Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

I wonder if civic minded entertainers like Colbert regret all the free air they gave Trump now. I wonder if they feel a little culpable.

Your video, Idiot Drives Civic Into River, Rescued By Reporter, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

"REACH! Partnership School is an innovative Baltimore City public middle and high school operated by Civic Works. We prepare students for college and careers in Healthcare and Construction. Graduates of REACH! Partnership leave the school with certifications that let them start jobs or apprenticeships as nursing assistants, pharmacy technicians, carpenters, or electricians. "

I doubt it will go further than a grand jury, but apparently they are possibly going to face criminal charges. http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/education/blog/bs-md-ci-school-slapping-video-20160301-story.html

I owned a car stereo install shop for about 15 years. People would come to me and ask how to make sure their car didn't get stolen. Every time, I'd tell them, "sell it and take the bus".

The object of car "security" is to make the thief go on to lower hanging fruit. If someone wants your "you've-paid-huge-money-to-make-virtually-impregnable" '86 Civic, they'll wait for you to approach it, put a knife to your throat (this being in Canada) and take your keys. To quote W.O.P.R. "The only winning move is not to play."

@radx @enoch @eric3579

For one thing, give the executive or legislative power over the printing press in a crisis and they will not willingly give that power up and end up abusing it. For another, if you're simply printing money to spend then you depreciate and inflate your currency commensurately, at least in the long term. Relying heavily on this is the kind of thing that Venezuela does. There's a reason that governments instead take on their fiscal spending as debt. On that I would say, I've also become much more skeptical of fiscal stimulus in general but particularly in corrections or recessions. I'm okay with automatic stabilizers (unemployment benefits, the largely limitless kind with strings attached we have here in Australia) but not so much direct fiscal stimulus.

The fundamental issue to me is large, even extremely large fiscal spending will not affect business confidence levels of economic conditions. There is some fiscal multiplier effects (the multiple of the effect on national income over the spending injection by the government) but the worse economic conditions are, the lower this will be. Also, yes with say infrastructure spending, you're creating immediate jobs. Problem is these are in no way permanent jobs and simply pushes the can down the road on them finding new employment. Better to provide unemployment benefits and training to get them into a more permanent job faster.

Also large bouts of spending (again to use infrastructure as an example) tends to be hugely wasteful. Good projects require appraisals, consultation and careful planning. The notion of handfuls of 'shovel ready' projects is a political myth. You can instead span it out but then you don't get the mooted fiscal boost. In fact I would argue infrastructure spending is never appropriate as fiscal stimulus. It should be in a constant, planned process of improvement irrespective of business cycles or downturns. The US stimulus under Obama was largely long term spending projects like this as giveaways to the states. There is little evidence it eased the recovery or altered behaviour though. Many states simply enacted the same civic projects they would have otherwise and used this money instead of issuing debt like they would have otherwise - effectively they saved on interest.

So what are the alternatives then? The government here in Australia also heavily spent on roads, home subsidies and schools but notably also gave all income earners a cash deposit of AUD $300-950. The latter is probably the closest you can get to a pure fiscal stimulus - immediately cash to spend, injected not into banks than might save it but given particularly to low / medium income earners most likely to spend it. Again what we saw is that it hardly altered consumer / household behaviour. Many saved it, many spent it on large one off purchases (e.g. TVs, in which case most of that value was transferred overseas). So we gave a dollop of cash as stimulus to the global economy of which Australia is a drop in the ocean. Basically my attitude is, if you maintain good infrastructure, effective education systems, adequate but efficient regulation, reasonable tax rates, and importantly competitive markets, the best way to get through a crisis is to let the market stabilize by itself. Provide assistance and retraining to workers who lose their jobs by all means, but don't expect government spending to be some kind of savior.

I agree on the inflation aspect of your post. There were certainly no shortage of self-declared monetarists buying up gold in anticipation of high inflation, but as you say dollops of cash in the economy are meaningless if they are idle and the economy under capacity. The question now with unemployment in the US at 5.5% whether capacity is finally pushing LRAS levels. Probably not, participation rate is low and falling, and the unemployment rate is woefully underrepresenting forced part timers. Also as you mention the dip in oil will temper prices on the input cost side. The Fed certainly seems to think so and has started tightening rates but as so much commentary in the investing world is saying, this may turn out to be a mistake and they may end up having to reverse course.

So, if anyone reading this knows a Paiute, it is your civic duty to convince them to go on their local news and have them, without any coordination with the 'militias', thank the 'militias' for joining the fight to return all this Federally held native American's land to it's rightful owners, in this case the Paiute, but in all cases the natives.
That should end the standoff.

He makes a persuasive argument with regards to the length of campaigns in the US vs elsewhere.

I somewhat disagree with the idea that we need people with government experience to be elected as presidents, senators, representatives, etc. though. Mainly because "government experience" is just bullshit code for "been in Washington long enough to be bought and paid for by some mega-corporation and its lobbyists".

...Not to say that Carson or Trump are ideal (or, you know, even "adequate") candidates because they don't have government experience. However, someone with zero experience but having good intentions, a reasonable amount of common sense, and a High School Civics class level of knowledge about how government is supposed to work would likely end up being a better candidate than either of them (or Hillary, or Sanders, or whoever else). Especially if we could keep lobbyists away from them for a while.

Right now, especially for the Legislative branch, lobbies get way too much bang for their buck buying the loyalties of newbies that are very likely to become entrenched incumbents for years if not decades. Sweep everybody out after a term or two and at least they would have to try their luck buying off somebody new (and hopefully a bit more idealistic) every election cycle instead of letting it ride for years and years...

The only difference here seems to be a lack of ego. These guys aren't acting like they're constantly under threat of looking stupid, or need to maintain control via threat of physical violence. They're controlling the guy by letting him think he's in control, while everyone's still safe. Reflecting on what we see of the american police force online, it really makes them look like a one-note cannon when it comes to local civic diplomacy.

I was thinking the same thing. We had a good deal of choice of what classes to take. I didn't take Lit, but I did do the basic English classes, where we read some Shakespeare and the like, but not to the degree the Lit students did. I didn't do any complex math classes either, I did Algebra. But then I also did Applied Business, or whatever it was called. I did Civics with the base History classes. I did Home Economics in 9th grade, not a required class, but an elective. Woodshop was another example of an elective class. Have they removed electives from schools? If not then it's this dude's own fault for not choosing the proper electives. If they are gone and all that is taught is the core, then there may be too much core.

I got to disagree with the video's premise that Math, History and the cores aren't needed. Do you need Calculus, no but you should graduate with a strong understanding of basic Algebra. History is important to, though I'm not sure the methods used are effective, route memorization of facts and dates for tests, rather than a general understanding of history and how to avoid the same mistakes. Teaching for tests period is a problem... Lit isn't important and should remain an elective, but having read some of the "classics" is important too, even if it is just a quick Cliff Notes sort of version of it (do they still have Cliff Notes?) Actually a Cliff Notes rundown of lots of the "classics" would probably be better than what most English classes do, while encouraging students to read more modern what they want fare for reports and the like. I didn't take Biology, but basic Science understanding is important, problem is it's politicized and rather than stick with the facts, too many people want to introduce at the very least doubt about the facts if not introduce ideological ideas that contradict the facts and are based on a misunderstanding of what the facts actually say... due to a messed up literal reading (well when it's convenient to take literal, other times things are dismissed as "literary" or "poetic" be it about the Earth not moving or bats being birds and on and on) of one particular bronze age book.

Also you can't teach people who to vote for... you gain understanding of the issues in History and Civics... so...

How to move away from testing is a tricky thing. You need to prove you have an understanding of how to form an Algebraic formula and to solve one. You need to prove you understand the issue(s) of the Civil War and the basic era (I'm not convinced you need to remember exact dates, know it was the 1860s), same with the other wars. What was one's nation's involvement in the World Wars and what caused those wars in the first place, and again basic era, if you don't know the exact year of the bombing of Pearl Harbor or D-Day or the dropping of the atomic bombs, okay, but a basic close approximation of the years. For English you need to prove you can write and read, and a basic understanding of literature, not details of classic books, but narrative structure etc. There should perhaps be more time spent on critical thinking and how to vet sources. You need to have a basic enough understanding of science not to dismiss things as "just a theory" which proves you don't know what theory means in science, and don't ask ridiculous questions like "if we came from monkeys why are there still monkeys" instead you should be able to answer that. You should be able to answer properly if somebody notes that CO2 is good for plants or that compact fluorescent have mercury in them so they aren't better for the environment than older bulbs.

How does one prove these things without tests? That's the question. And it needs to be Federally standardized to a degree to ensure that you don't have lose districts teaching that the Civil War wasn't about slavery nearly at all, rather than the fact it was the primary reason, or that Evolution is "just a theory", or deny the slaughter of the Native Americans or interment of Japanese Americans. You need to insure that all students are getting the same basics, and insure they have a good range of choices for electives. It's the basics though that basically need tested for, and I personally can't figure out a way to prove a student knows say what caused the Civil War or that they know what Evolution actually is, or how to form an Algebraic formula to solve a real life problem without a test.

Most of the stuff he mentioned (human rights, taxes, writing a check, how stock market works, etc) were taught in my high school civics class. My high school (and middle school) had other practical classes too - wood shop, metal shop, home-ec, etc.

Of course all this was pre no-child-left-behind, so who knows how shite it is now compared to then...

I really don't understand why these people are so upset because it's not as if the government has said that a religious definition of marriage has to be X, they're just saying that on a civic level, it's X, but as far as a particular church or a minister goes, they can still refuse to marry a gay couple can't they?

It's not as if the government is forcing pastors to marry gay couples is it? Or re-defining what the Christian definition of marriage is? Didn't they just re-define marriage on the civic/legal level? I'm honestly really confused here... Are they upset because now the government's definition no longer jives with theirs?

I understand your discomfort with my phrasing. My beef is with the electoral college system.

While I was getting my degree, I took some really good American History and Government classes at college. The prof in the Govt. class really went into depth explaining the electoral college to us, and to me the shittiness of that system was just shocking. For example: (none of this is news to a truly informed voter or an interested person with an internet connection, but it WAS news to me when I was ~20 years old, and I think it still would be news to a really high percentage of US voters)

* First is the very idea of an electoral college. The only way to become president of the US is to win the most electoral votes. But voters don't cast electoral votes, the people of the electoral college do. OK, the electoral college is supposed to follow the votes/will of their state/constituents (more on that next), but the fact remains that literally/practically, our votes as citizens don't matter. Only the electoral votes count. So yes, in the most literal sense ... NONE of our votes "matter".

* In general, the "electors" (the people on the electoral college) are supposed to cast their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote in their state / district. I think 2 states (Nebraska and Maine?) divide up their suggested electoral votes to be as close as possible to the actual proportions of the popular vote, but that's a whole other issue. Anyway, in general the electors are supposed to cast their vote for the popular vote winner in their state. BUT, that process isn't automatic. The votes that actually matter, the electoral votes, are cast by fallible human beings -- and they might "go rogue" and vote against what they are "supposed to" do. That is called a "faithless elector". That would be bad enough if it was just some weird loophole that technically exists but has never actually happened in practice, but actually faithless electors happen fairly frequently. The only upside is that they haven't ever changed the outcome of an election. Yet.

* When we're young and in civics type classes in school, we're brainwashedtaught about Democracy as a very simple, will of the public, one man one vote system. The electoral college shits all over that. One can win the popular vote but lose on electoral votes, and that actually has happened multiple times (not just to Al Gore). In my opinion, the electoral college creates a laundry list of problems (swing states are the only ones that matter, so campaign there and ignore everybody else, etc. etc. etc.), has very few benefits (any supposed benefits of the system are tenuous at best), and is completely contrary to the core concepts of Democracy.


Without the electoral college, a blue vote in Kansas would matter, as would a red vote in Massachusetts. Or a vote for a 3rd party or independent, anywhere. With the electoral college, edge cases like any of those can be safely and easily ignored by candidates.

I think it is unlikely that Kansas would turn blue, even if all of the democrats voted. That being said, we're not a complete LOCK for red; heck, out of the 10 most recent Governors we've had before we turned into Brownbackistan it is an even split between Democrats and Republicans with 5 each. And actually the Democrats had significantly longer total number of years in the office.

So basically, I don't actually think that a vote cast on a losing candidate is "pointless", I just think that the electoral college system does a really good job of making sure that some votes are more pointless than others. It amazes me that there wasn't a MUCH bigger stink made about it when Gore "lost" in 2000, but I guess voter apathy can overcome any challenge to the system.

" In the end, nothing the public had to say mattered. The city council approved the acquisition with an 11-4 vote. Here's how they justified the armored vehicle's existence in a town of 42,000.

[Liz] Blanchard said she was voting for the Bearcat because it was the replacement of an older piece of equipment and would only be used for defensive purposes. She said in the wake of the Newtown school shooting and the Boston Marathon bombing attack, “we do need to be defensive.”

Ward 2 Councilor Jennifer Kretovic called the issue “a huge civic discussion” but said the calls from her district in support of the Bearcat were "ten-fold." She said recent murders and armed robberies in the northern part of the city showed that it was needed. "

Vaccination isn’t a private choice but a civic obligation.

"Dominic: What do you think will happen?

Finch: What usually happens when people without guns stand up to people *with* guns."

My history teacher in high school was very civic minded. He was a Quaker too, but I believe he converted after serving in the army during Vietnam. I will never forget that he us that protesting is important, but if cops/national guard/ people with guns show up - get away. It creates a dangerous and volatile situation.

I really don't believe that the majority of police or protesters are bad people and want these kind of things to happen. In the heat of the moment things escalate rapidly and get out of control. People make bad decisions - now we capture them and put them on youtube.