Don is gone
But his herd isn't

Hope the sober GOP members stay the course
Get some real fixes installed

Healthcare, Public Education Reform, Infrastructure, COVID...and a total myrid of things that can be addressed if the desire is there.

Four years of Don foolery is enough.

Go Joe

Try reading again. You have it totally backwards.

When was I insulting or dismissive? Because it was unforseen that educated people would elect a bombastic insulting sexist popularist con man who was obviously lying to them simply because he wore a red hat and tie? Those are facts, not opinion. Many of them are saying how much they regret it now.

I offered solutions you appeared to agree with, like funding lower education so everyone has a decent, if not equal, opportunity to get an education.
Using race as ONE criteria amongst many for admission is not ideal, as I said, but until a better system for identifying and addressing financial and societal issues that stymie opportunities for people often based on their pigmentation is created, it's the best we've got.

What we don't have is what you imply is the problem.....rich white men with 1570 SAT scores (old school SAT, I don't know how it's scored now) and 3.9 gpas are not being turned away from Yale to make room for indigent African American women with 990 SATs and 2.7 gpas...but the Latina woman with 1550 and 3.6 gpa earned while raising 2 siblings and holding a full time job, yeah, she gets the slot, and that's proper. One skewed test that benefits one privileged group is hardly a decent measure of their work ethic or intelligence....often it's only an indication they hired the right student to take the SAT for them. There were at least 3 hired test takers out of 30 students taking the PSAT when I took it, we talked afterwards.

It is the right (and people making the arguments you are) who are far more insulting and dismissive of non white people's frustrations at being racially discriminated against....to a level and consistency exponentially higher than the trifling discriminations whites suffer. That doesn't mean some whites don't suffer some deleterious effects, it means they come out way ahead in the discrimination game.

You wish to ignore all racial discrimination and racial obstacles except that single instance you can point to where it doesn't come out in your favor, then suddenly racism IS a problem that needs eradicating....but only the kind that harms white guys, forget the myriad of insurmountable racist mountains non whites climb daily, both institutional and societal, this speed bump for whites is unconscionable and must be removed immediately!

Come back and whine about institutional anti white bias when anti white racism permeates every facet of your life but not when your race doesn't give you a free leg up that one time. Maybe talk to your right wing friends about why funding education for others is good for you as step one towards eliminating programs like this that address inequities in opportunities, and giving the less fortunate extra opportunity to overcome their situation is good for all. After reasonable basic educational opportunities are available for all, schools will still take the student's home life, finances, and extra curricular activities into account....with luck that will be on an individual basis eventually, but that's not likely until education reforms occur that give everyone an opportunity to display their skills on a more level field..

>> ^Porksandwich:

Does Finland schooling system provide anything but education and the facilities and meals related to keeping a large group of people for hours on end?
Do they do tutoring?
How do they handle discipline?
Do they offer sports teams and fields, etc as part of the school budget?
Uniforms?
Field trips?
Music/band?
Im hoping to hear from @CreamK on this.
Like I've always felt in the US that the sports programs and all the cost associated with them plus the competition they spawn within the student body and against other schools is not beneficial. Basically you end up with a small group of players who get the school to bend over backwards to make things possible for them and everyone else loses out on it, in fact they often have to pay for tickets to even see the events their parents tax dollars make possible.


There's tutoring for students that are falling behind, it's personal one-on-one and there's a multiple programs to help students who have problems, like specail ed or for troubled teens. I actually went on one these troubled youth programs. I never had any learning problems in school, in fact i was always so much ahead in classes that i got bored and started to get in to problems and skipping A LOT.. But when they finally managed to get me in to this special class, i've never enjoyed school that much.. I did two years of math in half a year and got free choice of what to do instead of math.. I either got a free hour or i picked up another subject like literacy and the best part of it was that i choosed what to do..

Discipline is there, you got many levels of it. Mostly it's handled in conjunction with parents. Detention, personal tutoring or changing to a smaller group, workshops where you can fix bikes and learn sciences with more hands on approaches etc. Mostly it's not a punishment as such but personalized programs to tailored to fit for the needs. Expulsions are very rare, in my school years i heard of two incidences and both were changed to smaller group where they both stopped skipping school in two weeks time. Those smaller groups consists of one teacher per 5 students or even less..

No sport teams are provided by schools, they are handled by sport teams junior programs. There is of course 1-2 hour classes per week for sports but it's more to do with learning to enjoy excercise than competing.

No uniforms or mandatory dressing codes. There is the basic decency expected when it comes to dressing and one peculiar code is that you are not allowed to wear a hat in class... Those baseball caps can hide your eyes... I know, it's a bit strange..

Field trips: yes, there are both provided by the school and then longer ones where the students do bake sales etc to gather money and those are voluntary.

Music is a subject and schools can provide the means to do them more in your own free time. The bands are not a part of schools but usually every city has one or to schools that concentrate more for those programs. It means a few extra hours but provide a good base for secondary musical education institutes where you can enroll at young age. Those institutions are publicly funded too and work in conjuction with all levels schools and they continue seamlessly to provide education for music teachers and professionals up to master degrees. You can go to those schools when you're grown up too and they have a tuitions, in the range of 100-200€ per class. So once again, money is not a hurdle for education.

It's been a years when i was in basic school, i graduated in 1989 and went to secondary school in 1991. That was about the time when the education reform was moving to that state too so i had to mixed field of teachers. Some were not up to job and some were just wonderful personalities. Now adays it's up to standards too and in fact, i'm enrolling in one next fall to finish up my graduation..

The downside of Finnish system is that you can not even get a job as a cleaner without finishing some sort of courses for it.. So even for basic shitty jobs you need a basic education in that field... But since those are basically free of charge (some require a 100-200€ fee, not a problem...) everyone has a chance. Also when you get a better job the companies often provide the follow-up studies that fit to that job description. The cost of those are divided by the goverment and the companies.

Before it comes up I'd like to point out that charter schools, which she mentioned, are not the silver bullet everyone thinks they are. From Multiple Choice Credo, a Stanford study of the effectiveness of Charter schools published in 2009:
---
Charter schools have become a rallying cry for education reformers across the country, with every expectation that they will continue to figure prominently in national educational strategy in the months and years to come. And yet, this study reveals in unmistakable terms that, in the aggregate, charter students are not faring as well as their traditional public school counterparts. 

Further, tremendous variation in academic quality among charters is the norm, not the exception.  The problem of quality is the most pressing issue that charter schools and their supporters face.  
---
For those who don't know, charter schools are just taxpayer funded schools that the public has zero say in because that taxpayer money is handed over to a private company. Laws and sausages my friend.

>> ^oscarillo:

I really dont know were to start, but first thing first
Im no left or right (I like to masturbate with either hand)
1 - Do you have a video on all the lies from Bush?, or you just going to say that he was a better choice?
2 - C'mon it only has been 8 friking months or in you little minds you think he was going to have a magic wand to fix all problems?
3 - Do you know of any politician that has not tell you any lie to get elected?
"Read my lips, no new taxes"
"Education reforms to be first legislation sent to Congress."
etc. etc.
Dont you think is stupid just to be whining and not doing anything?
ps
and by anything I mean doing something for you comunity and not just "posting videos or comments"


Well, it's now been what? 2 years. He's still going back on his promises. NOW what do you have to say? By the way, what exactly are YOU doing for YOUR community?

Here's the thing--after you watch that video, pay particular attention to the pathos being elicited, as we watch the hopes and dreams of thousands of children riding on a particular bingo ball being selected. So much emotion, designed to make the viewer ANGRY that it's come to this. But research (reported in Freakonomics and other places) has shown that every child in that auditorium is just as likely to succeed in their respective educational career, whether or not their number is called.

Say what? The authors speculate that, like so much in life, who you are is far more important than what you do. They found positive correlations between the number of books in a home and a child's long term educational success, so Blagojevich, governor at the time, ordered books for every home with children under age six. This is exactly the sort of faulty interpretation of research findings that cause so much consternation in educational reform efforts. It wasn't merely the number of books a child could read--it was the total number of books present in the household. The authors mused that such a collection transmitted a clear set of values to the child. Parents who treasured reading had children who treasured reading, and these children did rather well in testing situations. Similarly, merely the desire to improve one's current state through applying for new educational opportunities seems to be the factor in whether or not a child succeeds. I worked at a magnet high school in Chicago, and I have to be clear--the desire must come from both the parents AND the child. Parents who enrolled in the lottery to place their child in a 'safe' school against that child's wishes were sorely disappointed with the result, which usually included 27 other children (and their parents) annoyed at the disruptive element in their midst.

There are a number of reports from the Consortium of Chicago School Research (based out of the University of Chicago) which finds, quite astonishingly, that the best indicator of a student's long term success is NOT a standardized test score (which in CPS is the Prairie State, which is the ACT plus three other tests) but rather GPA. Think about that for a moment. Here you have BAD teachers in FAILING schools. I mean, that's what the movie's talking about, right? The research shows, though, that these 'bad' teachers are actually fairly good at gauging where the student is at. They're not necessarily dumbing down the material, or handing out C's for having a pulse. You would think that if they were so terrible, they'd avoid the stress of report card pick-up by passing everyone, but they don't. They do the right thing. They pass the ones who are passing, and fail the ones who are failing, and somehow this aggregate does a better job of predicting how well that student will do in life than the standardized test. That one conclusion should be studied at every school in the nation, but it seems to be ignored. Why?

Remember that joke about the guy who finds his best friend frantically looking for his wallet in the street late one night, and helps him out, but after an hour, asks, "Are you sure you lost it here?" The friend replies, "Oh, no. I lost it in the alley over there. The light's better here." That, right there, is most of what's wrong with the current fetishization of accountability in education. In order to hold schools accountable, they've chosen something that's easy to count. However, is what it's counting IMPORTANT? Accountability that doesn't count the right thing shouldn't count at all. The alternative is hard, sticky, prone to errors with few moments of identifiable triumph. In short, it makes the bureaucrats work, and Ghod help us all if they have to do THAT.

A quick statement to establish my bona fides. I was selected to participate in Teachers for Chicago, the spiritual predecessor of Teach for America. I was part of the first group of library media specialists put through the program. We were a different breed of teacher, sent to confront a new breed of student. I have worked 14 years in CPS, six in the elementary school setting, eight in high school. I have watched the rise of charter schools, and know why they're so effective--the Freakonomics folks called it. They do better because they WANT to do better, and that desire manifests with the choice to forego the neighborhood school for the charter school. But the students who wanted into the Charter school and did not are still doing well--they're just drowning in a sea of knuckle-heads, and their successes are being diluted when it comes time to rank schools in how well they prepare their students.

I've written quite a bit, because I have a lot to say. I'll see this movie when it comes out (because I'm that kind of librarian), but I'm almost certain that they'll ignore most of the new evidence that's come out indicating that charter schools don't live up to the hype (read The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education by Diane Ravitch for a comprehensive view of this) and that the problems confronting us seem almost insurmountable. They certainly defy easy metrics that would allow standardized testing to be used to establish accountability. The problem, to me, is plain. When A Nation At Risk came out in the 1980s, the US education system entered triage mode. We've never left it. We've pandered to corporate interests, as they sell us 'proven' tests (the creators of those tests have gone on record as saying that it's useless to test the sort of thing that politicians want tested) and curriculum delivery systems that simply do not work. As anyone will tell you, the entire hospital cannot be run like the ER, and yet we do just that. There is a solution, but it is all but unthinkable in the current climate. I've discussed this with other teachers, and they've rebelled against the notion, even though they later admit that perhaps it's the only way.

One last comment. I am currently working at one of the selective enrollment schools featured in the Freakonomics study. Students merely have to apply, and there's a lottery. There are, as a result, a wide variance of student ability levels, but not 100% bell curved--the very top can score well enough to get into Northside College Prep or Walter Payton College Prep. I arrived at the end of March, when the Prairie State push was in overdrive. Metrics were everywhere, and the pie-in-the-sky target of 18 was pretty much unattainable, if the various practice tests were to be believed. When the school's score came back 19, though, there was the usual jubilant celebration, but undermining this was 'the fear'. One administrator said when asked by a teacher what was done differently this year, he replied, "I don't know." They'd tried a lot of things, and clearly one was the winner, but which? Why is this navel gazing important? Why do I call it "the fear"? Because schools all over the area will be sent to this school, to learn from them. They're a success, after all. They did much better than predicted. Will these schools settle for, "We don't know?" I doubt it.

Synopsis

For a nation that proudly declared it would leave no child behind, America continues to do so at alarming rates. Despite increased spending and politicians’ promises, our buckling public–education system, once the best in the world, routinely forsakes the education of millions of children. Oscar®—winning filmmaker Davis Guggenheim (AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH) reminds us that education “statistics” have names: Anthony, Francisco, Bianca, Daisy, and Emily, whose stories make up the engrossing foundation of WAITING FOR “SUPERMAN.” As he follows a handful of promising kids through a system that inhibits, rather than encourages, academic growth, Guggenheim undertakes an exhaustive review of public education, surveying “drop—out factories” and “academic sinkholes,” methodically dissecting the system and its seemingly intractable problems. However, embracing the belief that good teachers make good schools, Guggenheim offers hope by exploring innovative approaches taken by education reformers and charter schools that have—in reshaping the culture—refused to leave their students behind.

Tarrifs? Smoot–Hawley all over again? The issue is not the size of government but the embed corporate interests. An efficient and truly representative government would be flexible enough to grow and diminish to reflect economic dynamics. As it stands different corporate interests represent each party and there isn't so much as a legislative deliberation but stubborn grandstanding for conflicting interests and a back and forth with electoral cycles.

I'm not saying anything new here of course, but my point is, ideology in the grand scheme of things is irrelevant. The Democrats are firmly behind free market policies over any kind of long term nationalization, or anti-free trade policies. They will be rid of their corporate ownership of the automobile and financial services industries as fast as they can, and they will be forced or at least pressured into spending cuts, tax rises, raising the pension age and what have you to combat the deficit whether they like it or not.

The best thing in the short term is effective education reform. As much as anyone would like to say otherwise, the biggest factor that has led average middle income wages stagnate or fall in real terms over the last few decades has been technological innovation and automation replacing manual jobs. Competing at this level in trades that haven't been automated is obviously a fool's errand, emerging countries will easily out compete on wages. Educating people into higher skilled jobs should be the priority.

Effective campaign finance reform is the only way this and any meaningful reform will be possible though. When Massa went on his talk show tour, the focus shouldn't have been on his playful tickling or innuendo it shouldn't have been him saying on Beck's show: (a comment that is in a video in my PQ by the way!)

“Congressmen spend between five and seven hours a day on the phone begging for money ..."

If this isn't dealt with, the US will simply become Japan if it has not already. Growth will stagnate, but living standards will remain high though so no one will really notice. Rather than bureaucrats becoming more embedded with the government as in Japan it will be the corporate interests. Meanwhile problems will accumulate. As the government becomes less and less effective, voter apathy will takeover and feed the process.

As with Japan's current debt of 200% of GDP, the US's current 80% level will continue to rise until breaking point. Japan is lucky being a creditor nation and having plenty of domestic lenders willing to provide low yield rates, but even that will not last. Meanwhile the US's stupendous absolute debt in relative terms and being a debtor nation will probably not allow it to reach that level, with perhaps the saving grace being that the US dollar is still the world's reserve currency.

But anyway, tl;dr version: ideology is irrelevant, campaign financing and genuine representation is everything.

Oh perhaps I should make clear that this isn't really all directed at you, more a general response to the topic.
>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

We need to rethink our economy. The population is getting bigger, while at the same time employment is being lost to automation, 3rd world labor exploitation and corporate consolidation. It seems to me that this is a problem that can't be solved by a booming economy alone.
I'm not sure what could be done to halt this process, perhaps huge tariffs on corporations that use non-American labor, or limits on the size and power of corporations. I don't know. I'd love to hear ideas on this.

I am a Swiss citizen living in Switzerland, and while I voted against this ridiculous ban, I think I can understand why it passed (after the initial shock of course... I had put more stock in Swiss citizens than this).

All the polls predicted that the ban would be massively rejected and yet it passed; it seems to be an awkward attempt by the people to express their distrust of islam and their fear of its rapid progression in Europe, something that is quite impossible to do in public or in the media without being belittled as a “xenophobe” and “islamophobe” (the latter of which should not be considered insulting). The government, largely left-wing, continually undermine or disregard certain real problems regarding immigration/integration of muslims – most of which come from Turkey and ex-Yugoslavia – in order to retain their politically correct image, even when it is at the expense of the people. One example: the fact that individuals of the above-mentioned population, along with African immigrants, are responsible for over 70% of all criminality in Switzerland, was systematically downplayed and the statistics criticised by the media and the government left, without proposing any constructive solutions. One mustn’t forget that one of the UDC’s main beefs is with immigration, not religion (not that that makes them any better, mind).

@rychan: the ban, like every law project, had to pass the parliament first, where they decide if it is constitutional or not. This is where the UDC, the far right party, sneakily got away with what is in effect a straw-man ban: a mosque is still a mosque without a minaret, and banning them cannot be considered against religious freedom because they can still worship in a minaret-free mosque.

The UDC’s argument was that the minaret, whose purpose is to call for prayer 5 times a day (not allowed in CH), is also a symbol of conquest. Dumb, I know, but it fed into the fears of a country already fed up of being toyed with (Khadafi, the EU, the US and the “secret bancaire”, etc.) and represented by a bunch of pussies who will bow and scrape< /a> to the worst of tyrants just to be liked.

Of course, there is the “religious war” side to it as well, even if all the religious authorities here, christian and other, vehemently rejected the ban, possibly fearing that such legislation could eventually turn on them.

The real test will come when the people vote on an initiative by the “jeunnesse socialiste” which aims at secularising the state. They wish to completely separate church and state, removing catechism, theology and crucifixes from public schools, replacing religious education lessons (which should only be a part of history class) with ethics/civism, cease the funding of “state” churches (protestant or catholic depending on the canton) with tax-payer money, etc.

Somehow, I am not so optimist as to how this will fare... Ignorance is a tough opponent.


@Krupo: your knowledge of CH seems a tad outdated. Not only does CH have one of the smallest and most under-financed armies of western Europe, but it is planning on making it even smaller. As for the sexism, it is the same small group of idiots who proposed the minaret-ban who want traditional christian families with mommy at home and daddy at work, but they're the only ones. An educational reform is working on changing the long lunch break, but most kids eat at school already because, well, mommy's at work too.

As for old-school... how many countries have legalised assisted suicide?

>> ^ajkido:
Maybe you Americans should also look into some kind of education reform...
Those numbers are just mind boggling. Although I guess it must be motivating to study hard when it costs that much and you're in a hurry to start paying back those loans! But hundreds of thousands?!


Well, that's what happens when the entire culture of a country has degraded to the point that the only things that are important are the increase of profit and acquisition of wealth.

Maybe you Americans should also look into some kind of education reform...

Those numbers are just mind boggling. Although I guess it must be motivating to study hard when it costs that much and you're in a hurry to start paying back those loans! But hundreds of thousands?!

>> ^oscarillo:
I really dont know were to start, but first thing first
Im no left or right (I like to masturbate with either hand)
1 - Do you have a video on all the lies from Bush?, or you just going to say that he was a better choice?
2 - C'mon it only has been 8 friking months or in you little minds you think he was going to have a magic wand to fix all problems?
3 - Do you know of any politician that has not tell you any lie to get elected?
"Read my lips, no new taxes"
"Education reforms to be first legislation sent to Congress."
etc. etc.
Dont you think is stupid just to be whining and not doing anything?
ps
and by anything I mean doing something for you comunity and not just "posting videos or comments"


1 - This happens a lot. Present negative facts on Obama and you get "well at least he's not Bush" "but what about Bush" etc. etc. The fact that the previous president was corrupt does nothing to excuse the fact that the current one is too. It's obvious Obama has no intention of prosecuting Bush & Co. for war crimes, it's all about "looking forward" I don't think Bush was the better choice at all. Ron Paul was a good choice.

2 - Certainly not, I just expected he might live up to his campaign promises. Withdrawal from Iraq, etc.

3 - A few. There's a difference between the President and "any politician" however.

I'm not whining. There's nothing wrong with posting a video.
You have no clue as to what I do or don't do for my community.

I really dont know were to start, but first thing first
Im no left or right (I like to masturbate with either hand)

1 - Do you have a video on all the lies from Bush?, or you just going to say that he was a better choice?
2 - C'mon it only has been 8 friking months or in you little minds you think he was going to have a magic wand to fix all problems?
3 - Do you know of any politician that has not tell you any lie to get elected?
"Read my lips, no new taxes"
"Education reforms to be first legislation sent to Congress."
etc. etc.

Dont you think is stupid just to be whining and not doing anything?
ps
and by anything I mean doing something for you comunity and not just "posting videos or comments"

He has restored American significance on the world stage.
He's killed a lot of Al Quida in Pakistan with unmanned aircraft. U.S. troops have a reasonable and timely exit strategy.
I am waiting for the education reform he campaigned with.
People are still debating about the New Deal (although, I had never heard anti-Roosevelt propaganda until the Obama/McCain election) and it's almost certain to be continued after our demise. I think he's doing fairly well in this area, although, his hands seem to be tied by the bankers. It's a hell a shit storm to have to sail through and I trust in his ability to keep us afloat.

I usually dislike speeches that preach platitudes and state the obvious but I'm glad he's hitting all the right points.

Defending fiscal and financial stimulus by laying out specific objectives and candidly explaining the necessity and price of it all, while blatantly and unobtusely disavowing wasteful spending.

Pushing education reform, particularly making a point of performance pay, unambiguously stating the abysmal levels of higher education and drop out rates in addition to ever rising job requirements, but equally demanding more involvement from individuals for example.