You blame this on liberals for some reason when it's the almost exclusively registered republican owners of companies that pay these low wage workers who come here for the shitty jobs, right?

Oh, and your budies over at Enron and so many others like them are the ones who nearly bankrupted this state.


>> ^chilaxe:

@Stormsinger
Right, the education level of California being cut in half at exactly the same time that 15 million people without high school educations happened to enter the state is actually due to what... that California's schools are better funded than other states' schools?
We have to stand up for the most likely explanations for phenomena even if others don't like it.
I don't think there was ever an argument that importing 80 million low education workers into the country wasn't going to decrease measures of societal well-being. The new information here is that immigrants don't on average improve academically in later generations, regardless of many public spending efforts designed for that goal.

>> ^budzos:

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. Maybe some day you'll become enlightened enough to realize that the conscious choice to end a human life is ALWAYS wrong. It doesn't achieve anything but the psychic/spiritual degradation of us all.
I have to take offense at the stupid canard/strawman in your second paragraph. In an ideal world, it would be impossible for governments to declare war (AKA ordering mass murder). But it's not an ideal world yet, so war is going to be around for a while longer. However, elimination of the death penalty does not require an ideal world at all. It simply requires a sane, humane, empathetic approach to the issue (see the dozens of countries around the world with no death penalty as an example).


Always wrong though? Like if someone is trying to kill my daughter and I kill him in the struggle? I don't really have absolute moral authority to dictate right and wrong for you, but for myself, yes, death is something to be avoided whenever and wherever you can. Animal carnage, I despise. However, I do consider using death as a form of justice; a form of rational punishment. For instance, if I caused 400 damage to your property, I consider it a rational course of justice that 400 dollars of fine/reciprocity be extracted from the offender, and perhaps a little extra to discourage the activity. Likewise, it seems rational to expect that someone who takes a life, should in turn, have his life taken, it is a consistent course of reason. The one flaw being that, even after his life is taken, the life of the original party is not restored. That isn't our fault, though, just our inability as humans to ever achieve perfect justice. Like those in Enron, they stole far more then they could ever repay...no perfect justice could ever be done.

So I agree, animal barbarism as a justification for murder is pretty much always bad, or wrong as one might say morally. But I think you can support completely rational grounds for ending a life. Hell, I have considered suicide many times, which one can say is a form of self murder. That is where I find the argument for "ending a human life is always bad" breaks down. Likewise, my grandmother recently passed from emphysema. It was dreadfully painful watching her die. And in that, if she asked someone to help her die, I could not say it evil...the pain was so great. I am no utilitarian, but I don't think that dying is so bad or living so good. Living a life in prison being butt raped doesn't sound much better than just dying, I would rather die. To each his own, it sounds like you have stuff to live for and junk, so I can understand your zeal against death. I don't find humans entitled to anything, like life, I only value our rational agreements between each other. And those who choose not to play by the rule of rational existence, well, then they are playing by the rules of the jungle; and the jungle is a harsh mistress.

Beyond all that though, the practical notion that we are murdering innocent people is enough, to me, to call the whole ordeal off. I thank you for your response, and I didn't mean to offend with the war comparison. I was making the comparison that we do, indeed, live in an imperfect world where wars happen, so governments have the ability to counter act that. I thought that laterally compared to murder. though. Murder is in essence war against that person. A person at war with the state, in an imperfect world, can rationally be "terminated" by the war example. I don't mean to offend, and I am usually horrible in arguing such things in text, I should refrain from doing so ever again.

edited (like always, I am so bad at writing )

I read the wiki article you posted, it says the opposite of what you suggest. That pre-1980, they had no ability to generate policy...they just gathered information. Do you have a link to something that talks about the freemarkety nature in the 80s?, because that link doesn't have it. Unless you are just talking about Regan doing free market stuff on the whole affecting education somehow indirectly, but the link clearly says he made it a federal government responsibility to create educational policy in the 80s. In that, I don't know that your argument fully answers @Grimm's claim that educational stardards have gone down since federal policy making has been done. We aren't talking about free markets here, even at the state level. We are talking about who makes better policies affecting children's education; federal or state. It has also been of my opinion that for important things, eggs in one basket methodologies are dangerous. Best to have a billion little educational experiments boiling around the country, cooking up information that the rest of them can turn around and use. Waiting for a federal mandate to adopt a policy can be rather tedious.

I have some friends that are educators, I will have to ask them how they feel about this. It is easy for us to have an opinion based on raw idealism of our core beliefs, but I would be interested to see what certain teachers have to say. I met a real interesting person at my friends bachelor party. He came from a union state, and moved down here to Texas, we have teachers unions and things, but they aren't as powerful as the north. He experienced a complete change in himself. He found that his own involvement in his union happened in such a way where he basically held the kids education hostage over wages. He said that is was basically the accepted role of teachers to risk children's education over pay. I am not talking about just normal pay, but he was making 50k as a grade school teacher in the early 90s. Not suggesting this is normal, but it is something we don't copy here in Texas. As for his own mind, he knows he would never teach in that area of the country again, and would never suggest anyone move their that values their children's education.

What would be interesting to me is if the absence of the DOE would break down some of the red tape and allow schools to "get creative" with programs a federal political body might not want to take a risk on. Education is to important to fail on, and applying "to big to fail" kind of logic to a failing system of education is to much politics to play for me. Empower teachers and schools, and try to avoid paying as many non-educators as possible would be one way to improve things I would wager. What aspect of the DOE do you think is successful that we need to keep exactly? I mean, I can tell you I don't like that the DOD is so huge and powerful, but I know nuclear subs and aircraft carriers can't operate themselves. What necessarily component of the DOE do you see as necessarily, beyond just talking point of either party line stance of it? I mean, the Department of Energy's main goal was to get us off foreign oil, like a long time ago, that is pretty failed as much as the DOE. Different approach needed, or a massive rethinking of the current one. You don't usually get massive rethinking nationally of any coherent nature, which is why I think a local strategy might be a good way to go here. Perhaps then, you could have that initial part of the DOE before it became the DOE of providing information to schools about what works from other schools kick in again.

This kind of talk of "Ron Paul addresses none of this" about something that isn't related exactly isn't really fair. It is like trying to talk about income tax issues and saying changing them doesn't address the issue of the military war machine...well of course not, it is a different issue. Did you see that recent Greewald video where he talks about the founders did think that massive inequality was not only permissible, but the idea...just as long as the rules were the same for everyone? What I mean to say is that there does need to be a measure of fairness, but that fairness needs to be the same for everyone, rich and poor. I still say the real problem lay in the government creating the monster first and the monster is now eating us. If legislators simply refused to accept the legitimacy of corporate entities and instead say that only individuals can deal on the behalf of themselves with the govenrment(the elimination of the corporate charter as it refers to its relationship to the government) things could get better in a day. But since the good ol USA thinks that non-people entities are people, well, I don't see much hope for restoration. Money is the new government, rule of law is dead. I liked the recent Greenwald input on this. Rant over Sorry, this is just kind of stream of consciousness here, didn't plan out an actual goal or endpoint of my ideas....just a huge, burdensome wall of text

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

The first incarnation of the department of education was actually created in 1876. Was our educational system unfucked before 1876? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Education
1980 was a pivotal year, but it had nothing to do with the department of education. 1980 was the year that Reagan ushered in a large number of 'free market' reforms: Privatization, deregulation, tax cuts for those at the top, austerity for those at the bottom... basically the Milton Friedman Shock Doctrine as described in Naomi Klein's excellent book.
We've since seen the rise of the corporate state and a deterioration of the public sector. These market principles have seen our jobs exported to 3rd world slaves (and then asked us to compete with those slaves), have given the green light to mass pollution and global warming, have allowed big business to use our military as middle east mercenaries and have redistributed vast amounts of wealthy to a tiny fraction of the population (not to mention numerous scandals (Enron, Exxon, BofA, Countrywide, Halliburton, Blackwater, Savings and Loans, Mortgages, etc..)
Ron Paul addresses none of this. He has no solutions for jobs or inequality outside of his faith in invisible hands and invisible deities. He doesn't even seem aware that there is a problem. I don't think he's lying when he pretentiously states that his partisan political views are the very definition of liberty. I just think he is another out of touch conservative millionaire with a mind easily manipulated by self serving dogma (be it religious political or economic).

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

The first incarnation of the department of education was actually created in 1876. Was our educational system unfucked before 1876? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Education
1980 was a pivotal year, but it had nothing to do with the department of education. 1980 was the year that Reagan ushered in a large number of 'free market' reforms: Privatization, deregulation, tax cuts for those at the top, austerity for those at the bottom... basically the Milton Friedman Shock Doctrine as described in Naomi Klein's excellent book.
We've since seen the rise of the corporate state and a deterioration of the public sector. These market principles have seen our jobs exported to 3rd world slaves (and then asked us to compete with those slaves), have given the green light to mass pollution and global warming, have allowed big business to use our military as middle east mercenaries and have redistributed vast amounts of wealthy to a tiny fraction of the population (not to mention numerous scandals (Enron, Exxon, BofA, Countrywide, Halliburton, Blackwater, Savings and Loans, Mortgages, etc..)
Ron Paul addresses none of this. He has no solutions for jobs or inequality outside of his faith in invisible hands and invisible deities. He doesn't even seem aware that there is a problem. I don't think he's lying when he pretentiously states that his partisan political views are the very definition of liberty. I just think he is another out of touch conservative millionaire with a mind easily manipulated by self serving dogma (be it religious political or economic).


Well said sir, in my view no department is inherently bad or good, the value of the department depends on who is running it, how it is used and how policies governing the department are made. If the Department of Education is causing harm to the education of students then this could be fixed by resolving the underlying issue which is one of corrupt policy making. Look at Bill Gates for example, he's playing his part to destroy and privatize the education system so he can have Windows on every school computer and influence the public education budget. He's allowed to do this because of policy changes and enormous amounts of lobbying money (which go hand in hand).

Here's an interesting read about some of the sweeping changes he's been able to introduce via lobbying:
http://techrights.org/2011/09/09/new-york-times-and-washpo-on-edu/

Plus of course all the other issues dystopianfuturetoday mentions - these won't go away just by removing a couple of departments - the core issues of corruption and lobbying have to be fixed first.

Is Ron Paul going to fix these? Hell no. Even if he was strongly in favor of these sorts of real changes, he wouldn't get support for them under the current system, the GOP would block everything, the Dems would keep talking about how bad the GOP is for blocking everything, and everything would continue to get fucked just as badly, or worse, than it currently is.

The first incarnation of the department of education was actually created in 1876. Was our educational system unfucked before 1876? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Education

1980 was a pivotal year, but it had nothing to do with the department of education. 1980 was the year that Reagan ushered in a large number of 'free market' reforms: Privatization, deregulation, tax cuts for those at the top, austerity for those at the bottom... basically the Milton Friedman Shock Doctrine as described in Naomi Klein's excellent book.

We've since seen the rise of the corporate state and a deterioration of the public sector. These market principles have seen our jobs exported to 3rd world slaves (and then asked us to compete with those slaves), have given the green light to mass pollution and global warming, have allowed big business to use our military as middle east mercenaries and have redistributed vast amounts of wealth to a tiny fraction of the population (not to mention numerous scandals (Enron, Exxon, BofA, Countrywide, Halliburton, Blackwater, Savings and Loans, Mortgages, etc..)

Ron Paul addresses none of this. He has no solutions for jobs or inequality outside of his faith in invisible hands and invisible deities. He doesn't even seem aware that there is a problem. I don't think he's lying when he pretentiously states that his partisan political views are the very definition of liberty. I just think he is another out of touch conservative millionaire with a mind easily manipulated by self serving dogma (be it religious political or economic).

>> ^Crosswords:

Lets start off a video about inappropriate behavior with a little inappropriate behavior of their own. OMG THOSE GIRLS ARE HAWT, oh what? yeah bad law-firm for being insensitive.


Yeah that guy sounded like a complete idiot and he had nothing to add to the conversation.

This is fucking despicable though. The Daily Show had it best when everyone was whining about how Bankers and Moneyed individuals were getting picked on. We've seen this shit, Enron laughing about peoples homes burning down cause they'd get money for it. These lawyer bastards...it's been done and we're sick of it.

We haven't even begun to pick on you yet.

>> ^chilaxe:

@Ryjkyj
I agree it's funny.
However, it'd be impossible to count the ways in which organizations making a direct impact on human welfare have been made more efficient by or found unique uses for Apple products or the competitor products inspired by Apple products, so Apple's already one of the most humanitarian businesses in history.


I think I see your point, but I don't think that selling products that enable humanitarian causes makes you a humanitarian. Since there's money exchanging hands, it seems like all the credit should be given to the end-user. I would guess that Apple's products have enabled corporations like Halliburton and Enron, as well as people like Bernie Maddoff.

I'm not saying your wrong. Besides, my real problem lies with the fact that some people think they've genuinely earned an amount of money that's equivalent to the combined salaries of a small nation of living, breathing people.

Wealth disparity is a red herring. It is one economic indicator out of literally thousands. Neolibs like to harp on it, but when the poorest schlub in the US has 2 cars, 2 flat screens, air conditioning, and more food than they can possibly eat then it holds very little meaning. I'm a statistician, and there is always a curve in wealth with extreme ends. Deal with it.

Again - they're focusing on the wrong problem. The problem is a corrupt and powerful government. Lobbyists push for bad laws, but bad laws can't get passed without corrupt legislators. In the past, the robber-barons just did what they wanted and government was too toothless and feckless to stop abuses. Today the robber-barons are back, but they are aided and abetted by a powerful, corrupt government that creates a maze of loopholes, exemptions, and laws to pick and choose which company gets to be the one to get away with murder.

The first thing that has to happen is that government needs to be reduced in size and power so that they cannot be the kingmakers. Then you pass a set of simple reforms that are clear and basic so everyone knows 'the rules'. Companies get away with crap because government passes laws that allows it (like the repeal of Glass/Steagall). Peel the lobbyists out of such a system, and all you do it create an all-powerful government that crushes (or blesses) specific industries according to its whimsy.

For example - Obama has been literally shovelling cash at the 'green' industry. Solyndra (and others) have shown that it was all a subsidy-scam. There was no possible way these solar companies could possibly turn a profit. Not to mention ethanol subsidies, et al... They all lobbied big time and got a pile of political payola. It is modern day patronage. Meanwhile Obama is doing all he can to slap down oil and coal. The government is picking some industries to grow, and others to punish. That is totally bogus. And (just so you neolibs don't get mad) it is bogus when it happens to companies like Exxon or Haliburton too.

The government should not be this power broker that picks and chooses which industries get favoritism, and which ones get the thumbscrews based on the political preference of the legislators in power. That creates an unpredictable, uncertain, arbitrary system where industry is more beholden to politicians than the public. Who cares if a company makes a lousy or unprofitable product when they can just pay a lobbyist, or donate to a candidate, and end up getting piles and piles of taxpayer cash?

THAT is the real problem here. Wall Street, Solydra, Enron - all these companies are just symptoms. The disease is the government.

I didn't miss that memo, but after reading their opinions I decided to put more stock in the opinions of the other 99% of architects and engineers in the US alone who either didn't agree or didn't think the issue was worthy of comment.

You apparently missed the memo about the fallibility of professionals including architects, engineers, doctors, lawyers (especially), and accountants (see Arthur Anderson and Enron). There are just as many people wearing tinfoil hats in the professions as in any other field. >> ^Fade:

I guess you missed the memo from the 1500 architects and engineers who might have the qualifications to debate the 'evidence'.>> ^dannym3141:
@Skeeve don't forget, nothing you say would convince a conspiracy theorist off this idea. Because nothing can convince them off it - no authority is high enough because their nature makes them question authority. The only way they'll change is by letting them go and see for themselves and find the evidence glaring them in the face, but how the hell do you do that with a building that burned down years ago?
These people are so quick to shout "Hah, that building wouldn't fall down in a fire!" but honestly, what do you people know about that? What do any of you really know about the internal structure of a high rise or its construction, or exactly what a fire in a high rise can do? Do you even know what a fire in a normal room can do? Are you sure you're not guessing?

I'm not defending S&P. I'm saying the market needs the service that S&P provides, no matter how crappy S&P is performing when providing that service.

>> ^Stormsinger:

>> ^heropsycho:
Because there's nothing that has replaced them that's credible.
And the answer can't be nothing credible. That makes the entire market unstable.
>> ^Stormsinger:
I'm still a bit confused as to exactly why S&P has the slightest credibility on anything. These are the guys that were rating those toxic mortgages as AAA investments, after all. And gave Enron the same rating right up to a few days before the collapse.
I think they've sufficiently proven just how incompetent they are.


Really? The argument is that there's nothing proven out there, so let's continue trusting the people who -have- proven to be untrustworthy?
Thanks, but no thanks. I'd rather bet on pink unicorns or invisible teapots.

>> ^heropsycho:

Because there's nothing that has replaced them that's credible.
And the answer can't be nothing credible. That makes the entire market unstable.
>> ^Stormsinger:
I'm still a bit confused as to exactly why S&P has the slightest credibility on anything. These are the guys that were rating those toxic mortgages as AAA investments, after all. And gave Enron the same rating right up to a few days before the collapse.
I think they've sufficiently proven just how incompetent they are.



Really? The argument is that there's nothing proven out there, so let's continue trusting the people who -have- proven to be untrustworthy?

Thanks, but no thanks. I'd rather bet on pink unicorns or invisible teapots.

Yeah, and they rated Leahman Brothers as an A right up until the moment they collapsed. It's not like what they say matters.

>> ^Stormsinger:

I'm still a bit confused as to exactly why S&P has the slightest credibility on anything. These are the guys that were rating those toxic mortgages as AAA investments, after all. And gave Enron the same rating right up to a few days before the collapse.
I think they've sufficiently proven just how incompetent they are.

Because there's nothing that has replaced them that's credible.

And the answer can't be nothing credible. That makes the entire market unstable.

>> ^Stormsinger:

I'm still a bit confused as to exactly why S&P has the slightest credibility on anything. These are the guys that were rating those toxic mortgages as AAA investments, after all. And gave Enron the same rating right up to a few days before the collapse.
I think they've sufficiently proven just how incompetent they are.

I'm still a bit confused as to exactly why S&P has the slightest credibility on anything. These are the guys that were rating those toxic mortgages as AAA investments, after all. And gave Enron the same rating right up to a few days before the collapse.

I think they've sufficiently proven just how incompetent they are.