground with those who don't support vouchers... Isn't it liberals who always talk about shades of gray? Someone complained that vouchers would give an unfair advantage to rich kids so means test it if that resolves the problem.
1) Vouchers will absolutely make private schools more accessible in the same way that college grants make going to college (public or private) more accessible. I got to go to a private college that was $20k a year for about $2000 a year. Without the grants, I wouldn't have had that opportunity. If a parent can send their kid to a private school at the cost of an extra 5 hours of week of work (assuming a minimum wage job), don't you think they would do it? Don't you think that, if kid's education meant an extra (albiet fairly small) sacrifice on the part of the parent, the parent would most likely instill the value of education in their kid?
2) Again, nothing says private schools can't keep minimum standards. You want to get into a private school, well, you have to earn it by showing you value your education. Again, if you are go
1. If the vouchers can be used at religious schools, that obviously raises First Amendment issues.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;"
Congress cannot make or promote any particular religion. The First Amendment does not guarantee freedom FROM religion, just that the government won't officially endorse one.
As such, if I choose to use my voucher to go to St. Bob's Institute for Christianity, Buddha's Home for Enlightenment, Mohammad's Center for Sharia Education, or Jim's School of Secularity, it doesn't matter... the government isn't endorsing any religion in any of those cases; The parents have made their choice of where to send their kid.
Taking money out of the public school system makes the public schools worse for everyone who chooses to stay in them (or can't afford to switch, or can't get accepted by a private school - see below).
Doubling the money spent in the public school system hasn't helped it, who says taking money away and forcing them to become more efficient will make it worse? My school property taxes go up 6-15% every year. In a $30 million budget for ~2000 kids, they can't find anywhere to trim the fat because they don't have to. The school is so full of inefficiency, it's sickening... and a lot of that comes down to the rules the union imposes on the school (teacher's teach 4 classes, oversee a lunch or study hall and have 4 classes off a day. They all get their own room, which sits empty half the day, even though every 5 years, the school board decides to add on a new $25 million expansion to make more room for students. They get tenure after their first year and even the teachers who come in drunk can't be fired. A 23 year old teacher fresh out of college gets paid above the median income for my town and within 10 years, it just about doubles. Etc). $11 million on salary, $6 million on benefits, $6 million on building loans, $175k on books.
What do they have to show for it? Drop out rates have doubled since 1995, test scores are down across the board despite the tests being easier, kids can't do basic math (stuff I was doing before kindergarten), they can't follow directions, they can't figure out how to do trivial tasks (like mopping a floor) themselves, their vocabularies are ridiculously small, etc. The school has failed by nearly every measure to educate kids and prepare them for adult life. They can't function in a work place, they don't know anything about raising a family, and aren't prepared for college, etc. About all they can handle is asking mom and dad for money, driving to the mall and hanging out with their friends.
Frankly, maybe if the public schools were forced to do with a little less, it would make them think about what they're actually doing so they could make it better... because it sure doesn't get worse.
The vouchers aren't guaranteed to cover tuition at any private school, which means they may end up as little more than handouts to the rich families who can afford to pay the difference between $voucher and $tuition.
Lots of private schools give out scholarships and if more students are coming on vouchers, it'll free up more of that scholarship money to let more kids come in. Vouchers would open up private schools to far more kids than who currently have access to them now... should we saddle those kids with a near guaranteed bad education or should we give them the same opportunities that the rich kids have? There's no reason why you can't put an income cap to receive vouchers either if that's what you're worried about.
Private schools often perform better simply because they can reject "problem" students, or because of factors at home (parents who are involved, proper nutrition, etc.) that vouchers will not address. Requiring private schools to accept all students will drag down their performance; not requiring them to accept all students means the ones who
Unions do not add extraordinary cost to any industry where they cannot justify the increased pay by increased quality. All it takes is one alternative and the downward spiral begins, forcing the union-shop to either raise quality further or reduce price if it doesn't want to go out of business. Unless that industry is government... The employer can raise their income to pay for expense increases at any time they want to without ever having to worry about whether or not they're running efficiently and/or utterly failing at their jobs.
See the teachers' unions strong opposition to any competition (say, by vouchers) even though the state of education in the US is abysmal despite doubling spending since 1991. Alas, their jobs are generally secured for life, they get great benefits and their pay grows far faster than inflation (at least in NY) so they don't want to risk competition even if it means the kids continue to fail.
My parents' generation ripped a hole in the ozone, my generation outlawed CFCs worldwide and the hole is shrinking.
We've been able to quantify the ozone for a couple of decades. Several decades of measurements of a several billion year old system does not a scientific fact guarantee.
My parents' generation started AFDC, which actually caused the poverty LBJ declared war on to get worse. My generation abolished AFDC and started TANF, which is geared to getting poor people into the workforce and out of poverty.
Your parents' generation started AFDC.... and the oldest boomers likely voted for the people who created it. Those same people (elected with the help of boomers in 1964) were the ones who declared the Social Security taxes to be part of the general fund (oops, I mean, we'll write IOUs to the Social Security Trust Fund) to balance out their budget for the increased spending.
Fast forward a couple decades and TANF is getting a handful of people into the workforce, but it doesn't solve the underlying problem of families receiving welfare generating large numbers of kids who will, in turn, either end up in jail or on welfare themselves. Your generation, not satisfied with voting in politicians (and later becoming them), who gave us a $8 trillion debt, in addition to spending the Social Security Trust Fund ensuring that your kids will have to pay for your retirement, now wants the government to permanently take over 1/7th of the US economy.
That is, of course, after your generation sold out our economy with programs like NAFTA. What won WWII? Our manufacturing ability... so lets send the jobs and capacity overseas. Meanwhile, we'll raise minimum wage again, causing mass inflation to benefit some teenagers while those who make more than minimum wage (read low income adults who can't get a manufacturing job anymore) don't get a similar increase.
As long as we're on the subject of money, let's double what we spend on education while results continue to get worse. Kids today can't make change, they don't understand logic, have a hard time spelling even trivial words in their infinitesimal vocabulary, etc. Why? Because their parents, your generation, is too busy working two jobs so you can have the mansion, two cars, take a dream vacation every year, etc and you ignore your kids. From the time they're born, they're sent to daycare. Once they go to school, it's up to the school not just to educate them but to focus on their self esteem, hand out birth control to your 11 year old without your knowledge so you don't have to have an awkward talk with them, etc. All of that while you haven't prepared them for school by teaching them to count, know their ABCs or to add and subtract numbers because that would interfere with your "me time."
My parents' generation started the Vietnam war, our protests stopped it and got a President to resign in shame.
Your generation allowed the genocide of 3 million people at the hands of fun guys like Pol Pot when you decided to just cut and run (much like you want to do with Iraq now). Your generation spat in the faces of drafted soldiers who had no choice but to fight when they did finally get home. If your generation was the one that fought Hitler, you would have likely surrendered the day after Pearl Harbor because who gives a crap about alliances and national security anyway... I mean, it's not like we need borders anymore. Let's naturalize the entire world and let them come in without scrutiny or limits.
Your generation gave away the Panama Canal (btw, GWB wasn't the worst President in US history, Carter, that guy your generation elected, was), stood idle while the Shah was overthrown and our embassy overrun in Iran, and trained and funded Osama bin Laden. Your generation ended the Cold War (well, you opposed every step of it but we'll give you credit for being alive and middle-aged anyway).
started an even more senseless war just so he and his oil bud
Hillary... twit romney... cross-dresser Judy Guiliani Any particular reason why you make fun of Romney and Guilliani's names but not Hillary's even though you question the validity of the source of their money equally?
Those "People" who support the republican candidates usually can't afford to feed their own family. Isn't the jibe that the Democrats are the party that supports the poor? Over the last few election cycles (I haven't looked at it much yet this year), it was the Republicans who had higher percentages of small/medium donations ($50 here, $100 there) while the Democrats got most of their money from donors giving at the limit. The complaint was also that Republicans were subverting elections with soft money while it seems since McCain-Feingold, it's been the opposite with all these 527s that McCain-Feingold created.
So, if the CIA gives the President bad intel, (or FEMA screws up or the Attorney General fires some people or...) it's the President's fault... but if the House Judiciary Committee screws up, it's the fault of, uh, someone other than the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee? Being the boss means the buck stops with you when someone screws up under you (large corporations not withstanding).
People on the right want to make things as hopeless as possible because they aren't concerned about the social security issue, they just want to kill it.
People on the right ARE concerned about social security and that's why they want to do something about it. The Democrats and their 527s are the ones running the ads saying the Republicans want to kill and starve the old people. They're the ones who stand in the way of any reform knowing damn well that the fund is going insolvent soon... REAL soon by macroeconomics standards.
Anyone who thinks this generation is going to pay in and not get their money back is going to get zapped. If the rich get soaked, the rich get soaked. Almost no one in this country is saving enough for retirement sans social security check (or even with).
Add up the money of all the billionaires in the US... take every penny they hae. You might get a trillion dollars... we're talking about an existing $8 trillion debt and yearly budgets of that amount in the next 15 years to cover expenditures. Our GDP is $13.13 trillion right now and government is eating up a quarter of it while still putting us deeper in debt right now.
And that debt is just federal level debt. NY is another $80 billion in the hole themselves. "Nobody" is saving the money for retirement because they can't afford to with the current level of taxation... so the solution constantly trotted out by the left is MORE social spending to make up for it. It's only going to accelerate the bankruptcy of the federal government. Why do you think the US dollar is at an all time low? The money is growing worthless as the US becomes closer to insolvency. If you think it's bad now, just wait another 10 years.
The Republicans are so slimy, they know taxes are going to have to go up, they're just not going to do it. They're going to leave it to the Democrats after it gets so bad there's no choice. It's a cynical game of chicken and it's disgusting.
It's already beyond that point... but budgets are a two way street. You can trim spending or you can increase your income. Raising taxes will give you a short term increase in funds but over the long haul, it will stall the economy, especially if you have to go from 25% of GDP to 50% of GDP just to maintain your current programs at their current levels, taking into account all the new eligible recipients.
The Great Society is a bust... we've spent trillions of dollars to eliminate poverty and we still have just as many poor people today. We've destroyed the urban family in the process. We paid for it by stealing money from the Social Security Trust Fund to hide the tax increase that was needed to pay for it for the last 42 years. The answer isn't new spending programs... that's the exact cause of the problems in the first place.
Nothing makes me madder than all this 'low taxes make the economy grow, so don't "steal" my money' crap. Yes, to a point, but the sad fact of the matter is that a lot of spending is needed to make the economy grow. This isn't 1800 dude, a modern economy needs modern infrastructure, and it ain't cheap. Rich people get the most advantage out of all this too. There are plenty of places where there are extremely low taxes, but of course you don't see anyone starting anything other than a shell company there.
And the social safety nets create a disincentive to take care of yourself and your family. Why work to pay for your kids when "the government" will do it anyway? Daddy doesn't need to be in the picture anymore, he can impregnant every chick on the block and every one of them is taken care of.
You want to see what high taxation and endless government spending does to an economy? Spend a year or two living in Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse or Elmira. The businesses are gone, the 20 and 30 somethings are gone because they can't get jobs without businesses despite going to some great colleges here, etc. The solution here is the same as yours, spend
Bad form to reply to myself, but I just got out of the shower and that's the best place to think.
I find it funny that the U generation (those who fought in WWII) were enabled by the V generation (hippies) to create this debt. The U generation aged and the V generation took over power and the V generation is still doing everything it can to throw even more money at the U generation (Medicare Part D, refusal to change Social Security for younger generations, etc). Part of that is probably the greed of knowing the first V generation people are filing for their Social Security benefits, so the rest of them will start cashing in soon too. We have an $8 trillion debt right now and in a few years, it's going to take that amount yearly to pay for the tens of millions of boomers collecting money every year. Still not satisfied, they want to socialize the entire health industry.
They can criticize GWB's spending (and I will too), but $1799 billion of the $2592 budget is already going to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and interest on the debt. The last thing anyone on the left has the right to complain about is government spending, much less on Unconstitutional (read, government stealing your rights) programs created by them, especially as they try to create more programs, spending and debt.
Generations X and Y are royally screwed thanks to the policies of our parents and grandparents... the last thing we should be doing is pandering to them and defending and promoting their ideology that got us here.
Along the lines of the 1960s, military spending and budgets, it was the Social Security Act of 1965 that dissolved the trust fund and put the Social Security funds into the general budget. The general government was projecting deficits due to the Great Society programs, so LBJ, along with a Democratic House and Senate (both with Democratic super-majorities), decided to fill the deficit with those monies.
Reagan got blamed for the debt problems in the 1980s (ignoring that the budget was controlled by Tip O'Neill), but the problems started 20 years earlier.
I do find it rather interesting that, at least in my high school, American History always ended with WWII and the creation of the United Nations. We never talked about Korea and we never talked about Vietnam. We never talked about the Great Society or our the meddling in Iran. Certainly, none of that stuff was in our text books. I wonder just how many kids grew up with absolutely no knowledge about the post-WWII era other than what their parents passed on about it (and if it mattered enough to their parents to talk about it, it's probably because their parents have a strong feeling (read bias) about such things).
NYC (and the entire Hudson Valley corridor up to Albany) control the state government. The big three: Sheldon Silver, Joe Bruno, and Eliot Spitzer all hail from that area, as does virtually every other state-wide politician (Andrew Cuomo, Thomas DiNapoli, Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton (ok, she's never actually spent a day in NY but bought a house near NYC so she could run for the Senate), etc).
It is the state that sets policy for things like Medicaid. Those policies are some of the primary things drowning upstate right now. Every year, the cost of Medicaid exceeds inflation and taxes are raised yet again to make up for it. The same can be said with school budgets growing by 6-15% every year due to mandates from the NYCers in Albany. Meanwhile, programs like ELP (Extended Learning Program) which are focused on gifted kids are being cut because they aren't mandated (while special ed for the slow kids is) to free up more money for the mandates. The taxes, required by the governments that don't know how to stop creating more spending, are driving businesses out and with the businesses, the young people who will make up the future of the economy. The aging population retiring isn't the only problem - losing tons of people from future tax rolls is just as big, if not bigger.
Even prior to their fall in the digital age, Kodak was busy shipping jobs to other states/countries in the early 90s to try to shed some of the costs of doing business in NY. My grandfather was one of three film cutters in Rochester and watched his job go to Canada before digital cameras ever landed on a retail shelf. It's not like the jobs were being outsourced to China to avoid pretty much any regulation then (that came later), Canada was seen as a much cheaper place of conducting business than NY and it was still just a hop away on a plane (or a couple hours by car). The state is driving business out, NYC is just the last to see it because of it's long entrenched state as the economic capital of the world. However, that's eroding too. Spitzer set the trend of suing everyone on Wall Street that he didn't like and Andrew Cuomo appears to be following suit. How long before those companies start moving to NJ, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Connecticut or London to avoid NY's overzealous squad of lawyers?
As for how far I live from the economic centers, I live in a rural county, so it's par for the course. I assume you want your dairy, corn, potatoes, apples, etc. You need space to grow that kind of stuff. My point was simply that the high gasoline taxes weigh more heavily on upstaters who have to drive than people in NYC who walk or hop on the subway... and again, NYC needs us to grow their food, so we don't really have a choice about having a bunch of farm land between our houses and various stores. Because they (NYCers and the politicians in Albany (many of whom are from NYC)) largely don't have to deal with it, they don'y really see the problem.
State level taxes, mandates, etc are the policies hurting us (and what originally started driving business out of upstate) and can only be resolved by the state.
I had forgotten about them, but check out Unshackle Upstate for at least one group's (composed of 60 trade groups from upstate) study/opinion on what the state needs to do to help fix upstate.
Um no. It would be good if they would kick storm-infested clients off the net or block everything except http(s) and ftp until they fix their machines. But that should only be done to clients who were identified to be infected, no every customer of that ISP.
So, are you for or against blocking? You're for it when it's convenient to you, against it when it's not. At least be consistent. And sure, block everything but port 80 and 20/21 traffic, it's not like those ports can't still be used for worms.
The fact remains: When other - way smaller - ISPs can handle P2P traffic and still offer high-speed connections w/o any noticeable impact to their customers connection, than this multi-billion-dollar ISP Comcast should be able to get their bloody act together as well.
Are we talking about a small company who sells service on someone else's copper/fiber or a small company that runs wire to your house? The big companies have to pay to run the wires all over the place, whether everyone is using it or not. There's about 100 miles of road in my town; The phone and electric companies cover 95% of it (there are some roads with houses on either end but farm land between, so the lines don't go down the entire road) and the cable company covers about 80% of it (it's not cost effective to roll cable out five miles to hook up one person. They won't pay back the cost in their lifetime). If you're talking a co-op that covers one building, their infrastructure costs are small. If you're talking about some type of wireless for a limited number of people, again, costs are pretty small. If you're talking about renting some space on the telco's rack, again, the costs are smaller than operating the full copper network.
I'm not trying to make excuses for Comcast, just noting that full networks don't necessarily scale as well as selected networks. A delivery pizza joint might be profitable delivering within the village limits, but would lose money delivering to a full town or county (note that there is a 1 sq mile village within the town where I live). Fortunately, my provider has been pretty good (I almost always get my full 10 Mbit throughput with 2 digit latencies. The one exception being USENET where I get about 80% of my speed). My biggest complaint is that I'm still stuck at 384Kbit up, though I could switch to 15Mbit/1Mbit for an extra $15/month if I really cared. The local phone company isn't big enough to roll out FIOS. but the cable provider and them have been inching up their speeds over the last few years, especially as we're seeing Verizon roll out FIOS a couple counties to the east.
Overselling is normal practice. Every ISP on earth is overselling its bandwidth, it's just common sense. You only run into problems when you do it too much.
The problem is determining what exactly is "too much." It's like defining pornography. 99% of people might think the current bandwidth is fine while 1% complain. Similarly, 99% of people might complain a woman showing her ankles isn't pornographic while 1% complain it is. If someone truly needs guaranteed throughput, they should really consider a T1 or T2. If they don't want to pay that much, then they don't have a lot of room to complain.
There are probably only a handful of people at each local franchise who knows how oversold the pipes are, I certainly don't. If they're oversold to the point where you can't have P2P at all, I think there's a problem. If they're oversold to the point where you get 20% of your regular speed on P2P (after QoS prioritization to keep interactive apps working right) and 99% of people are happy, I'm less concerned. Does it suck? Absolutely. However, again, if you want a guaranteed minimum level of service for every app, you're going to have to pay for it. My local cable franchise has a setup where their VOIP gets it's own channel (shared with other VOIP users) while your internet service gets another. I don't see much of a problem with that either. Rather a maximum level
Because blocking / restricting SMTP and throttling / blocking virus infected clients is actually a good thing and a service to the internet community. The Storm worm uses P2P (edonkey IIRC) for command and control. Using your logic, if you're willing to block/restrict/throttle SMTP because of spam and virus infested clients, should they not also block/restrict/throttle P2P to prevent the same thing?
Filtering (or throttling into uselessness) a protocol to lower the overall bandwidth consumption is only done because the ISP in question oversold their pipes too much and is not investing enough money into upgrading and maintaining their networks. DOCSIS is a shared service. You can only saturate so much bandwidth onto a line at once. Your 10 Mbit (or whatever) connection is for peak service, not constant throughput. DOCSIS 2.0 supports 38 Mbit per second per channel on the download side (27 up). If you want your full 10 Mbit all the time, you can have, at most, 4 users per channel (and an T3 for every 4 users). There are a total of 52 channels, so you can support 208 users with no digital tv available or you can buy lots of head end equipment to keep that many users on a handful of channels. Ok... so 4 users probably won't be using the service all the time. Lots of people just want a burst rate to get a web page or maybe a PDF. So, what's the right number of users per channel? Is 20 people per channel good? They can each get about 2Mbit per second if they're all using it at the same time. Of course, if the pipe is saturated in either direction, latency is going to suck for applications like VOIP. So, obviously you're going to want to prioritize certain traffic. Similarly, you're going to want what people use interactively to have good throughput (ie, websites). At the bottom of the list is the traffic that isn't latency dependent, has nobody sitting there waiting to use it and that consumes the most bandwidth in relation to every other user on the network. You might be able to put 100 people who generally just browse the web and read email on one channel. Put 8 P2P users on their own channel and they'll all complain. 2 or 3 frequent P2P users might wreck the experience of the other 50 people on the same channel. So, where is the happy medium? Isn't that the question. Exactly where is "oversold their pipes?"
You can always price out a T2 instead of complaining about your cable service so you don't have an oversold pipe. Of course, you don't want to pay full price for the level of service that you want, you expect all those web surfing dolts to subsidize you.
Lest you think I'm just some cable apologizer, I don't like the advertising either. When I first got my cable modem, the advertising was "up to 10 Mbit/s" while the modems were capped at 2Mbit/s. It took 6 or 7 years to finally get the level of service I was sold. I just think you're being hypocritical for bitching they should block one service while leaving your pet service unthrottled and then complaining you aren't getting your money's worth when your monthly payment only covers a fraction of the cost of the full bandwidth you want.
What New York state government policies are causing the economic climate in upstate new york that in turn causes businesses (and young people) to depart?
The worst of it comes down to unfunded mandates. The state's Medicaid costs are being shifted more and more onto the shoulders of the counties. For someplace like Rochester, who already lost Kodak and Xerox to foreign countries being cheaper to operate in, that means higher sales and property taxes. Higher sales tax means your dollar doesn't go as far (and when you've switched from a nice job at Kodak to a retail/service job, that really hurts) and higher property taxes means it's harder for families to stay here and it's another increase in expenses for businesses wanting to operate here. No business = no jobs = no 20 or 30 somethings sticking around = a further eroding tax base.
The same goes for schools. My school district had a budget of $14 million back in 1995. This year's budget was $30 million. $250,000 of it was optional spending. If we voted no, we'd get the exact same budget minus a couple new buses. Why? Pretty much everything is mandated by the state and the local school board has no real control. My house is assessed around $80k (3 bedroom, 1 bath, 2.5 car garage on an acre of land... values are so cheap since nobody wants to live here and nobody can afford to spend too much on a service job salary anyway). My school taxes were $1013 for school (with a $660 STAR discount) and $1371 town/county. That's $2400 a year ($3000 if I didn't actually live in my house) in just property taxes for a place with a median income of $31k and my house is still about $40k under the average house value. That puts the average house around $4500 a year. On top of that, there's a 4% state sales tax and a 4% local sales tax cutting out another good chunk of that meager income.
Factor in the highest gasoline (just try to get around without a car. My nearest grocery store is 2.2 miles away, nearest general merchandise store is 14 miles away and nearest speciality stores are 25 miles away) taxes in the nation (63 cents/gallon if I remember the story in the paper about a year ago right). Insurance (car/health/home owner)? Some of the highest in the country due to the mandates of the NYS Insurance Board. I dropped my single policy (health) last year when mandates drove it up to $1432/3 months as a 29 year old.
So, you need businesses to have an economy, right? That minimum wage increase a couple years ago cost a third of the people at the restaurant I managed their job (ok, so we did it via attrition as they left for college rather than firing them directly). In their place, everyone has to work that much harder (well, as hard as you can get an uneducated 17 year old to work even though they just got a 40% raise). Oh, we had to raise prices to make up for it too, which, in turn, is an inflative pressure, especially since the long term employees (read adults) who made more than the minumum wage didn't get a 40% pay increase with it. Let's not forget the ever-rising costs of workers compensation (with the benefit of having some of the lowest payout rates in the nation). Actually, we could spend hours on business problems created by Albany/NYC.
Ultimately, what it all boils down to is the size government is always growing (10% growth this year) while more and more people are fleeing. Over the next 10-15 years, as the baby boomers (those people who are most likely to be earning the prime money in the economy right now) retire and the tax base erodes even more (since the 20-45 crowd will be gone at that point based on current trends), good luck having any kind of economy. Who's going to pay the bills, the kids in high school and college and the handful of 45-60 year olds who didn't get out? Businesses? hah! The rest of them who can flee to less taxed and regulated states will. All we'll be left with is retail and government jobs... and government is a net drain on the economy.
You do realize that Rochester has Ginna and not too far away in Oswego, there is Nine Mile Point and Fitzpatrick? All are nuclear plants (NY's 4th nuclear plant being Indian Point, outside NYC).
My bill from National Grid breaks down my (standard) power as:
Biomass <1%
Coal 11%
Gas 9%
Hydro 32%
Nuclear 41%
Oil 6%
Solar <1%
Solid Waste 2%
Wind <1%
Air emissions relative to NYS average:
Sulfur Dioxide 62% of average
Nitrogen Dioxide 62% of average
Carbon Dioxide 59% of average
Again, those numbers are for standard National Grid with their default power source. The mileage of those who want green power or who choose a different provider may vary. You'll also see that NG covers a pretty good chunk of the area you're talking about.
I have no clue what NYC's power is like (minus Indian Point), but if my area is around 60% of the average pollution, I'd have to say NYC is probably much closer to the average.
We're definitely the most economically depressed, but right now, power generation isn't our problem... taxes are. And new taxes (passed on from the state via the electric companies) will definitely make things even worse than they are now. What we need is to force more businesses, recent grads and young families to move to another state due to a hostile economy.
Who do you think elects the members of the Senate? Or do you mean that you wish to nationalize the election of my senators? Yeah, no Once upon a time, prior to the 17th Amendment in 1912, Senators were chosen by the state legislatures, not popular the popular vote in the state. The Senate was to be the chamber that protected the concerns of the states to balance out the whims of the House. These men were often referred to as "Statesmen" and were generally the least political and most civil legislators in Congress. That is why it is up to the Senate to ratify treaties, approve political appointments, etc...
Why don't you and the rest of Middle America secede and do whatever you want with your coalition of mediocre states? The Northeast and the West don't want you, and while I imagine you want us so that your country can have an economy, Where do you plan to get your food, electricity, steel, cars, etc from? I've got nuclear, coal, wind, solar and hydro power within 50 miles of me. There's a dairy farm with 150 cattle across the street. There's thousands of acres of corn, potatoes, beans, wheat, etc grown in my county. The salt the northeast uses to melt the ice off their roads comes from a mine on the other side of my county.
You can sit there in your smog filled city feeling smug about yourself, but the fact is, you need us more than we need you. We're self-sufficient as far as the necessities of life go. Have a nice riot when you guys figure out that you can't grow enough food to feed yourselves and can't get enough electricity to provide your air conditioning, heating and subways. I'm sure your centers of commerce will thrive under those conditions.
Please, Confederate States of America, rise again and leave the Union. Take President Bush and Guantanamo Bay with you when you go. You won't be missed. /cough just remember, there's not much value of a terrorist attack on a silo. Foreigners who dislike Americans have a mental picture not of some hillbilly in Kansas, they picture the decadence of NYC or LA.
Not that I'm saying anything about Hans, but smart people do stupid things... Many people will commit crimes they think they can get away with ranging from jaywalking and speeding to embezzelment and murder. A lot of serial killers, in particular, are smart enough to cover their tracks and don't get caught until they get bored by the fact that they've outsmarted everyone for so long(see Dennis Rader, aka BTK, for an example).
As a side note, I just stopped over at Kuro5hin to see what they were up to. I left that site, oh, 4 or 5 years ago maybe, because of the same thing that is happening to slashdot now. K5 appears to be a ghost town these days. If that's what everyone wants Slashdot to become, keep splitting us down the middle on politics. VI and Emacs, GNOME and KDE, Apple vs PC, etc are just the tools we use, politics (and religion) are who we are and how we define ourselves.
I am one of your "rover boys" with a low 5 digit account. Odd that I'm implied to be an arm of Karl Rove and that he's the lone political operator in the US. You do realize that the left has their own Roves like James Carville, right?.
What exactly has me worked up lately, causing me to troll slashdot? I come to slashdot primarily for techology and other nerdly stuff primarily. I expect a little politics to be thrown into some things because they overlap and it is acceptable in moderation. However, ever since Al Gore lost the 2000 election, every story about electronic voting (and a LOT of stories not about it) has the people who can't stand that Gore lost posting that Bush stole the election. These posts and their variations inevitably get modded to +4 or +5. I don't come here for regurgitated DU or moveon comments. If I want to see such things, I will go to those sites.
As time went on, more and more stories became infected with politics so Slashdot opened up a section for political stories. Creating that section made Slashdot even about politics and polarized the factions of users here. No longer was it about a place to go get tech news, it was a place where people could go off on their little conspiracy theories, anti bush rants, etc. Those comments were eagerly moderated up and many well written, well thought out posts who disagreed were moderated down as troll, flamebait, etc. The more political Slashdot became, the more certain dogma was accepted as fact and the less dissent was tolerated. At best, someone who disagreed with the dogma wouldn't be moderated but their voices would be drowned out by various sheep of the leftist causes, be it global warming, what to do with people in gitmo, a conspiracy to take down the WTC that would have taken hundreds or thousands of people to orchestrate, etc. Most of it is blatently unfactual if you look passed the dogma and for as critical and intelligent slashdotters consider themselves to be, they just can't see the truth.
At this point, Slashdot seems to mostly post stories which continue to favor these people, sometimes going out of their way to frame the argument before it can be discussed. Hiring new editor Keith Dawson (kdawson) seems to be primarily to do that. Frankly, I'm sick of it all and I want the old slashdot back. As it is, the entire site has turned into that which many (most?) of us once despised, a giant Jon Katz troll.
If Slashdot wants honest political debate and to not simply become Dailykos with more tech, everyone needs to step back on the political stories. Don't post crap like I saw a few minutes ago about how Limbaugh and Hannity literally want liberals to die. Don't blame everything on Rove, Bush, Cheney, et al. Stop painting all republicans with the Mark Foley brush unless you want things to degenerate even more. As the website says, "move on" from the past elections, you can't change them. Learn from them and find a way to make a better system but back it up with hard facts and not soft sciences and conspiracy hypotheses.
In short, the trolling, flame baiting, ad hominems, etc neeed to not only stop, but stop being moderated up. Open up your minds enough that you're willing to ask yourself why you believe what you believe and if there is something that you should change about it to make it more correct. Be as critical of your own ideas as you are of others. Slashdot editors need to stop posting stories that are obvious trolls.
To those who say that this is news for nerds and stuff that matters, yes... politics matter. However, is slashdot a site about technology, first and foremost, or just another DU echo chamber?
Slashdot Mirror
And during those couple years, we'll just have to deal with a system that combines the worst parts of public and private education?
Tell me, when it comes to the environment and global warming, do you believe we should act immediately, even if our actions end up being meaningless, or wait until it is scientifically proven that we're causing it before we act? If we should act immediately, why shouldn't we act immediately to do something to fix our children's education? Their education will have a far greater impact on the quality of their life than the amount of carbon in the air and a degree or two of temperature increase. So let's sit back and just keep the status quo because you're afraid of that "p" word. Why is it that the party who calls itself pro-choice is so against it when it comes to everything but abortion?
Same difference. The end result is that the vouchers aren't as useful as they first appear, because you have no guarantee that you can actually exchange one for a seat in any school.
So again, we should do nothing. We're only watching millions of kids furthering their ignorance but hey, we'll do nothing because you believe that one particular approach isn't "as useful as it appears" and can't solve the problem in entirety by itself.
In Washington State, where I live, it's more like $9500 per student. $2000 is a number I just made up. But you can't directly translate per-student spending into voucher amounts unless you want to pretend overhead doesn't exist, which leads to the "drastically underfunded public schools" problem I mentioned: just because the state is spending, say, $10 million for 1000 kids doesn't mean you can cut it down to 500 kids and only spend $5 million to achieve the same results.
Of that overhead, do you know how much of it is useless fat because there is no competition in the system? My school district has dozens, perhaps upward of 100, of classrooms sitting vacant for half the day. They were built at state prevailing wage (read: above what they could have actually hired the contractor for) and have continuing heating, cooling, cleanup and other maintenance costs. Those costs alone count for about $6.5 million of our $30 million budget this year. We're pretty lean on administrators (compared to other schools anyway) and only spend about $2 million on administration. Larger districts spend expotentially more there as well. Schools have a LOT of room to cut the fat, only they don't have to because they have a guaranteed income every year and can increase that income at their will. You say you're averaging $9500 per student... we're around $15000 per student here (and this is western NY, not NYC... the cost of living is far cheaper here, though the taxes will kill you and the economy has been in the toilet for decades (which is why housing is dirt cheap)). Surely we can cut $5500 for vouchers for each kid if you're operating that much cheaper than us and having better results.
You still haven't answered the question of what happens to the kids who are rejected by private schools. Do they not get an education at all? Or do they have to stick with their local public school, which now can't even keep the lights on because the other students have left and taken their funding with them?
They can apply to the future private schools that will open. Yeah, it's going to take a year or two... in the meantime, they'll continue to be saddled with the same (lack of) education that you're intent on them having in the first place. As for the school not keeping it's lights on, please... like the schools are 100% efficient and have no room to tighten their budgets. Also, if there are less kids going there, there will be less need for teachers at that school (which is the single largest expense in a public school budget). If you have 400 teachers for 2000 kids at an expense of $20 million per year and lose 1000 kids, you now only need 200 teachers at an expense of $10 million per year.
That's an interesting theory, but it flies in the face of basic economics. If you suddenly increase demand (give every family $2000 to spend on tuition) without increasing supply, prices go up to keep the demand under control. Now the education that used to cost $2000 will cost $4000 instead, because the school doesn't have enough space or staff to accept every student who shows up with a voucher in hand.
Supply WILL increase. There will be an incentive to create new schools because kids who couldn't afford to attend non-public schools otherwise will have the money to do so. Will it happen overnight? Probably not... it'll take a couple years for it to all shake out.
And again, there is nothing that says a private school HAS to take all students who apply. They could limit the size of each graduating class.
And where do you live that public education is only costing $2000-4000 per student? Public education is closer to $15,000 each here (western NY). Spending has already doubled in the last 15 years and there is nothing to show for it except a higher dropout rate and a diploma that no longer means you can make change.
should we saddle those kids with a near guaranteed bad education or should we give them the same opportunities that the rich kids have?
False dichotomy. There's another alternative, which is to study the public schools that work and apply whatever it is they're doing to the ones that don't work.
The public schools that work are run more like private schools. Limited acceptance, parental involvement, etc. Those that are open to anyone tend to be in better towns with more affluence and parents who care what their kids are doing. School's can't copy that, it starts at home. You want a solution there? Tie the welfare benefits to the children's success in school (yes, I know it's far wider than a welfare problem... but I'd venture that 90% of the children receiving welfare are involved with dropouts and low grades).
There's no reason why you can't put an income cap to receive vouchers either if that's what you're worried about.
Well, there is one reason: it goes against the principles that are supposedly behind vouchers in the first place. If it's wrong to force people to pay into a school system they aren't using, then what does income have to do with it?
What I'm worried about is not that rich folks will be able to take advantage of vouchers -- it's that (1) vouchers won't actually make private schools much more accessible, (2) to the extent that they do make private schools more accessible, they'll also make them perform worse, because their performance has more to do with exclusivity than efficiency, and (3) "competition" from vouchers will make public schools worse, not better, with dire consequences for the students who still attend public school.
I'm trying to find middle ground with those who don't support vouchers... Isn't it liberals who always talk about shades of gray? Someone complained that vouchers would give an unfair advantage to rich kids so means test it if that resolves the problem.
1) Vouchers will absolutely make private schools more accessible in the same way that college grants make going to college (public or private) more accessible. I got to go to a private college that was $20k a year for about $2000 a year. Without the grants, I wouldn't have had that opportunity. If a parent can send their kid to a private school at the cost of an extra 5 hours of week of work (assuming a minimum wage job), don't you think they would do it? Don't you think that, if kid's education meant an extra (albiet fairly small) sacrifice on the part of the parent, the parent would most likely instill the value of education in their kid?
2) Again, nothing says private schools can't keep minimum standards. You want to get into a private school, well, you have to earn it by showing you value your education. Again, if you are go
1. If the vouchers can be used at religious schools, that obviously raises First Amendment issues.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;"
Congress cannot make or promote any particular religion. The First Amendment does not guarantee freedom FROM religion, just that the government won't officially endorse one.
As such, if I choose to use my voucher to go to St. Bob's Institute for Christianity, Buddha's Home for Enlightenment, Mohammad's Center for Sharia Education, or Jim's School of Secularity, it doesn't matter... the government isn't endorsing any religion in any of those cases; The parents have made their choice of where to send their kid.
Taking money out of the public school system makes the public schools worse for everyone who chooses to stay in them (or can't afford to switch, or can't get accepted by a private school - see below).
Doubling the money spent in the public school system hasn't helped it, who says taking money away and forcing them to become more efficient will make it worse? My school property taxes go up 6-15% every year. In a $30 million budget for ~2000 kids, they can't find anywhere to trim the fat because they don't have to. The school is so full of inefficiency, it's sickening... and a lot of that comes down to the rules the union imposes on the school (teacher's teach 4 classes, oversee a lunch or study hall and have 4 classes off a day. They all get their own room, which sits empty half the day, even though every 5 years, the school board decides to add on a new $25 million expansion to make more room for students. They get tenure after their first year and even the teachers who come in drunk can't be fired. A 23 year old teacher fresh out of college gets paid above the median income for my town and within 10 years, it just about doubles. Etc). $11 million on salary, $6 million on benefits, $6 million on building loans, $175k on books.
What do they have to show for it? Drop out rates have doubled since 1995, test scores are down across the board despite the tests being easier, kids can't do basic math (stuff I was doing before kindergarten), they can't follow directions, they can't figure out how to do trivial tasks (like mopping a floor) themselves, their vocabularies are ridiculously small, etc. The school has failed by nearly every measure to educate kids and prepare them for adult life. They can't function in a work place, they don't know anything about raising a family, and aren't prepared for college, etc. About all they can handle is asking mom and dad for money, driving to the mall and hanging out with their friends.
Frankly, maybe if the public schools were forced to do with a little less, it would make them think about what they're actually doing so they could make it better... because it sure doesn't get worse.
The vouchers aren't guaranteed to cover tuition at any private school, which means they may end up as little more than handouts to the rich families who can afford to pay the difference between $voucher and $tuition.
Lots of private schools give out scholarships and if more students are coming on vouchers, it'll free up more of that scholarship money to let more kids come in. Vouchers would open up private schools to far more kids than who currently have access to them now... should we saddle those kids with a near guaranteed bad education or should we give them the same opportunities that the rich kids have? There's no reason why you can't put an income cap to receive vouchers either if that's what you're worried about.
Private schools often perform better simply because they can reject "problem" students, or because of factors at home (parents who are involved, proper nutrition, etc.) that vouchers will not address. Requiring private schools to accept all students will drag down their performance; not requiring them to accept all students means the ones who
My parents' generation ripped a hole in the ozone, my generation outlawed CFCs worldwide and the hole is shrinking.
We've been able to quantify the ozone for a couple of decades. Several decades of measurements of a several billion year old system does not a scientific fact guarantee.
My parents' generation started AFDC, which actually caused the poverty LBJ declared war on to get worse. My generation abolished AFDC and started TANF, which is geared to getting poor people into the workforce and out of poverty.
Your parents' generation started AFDC.... and the oldest boomers likely voted for the people who created it. Those same people (elected with the help of boomers in 1964) were the ones who declared the Social Security taxes to be part of the general fund (oops, I mean, we'll write IOUs to the Social Security Trust Fund) to balance out their budget for the increased spending.
Fast forward a couple decades and TANF is getting a handful of people into the workforce, but it doesn't solve the underlying problem of families receiving welfare generating large numbers of kids who will, in turn, either end up in jail or on welfare themselves. Your generation, not satisfied with voting in politicians (and later becoming them), who gave us a $8 trillion debt, in addition to spending the Social Security Trust Fund ensuring that your kids will have to pay for your retirement, now wants the government to permanently take over 1/7th of the US economy.
That is, of course, after your generation sold out our economy with programs like NAFTA. What won WWII? Our manufacturing ability... so lets send the jobs and capacity overseas. Meanwhile, we'll raise minimum wage again, causing mass inflation to benefit some teenagers while those who make more than minimum wage (read low income adults who can't get a manufacturing job anymore) don't get a similar increase.
As long as we're on the subject of money, let's double what we spend on education while results continue to get worse. Kids today can't make change, they don't understand logic, have a hard time spelling even trivial words in their infinitesimal vocabulary, etc. Why? Because their parents, your generation, is too busy working two jobs so you can have the mansion, two cars, take a dream vacation every year, etc and you ignore your kids. From the time they're born, they're sent to daycare. Once they go to school, it's up to the school not just to educate them but to focus on their self esteem, hand out birth control to your 11 year old without your knowledge so you don't have to have an awkward talk with them, etc. All of that while you haven't prepared them for school by teaching them to count, know their ABCs or to add and subtract numbers because that would interfere with your "me time."
My parents' generation started the Vietnam war, our protests stopped it and got a President to resign in shame.
Your generation allowed the genocide of 3 million people at the hands of fun guys like Pol Pot when you decided to just cut and run (much like you want to do with Iraq now). Your generation spat in the faces of drafted soldiers who had no choice but to fight when they did finally get home. If your generation was the one that fought Hitler, you would have likely surrendered the day after Pearl Harbor because who gives a crap about alliances and national security anyway... I mean, it's not like we need borders anymore. Let's naturalize the entire world and let them come in without scrutiny or limits.
Your generation gave away the Panama Canal (btw, GWB wasn't the worst President in US history, Carter, that guy your generation elected, was), stood idle while the Shah was overthrown and our embassy overrun in Iran, and trained and funded Osama bin Laden. Your generation ended the Cold War (well, you opposed every step of it but we'll give you credit for being alive and middle-aged anyway).
started an even more senseless war just so he and his oil bud
So, if the CIA gives the President bad intel, (or FEMA screws up or the Attorney General fires some people or ...) it's the President's fault... but if the House Judiciary Committee screws up, it's the fault of, uh, someone other than the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee? Being the boss means the buck stops with you when someone screws up under you (large corporations not withstanding).
At least be consistent.
People on the right want to make things as hopeless as possible because they aren't concerned about the social security issue, they just want to kill it.
People on the right ARE concerned about social security and that's why they want to do something about it. The Democrats and their 527s are the ones running the ads saying the Republicans want to kill and starve the old people. They're the ones who stand in the way of any reform knowing damn well that the fund is going insolvent soon... REAL soon by macroeconomics standards.
Anyone who thinks this generation is going to pay in and not get their money back is going to get zapped. If the rich get soaked, the rich get soaked. Almost no one in this country is saving enough for retirement sans social security check (or even with).
Add up the money of all the billionaires in the US... take every penny they hae. You might get a trillion dollars... we're talking about an existing $8 trillion debt and yearly budgets of that amount in the next 15 years to cover expenditures. Our GDP is $13.13 trillion right now and government is eating up a quarter of it while still putting us deeper in debt right now.
And that debt is just federal level debt. NY is another $80 billion in the hole themselves. "Nobody" is saving the money for retirement because they can't afford to with the current level of taxation... so the solution constantly trotted out by the left is MORE social spending to make up for it. It's only going to accelerate the bankruptcy of the federal government. Why do you think the US dollar is at an all time low? The money is growing worthless as the US becomes closer to insolvency. If you think it's bad now, just wait another 10 years.
The Republicans are so slimy, they know taxes are going to have to go up, they're just not going to do it. They're going to leave it to the Democrats after it gets so bad there's no choice. It's a cynical game of chicken and it's disgusting.
It's already beyond that point... but budgets are a two way street. You can trim spending or you can increase your income. Raising taxes will give you a short term increase in funds but over the long haul, it will stall the economy, especially if you have to go from 25% of GDP to 50% of GDP just to maintain your current programs at their current levels, taking into account all the new eligible recipients.
The Great Society is a bust... we've spent trillions of dollars to eliminate poverty and we still have just as many poor people today. We've destroyed the urban family in the process. We paid for it by stealing money from the Social Security Trust Fund to hide the tax increase that was needed to pay for it for the last 42 years. The answer isn't new spending programs... that's the exact cause of the problems in the first place.
Nothing makes me madder than all this 'low taxes make the economy grow, so don't "steal" my money' crap. Yes, to a point, but the sad fact of the matter is that a lot of spending is needed to make the economy grow. This isn't 1800 dude, a modern economy needs modern infrastructure, and it ain't cheap. Rich people get the most advantage out of all this too. There are plenty of places where there are extremely low taxes, but of course you don't see anyone starting anything other than a shell company there.
And the social safety nets create a disincentive to take care of yourself and your family. Why work to pay for your kids when "the government" will do it anyway? Daddy doesn't need to be in the picture anymore, he can impregnant every chick on the block and every one of them is taken care of.
You want to see what high taxation and endless government spending does to an economy? Spend a year or two living in Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse or Elmira. The businesses are gone, the 20 and 30 somethings are gone because they can't get jobs without businesses despite going to some great colleges here, etc. The solution here is the same as yours, spend
Bad form to reply to myself, but I just got out of the shower and that's the best place to think.
I find it funny that the U generation (those who fought in WWII) were enabled by the V generation (hippies) to create this debt. The U generation aged and the V generation took over power and the V generation is still doing everything it can to throw even more money at the U generation (Medicare Part D, refusal to change Social Security for younger generations, etc). Part of that is probably the greed of knowing the first V generation people are filing for their Social Security benefits, so the rest of them will start cashing in soon too. We have an $8 trillion debt right now and in a few years, it's going to take that amount yearly to pay for the tens of millions of boomers collecting money every year. Still not satisfied, they want to socialize the entire health industry.
They can criticize GWB's spending (and I will too), but $1799 billion of the $2592 budget is already going to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and interest on the debt. The last thing anyone on the left has the right to complain about is government spending, much less on Unconstitutional (read, government stealing your rights) programs created by them, especially as they try to create more programs, spending and debt.
Generations X and Y are royally screwed thanks to the policies of our parents and grandparents... the last thing we should be doing is pandering to them and defending and promoting their ideology that got us here.
Along the lines of the 1960s, military spending and budgets, it was the Social Security Act of 1965 that dissolved the trust fund and put the Social Security funds into the general budget. The general government was projecting deficits due to the Great Society programs, so LBJ, along with a Democratic House and Senate (both with Democratic super-majorities), decided to fill the deficit with those monies.
Reagan got blamed for the debt problems in the 1980s (ignoring that the budget was controlled by Tip O'Neill), but the problems started 20 years earlier.
I do find it rather interesting that, at least in my high school, American History always ended with WWII and the creation of the United Nations. We never talked about Korea and we never talked about Vietnam. We never talked about the Great Society or our the meddling in Iran. Certainly, none of that stuff was in our text books. I wonder just how many kids grew up with absolutely no knowledge about the post-WWII era other than what their parents passed on about it (and if it mattered enough to their parents to talk about it, it's probably because their parents have a strong feeling (read bias) about such things).
NYC (and the entire Hudson Valley corridor up to Albany) control the state government. The big three: Sheldon Silver, Joe Bruno, and Eliot Spitzer all hail from that area, as does virtually every other state-wide politician (Andrew Cuomo, Thomas DiNapoli, Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton (ok, she's never actually spent a day in NY but bought a house near NYC so she could run for the Senate), etc).
It is the state that sets policy for things like Medicaid. Those policies are some of the primary things drowning upstate right now. Every year, the cost of Medicaid exceeds inflation and taxes are raised yet again to make up for it. The same can be said with school budgets growing by 6-15% every year due to mandates from the NYCers in Albany. Meanwhile, programs like ELP (Extended Learning Program) which are focused on gifted kids are being cut because they aren't mandated (while special ed for the slow kids is) to free up more money for the mandates. The taxes, required by the governments that don't know how to stop creating more spending, are driving businesses out and with the businesses, the young people who will make up the future of the economy. The aging population retiring isn't the only problem - losing tons of people from future tax rolls is just as big, if not bigger.
Even prior to their fall in the digital age, Kodak was busy shipping jobs to other states/countries in the early 90s to try to shed some of the costs of doing business in NY. My grandfather was one of three film cutters in Rochester and watched his job go to Canada before digital cameras ever landed on a retail shelf. It's not like the jobs were being outsourced to China to avoid pretty much any regulation then (that came later), Canada was seen as a much cheaper place of conducting business than NY and it was still just a hop away on a plane (or a couple hours by car). The state is driving business out, NYC is just the last to see it because of it's long entrenched state as the economic capital of the world. However, that's eroding too. Spitzer set the trend of suing everyone on Wall Street that he didn't like and Andrew Cuomo appears to be following suit. How long before those companies start moving to NJ, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Connecticut or London to avoid NY's overzealous squad of lawyers?
As for how far I live from the economic centers, I live in a rural county, so it's par for the course. I assume you want your dairy, corn, potatoes, apples, etc. You need space to grow that kind of stuff. My point was simply that the high gasoline taxes weigh more heavily on upstaters who have to drive than people in NYC who walk or hop on the subway... and again, NYC needs us to grow their food, so we don't really have a choice about having a bunch of farm land between our houses and various stores. Because they (NYCers and the politicians in Albany (many of whom are from NYC)) largely don't have to deal with it, they don'y really see the problem.
State level taxes, mandates, etc are the policies hurting us (and what originally started driving business out of upstate) and can only be resolved by the state.
I had forgotten about them, but check out Unshackle Upstate for at least one group's (composed of 60 trade groups from upstate) study/opinion on what the state needs to do to help fix upstate.
Um no. It would be good if they would kick storm-infested clients off the net or block everything except http(s) and ftp until they fix their machines. But that should only be done to clients who were identified to be infected, no every customer of that ISP.
So, are you for or against blocking? You're for it when it's convenient to you, against it when it's not. At least be consistent. And sure, block everything but port 80 and 20/21 traffic, it's not like those ports can't still be used for worms.
The fact remains: When other - way smaller - ISPs can handle P2P traffic and still offer high-speed connections w/o any noticeable impact to their customers connection, than this multi-billion-dollar ISP Comcast should be able to get their bloody act together as well.
Are we talking about a small company who sells service on someone else's copper/fiber or a small company that runs wire to your house? The big companies have to pay to run the wires all over the place, whether everyone is using it or not. There's about 100 miles of road in my town; The phone and electric companies cover 95% of it (there are some roads with houses on either end but farm land between, so the lines don't go down the entire road) and the cable company covers about 80% of it (it's not cost effective to roll cable out five miles to hook up one person. They won't pay back the cost in their lifetime). If you're talking a co-op that covers one building, their infrastructure costs are small. If you're talking about some type of wireless for a limited number of people, again, costs are pretty small. If you're talking about renting some space on the telco's rack, again, the costs are smaller than operating the full copper network.
I'm not trying to make excuses for Comcast, just noting that full networks don't necessarily scale as well as selected networks. A delivery pizza joint might be profitable delivering within the village limits, but would lose money delivering to a full town or county (note that there is a 1 sq mile village within the town where I live). Fortunately, my provider has been pretty good (I almost always get my full 10 Mbit throughput with 2 digit latencies. The one exception being USENET where I get about 80% of my speed). My biggest complaint is that I'm still stuck at 384Kbit up, though I could switch to 15Mbit/1Mbit for an extra $15/month if I really cared. The local phone company isn't big enough to roll out FIOS. but the cable provider and them have been inching up their speeds over the last few years, especially as we're seeing Verizon roll out FIOS a couple counties to the east.
Overselling is normal practice. Every ISP on earth is overselling its bandwidth, it's just common sense. You only run into problems when you do it too much.
The problem is determining what exactly is "too much." It's like defining pornography. 99% of people might think the current bandwidth is fine while 1% complain. Similarly, 99% of people might complain a woman showing her ankles isn't pornographic while 1% complain it is. If someone truly needs guaranteed throughput, they should really consider a T1 or T2. If they don't want to pay that much, then they don't have a lot of room to complain.
There are probably only a handful of people at each local franchise who knows how oversold the pipes are, I certainly don't. If they're oversold to the point where you can't have P2P at all, I think there's a problem. If they're oversold to the point where you get 20% of your regular speed on P2P (after QoS prioritization to keep interactive apps working right) and 99% of people are happy, I'm less concerned. Does it suck? Absolutely. However, again, if you want a guaranteed minimum level of service for every app, you're going to have to pay for it. My local cable franchise has a setup where their VOIP gets it's own channel (shared with other VOIP users) while your internet service gets another. I don't see much of a problem with that either. Rather a maximum level
You can always price out a T2 instead of complaining about your cable service so you don't have an oversold pipe. Of course, you don't want to pay full price for the level of service that you want, you expect all those web surfing dolts to subsidize you.
Lest you think I'm just some cable apologizer, I don't like the advertising either. When I first got my cable modem, the advertising was "up to 10 Mbit/s" while the modems were capped at 2Mbit/s. It took 6 or 7 years to finally get the level of service I was sold. I just think you're being hypocritical for bitching they should block one service while leaving your pet service unthrottled and then complaining you aren't getting your money's worth when your monthly payment only covers a fraction of the cost of the full bandwidth you want.
What New York state government policies are causing the economic climate in upstate new york that in turn causes businesses (and young people) to depart?
The worst of it comes down to unfunded mandates. The state's Medicaid costs are being shifted more and more onto the shoulders of the counties. For someplace like Rochester, who already lost Kodak and Xerox to foreign countries being cheaper to operate in, that means higher sales and property taxes. Higher sales tax means your dollar doesn't go as far (and when you've switched from a nice job at Kodak to a retail/service job, that really hurts) and higher property taxes means it's harder for families to stay here and it's another increase in expenses for businesses wanting to operate here. No business = no jobs = no 20 or 30 somethings sticking around = a further eroding tax base.
The same goes for schools. My school district had a budget of $14 million back in 1995. This year's budget was $30 million. $250,000 of it was optional spending. If we voted no, we'd get the exact same budget minus a couple new buses. Why? Pretty much everything is mandated by the state and the local school board has no real control. My house is assessed around $80k (3 bedroom, 1 bath, 2.5 car garage on an acre of land... values are so cheap since nobody wants to live here and nobody can afford to spend too much on a service job salary anyway). My school taxes were $1013 for school (with a $660 STAR discount) and $1371 town/county. That's $2400 a year ($3000 if I didn't actually live in my house) in just property taxes for a place with a median income of $31k and my house is still about $40k under the average house value. That puts the average house around $4500 a year. On top of that, there's a 4% state sales tax and a 4% local sales tax cutting out another good chunk of that meager income.
Factor in the highest gasoline (just try to get around without a car. My nearest grocery store is 2.2 miles away, nearest general merchandise store is 14 miles away and nearest speciality stores are 25 miles away) taxes in the nation (63 cents/gallon if I remember the story in the paper about a year ago right). Insurance (car/health/home owner)? Some of the highest in the country due to the mandates of the NYS Insurance Board. I dropped my single policy (health) last year when mandates drove it up to $1432/3 months as a 29 year old.
So, you need businesses to have an economy, right? That minimum wage increase a couple years ago cost a third of the people at the restaurant I managed their job (ok, so we did it via attrition as they left for college rather than firing them directly). In their place, everyone has to work that much harder (well, as hard as you can get an uneducated 17 year old to work even though they just got a 40% raise). Oh, we had to raise prices to make up for it too, which, in turn, is an inflative pressure, especially since the long term employees (read adults) who made more than the minumum wage didn't get a 40% pay increase with it. Let's not forget the ever-rising costs of workers compensation (with the benefit of having some of the lowest payout rates in the nation). Actually, we could spend hours on business problems created by Albany/NYC.
Ultimately, what it all boils down to is the size government is always growing (10% growth this year) while more and more people are fleeing. Over the next 10-15 years, as the baby boomers (those people who are most likely to be earning the prime money in the economy right now) retire and the tax base erodes even more (since the 20-45 crowd will be gone at that point based on current trends), good luck having any kind of economy. Who's going to pay the bills, the kids in high school and college and the handful of 45-60 year olds who didn't get out? Businesses? hah! The rest of them who can flee to less taxed and regulated states will. All we'll be left with is retail and government jobs... and government is a net drain on the economy.
New York State is $50 billion in d
You do realize that Rochester has Ginna and not too far away in Oswego, there is Nine Mile Point and Fitzpatrick? All are nuclear plants (NY's 4th nuclear plant being Indian Point, outside NYC).
My bill from National Grid breaks down my (standard) power as:
Biomass <1%
Coal 11%
Gas 9%
Hydro 32%
Nuclear 41%
Oil 6%
Solar <1%
Solid Waste 2%
Wind <1%
Air emissions relative to NYS average:
Sulfur Dioxide 62% of average
Nitrogen Dioxide 62% of average
Carbon Dioxide 59% of average
Again, those numbers are for standard National Grid with their default power source. The mileage of those who want green power or who choose a different provider may vary. You'll also see that NG covers a pretty good chunk of the area you're talking about.
I have no clue what NYC's power is like (minus Indian Point), but if my area is around 60% of the average pollution, I'd have to say NYC is probably much closer to the average.
We're definitely the most economically depressed, but right now, power generation isn't our problem... taxes are. And new taxes (passed on from the state via the electric companies) will definitely make things even worse than they are now. What we need is to force more businesses, recent grads and young families to move to another state due to a hostile economy.
You can sit there in your smog filled city feeling smug about yourself, but the fact is, you need us more than we need you. We're self-sufficient as far as the necessities of life go. Have a nice riot when you guys figure out that you can't grow enough food to feed yourselves and can't get enough electricity to provide your air conditioning, heating and subways. I'm sure your centers of commerce will thrive under those conditions. Please, Confederate States of America, rise again and leave the Union. Take President Bush and Guantanamo Bay with you when you go. You won't be missed. /cough just remember, there's not much value of a terrorist attack on a silo. Foreigners who dislike Americans have a mental picture not of some hillbilly in Kansas, they picture the decadence of NYC or LA.
Not that I'm saying anything about Hans, but smart people do stupid things... Many people will commit crimes they think they can get away with ranging from jaywalking and speeding to embezzelment and murder. A lot of serial killers, in particular, are smart enough to cover their tracks and don't get caught until they get bored by the fact that they've outsmarted everyone for so long(see Dennis Rader, aka BTK, for an example).
As a side note, I just stopped over at Kuro5hin to see what they were up to. I left that site, oh, 4 or 5 years ago maybe, because of the same thing that is happening to slashdot now. K5 appears to be a ghost town these days. If that's what everyone wants Slashdot to become, keep splitting us down the middle on politics. VI and Emacs, GNOME and KDE, Apple vs PC, etc are just the tools we use, politics (and religion) are who we are and how we define ourselves.
I am one of your "rover boys" with a low 5 digit account. Odd that I'm implied to be an arm of Karl Rove and that he's the lone political operator in the US. You do realize that the left has their own Roves like James Carville, right?.
What exactly has me worked up lately, causing me to troll slashdot? I come to slashdot primarily for techology and other nerdly stuff primarily. I expect a little politics to be thrown into some things because they overlap and it is acceptable in moderation. However, ever since Al Gore lost the 2000 election, every story about electronic voting (and a LOT of stories not about it) has the people who can't stand that Gore lost posting that Bush stole the election. These posts and their variations inevitably get modded to +4 or +5. I don't come here for regurgitated DU or moveon comments. If I want to see such things, I will go to those sites.
As time went on, more and more stories became infected with politics so Slashdot opened up a section for political stories. Creating that section made Slashdot even about politics and polarized the factions of users here. No longer was it about a place to go get tech news, it was a place where people could go off on their little conspiracy theories, anti bush rants, etc. Those comments were eagerly moderated up and many well written, well thought out posts who disagreed were moderated down as troll, flamebait, etc. The more political Slashdot became, the more certain dogma was accepted as fact and the less dissent was tolerated. At best, someone who disagreed with the dogma wouldn't be moderated but their voices would be drowned out by various sheep of the leftist causes, be it global warming, what to do with people in gitmo, a conspiracy to take down the WTC that would have taken hundreds or thousands of people to orchestrate, etc. Most of it is blatently unfactual if you look passed the dogma and for as critical and intelligent slashdotters consider themselves to be, they just can't see the truth.
At this point, Slashdot seems to mostly post stories which continue to favor these people, sometimes going out of their way to frame the argument before it can be discussed. Hiring new editor Keith Dawson (kdawson) seems to be primarily to do that. Frankly, I'm sick of it all and I want the old slashdot back. As it is, the entire site has turned into that which many (most?) of us once despised, a giant Jon Katz troll.
If Slashdot wants honest political debate and to not simply become Dailykos with more tech, everyone needs to step back on the political stories. Don't post crap like I saw a few minutes ago about how Limbaugh and Hannity literally want liberals to die. Don't blame everything on Rove, Bush, Cheney, et al. Stop painting all republicans with the Mark Foley brush unless you want things to degenerate even more. As the website says, "move on" from the past elections, you can't change them. Learn from them and find a way to make a better system but back it up with hard facts and not soft sciences and conspiracy hypotheses.
In short, the trolling, flame baiting, ad hominems, etc neeed to not only stop, but stop being moderated up. Open up your minds enough that you're willing to ask yourself why you believe what you believe and if there is something that you should change about it to make it more correct. Be as critical of your own ideas as you are of others. Slashdot editors need to stop posting stories that are obvious trolls.
To those who say that this is news for nerds and stuff that matters, yes... politics matter. However, is slashdot a site about technology, first and foremost, or just another DU echo chamber?