Given your (oft well founded) distrust of government, why do you think government employees shouldn't be allowed to band together to make sure they don't get screwed over by their management?
I gave my main reason in the post you replied to.
Public sector unions have labor reps sitting down and bargaining with politicians, who get boatloads of money from unions, over how much of other people's money unions should get. There is nobody representing the taxpayers' interests in these "negotiations".
I don't have time at the moment to check your links or go into a lengthy reply, I must get going for now. I've got to work on a custom guitar amp build for a customer of mine and then leave to set up for a gig tonight..I'm also a lead guitarist in a blues band. I'll look at them later tonight or tomorrow and will reply more fully afterwards.
Again, given the decline in education unionization, and also the wide availability of union-free education sectors (a solid majority at 60%) for comparison...
Which regular government-run public schools employ non-union teachers? Got any links to data backing your claims? Your use of the term "education unionization" sounds like weasel-words to lump in janitorial/maintenance, IT, and other non-teaching jobs into the numbers to make your 60% claim. Prove me wrong.
I don't have any problems with unions in the private sector where there is the option for employees to opt out of union membership without penalty or losing their job/position/pay. If employees feel abused by their employer sufficiently, they will join. If they don't feel abused such that a union seems worth the dues they must pay, in the employees' opinions, they won't join, or will leave if a member.
Public-sector unions are just plain evil. They should all be abolished yesterday.
Public sector unions have labor reps sitting down and bargaining with politicians, who get boatloads of money from unions, over how much of other people's money unions should get. There is nobody representing the taxpayers' interests in these "negotiations".
The central C&C, Federal-run US education system is crashing and burning.
It's time to get the government and the teacher's unions out of the schools. Either that or encourage more parents to pull students out of public schools.
We'll have to continue on the "agree to disagree" line here, since I think you're making a mistake by reflexively lumping "unionization" in with the problems. Union membership and representation is at historical lows, and still declining; problems due to "unions" should thus be declining, not rising. Granted, the education sector is still fairly highly unionized compared to other industries, but that's still only 39.2% of employees covered by union representation (source: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/union2.pdf [bls.gov]). There's no indication of the majority 60% of the education system without unions being more free from the problems of teach-to-the-test "one size fits all" management metrics based education.
Yes, unions allow some bad teachers to stick around; I've had a few of those. They also allow especially good teachers --- the ones who cause trouble for higher management by sticking up for the individual needs of students instead of succumbing to uniform mediocrity --- to have a voice. From my own experience, my best teachers (who were willing to go through the trouble of dealing with a problematically way-ahead-of-standardized-grade-level kid like me) were rarely management favorites, and often burned out (or were forced out) and left for the far better conditions of jobs outside public education. Unions stand up for smaller class sizes, well educated teachers, diverse curricula, individual attention to students --- not cramming everything into a testing-driven, mass-production assembly line. Yes, these things raise educational costs (and cut into profitable opportunities for the privatization goons), but they're also mainly the things that make the education provided worthwhile at all.
Nothing "reflexive" about my including unions. I did not claim they were the major cause. Actually, the far-too-powerful teacher's unions are a symptom of the government meddling outside it's Constitutional scope & powers as well.
Unions stand up for smaller class sizes, well educated teachers, diverse curricula, individual attention to students --- not cramming everything into a testing-driven, mass-production assembly line. Yes, these things raise educational costs (and cut into profitable opportunities for the privatization goons), but they're also mainly the things that make the education provided
You don't need unions, the Federal government, or a one-size-fits-all, history-rewriting, "Common Core"-type homogenized & "PC" curriculum, to provide those things. All that stuff is a continuation of the same old shit that has gotten us here to this point of having an embarrassment of a US public education system. I've watched it happen in slo-mo over the last half-century.
Insanity, in one definition, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome each time.
"Feminization" is the wrong word for this. If you take female young children, and don't systematically indoctrinate them into quietly playing "tea" and "shopping" with dolls, a whole lot of them will love to run around and explore and compete, too. True, some of them won't, and will prefer quietly playing make-believe with dolls --- the same of which is true for some young male children, who won't all automatically be little wild roughhousing monsters. Kids of both genders show a variety of individual behaviors, frequently including thriving on unstructured, rambunctious activity.
Blaming poor treatment of children on sexist stereotypes ("feminization") is misplaced. "Femininity" is not to blame for the authoritarian, "sit down shut up and behave to become good obedient workers" schooling approach, which is usually dictated from above by overwhelmingly male upper-level administrators. Teachers interacting with students are primarily female, since societal sexism leaves lower-paying and less desirable jobs to women; however, teachers increasingly have little influence at all over school policy (they are expendable labor, who must submit to management priorities or be fired). When I was in school at the beginning of the transition into the "zero tolerance" era, none of my teachers supported those policies; that crap was being forced down from above, from a wealthy white male administrative class with MBAs (not from "touchy feely female teachers").
You and I had quite the discussion going recently where we could not agree. We will have to have a gentleman's agreement to agree to disagree.
That said...
Here, you are spot-on. Great post.
Following on from where you left off, it's a combination of quite intentional financial and political pressures by both government and powerful groups like unions, coming all the way down the chain while constantly being added to along the way. From top federal/union levels all the way down to State, county, township, and finally to individual districts and schools with bits and pieces added along the way at each level.
There's simply too many damned bureaucrats, unions, laws, regulations, and corrupt politicians involved in trying to have the Federal government run education. Look around. Most of the population under 40 are ignorant and clueless. Literacy rates are plummeting in the US. Many can't name the three branches of government nor tell you the name of their own Senator or Representative, or why that's even important.
We need to move past the immensely destructive Federally-controlled/directed, heavily unionized, "one size fits all" education system model.
It has failed spectacularly and expensively.
Whatever the solution is, it is NOT adding more of the same increasingly centralized/Federalized/unionized/politicized crap, and the corruption & dysfunction that accompanies it, that has been added as solutions and over and over for decades both in Canada and the US, that's gotten things to this laughably-pathetic, sick Orwellian type of playground rule from TFS and the "suspended-for-"gun-shaped"-poptart" type of zero-tolerance insanity that makes the children the true victims when it's all said and done.
One thing regarding the US school system "zero-tolerance" idiocy that I don't think they took into account is that, if you want kids to almost certainly do/try something, tell them "no".
Well they're BlueStrat, they have done more harm than good, putting innocent bystanders in the middle of their hackings to prove their point which you should never do if you're trying to prove a point.
Apparently you skipped right over the part of my post where I said that some things I disagree with Anonymous on.
The subject was speech regarding this demonstration. I fully support their right to assembly, peaceful demonstrations/protests, and free speech. I also strongly disagree with many other groups as well, like the NBPP, KKK, CPUSA, etc etc. But I will similarly fight to the death for their right to peacefully speak out as well.
The answer to speech you don't like is always more speech, not less.
It's always the most unpopular groups who are the first to be silenced. It never ends there once the silencing of those who dissent has begun, however, as history has demonstrated again and again.
To the whole world, the two mainstream US political parties are quite far to the right.
Which is why so many Europeans immigrated to America and why the Revolutionary War happened. Those in America wanted more individual freedom and less government control than any party or government in Britain or the rest of Europe offered or would allow.
They wanted choices other than rule by King or a choice of various flavors/strengths/mixes of socialism/communism/fascism.
You need to get rid of your US-centric perspective.
Acknowledging and pointing out differences is now "US-centric"?
You use that term...I do not think it means what you think it means.
The real metric is where on the scale between Anarchy and Tyranny a government & society falls for the common man.
Everything else is propaganda, distraction, and ideological masturbation.
Your "less spending, small government, no interference" talking points don't work when the encumbent right wing party's pushing through regulation-of-the-press bills, threatening to cut the BBC's funding unless they get back in line, and adding billions of pounds worth of extra administrative layers to the health system. The UK's Conservative party believes in treading lightly where business is concerned, but they're not exactly shy about expanding their footprint when it comes to social control.
Britain's "right wing" would be wildly liberal/progressive/left in the US. Britain simply has one leftist party with a branch that is slightly more moderate.
Maybe it's time to stop supporting three political parties all of which are further to the right than Thatcher.
But I guess everyone has to start somewhere, and that somewhere sometimes involves wearing a mask and burning stuff.
Yes, because supporting the left, who believe the solution to all problems is to grant government even more power and control, will nip that abuse of government power and control right in the bud.
Yup, right in the bud.
Bud, zoom, gone.
Makes perfect sense.
Strat
In the spirit of things, I choose to set fire to your strawman.
You use that word...I do not think it means what you think it means. Yes, the "set fire to your strawman" line is cute, but you really should have waited to trot that one out in a reply where it might have made sense.
The left advocates for a stronger, more powerful government because that's what is required to implement and manage things like wealth redistribution/entitlements and nationalized services and resources. They themselves admit as much.
Therefor, if the problem is government power & control being abused, putting people in charge who will grant the government even more power & control (the left) is antithetical to the goal of reducing/eliminating government abuse of their power & control.
Maybe it's time to stop supporting three political parties all of which are further to the right than Thatcher.
But I guess everyone has to start somewhere, and that somewhere sometimes involves wearing a mask and burning stuff.
Yes, because supporting the left, who believe the solution to all problems is to grant government even more power and control, will nip that abuse of government power and control right in the bud.
Anonymous is a bunch of mindless vigilante manchildren and idiotic trolls. Maybe if mommy has to go bail them out they'll grow up.
Why hello there, tool of the police state!
After the government is done jailing all the people exercising their 1A rights whom you didn't support because they said things you disapprove of, they'll get around to you.
Some things about, and actions taken by, Anonymous I support. Others I disagree with.
But I'd fight to the death for their right to speak out, because I understand that if they can be silenced, so can I or anyone else.
No the problem is US populations cowardice, where it has allowed itself to be terrorised that allowed this to happen, quite ironic even with all those guns.
No, the problem is not one of cowardice. Remember "Let's roll"? The many stories of bravery by 9/11 emergency responders? All the stunning examples of bravery and sacrifice by our young soldiers?
The problem is the results of a longterm program of propaganda and subversion, destruction of the family unit, destruction of pillars of common moral underpinnings, indoctrination-instead-of-education systems, and other attacks designed to divide, destabilize, encourage illiteracy & ignorance of history, and disenfranchise the population from within, which started at least 60+ years ago.
Actually, it's roots go back to Woodrow Wilson and Edward Bernays.
The government has been carefully and scientifically managing the emotional state of the population for decades, allowing them to gradually "boil the frogs" without a revolt until they are no longer capable of being any serious threat to their grab for ultimate power and control.
When the impending US economic/monetary collapse and accompanying food and other shortages occurs and causes chaos, I fully expect to see the government launch an attempt to forcibly complete the transformation to a full police state.
The disease is a far too large & powerful US Federal government that barely even pays lip-service to the Constitution and it's limits on government powers, if it's not outright publicly and blatantly mocked by those in office.
Large enough to build such a hugely expensive monstrosity, too powerful to be stopped by laws or Constitutional limitations, and able to use it's data to destroy anyone, including politicians supposedly in oversight, that don't "play along".
It's Big Brother powered by the data collection & computer analysis panopticon instead of a telescreen.
This can only result in a lot of blood and lives lost, no matter if the population revolts against or accepts it's new self-appointed masters and new societal paradigms or not. And, no matter who finally triumphs.
Either way, the camps and the mass graves will be filled. If history is any indicator, I think it's far too late at this point to walk this back without a fight. It's also a sure bet that huge numbers of people will be imprisoned/killed if the government keeps going in this direction.
It's whether or not the camps and mass graves last for weeks/months/years with an eventual victory for the people, or decades/centuries/millennia of suffering & death that will be historic in size and scope, that will be decided by whether or not people now decide to stand up and remove the criminals by whatever means necessary and strip the government of a large portion of it's power and wealth, and scrap the panopticon.
No, the authors of the Constitution designed a society specifically set up to place wealthy, white, male landowners in exclusive control of society. Slavery was built into the system from the start.
No, they designed a distributed government of limited powers. History and documents and letters from the founders show that the founders wanted to eliminate slavery when the Constitution was written, but they would have lost the southern states and consequently the revolutionary war against the British if they did not ignore the issue at that time.
"Great as the evil of slavery is, a dismemberment of the union would be worse." - James Madison
"There is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of slavery." - George Washington
"Every measure of prudence therefore ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery from the United States. I have, throughout my whole life, held that the practice of slavery is an abhorrence." - John Adams
There are many more.
As to the "3/5ths" issue, it was only for purposes of the census that slaves were counted as 3/5ths of a person so that the slave-owning states did not acquire an unfair advantage in the number of their representatives in Congress and block any effort to end slavery.
Slavery in the American colonies was started by a black man, Anthony Johnson, who owned a tobacco farm, not a white man. Anthony Johnson, a black, fought in the courts to become the first slave owner in the US. The first black US Senator was Hiram Revels in 1870. The army was non-segregated up until President Woodrow Wilson (D) segregated it.
Concepts like ordinary citizens being able to vote for their national legislators were specifically circumvented.
Voting was at first limited to land owners as a practical matter, as they were the only ones likely to be educated enough to be literate and comprehend what they voted upon, and would be the ones paying the taxes to fund the results. This changed after literacy rates improved.
If you meant the time prior to the 17th Amendment changing US Senate seats from State legislature-elected positions to citizen-elected positions, I believe that was wrong and that Amendment should be changed back to Senate seats being elected by State legislatures, as it has taken too much power away from the States and resulted in a nearly omnipotent Federal government.
Yes, the Constitution contained some good ideas; it's not pure evil, and parts are salvageable. But, neither is it a blueprint for a free and equal society, though it has frequently been mythologized as such.
The US Constitution has resulted in the most free & equal society ever to exist as a nation. Nothing is ever perfect or can ever be perfect that is made by man. Don't allow perfect to be the enemy of good.
Go read some history from first sources, not someone else's interpretations. Read the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers if you want to know what the founders intended regarding the Constitution in their own words. As you demonstrate with your reply, much of that history has been re-written or suppressed.
People do "naturally" trade, but allowing *accumulated wealth* (without limits) to be the single, ultimate deciding factor in society's distribution of resources is the unique point of Capitalism (over varied pre-capitalist and non-capitalist societal mechanisms that still contain elements of trade and private property).
A non-corrupt, well-functioning government which enforced laws & regulations equally mitigates that, and a smaller government with fewer people with fewer/lesser powers available to be suborned making it less attractive/profitable to suborn contributes greatly.
More democratic, decentralized, and egalitarian societal forms do not preclude trade; but they do require alternate arrangements from the "golden rule" of "he who has the gold, rules." Unregulated markets are inherently unstable towards accumulation, monopolization, and ultimately the re-establishment of an elite ruling class that right-Libertarians are nominally seeking to escape.
I don't know of anyone in their right mind seriously suggesting totally eliminating all regulations. That's a false dichotomy. Less does not equal none. There has never been pure capitalism in the US, nor anything approaching an unregulated market in the US since the early 20th century.
I do believe that as much governing as possible be done as locally as possible, and that those in government should only be given barely enough wealth and power to accomplish their duties.
That decentralized society you refer to is exactly what I described and what the authors of the US Constitution tried to design, and did a pretty good job until politicians decided to "improve" on it with laws designed to bypass Constitutional restrictions on government powers and bypass the need for public consent for adding an Amendment. Or, in many if not most cases, just plain.ignoring the Constitution and destroying anyone who protests.
Government size and power has grown immensely, especially over the last ~80 years, yet we see almost daily the rising numbers of ever-more blatant and over-the-top occurrences of both government and private sector corruption and lawless actions with little consequences for the guilty, often even rewarded in the end after any negative PR blows over. How is adding more laws or regulations going to help when those who break existing laws are not held to account?
I think you might have the misconception (I could be wrong) that accumulated individual wealth is simply locked away somewhere in some combination of paper and actual monetary vaults and does nothing to benefit society. To the contrary, that wealth sitting in financial institutions & banks provides capital to lend to individuals for homes/cars/etc and to small businesses.
It in fact expands the amount and scope of resources available to all because of the capital it makes available to invest to increase supply and availability while also bringing costs down and encouraging efficiency of utilization, as that typically brings the highest returns and market advantages.
Also, the accumulated wealth of those who worked, sacrificed, invested, and possibly started a business and became successful does not take that wealth from others. Wealth is fungible and can be created by anyone if they aren't overly-restricted in their freedom to do so by unreasonably-burdensome laws, taxes, or regulations.
Capitalism is not perfect. Far from it. But, mangling the Churchill "democracy" quote; "Capitalism is the worst form of society, except all the others that have been tried."
Most sane people do not feel safe with roaming machine-gun-toting civilians in any venue neither.
OTOH, there hasn't been a single crime committed with a lawfully-owned civilian machine gun (or other automatic firearm) since 1934.
There has not been a single crime committed with a lawfully-owned civilian nuclear device either.
There are many thousands of fully-automatic firearms owned legally by private individuals in the US., unlike your nuclear device example. Heck, the FPSRussia guy had a YT video where he demo'ed a legally civilian-owned fully-auto 40mm Bofors cannon that he was selling.
I wouldn't completely erase the Capitalist/Fascist/Communist/etc. distinctions as being irrelevant compared to the anarchist-authoritarian dimension, for the reason that Capitalism is *always* authoritarian.
I disagree strongly. Capitalism works because all it does is acknowledge what occurs naturally...people trade with each other. Whether it is in the form of barter among primitive tribal peoples or some type of modern monetary/financial system or a black market under non-capitalistic regimes, humans naturally will engage in capitalism without the use of coercive force.
The same is not true of other systems. It is not natural for people to sacrifice the fruits of their labor to others, and in particular, definitely not natural to be compelled under threat of force to sacrifice so much that it negatively impacts them and their families in major ways, as is the case with the central planning and control models like communism, socialism, fascism, etc. It is why those models have historically failed and resulted in horrific suffering among many millions.
Capitalism works by the simple fact that individual people will engage in capitalism with each other naturally on their own without the threat of force. This is rarely true of socialism, communism, fascism, etc, which are typically implemented on national scales by force. Only among small, relatively intimate groups do things like socialism and communism actually work, and are engaged in on a voluntary basis among the individuals.
I know it makes many Americans angry but I don't see much difference between civil liberties in US and China right now, the only one being that US regime is far superior in concealing itself behind "freedom and democracy" mirage.
Not all that long ago, I would have been one of those angry and would have replied with a scathing rebuttal.
These days? No anger. Not at you, certainly.
I think what I feel would more closely track in nature with grief at loss. I don't believe that the US is totally lost. However, I believe it's government has been largely suborned from within.
As I've written in other posts in the past, the metric is not the particular architecture of any system of government (aka force), ie communism, capitalism, fascism, socialism, left, right, etc etc. It is where, on the scale extending from anarchy to tyranny, that system is, Any form of government can become tyrannical, and history shows this is a general rule, when government becomes too powerful, controls too much of people's lives, and unduly limits individual choices.
What *is* relevant is what place on the range scale between Anarchy and Tyranny, or alternately, between Authoritarian and Libertarian (not the US political party) a society, ideology, government, or nation occupies. It also can be described as the struggle between those who believe men cannot govern themselves by mutual consent, and therefor need a central-planning & control system to control everything and everyone, and those who do believe men can govern themselves without a king, dictator, or ruling class/party of elites.
Consequently, the many ideological/political systems which require central planning & control start out already a good ways along the above-described scale towards the "Tyranny" or Authoritarian" side. This is not good from an individual citizen's standpoint, as government grows it's power by taking it from the citizens This has historically been accomplished most often by the simple expedient of killing/starving those individuals and groups who resist and/or are "inconvenient" for some reason, and some groups are simply used to direct hatred and anger against and away from government.
Or rather that if you screw with the NSA's budget and storage center you'll never be found again
Does that include those responsible for all the passive surveillance/monitoring/interception devices/systems which were built into the buildings, infrastructure, and the surrounding areas long before the first server rack was delivered on-site?
You're willing to support someone that has committed crimes that have put all citizens of the US in danger...
Wrong.
Snowden put no one in danger but himself from the US government's efforts to exact revenge for Snowden shining light on corrupt criminal government cockroaches. The US government put US citizens in danger themselves by knowingly violating the restrictions on government powers set forth in the US Constitution. Snowden simply revealed their ongoing crimes and constitutional violations.
Snowden is as much a criminal as is a woman who reveals her cop-rapist's identity to higher authority. In this case, the rapists compose the US Federal Government and the victims are everyone who is not them.
The government did and continues to conspire to violate their oaths of office, the Constitution, and the rights of every citizen because those in power want to monitor and control everything and everyone they can. They are criminals and tyrants for which hanging is far too good a fate.
If the US government had been acting within the powers it is allowed by the Constitution there would never had been any leak, as Snowden would have had nothing to reveal nor have any motive to reveal it.
LMAO!! Sounds about right for the cross-section of/. knee-jerk reactions to raw truths which upset slash-PC group-think.
About a third are able to think critically & logically, and not allow easily manipulated primitive lizard-brain emotional reactions and/or political/partisan ideologies to hold intellectual sway. The rest would seem to prefer to reject objective reality and substitute it with a reality of their own making (or of somebody else's making, for the lazy/apathetic/stupid).
Thanks for all the mod-validations both positive & negative!
That's a good way to make a martyr and galvanize their resolve, actually.... not a very good deterrent, in the same way that capital punishment and 3 strikes laws actually increase the risk of crime because a person on their third strike has nothing to lose.
I disagree. If drones are being used to attack/kill civilians domestically, then the situation for civilians is desperate and any pretense of government restricting itself to any civilized "rules of war" became non-existent long before such retaliations would begin. It would be more of a reply-in-kind type of retaliation.
Being domestic in nature, that puts the drone operators and their superiors local to the conflict and vulnerable. I believe that a sustained extreme-retaliation program against the drone operators/superiors would have the effect of dissuading potential new recruits/replacements and cause insubordination and chaos among the ranks, as many will prefer punishment for refusal to follow orders to attack civilians rather than risk their and their family's lives to horrific deaths.
Bottom line, at the point that the government is using armed drones domestically to kill civilians, any pretense of "civilized" conflict would have been long in the past, and the government would have already "taken it there" in spades regarding "war crime" levels & types of violence against civilians.
The government would have already created many civilian martyrs and strengthened the civilians' resolve by the time such retaliations against armed drone use would start, resulting in such extreme retaliations against them. There would be little for civilians to lose by engaging in such brutal retaliations at that point.
Modern Progressivism & Liberalism: Ideas so good they must be mandatory to function.
So... the above was your idea of progressivism and liberalism?
LOLwut? You're not making any sense. That's a forum "sig", not part of the posts themselves. You that green? Wouldn't have thought so, considering your user-ID number. Try reading the Slashdot "FAQ" section if you're still confused.
Slashdot Mirror
Arrrrgh! We're all going to die!
Ban Metal!!!
Music snob!
Strat
Given your (oft well founded) distrust of government, why do you think government employees shouldn't be allowed to band together to make sure they don't get screwed over by their management?
I gave my main reason in the post you replied to.
Public sector unions have labor reps sitting down and bargaining with politicians, who get boatloads of money from unions, over how much of other people's money unions should get. There is nobody representing the taxpayers' interests in these "negotiations".
I don't have time at the moment to check your links or go into a lengthy reply, I must get going for now. I've got to work on a custom guitar amp build for a customer of mine and then leave to set up for a gig tonight..I'm also a lead guitarist in a blues band. I'll look at them later tonight or tomorrow and will reply more fully afterwards.
Strat
Again, given the decline in education unionization, and also the wide availability of union-free education sectors (a solid majority at 60%) for comparison...
Which regular government-run public schools employ non-union teachers? Got any links to data backing your claims? Your use of the term "education unionization" sounds like weasel-words to lump in janitorial/maintenance, IT, and other non-teaching jobs into the numbers to make your 60% claim. Prove me wrong.
I don't have any problems with unions in the private sector where there is the option for employees to opt out of union membership without penalty or losing their job/position/pay. If employees feel abused by their employer sufficiently, they will join. If they don't feel abused such that a union seems worth the dues they must pay, in the employees' opinions, they won't join, or will leave if a member.
Public-sector unions are just plain evil. They should all be abolished yesterday.
Public sector unions have labor reps sitting down and bargaining with politicians, who get boatloads of money from unions, over how much of other people's money unions should get. There is nobody representing the taxpayers' interests in these "negotiations".
The central C&C, Federal-run US education system is crashing and burning.
It's time to get the government and the teacher's unions out of the schools. Either that or encourage more parents to pull students out of public schools.
Strat
We'll have to continue on the "agree to disagree" line here, since I think you're making a mistake by reflexively lumping "unionization" in with the problems. Union membership and representation is at historical lows, and still declining; problems due to "unions" should thus be declining, not rising. Granted, the education sector is still fairly highly unionized compared to other industries, but that's still only 39.2% of employees covered by union representation (source: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/union2.pdf [bls.gov]). There's no indication of the majority 60% of the education system without unions being more free from the problems of teach-to-the-test "one size fits all" management metrics based education.
Yes, unions allow some bad teachers to stick around; I've had a few of those. They also allow especially good teachers --- the ones who cause trouble for higher management by sticking up for the individual needs of students instead of succumbing to uniform mediocrity --- to have a voice. From my own experience, my best teachers (who were willing to go through the trouble of dealing with a problematically way-ahead-of-standardized-grade-level kid like me) were rarely management favorites, and often burned out (or were forced out) and left for the far better conditions of jobs outside public education. Unions stand up for smaller class sizes, well educated teachers, diverse curricula, individual attention to students --- not cramming everything into a testing-driven, mass-production assembly line. Yes, these things raise educational costs (and cut into profitable opportunities for the privatization goons), but they're also mainly the things that make the education provided worthwhile at all.
Nothing "reflexive" about my including unions. I did not claim they were the major cause. Actually, the far-too-powerful teacher's unions are a symptom of the government meddling outside it's Constitutional scope & powers as well.
Unions stand up for smaller class sizes, well educated teachers, diverse curricula, individual attention to students --- not cramming everything into a testing-driven, mass-production assembly line. Yes, these things raise educational costs (and cut into profitable opportunities for the privatization goons), but they're also mainly the things that make the education provided
You don't need unions, the Federal government, or a one-size-fits-all, history-rewriting, "Common Core"-type homogenized & "PC" curriculum, to provide those things. All that stuff is a continuation of the same old shit that has gotten us here to this point of having an embarrassment of a US public education system. I've watched it happen in slo-mo over the last half-century.
Insanity, in one definition, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome each time.
Strat
"Feminization" is the wrong word for this. If you take female young children, and don't systematically indoctrinate them into quietly playing "tea" and "shopping" with dolls, a whole lot of them will love to run around and explore and compete, too. True, some of them won't, and will prefer quietly playing make-believe with dolls --- the same of which is true for some young male children, who won't all automatically be little wild roughhousing monsters. Kids of both genders show a variety of individual behaviors, frequently including thriving on unstructured, rambunctious activity.
Blaming poor treatment of children on sexist stereotypes ("feminization") is misplaced. "Femininity" is not to blame for the authoritarian, "sit down shut up and behave to become good obedient workers" schooling approach, which is usually dictated from above by overwhelmingly male upper-level administrators. Teachers interacting with students are primarily female, since societal sexism leaves lower-paying and less desirable jobs to women; however, teachers increasingly have little influence at all over school policy (they are expendable labor, who must submit to management priorities or be fired). When I was in school at the beginning of the transition into the "zero tolerance" era, none of my teachers supported those policies; that crap was being forced down from above, from a wealthy white male administrative class with MBAs (not from "touchy feely female teachers").
You and I had quite the discussion going recently where we could not agree. We will have to have a gentleman's agreement to agree to disagree.
That said...
Here, you are spot-on. Great post.
Following on from where you left off, it's a combination of quite intentional financial and political pressures by both government and powerful groups like unions, coming all the way down the chain while constantly being added to along the way. From top federal/union levels all the way down to State, county, township, and finally to individual districts and schools with bits and pieces added along the way at each level.
There's simply too many damned bureaucrats, unions, laws, regulations, and corrupt politicians involved in trying to have the Federal government run education. Look around. Most of the population under 40 are ignorant and clueless. Literacy rates are plummeting in the US. Many can't name the three branches of government nor tell you the name of their own Senator or Representative, or why that's even important.
We need to move past the immensely destructive Federally-controlled/directed, heavily unionized, "one size fits all" education system model.
It has failed spectacularly and expensively.
Whatever the solution is, it is NOT adding more of the same increasingly centralized/Federalized/unionized/politicized crap, and the corruption & dysfunction that accompanies it, that has been added as solutions and over and over for decades both in Canada and the US, that's gotten things to this laughably-pathetic, sick Orwellian type of playground rule from TFS and the "suspended-for-"gun-shaped"-poptart" type of zero-tolerance insanity that makes the children the true victims when it's all said and done.
One thing regarding the US school system "zero-tolerance" idiocy that I don't think they took into account is that, if you want kids to almost certainly do/try something, tell them "no".
Strat
Laser Tag for everyone!
In the current environment of "zero-tolerance" hysteria over anything even remotely gun-like in schools?
Only if they can figure out how to get the laser in a condom. Schools already hand those out.
Of course, that opens a whole new can of "worms" in the classroom.
Strat
Well they're BlueStrat, they have done more harm than good, putting innocent bystanders in the middle of their hackings to prove their point which you should never do if you're trying to prove a point.
Apparently you skipped right over the part of my post where I said that some things I disagree with Anonymous on.
The subject was speech regarding this demonstration. I fully support their right to assembly, peaceful demonstrations/protests, and free speech. I also strongly disagree with many other groups as well, like the NBPP, KKK, CPUSA, etc etc. But I will similarly fight to the death for their right to peacefully speak out as well.
The answer to speech you don't like is always more speech, not less.
It's always the most unpopular groups who are the first to be silenced. It never ends there once the silencing of those who dissent has begun, however, as history has demonstrated again and again.
Strat
To the whole world, the two mainstream US political parties are quite far to the right.
Which is why so many Europeans immigrated to America and why the Revolutionary War happened. Those in America wanted more individual freedom and less government control than any party or government in Britain or the rest of Europe offered or would allow.
They wanted choices other than rule by King or a choice of various flavors/strengths/mixes of socialism/communism/fascism.
You need to get rid of your US-centric perspective.
Acknowledging and pointing out differences is now "US-centric"?
You use that term...I do not think it means what you think it means.
The real metric is where on the scale between Anarchy and Tyranny a government & society falls for the common man.
Everything else is propaganda, distraction, and ideological masturbation.
Strat
Your "less spending, small government, no interference" talking points don't work when the encumbent right wing party's pushing through regulation-of-the-press bills, threatening to cut the BBC's funding unless they get back in line, and adding billions of pounds worth of extra administrative layers to the health system. The UK's Conservative party believes in treading lightly where business is concerned, but they're not exactly shy about expanding their footprint when it comes to social control.
Britain's "right wing" would be wildly liberal/progressive/left in the US. Britain simply has one leftist party with a branch that is slightly more moderate.
Strat
You use that word...I do not think it means what you think it means. Yes, the "set fire to your strawman" line is cute, but you really should have waited to trot that one out in a reply where it might have made sense.
The left advocates for a stronger, more powerful government because that's what is required to implement and manage things like wealth redistribution/entitlements and nationalized services and resources. They themselves admit as much.
Therefor, if the problem is government power & control being abused, putting people in charge who will grant the government even more power & control (the left) is antithetical to the goal of reducing/eliminating government abuse of their power & control.
Strat
Maybe it's time to stop supporting three political parties all of which are further to the right than Thatcher.
But I guess everyone has to start somewhere, and that somewhere sometimes involves wearing a mask and burning stuff.
Yes, because supporting the left, who believe the solution to all problems is to grant government even more power and control, will nip that abuse of government power and control right in the bud.
Yup, right in the bud.
Bud, zoom, gone.
Makes perfect sense.
Strat
Anonymous is a bunch of mindless vigilante manchildren and idiotic trolls. Maybe if mommy has to go bail them out they'll grow up.
Why hello there, tool of the police state!
After the government is done jailing all the people exercising their 1A rights whom you didn't support because they said things you disapprove of, they'll get around to you.
Some things about, and actions taken by, Anonymous I support. Others I disagree with.
But I'd fight to the death for their right to speak out, because I understand that if they can be silenced, so can I or anyone else.
Strat
I'm truly sorry that you value your ideological world-view over facts.
I hope your awakening is not tragic in nature, when it comes.
Good luck
Strat
No the problem is US populations cowardice, where it has allowed itself to be terrorised that allowed this to happen, quite ironic even with all those guns.
No, the problem is not one of cowardice. Remember "Let's roll"? The many stories of bravery by 9/11 emergency responders? All the stunning examples of bravery and sacrifice by our young soldiers?
The problem is the results of a longterm program of propaganda and subversion, destruction of the family unit, destruction of pillars of common moral underpinnings, indoctrination-instead-of-education systems, and other attacks designed to divide, destabilize, encourage illiteracy & ignorance of history, and disenfranchise the population from within, which started at least 60+ years ago.
Actually, it's roots go back to Woodrow Wilson and Edward Bernays.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
The US recently officially ended a longstanding ban against domestic use of the US government's foreign propaganda apparatus against US citizens.
http://rt.com/usa/smith-mundt-domestic-propaganda-121/
The government has been carefully and scientifically managing the emotional state of the population for decades, allowing them to gradually "boil the frogs" without a revolt until they are no longer capable of being any serious threat to their grab for ultimate power and control.
When the impending US economic/monetary collapse and accompanying food and other shortages occurs and causes chaos, I fully expect to see the government launch an attempt to forcibly complete the transformation to a full police state.
Strat
The Disease is the PATRIOT act...
No, that's another symptom.
The disease is a far too large & powerful US Federal government that barely even pays lip-service to the Constitution and it's limits on government powers, if it's not outright publicly and blatantly mocked by those in office.
Large enough to build such a hugely expensive monstrosity, too powerful to be stopped by laws or Constitutional limitations, and able to use it's data to destroy anyone, including politicians supposedly in oversight, that don't "play along".
It's Big Brother powered by the data collection & computer analysis panopticon instead of a telescreen.
This can only result in a lot of blood and lives lost, no matter if the population revolts against or accepts it's new self-appointed masters and new societal paradigms or not. And, no matter who finally triumphs.
Either way, the camps and the mass graves will be filled. If history is any indicator, I think it's far too late at this point to walk this back without a fight. It's also a sure bet that huge numbers of people will be imprisoned/killed if the government keeps going in this direction.
It's whether or not the camps and mass graves last for weeks/months/years with an eventual victory for the people, or decades/centuries/millennia of suffering & death that will be historic in size and scope, that will be decided by whether or not people now decide to stand up and remove the criminals by whatever means necessary and strip the government of a large portion of it's power and wealth, and scrap the panopticon.
Strat
No, the authors of the Constitution designed a society specifically set up to place wealthy, white, male landowners in exclusive control of society. Slavery was built into the system from the start.
No, they designed a distributed government of limited powers. History and documents and letters from the founders show that the founders wanted to eliminate slavery when the Constitution was written, but they would have lost the southern states and consequently the revolutionary war against the British if they did not ignore the issue at that time.
"Great as the evil of slavery is, a dismemberment of the union would be worse." - James Madison
"There is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of slavery." - George Washington
"Every measure of prudence therefore ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery from the United States. I have, throughout my whole life, held that the practice of slavery is an abhorrence." - John Adams
There are many more.
As to the "3/5ths" issue, it was only for purposes of the census that slaves were counted as 3/5ths of a person so that the slave-owning states did not acquire an unfair advantage in the number of their representatives in Congress and block any effort to end slavery.
Slavery in the American colonies was started by a black man, Anthony Johnson, who owned a tobacco farm, not a white man. Anthony Johnson, a black, fought in the courts to become the first slave owner in the US. The first black US Senator was Hiram Revels in 1870. The army was non-segregated up until President Woodrow Wilson (D) segregated it.
Concepts like ordinary citizens being able to vote for their national legislators were specifically circumvented.
Voting was at first limited to land owners as a practical matter, as they were the only ones likely to be educated enough to be literate and comprehend what they voted upon, and would be the ones paying the taxes to fund the results. This changed after literacy rates improved.
If you meant the time prior to the 17th Amendment changing US Senate seats from State legislature-elected positions to citizen-elected positions, I believe that was wrong and that Amendment should be changed back to Senate seats being elected by State legislatures, as it has taken too much power away from the States and resulted in a nearly omnipotent Federal government.
Yes, the Constitution contained some good ideas; it's not pure evil, and parts are salvageable. But, neither is it a blueprint for a free and equal society, though it has frequently been mythologized as such.
The US Constitution has resulted in the most free & equal society ever to exist as a nation. Nothing is ever perfect or can ever be perfect that is made by man. Don't allow perfect to be the enemy of good.
Go read some history from first sources, not someone else's interpretations. Read the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers if you want to know what the founders intended regarding the Constitution in their own words. As you demonstrate with your reply, much of that history has been re-written or suppressed.
Strat
People do "naturally" trade, but allowing *accumulated wealth* (without limits) to be the single, ultimate deciding factor in society's distribution of resources is the unique point of Capitalism (over varied pre-capitalist and non-capitalist societal mechanisms that still contain elements of trade and private property).
A non-corrupt, well-functioning government which enforced laws & regulations equally mitigates that, and a smaller government with fewer people with fewer/lesser powers available to be suborned making it less attractive/profitable to suborn contributes greatly.
More democratic, decentralized, and egalitarian societal forms do not preclude trade; but they do require alternate arrangements from the "golden rule" of "he who has the gold, rules." Unregulated markets are inherently unstable towards accumulation, monopolization, and ultimately the re-establishment of an elite ruling class that right-Libertarians are nominally seeking to escape.
I don't know of anyone in their right mind seriously suggesting totally eliminating all regulations. That's a false dichotomy. Less does not equal none. There has never been pure capitalism in the US, nor anything approaching an unregulated market in the US since the early 20th century.
I do believe that as much governing as possible be done as locally as possible, and that those in government should only be given barely enough wealth and power to accomplish their duties.
That decentralized society you refer to is exactly what I described and what the authors of the US Constitution tried to design, and did a pretty good job until politicians decided to "improve" on it with laws designed to bypass Constitutional restrictions on government powers and bypass the need for public consent for adding an Amendment. Or, in many if not most cases, just plain.ignoring the Constitution and destroying anyone who protests.
Government size and power has grown immensely, especially over the last ~80 years, yet we see almost daily the rising numbers of ever-more blatant and over-the-top occurrences of both government and private sector corruption and lawless actions with little consequences for the guilty, often even rewarded in the end after any negative PR blows over. How is adding more laws or regulations going to help when those who break existing laws are not held to account?
I think you might have the misconception (I could be wrong) that accumulated individual wealth is simply locked away somewhere in some combination of paper and actual monetary vaults and does nothing to benefit society. To the contrary, that wealth sitting in financial institutions & banks provides capital to lend to individuals for homes/cars/etc and to small businesses.
It in fact expands the amount and scope of resources available to all because of the capital it makes available to invest to increase supply and availability while also bringing costs down and encouraging efficiency of utilization, as that typically brings the highest returns and market advantages.
Also, the accumulated wealth of those who worked, sacrificed, invested, and possibly started a business and became successful does not take that wealth from others. Wealth is fungible and can be created by anyone if they aren't overly-restricted in their freedom to do so by unreasonably-burdensome laws, taxes, or regulations.
Capitalism is not perfect. Far from it. But, mangling the Churchill "democracy" quote; "Capitalism is the worst form of society, except all the others that have been tried."
Strat
There are many thousands of fully-automatic firearms owned legally by private individuals in the US., unlike your nuclear device example. Heck, the FPSRussia guy had a YT video where he demo'ed a legally civilian-owned fully-auto 40mm Bofors cannon that he was selling.
Fail.
Strat
I wouldn't completely erase the Capitalist/Fascist/Communist/etc. distinctions as being irrelevant compared to the anarchist-authoritarian dimension, for the reason that Capitalism is *always* authoritarian.
I disagree strongly. Capitalism works because all it does is acknowledge what occurs naturally...people trade with each other. Whether it is in the form of barter among primitive tribal peoples or some type of modern monetary/financial system or a black market under non-capitalistic regimes, humans naturally will engage in capitalism without the use of coercive force.
The same is not true of other systems. It is not natural for people to sacrifice the fruits of their labor to others, and in particular, definitely not natural to be compelled under threat of force to sacrifice so much that it negatively impacts them and their families in major ways, as is the case with the central planning and control models like communism, socialism, fascism, etc. It is why those models have historically failed and resulted in horrific suffering among many millions.
Capitalism works by the simple fact that individual people will engage in capitalism with each other naturally on their own without the threat of force. This is rarely true of socialism, communism, fascism, etc, which are typically implemented on national scales by force. Only among small, relatively intimate groups do things like socialism and communism actually work, and are engaged in on a voluntary basis among the individuals.
Strat
I know it makes many Americans angry but I don't see much difference between civil liberties in US and China right now, the only one being that US regime is far superior in concealing itself behind "freedom and democracy" mirage.
Not all that long ago, I would have been one of those angry and would have replied with a scathing rebuttal.
These days? No anger. Not at you, certainly.
I think what I feel would more closely track in nature with grief at loss. I don't believe that the US is totally lost. However, I believe it's government has been largely suborned from within.
As I've written in other posts in the past, the metric is not the particular architecture of any system of government (aka force), ie communism, capitalism, fascism, socialism, left, right, etc etc. It is where, on the scale extending from anarchy to tyranny, that system is, Any form of government can become tyrannical, and history shows this is a general rule, when government becomes too powerful, controls too much of people's lives, and unduly limits individual choices.
Strat
Granted, there haven't been any examples of far-right countries that have done spectacularly better on that front, either.
See, that's the problem with the logic of this whole thread. You're failing to look at the larger picture.
Capitalism, fascism, communism, socialism etc etc...
None of it is really relevant.
What *is* relevant is what place on the range scale between Anarchy and Tyranny, or alternately, between Authoritarian and Libertarian (not the US political party) a society, ideology, government, or nation occupies. It also can be described as the struggle between those who believe men cannot govern themselves by mutual consent, and therefor need a central-planning & control system to control everything and everyone, and those who do believe men can govern themselves without a king, dictator, or ruling class/party of elites.
Consequently, the many ideological/political systems which require central planning & control start out already a good ways along the above-described scale towards the "Tyranny" or Authoritarian" side. This is not good from an individual citizen's standpoint, as government grows it's power by taking it from the citizens This has historically been accomplished most often by the simple expedient of killing/starving those individuals and groups who resist and/or are "inconvenient" for some reason, and some groups are simply used to direct hatred and anger against and away from government.
Strat
Or rather that if you screw with the NSA's budget and storage center you'll never be found again
Does that include those responsible for all the passive surveillance/monitoring/interception devices/systems which were built into the buildings, infrastructure, and the surrounding areas long before the first server rack was delivered on-site?
Strat
You're willing to support someone that has committed crimes that have put all citizens of the US in danger...
Wrong.
Snowden put no one in danger but himself from the US government's efforts to exact revenge for Snowden shining light on corrupt criminal government cockroaches. The US government put US citizens in danger themselves by knowingly violating the restrictions on government powers set forth in the US Constitution. Snowden simply revealed their ongoing crimes and constitutional violations.
Snowden is as much a criminal as is a woman who reveals her cop-rapist's identity to higher authority. In this case, the rapists compose the US Federal Government and the victims are everyone who is not them.
The government did and continues to conspire to violate their oaths of office, the Constitution, and the rights of every citizen because those in power want to monitor and control everything and everyone they can. They are criminals and tyrants for which hanging is far too good a fate.
If the US government had been acting within the powers it is allowed by the Constitution there would never had been any leak, as Snowden would have had nothing to reveal nor have any motive to reveal it.
Strat
"Score 0, Troll"
30% Insightful
30% Overrated
40% Troll
LMAO!! Sounds about right for the cross-section of /. knee-jerk reactions to raw truths which upset slash-PC group-think.
About a third are able to think critically & logically, and not allow easily manipulated primitive lizard-brain emotional reactions and/or political/partisan ideologies to hold intellectual sway. The rest would seem to prefer to reject objective reality and substitute it with a reality of their own making (or of somebody else's making, for the lazy/apathetic/stupid).
Thanks for all the mod-validations both positive & negative!
Strat
That's a good way to make a martyr and galvanize their resolve, actually.... not a very good deterrent, in the same way that capital punishment and 3 strikes laws actually increase the risk of crime because a person on their third strike has nothing to lose.
I disagree. If drones are being used to attack/kill civilians domestically, then the situation for civilians is desperate and any pretense of government restricting itself to any civilized "rules of war" became non-existent long before such retaliations would begin. It would be more of a reply-in-kind type of retaliation.
Being domestic in nature, that puts the drone operators and their superiors local to the conflict and vulnerable. I believe that a sustained extreme-retaliation program against the drone operators/superiors would have the effect of dissuading potential new recruits/replacements and cause insubordination and chaos among the ranks, as many will prefer punishment for refusal to follow orders to attack civilians rather than risk their and their family's lives to horrific deaths.
Bottom line, at the point that the government is using armed drones domestically to kill civilians, any pretense of "civilized" conflict would have been long in the past, and the government would have already "taken it there" in spades regarding "war crime" levels & types of violence against civilians.
The government would have already created many civilian martyrs and strengthened the civilians' resolve by the time such retaliations against armed drone use would start, resulting in such extreme retaliations against them. There would be little for civilians to lose by engaging in such brutal retaliations at that point.
LOLwut? You're not making any sense. That's a forum "sig", not part of the posts themselves. You that green? Wouldn't have thought so, considering your user-ID number. Try reading the Slashdot "FAQ" section if you're still confused.
Strat