Very few thanks to the NRA (the gun manufacturer's lobby) paying and blackmailing politicians into not enacting regulations on purchasing, carrying, or using them.

Yes, those politicians who let themselves be bought are a problem....but clearly so are the ones paying them off (bribing) like the NRA and Trump himself.

A trickle would be nice, seems like everyone got pissed on instead.

Tax cuts need to be designed so that they only apply to businesses when they employ more people.... this helps people, and it also helps the state/country, since more people working = more tax collected (in total) and all those schools are able to be funded properly - look at Sweden, a teacher is paid a massive wage, and educated people innovate and make even more money for the state thru taxes. It needs a fine balance, like gardening.

Some laws that help weed out clear corporate meddling in government policies would be nice too. Lobby groups, kickbacks etc. Completely screwed up imo.

In Western Countries, it's the Pop manufacturers like Coke and Pepsi that keep beer out of our fast food restaurants.

Did you know Pizza Hut, KFC and Tacco Bell are all owned by Pepsi, and whose sole purpose is to be vehicles to sell their beverages?

Likewise Coca cola has contracts with most of their users, such as McDonalds to keep out any competitors, and only sell their their products exclusively.

They lobby against selling beer in "Family-oriented" establishments so they can monopolize the drink industry.

I understand how you've come to your conclusion, but let me clear it up:

The word 'vegan' in medicine is exchangeable with plant-based diet. If you look at the PCRM.org they recommend a whole-foods plant-based diet. They simply call it vegan, as that's what other organisations know it as, such as the British/American Dietetics Association. Clearly not recommending vegan icecream and hotdogs :-)

When it comes to prevention of cruelty to animals, the PCRM do it from a medical training/testing stand point. They're not saying don't eat animals because it's cruel, they're saying don't test drugs on animals when there are computer models and lab work that yield more accurate results (although animals costs less....). They're also against surgeons performing vivisection as part of their training. E.g. when my cousin did her training she had to put a perfectly healthy dog to sleep, chop of some of it's legs and re-attach them, as well as causing massive internal wounds to simulate gunshots.... it's messed up, but it's hard for young doctors to say anything because they've trained for a decade at that point, and they're not going to throw it away (and the next person will come along and do it anyway, since it's such a highly competitive industry). This where the PCRM come in, they lobby medical institutions to stop this kind of stuff.


If you're still thinking that they have some kind of vegan agenda / bias, the PCRM is an organisation of 12,000 doctors. If it was just one or two quacks preaching veganism, I'd be suspicious too, but that's clearly not the case here.

Everything they do is based on data. And they're also not the only medical organisation to do it. The Australian Medical Association is also urging hospitals to give patients plant-based diets because of how much faster they recover (and don't return). The President of the American College of Cardiology is 'vegan', and is know for his phrase "Meat kills, processed meat kills you quicker". The World Cancer Research Fund, recommends beans with every meal, no processed meat, and maximum of 350g of red meat a week. That's basically a plant-based diet.

There are now something like 400 studies being published every single year showing how bad animal products are for us. There's a nice graph here actually showing how much more evidence is coming out all the time: https://youtu.be/C5qRXPDNw1E?t=4190 (nevermind the tacky channel, the speakers at this conference are all legitimate medical professionals)

So yes, your doctors are right, eat your fruit and veg, but also whole grains, beans, nuts and seeds. Bean burrito is a perfect combination of these, followed by a banana and berry smoothie

You also have to consider the amount of financial loss various food and pharmacological industries would suffer if most people ate plant-based. So when you look for opinions about the PCRM people are very quick to make PCRM appear as a bunch of hippies in order to protect their earnings. America spends something like 50 billion dollars a year on statins, and 35 billion on stent surgeries, which would pretty much go away overnight if everyone ate plant-based diets. They're not going to let that money go without a fight, which is why there's a lot of opinions about PCRM around. Needless to say though, they don't have any good evidence to back their reasoning, which makes it quite easy to see which ones are likely opinions funded by certain industries.

@smr
Well, there was a fight over the definition of butter too, but not what you described.

I think the biggest difference is the possibility that the public could confuse one product for another.

The public uses nut milk as a substitute for animal milk, you put it on cereal, in shakes, dunk cookies in it, etc. It's a white liquid that differs in taste, but is made to be close to animal milk.

The fight over "butter" as a definition happened between butter and margerine. The butter people, at one point even lobbied for a law making it so magerine could not be sold in the color yellow. It makes sense to some degree. They are similar products. They are used in almost identical application.

It's probably the case that nothing like that happened with peanut butter because it's not close enough to regular butter to be confused as churned milk fat.

One could argue that people may put peanut butter on toast with jelly with their breakfast, possibly; but they'd know what product they are using. No one would try to put a dollop of apple or peanut butter in a pan to fry up some eggs. They are night and day different products and it's not as though one would be confused about what you were getting into with the purchase of apple butter instead of butter.

Whereas milk vs almond milk seem similar enough, and butter and margerine are similar enough and both used the same; the FDA then decided that a distinction should be made.

I think it's fair for the dairy industry to lobby for this. It's an argument of definition.

You make almond milk basically by taking almonds and blending them up with water then straining.


They could call it "milk-substitute" perhaps. Point being, it's not the same thing as milk from a cow.

Peanut butter went through a similar episode in history when Jif added a bunch of crap that wasn't peanuts to its mix.

"Jif, in an effort to overtake Skippy and Peter Pan, added sweeteners and reduced their actual peanut content to improve the flavor and increase the profit margin. According to a lab study (granted, by a lab run by Skippy’s parent company, Best Foods), Jif peanut butter contained 25 percent hydrogenated oil and only 75 percent actual peanuts. This greatly concerned the FDA and other consumer groups."

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/12/food-labels-peanut-butter-hearings/

Today, you can't call a product "peanut butter" unless it's made of at least 90 percent ground up peanuts. Otherwise it has to be labeled "peanut-spread."

See also: Pringles are not "chips" they are "potato-crisps" http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2012/04/the-inventor-of-the-pringles-can-was-buried-in-one/

Step one, eradicating for profit prisons.

This single idea was the worst thing that ever happened to our legal system, imo. It created billion dollar companies who's product is incarceration. Like any for profit company, they minimize their costs by warehousing people in illegally crowded cells as cheaply as possible with little or no treatments or support during or afterwards and maximize their business by lobbying for ever more incarceration. The prison guard union is the best funded lobbying group in Washington, and created minimum sentencing so every convict becomes a customer.

Make prison a government function again, who's goal is turning out functional citizens, not warehousing as many bodies as they can get paid for, and we might turn a corner.....but that won't ever happen, there's no multi billion dollar prison reform lobbying group to bribe senators into doing the right thing.

I don't doubt it. But frankly, watching elected representatives in the US bend over and take it from the gun lobby is nothing new.

I 100% agree with his message, I just don't find the execution that funny.

But can you blame 'all' of the problem on Bush/Obama?

I can recall many changes in the 80's from Reagan, huge cuts to school lunch programs, and many attempts to either reduce or totally eliminate the Department of Education.

In 89, Bush Sr. and the Governors of 'every' state held a summit, where they developed some of the first goals for future changes to education. These included some of the first recommended changes to standards-based education.

During both of Clinton's terms they steamed ahead at full speed on these goals, leading to massive changes forcing standards-based education. They implemented ESEA, which was succeeded by the two later programs you mentioned.

So we clearly can't pin it to just one group, as both led the charge at one point or another. This is what I meant by my statement. Neither Liberals nor Conservatives can point a finger and say, "Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand?" They both grasped it and wielded it.

So, now as you mention, we have a climate which puts incredible importance on standardized testing. Because of this, and how the schools are funded, students are basically learning how to pass a test based on minimum standards as set by the government. Students aren't taught what they 'can' learn, but what the government thinks they 'should' learn.

I graduated in 1992, so I missed the true first wave of standardized tests. But if I had not been, I know I would have been *incredibly* frustrated at being forced to learn at a slower pace because all students needed to pass. I can almost guarantee I would have acted out, become more of a clown and troublemaker than I actually was in school, because I would have been bored to tears.

As you mention also, we have a highly media based group of children today. I agree cell phones should be not be allowed.

As far as the publishers, perhaps it is less than noble to prey upon the environment that we have currently. I can't blame them, however, because it would be akin to blaming cell phone makers for making products that children want for connectivity to social media. Like any company, they are in it for a profit. It just happens to be that currently the profit is more in tests than innovative learning tools/textbooks. They are simply doing what they have to do, like any corporation. I'm sure a lot of that includes lobbying to keep standards based education in place.

We can blame a lot of different groups, even parents. But that isn't solving the issue. I have my ideas of how to begin fixing it, which may differ from yours because I am not in the 'business' nor do I have children. I would say the following would be some baseline changes I would implement or suggest:

1. School Uniforms - It makes it harder to differentiate between children and helps against the forming of cliques.

2. A complete 180 from standards based education.

3. We have to invest more money into hiring more teachers. Smaller classes means less stress, more personal interaction, and more time for the teacher to be aware of 'problems' before they blow up.

4. Students should only be allowed to access devices owned by the school, ones that are for education and not instagram. What they have available before and after school is on their parents, but they shouldn't have it in class.

5. I will probably take some flack, but I do believe that vouchers should be allowed versus forced public school attendance. Forcing people who cannot afford private schooling to send their children to public education means you remove choice of the quality of learning. Once public schools start to even out in quality due to the aforementioned changes, then we can remove vouchers.

I disagree. Pinpointing the problem isn't very hard if you have some idea of where to look.

As someone who was 'coming of age' in my profession when No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and its successor the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), I can provide some insight into how these policies have been enacted and how both have been detrimental to the public education system as a whole. The former is a GWBush policy, and the latter is an Obama policy meant to mend the original law, so both liberals and conservatives are to blame to some degree, but both are based on the same philosophy of education and teacher-accountability.

There are some other mitigating factors and outside influences at work that should be noted: gun violence, the rise & ubiquity of the internet, and universal cell phone availability, all mostly concentrated in the past 10 years that play a large role. Cell phones, for example, are probably the worst thing to happen to education ever. They distract, they assist in cheating, they perpetuate arguments which can lead to physical altercations, and parents themselves advocate for their use "what if there's an emergency?!?!"

The idea of "teacher accountability" is the biggest culprit though.

Anecdotally, I've caught people cheating on papers. A girl in my honors English class basically plagiarised her entire final paper that we worked on for close to a month. The zero tanked her grade, which was already floundering, and the parent wanted to meet. I'd rather not go into detail to protect both the girl and my own anonymity, but suffice to say, all of the blame for this was aimed directly at me. How? Well I (apparently) "should have caught this sooner and intervened." Now, the final in that class is 8 pages long, I have ~125 students all working on it at the same time. but my ability to check something like that and my workload are beside the point. I'M NOT THE ONE WHO COPY PASTED A WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE AND DOCTORED IT UP SO IT COULD SQUEAK BY THE PLAGIARISM DETECTOR (shows she knew what she was doing, IMHO). Yet, I'm still the one being told that I was responsible for what happened.

Teacher-accountability SOUNDS like the right thing to do, but consider the following analogies

--Students are earning poor grades, therefore teachers should be demoted; put on probationary programs; lose some of their salaries; and if they do not improve their test scores, grades, and attendance; be terminated from their positions.

as to

--Impoverished people have poor oral hygiene/health, therefore their dentists should be forced to take pay cuts from insurance companies. If the patients continue to develop cavities and the like, the dentist should be forced to go for further training, and possibly lose his practice.

I have no control over attendance.
I have no control over their home life.
I have no control over children coming to school with holes in their shoes, having not eaten breakfast.

@Mordhaus the part about money grubbing could not be further from the truth.

I'll be brief b/c I know this is already too long for this forum, but Houton Mifflin, McGraw Hill, Etc. Book Company is facing a shortfall of sales in light of the digital age. It may be difficult to blame one entity, but that's a good place to start. They don't sell as many books, but guess who produces and distributes the standardized tests and practice materials? Those same companies who used to sell textbooks by the boatload.

When a student does poorly, they have to retest in order to recieve a diploma. $$$ if they fail again, they retest again and again there is a charge for taking the test and accompanying pretest materials. Each of which has its own fees that go straight to the former textbook companies. See: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/schools/testing/companies.html

In short, there is an incentive for these companies to lobby for an environment where tests are taken and retaken as much as possible. Each time a student has to retest that's more $ in their pocket.

How can they create an enviorment that faccilitates more testing? Put all the blame on the educators rather than the students.

That sounds a little tin-foil-hat conspiracy theory-ish, but the lobbying they do is very real: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/03/30/report-big-education-firms-spend-millions-lobbying-for-pro-testing-policies/?utm_term=.
9af18f0d2064

That, combined with exceptions for charter/private schools where students have the option to opt-out of said testing is skewing the numbers in favor of all of these for-profit companies: http://sanchezcharter.org/state-testing-parent-opt-out/ << one example (you can't opt-out in a public school, at least in my state)

@bobknight33 idk if i'd call business-minded for-profit policies "liberal"

The Republican all but decimate health care for a vast majority of the population, including Mental Illness treatment. When the 2nd amendment is twisted into holy protection for the gun lobby, and diverting any sane gun related discussion into blaming gang violence (WHICH mass shooting is related to gang violence?) and mental illness, America is not alleviating any of its mass shooting pro-gun culture problems.

It's not a partisan issue, Bob. The "debate" is being stifled by the NRA - a prime example of pure capitalist interest infringing on public policy. The NRA doesn't truly care about gun owners' rights, or the 2nd amendment. It only cares about the money it gets from the gun companies. Conservatives' voices are being taken away from them by this industry lobbying group. You should be angry about that.

This has been one of my key problems with the ongoing debate. They represent the product, the companies. Though the GOP way now is to let the fox guard the hen house and say everything is fine... Have a lobbyist for an industry be in charge of regulating that industry... as if he'll have the public's interest and not the industry's interests. Have the lawyer for Verizon in charge of regulating Verizon and similar companies, and we've already seen he has no interest in the public good, just what is good for Verizon. Put a guy who hates the EPA and has tried to shut it down, in charge of the EPA... let the Cuyahoga River burn again by rolling back all the regulations that prevent it from happening again. These people have zero integrity, and the NRA is just an extension of this issue, and perhaps was the wedge in the door. Let the industry's lobby group control the debate, and people get used to the idea of the fox guarding the henhouse. It is rather maddening.