Growing up in Utah, the state with the lowest spending per pupil, I've been in some pretty bad schools. But I never thought the teachers were to blame even as a kid. It was all down to underfunding, overcrowding, bullying and a focus on bad standardized material. I'm not sure I've ever had what I would call a bad teacher, just great ones and adequate ones. The very worst teachers I've had are ones that only had us drill stupefyingly dull textbooks. And that's exactly the sort of teaching that these policies encourage.

I'm not saying bad teachers don't exist. But that there must be a more intelligent and accurate way to identify them that's less directly harmful to students. And at it's core the push to blame teachers is meant to distract the public from the actual problems; underfunding, budget cuts, and badly designed but strictly enforced curriculum.

She seems to have the same Palin disease of not knowing what she's talking about and instead making shit up. This we don't need to raise the debt ceiling rhetoric is blatant political maneuvering without any serious thought to the long term consequences. They've just read a poll that says 69% of Americans don't want the ceiling raised, so they go on TV and tell us they oppose raising it.

You know that if the ceiling doesn't get raised and we default or stop paying our military, they'll be on TV saying how rotten the president is for not paying the bills. If there's a deal without budget cuts they'll moan we're spending ourselves to oblivion. If there are cuts, they'll complain about what all the federal layoffs do to the unemployment rate.

The fundamental problem is politicians who care more about winning than governing. I've had students who tell me "I don't really read," and I think these politicians are in the same mold. They go to fundraisers, they talk to their political advisers. Who has time to actually figure out what effect various policies will have? Mitch my-top-legislative-priority-is-winning-an-election-4-years-from-now McConnell was the old poster child of this camp, but Palin and Bachmann have supplanted him.

This is how someone who actually wants to solve problems sounds:
source

Unhappy that negotiators remained at approximately $1.7 trillion in cuts, Cantor pressed again for a shorter deal or for negotiators to find their way to $2.5 trillion. The president, growing more agitated, argued that attendees were simply looking for ways to say no.

"Talk about arbitrary," he said of Cantor's figure, according to a Democratic attendee. "I am totally willing to do the hard stuff to get well above what you need and you won't do it because you can't put one penny of revenue on the table."

"At least Mitch McConnell, to his credit, was willing to work for a solution," the president added, acknowledging the proposal by the Senate Minority Leader to, essentially, give him the authority to lift the debt ceiling without passing commensurate cuts.

"I have reached the point where I say enough," Obama concluded, according to Reuters. "Would Ronald Reagan be sitting here? I've reached my limit. This may bring my presidency down, but I will not yield on this."

>> ^GenjiKilpatrick:

Right, cause Obama's really being courageous with all his foreign policy changes, health care overhauls, bailouts and budget cuts to low-income heating assistance programs & the like.
When are you gonna stop supporting this "foo" Netrunner.
(You're still gonna vote for him in 2012 aren't you?)


People have been calling Ryan courageous for calling for a cut in high-end tax rates that's funded by eliminating Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. I don't see why, and Obama does a good job of pointing out that it's anything but.

As for stopping supporting Obama, I'll stop when there's actually some better alternative. I'm happy to criticize him for being timid and not having gone nearly far enough, but that doesn't translate into me deciding that the world would be better with a Republican in the White House.

>> ^EmptyFriend:

I'm not disagreeing. I'm actually currently in the middle of a research project on the decision to scrap Constellation and the implications. All I was saying is that taking the anger out on such a small program isn't fair. For $10M you'd have a hard time doing something as simple as upgrading all the PCs in a ship class to WindowsXP (and yes, that is something that is only now happening).
The total cost to launch a space shuttle into orbit is incredibly high though, also. Like in the $1B territory.
>> ^mentality:
>> ^EmptyFriend:
>> ^mentality:
So this is what $553,800,000,000 a year gets you.

_{Iraq and Afghanistan not included.}

good thing you took out the iraq and afghanistan money (or tried to at least), wouldn't want that number to seem ridiculously untrue.
a little search says this contract wasn't even $10 million (which is actually pretty small).
http://www.ga.com/news.php?read=1&id=72&page=7
EDIT: and just to be clear, i do think military and defense spending is way too high, but i at least support the development of new technologies as opposed to the continual support/retrofit of old stuff.


Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realize that new technologies to kill people were more important than other kinds of research. Good thing we're slashing NASA's budget so we can better conduct an asymmetrical war on terror using the power of electromagnetism.
Sorry for the snark, but the ridiculous defense spending, record deficit, budget cuts in all the wrong places, and development of weapons systems grossly out of touch with what's needed, is seriously pissing me off. And that goes for the F22/F35 too no matter how f awesome they are.




It's $10 million invested from the US office of Naval Research from June 2006 to Jan 2009. It doesn't say how much was invested in the last two years, and how much the project costs in total, including other sources of funding. And that's just for a proof of concept. How much is it going to cost taxpayers to make a version fit for service, and they start arming ships with it? Yeah, billions sound like the right territory.

Right, cause Obama's really being courageous with all his foreign policy changes, health care overhauls, bailouts and budget cuts to low-income heating assistance programs & the like.

When are you gonna stop supporting this "foo" Netrunner.

(You're still gonna vote for him in 2012 aren't you?)

I'm not disagreeing. I'm actually currently in the middle of a research project on the decision to scrap Constellation and the implications. All I was saying is that taking the anger out on such a small program isn't fair. For $10M you'd have a hard time doing something as simple as upgrading all the PCs in a ship class to WindowsXP (and yes, that is something that is only now happening).

The total cost to launch a space shuttle into orbit is incredibly high though, also. Like in the $1B territory.
>> ^mentality:

>> ^EmptyFriend:
>> ^mentality:
So this is what $553,800,000,000 a year gets you.

_{Iraq and Afghanistan not included.}

good thing you took out the iraq and afghanistan money (or tried to at least), wouldn't want that number to seem ridiculously untrue.
a little search says this contract wasn't even $10 million (which is actually pretty small).
http://www.ga.com/news.php?read=1&id=72&page=7
EDIT: and just to be clear, i do think military and defense spending is way too high, but i at least support the development of new technologies as opposed to the continual support/retrofit of old stuff.


Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realize that new technologies to kill people were more important than other kinds of research. Good thing we're slashing NASA's budget so we can better conduct an asymmetrical war on terror using the power of electromagnetism.
Sorry for the snark, but the ridiculous defense spending, record deficit, budget cuts in all the wrong places, and development of weapons systems grossly out of touch with what's needed, is seriously pissing me off. And that goes for the F22/F35 too no matter how f awesome they are.

[redacted]

>> ^EmptyFriend:

>> ^mentality:
So this is what $553,800,000,000 a year gets you.

_{Iraq and Afghanistan not included.}

good thing you took out the iraq and afghanistan money (or tried to at least), wouldn't want that number to seem ridiculously untrue.
a little search says this contract wasn't even $10 million (which is actually pretty small).
http://www.ga.com/news.php?read=1&id=72&page=7
EDIT: and just to be clear, i do think military and defense spending is way too high, but i at least support the development of new technologies as opposed to the continual support/retrofit of old stuff.



Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realize that new technologies to kill people were more important than other kinds of research. Good thing we're slashing NASA's budget so we can better conduct an asymmetrical war on terror using the power of electromagnetism.

*Sorry for the snark, but the ridiculous defense spending, record deficit, budget cuts in all the wrong places, and development of weapons systems grossly out of touch with what's needed, is seriously pissing me off. And that goes for the F22/F35 too no matter how f***** awesome they are.

Did you even read the comment you're responding to?

The problem is that there's no left in this country's governance at all. It's not a false dichotomy between the parties, it's just a choice between a moderate right-wing party and a hard-right nationalist party. I feel pretty strongly about wanting to have the moderates over the fascists, even though I'm not particularly happy with the moderates.

Why aren't there more than two choices? Because that's just how first past the post voting works. More than that though, it's because there's a really big propaganda machine that constantly demonizes anyone who's even slightly left, and constantly pushes the idea that all suffering in the world is the fault of government, and it'll all get better if we just vote in people who mouth those same words while they cut taxes on businesses, slash government aid to the poor, and make worker safety laws a thing of the past...

Incidentally, you're part of the problem as a person who proclaims that deficit "spending" is the issue. The problem in this country isn't the government's balance sheet, it's high unemployment, and ridiculous concentration of wealth coupled with the growing formalization of the idea that our corporate rulers may commit any atrocity they please with impunity.
>> ^flavioribeiro:

I think the first step is to eliminate the Democrat/Republican false dichotomy. I'm not American, and almost every time I criticize the Obama administration, I hear "yeah, but the Republicans...". First of all, who said anything about the Republicans? And second, it's not as if they have a fundamentally different way of running the country.
Also, given the current levels of deficit spending, it's irrelevant whether you call yourself a Democrat, Republican or Libertarian. The U.S. has a very grim long-term outlook, and the budget cuts proposed by the Congress are insufficient. And to see why actual budget cuts aren't enacted, you only need to follow the money. Things will never change as long as the population thinks the "other party" represents the opposition.

>> ^NetRunner:

It'd be more possible if people everywhere realized that right-wing/conservative/libertarian ideology is entirely about consolidating the dominion of the rich and powerful over the rest of us, and adopted a generally left-wing view of the world.
Once that happens, yes, people would notice that Democrats aren't really left-wing, but this is something the left says all the time.
The issue here isn't that an insufficient number of liberals will talk smack about Obama, it's the millions of people who think the biggest problems in our country are that taxes are too high on businesses, government aid to the poor is too generous, and worker safety regulation is a tyrannical imposition on liberty.


I think the first step is to eliminate the Democrat/Republican false dichotomy. I'm not American, and almost every time I criticize the Obama administration, I hear "yeah, but the Republicans...". First of all, who said anything about the Republicans? And second, it's not as if they have a fundamentally different way of running the country.

Also, given the current levels of deficit spending, it's irrelevant whether you call yourself a Democrat, Republican or Libertarian. The U.S. has a very grim long-term outlook, and the budget cuts proposed by the Congress are insufficient. And to see why actual budget cuts aren't enacted, you only need to follow the money. Things will never change as long as the population thinks the "other party" represents the opposition.

America's military action in the world has caused way more deaths that Gaddafi's supposed genocide. Not to mention the amount of death that has resulted from Western powers selling weapons. I dont believe that those actions saved more lives than they cost either.

Lets be honest to the international community it's not a matter of shrugging at genocide, it's a matter of what can we gain, what are we going lose, how much money can we gain from defence contracts, what influence can wield, what can we control etc etc. Due the recession there's been calls to lower defence budgets, cut out jobs etc, this war gives governments the excuse to not cut defence budgets and instead spend more money just bombing the crap out of places for their own gain.

Really all Gaddafi has done is defend his country against an armed rebellion, which any country should be able to do.

Also the current International situation is a bit different than it was back in the American Revolution. I don't really see it being the same as the Libiyan Conflict.

As someone who has spent almost zero time reading up on education policy, but who's a total junkie for reading politics, I can explain why the current merit pay/charter school/standardized testing thing is pretty transparently a load of horseshit.

Let's start with who's in favor of it. Is this a popular idea in the Washington press corps? Yes, undoubtedly. Do they ever back good policy? I've never known them to. Conservatives love it, as do the perennially "moderate" Democrats. More bad signs. As for Waiting for Superman, all my pinko-commie friends tell me it was made and promoted by big money interests. That's not good, either.

Where else in the world do they have an education system like this? How's it working for them? Not having researched it, I can't answer that question, but no one who's for it ever says "look at how well <some country>'s education system works! We should copy them!" However the people who oppose it, like Ravitch, point to Finland, and the fact that it's almost entirely the polar opposite of what the big money wants for America, and Finland is almost always ranked #1 internationally for education.

Mostly, I just hear more union-busting in a lot of this talk. Ravitch sounded like she did too -- it's all about rooting out the "bad teachers", as if our education system's sole flaw is a lousy crop teachers that are bilking the system, with the aid of the eeeeevil teacher's unions.

It can't be poverty and budget cuts, noooooo, that'd mean admitting those dirty fucking hippies are right yet again...

This video has been nominated as a duplicate of this video by chicchorea. If this nomination is seconded with *isdupe, the video will be killed and its votes transferred to the original.

*dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/How-big-of-a-budget-cut-is-100-million

First of all, I hope that driver will be found and fully prosecuted for their violent temper tantrum assault. Why didn't the bike riders just pull over to one lane and let traffic pass? If you're going to protest in that inconsiderate fashion, you would think they would be organized/prepared to allow people to pass. Other wise you are just going to alienate those who are indifferent, and could end up resenting Critical Mass come elections and budget cutting season. Bike lane maintenance is a very excusable cut. So one would think winning over the public might be a good overall idea.

After reading up on Critical Mass, they really should find a more efficient way to get their message across. While I see a random protest sign in this video their message remains clouded. Ever heard of the billboard effect? It seems like their message isn't getting out, unless you consider random acts of violence like this to be getting the message out. Ever hear of picketing city hall, after all that's where the decisions they're protesting originate.