No, you fuckwit. You are always releasing the paper tigers you love to fight. Heroically battling windmills. 😂

They should only be allowed to accept minor gifts they report like a normal under $100 meal, not $1 million vacations that are specifically barred by law, not sale of properties at extreme profits that’s intentionally hidden from financial reports which require their report by clear unambiguous law.
It’s not one bit about “hanging out”, it’s about selling access to justices to people with cases before the Supreme Court in secret, about buying opportunity to present your argument to justices away from the court with no rules or opposition and prejudice them towards your position, and to pay them to accept those positions.

(Side note, it’s not illegal but this also 100% destroys the fake “Everyman” persona Thomas has lied about for decades….saying he prefers Walmart parking lots to expensive beaches and old RVs over luxury travel, but spending all his vacations on private luxury beaches, exclusive luxury resorts and retreats, and globetrotting on private planes. Every word you’ve ever heard from this man is a lie. Every. Single. Word. Ever.)

News flash, these billionaires had no interest in being friends with the justices before hey were on the highest court…they aren’t old friends, they’re new benefactors found after they became powerful justices mislabeled as “friends”. Guaranteed, if Thomas is removed, he will never hear from Crow again….not once.

News flash, Justices are only rich because they illegally take bribes in the million dollar range for the sale of their decisions in court. They were not rich before becoming justices. Do you think American justice should be for sale to the highest bidder…should Soros be in control of everything because, as you believe, he bribes everyone everywhere. (Hint- you would clearly call for prison nonstop if you could prove he bribed anyone).

No, you don’t think, you just defend every righty crime no matter what it is and make up lefty crimes out of thin air.

You fuckwit. He hid EVERYTHING. Tens to hundreds of millions unreported, every penny of which he absolutely knew must be reported by law, he reported most before finding out Scalia had gotten away with not reporting tens of millions and over 70 million dollar international hunting trips, one of which he died on….today it was revealed Crow secretly, totally unreported, paid for Thomas’s ward/child’s tuition at hyper expensive (Tuition at the exclusive Hidden Lake Academy cost more than $6,000 a month) private schools….on top of million dollar vacations for the entire family, businesses created for his wife and huge salary for his wife unreported, property sold by Thomas above market value then handed back for free with major improvements, the list of bribes discovered from this one billionaire grows daily….hint, he’s not the only one.

Yes, dumbshit. If as a judge you sell your decisions about the law in America for a cash bribe, that’s secret personal enrichment. I know, two 3 syllable words together is way above your comprehension level.

Edit: Maybe that’s the problem. Let’s try this….
He big steal lots of times…lots big steals two. Big lies to. Him sell law four cash bribe. Your thinks say that ok fine, he MAGA hero, so he can no bad. That dumb.

Big surprise….because conservatives were caught taking them over and over and over and over and over you now have absolutely no problem with bribery at the highest levels….but you’ll lose your shit and start screaming “hypocrisy! Criminals! Lock them up!” if any non MAGgot gets caught accepting a sandwich.

Aaaaahahaha!
One private school followed the public school law in Texas and banned the Bible for glorifying explicit sexual and violent content…and the right has lost their hypocritical shit!
Enjoy reaping what you sow.

Edit: bonus- Trump was just deposed in the Eugene Carrol rape case, and as a civil case he could invoke the 5th but the jury can assume guilt because he pleads the 5th, so he actually testified for 7 hours. Now that deposition, which included questions the answers to which Bragg wanted on the record before prosecuting Trump for bank and tax fraud for fraudulently over/under valuations properties for loans/taxes.
Suddenly not filing this case last year when the investigators brought it to him is genius, because otherwise the civil deposition wouldn’t have happened for years if ever and he would have less evidence.

Added bonus- WI republicans hijacked the emergency alert system during a blizzard/tornado outbreak to fake an emergency alert that was in fact a political ad against the Democratic Supreme Court candidate. More evidence that respect for laws, morals, and ethics aren’t part of the Republican Party.
Happily thanks to this and other blatant Republican disregard and distain for the law, the Democratic candidate won by double digits in conservative Wisconsin.

More anti education anti lgbtq hate from ignorant infantile zealots.
Undoubtedly untrue too, 99% of what these nutjobs claim is false, totally made up, or hyperbole presented as fact.

The Bible has far more explicit sex, violence, rapes, beastiality, etc than any banned book, but the same morons send 2 year olds to private, unregulated, unsupervised “classes” run by clergy (with the highest pedophile rate of any profession) to learn the nonsense before they can reason.

Don’t want your kid exposed to it, send them to a religious private school….but expect actual sex abuse by teachers, not the fantasy abuse of having a book available to their peers their parents don’t agree with.

Fuck off to Russia if this is what you want, Bobski. Leave the freedom to those who understand and respect it.

I know….let’s cut public school funding and let some parents take more with vouchers that partially pay for private schools many can’t afford. That will solve it. Just have those neglected students pick themselves up by their bootstraps and just do better. Problem solved.

Public schools are awful, but the solution isn’t to just defund them. The solution is simple….more, and better teachers, and real standards for grade advancement. That requires more money.

Whatever you say. They kept very detailed records of on the books and off the books transactions (ironically their illegal expenses are also very detailed).

Tax evasion. All there. Black and white. Clear as crystal.

And we got trump saying it over and over. 'I don't pay taxes because I'm smart'

And we got trump junior saying exactly "my dad paid for his private school" https://m.facebook.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/videos/1262946037499155/

Posted it himself. What he's describing is tax evasion.

Tell me he did nothing wrong. Those tax evasion charges are easy to beat I bet. Just ask Al Capone.

There are people who spend vast sums of money sending their children to private schools in america. To some from their perspective they feel as if they are having to pay the cost multiple times over. Once when they write the check for their child's tuition and a second time when they pay taxes on their properties. But most don't even know how much the tuition cost because their accountants handle the disbursement.

I don't disagree, and we have much the same thing in practice if not by law with our native people's, they even have their own separate tribal police, courts, and laws. They are in many ways a different country inside our borders.
I agree, removing the disparities in lower education is far more desirable....but at least here we're doing the opposite, defunding public schools and programs that offer assistance like breakfast and lunch while also making it easier for affluent people to use public funds to pay for private schools, effectively defunding the public schools even farther.
That leaves us trying things like affirmative action in admissions to try to mitigate the continuing unfair, unequal opportunities lower income students face. Far from ideal, but better than another poke in the eye with a sharp stick, as my wife used to say....and she ought to know! ;-)

They might put the argument in different terms. Which do you prefer....giving admission advantages to aboriginal students in recognition of the piss poor opportunities they've had educationally, or give sentencing advantages to aboriginal criminals in recognition of the across the board piss poor opportunities they've had, recognizing that neither approach addresses the underlying problems, only the results of those long standing issues that simply are not being addressed at all.
What doesn't work is ignoring their lack of opportunities and expecting them to perform on par with other, non disadvantaged kids. That just gets you uneducated, pissed off adults with a chip on their shoulder and no prospects for improvement.

So.....until we actually get to work improving their overall situation, easier said than done, it behooves us to give a leg up to those trying hard to do it for themselves....no? Otherwise we're likely just perpetuating a cycle of criminality that hurts us all.

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"

I can watch unedited footage of testimony....so can you, but Trump told you it's all lies, so good enough, right? When the godfather says he's not a criminal, of course you would believe him....why wouldn't you?

Um....you mean like the lies about Flynn...proven not only true (but lied about by Flynn and Trump) but known before Trump hired him? Or Lewandowski, or Manafort......

We agree at least that the Fed has done a poor job in education...but probably for different reasons. We should get more for our money...and we should spend more money. If we paid teachers on par with what they can make in their profession, we'll get better teachers, and then better students.

Betsy is ignorant of most things education, she demonstrated that clearly at her farcical confirmation hearing, and is most likely to just take more funding out of public education (wanting to pay for religious education and other private schools with that money, for instance). Her druthers are to dismantle the education dept, not to make it work for poor children. Her best plan is to pay private institutions to teach instead...leaving out anyone who can't afford the tuition or doesn't have access to decent schools....and removing any regulations on what must be taught or nondiscrimination of students. She's horrid for education in America.

Please tell me she's been fired.

Also, please tell me this is private school, so the money from the lawsuit he's going to win won't come from Taxpayers.

Actually, I was taught (in a good private school in Texas) that secession happened because the North taxed the hell out of agricultural products (the South's only real income) and not the industrial products of the North. This was, allegedly, in large part due to slavery and attempts to tax it away. The North/FED didn't try to free slaves until the war was on, and as mentioned, only freed the Southern slaves until after the war.
What this means is that, while slavery was integral to many of the reasons for the civil war starting, it was far from the only reason. Slavery was actually already diminishing at that time in the south, and was likely to disappear fairly quickly without the war if things stayed the same.
If you are looking for a catch all 'reason' for the civil war starting, it was perceived draconian political unfairness.

No cancer, seems kinda unfair to pay health insurance premiums toward someone else's treatment.

Haven't been unemployed. Seems kinda unfair to pay for unemployment insurance.

Don't drive much, seems kinda unfair to pay for all these roads.

My kid is in private school, seems kinda unfair that I have to pay for the public ones too.

See where this reasoning takes us?

I'm 39 the only vaccine I ever got was polio as a child as my grandfather died of polio when my mom was 18.

My mom refused the rest , when I was 4 I went to a measles and chicken pox party and gained immunity that way. Parties like that was huge in late 70s.

But I'm 39, never had mumps, chicken pox, etc anything other than bad back and heart disease which runs in the male side of family, had heat attack at 30, I've made it 9 years so far with stints in chest. But all the men die in late 50s to mid 60s on the paternal side to heart disease.

No vaccine for that


Only vaccine my son has had was polio. He's in a private school

No Bob, just no. That is not correct on any point. (except that we were a republic...but a democratic representative republic)
I went to one of the best private schools in America, Kinkaid in Houston, and they DID teach civics (and history) quite well, thank you.
Last year I also read a great book about what really happened, taken directly from the notes of those who were there at the Philadelphia constitutional convention in 1787, called "Miracle At Philadelphia" which I suggest you read.
We have always been a democratic representative republic. It was what the founding fathers set up. It is not a 'trend' of the last few centuries. I can't fathom what you are referencing.
Perhaps you reference us having the electoral college, which are 'elected' representatives that actually elect our governing representatives, as opposed to a true direct democracy? That is not a new, or evolving thing either.
The constitution is not a history lesson, it's a civics lesson. Miracle at Philadelphia is history. Check it out.