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The problem with that, is that they won't be able to overcome a Democratic filibuster in the Senate for a full repeal.
Here's a crazy idea... write up the "better" replacement before going for the repeal. Use it to negotiate... Since you, any so many other people are of the view that Team R is better than Team D, prove it by putting forth an idea, and have honest debate on the issue.
The problem with that, is that they won't be able to overcome a Democratic filibuster in the Senate for a full repeal.
Here's a crazy idea... write up the "better" replacement before going for the repeal. Use it to negotiate... Since you, any so many other people are of the view that Team R is better than Team D, prove it by putting forth an idea, and have honest debate on the issue.
Repeal first. Then let's get together and negotiate.
Seriously, if this is it, expect many GOP'ers getting primaried at mid-term.
The problem with that, is that they won't be able to overcome a Democratic filibuster in the Senate for a full repeal.
Here's a crazy idea... write up the "better" replacement before going for the repeal. Use it to negotiate... Since you, any so many other people are of the view that Team R is better than Team D, prove it by putting forth an idea, and have honest debate on the issue.
Repeal first. Then let's get together and negotiate.
Seriously, if this is it, expect many GOP'ers getting primaried at mid-term.
That is really really dumb, lets get rid of the thing that covers millions of people and THEN write up and negotiate a new one which could take a long time leaving people without coverage
The problem with that, is that they won't be able to overcome a Democratic filibuster in the Senate for a full repeal.
Here's a crazy idea... write up the "better" replacement before going for the repeal. Use it to negotiate... Since you, any so many other people are of the view that Team R is better than Team D, prove it by putting forth an idea, and have honest debate on the issue.
Repeal first. Then let's get together and negotiate.
Seriously, if this is it, expect many GOP'ers getting primaried at mid-term.
That is really really dumb, lets get rid of the thing that covers millions of people and THEN write up and negotiate a new one which could take a long time leaving people without coverage
No... what you do, is repeal it on a sunset date. (ie, effective on Dec. 31st, 2017 or 18).
Then, that pits the House/Senate to negotiate with an actual deadline.
So the Columbia Journalism Review has completed a study of the media outlets that covered the 2016 presidential race. It’s a fascinating read, with a lot a more detail than I can give in a summary of the piece. http://www.cjr.org/analysis/breitbart-media-trump-harvard-study.php
CJR reviewed 1.25 million stories over the election period, looking at facebook shares and retweets to establish the links between different media outlets. It found a media environment consisting of one large, diverse media block, and then a secondary, insulated media group centred around Breitbart.
This can be shown by looking at the number of Clinton and Trump supporters following each site, and noticing the disappearance of centre right media sites, that is sites which drew more Trump supporters that Clinton supporters but still a fairly even number of each. Sites like NY Post, WSJ and The Daily Mail leaned to Trump but had a mix of Clinton and Trump supporters that was pretty close to even, but looking right of them there is almost nothing more partisan than that until you reach the hyperpartisan Breitbart bubble of 90%+ Trump supporters.
This finding counters to common myth that technology alone has produced our partisan media. If it was merely a product of technology then the impact would be assymetric, we would have a left wing news bubble just as large and isolated as Breitbart’s Trump bubble. But we see no such bubble on the left. So there must be other factors at play driving this creation of a right wing bubble, whether it’s the nature of Republican/Trump supporters, or some kind of political/business plan is unsure, but technology is merely a facilitator of something else going on in right wing politics.
One interesting element of this new right wing bubble is how new its media outlets are. Looking at every single site that had a majority of Trump supporters, only the NY Post existed before Reagan’s election in 1980. This didn’t change much through to the mid-90s (Washington Times, Limbaugh, and finally FOX News started up). Since then this bubble has grown exponentially. A majority of its sites were created after 2008.
Another feature of this media is that isn’t simply politically biased, but media with a clear political engagement and support for specific candidates. The targets of the Breitbart weren’t necessarily based on ideological difference, but their rivalry with Trump. When Rubio or Jeb Bush were Trump’s primary opponents they were also the primary targets of the Breitbart media bubble (alongside Clinton). When FOX News was critical of Trump, it was also attacked by Breitbart and it’s closely aligned sites.
To achieve these political ends the Breitbart bubble contructs media stories better described as disinformation rather than fake news. In fact the article says ‘fake news’ is not an appropriate description of what is happening at all. Fake news best describes people looking to make some cash from facebook ad dollars, and is typically apolitical, making up whatever stories give the best rate of clicks. Rather, Breitbart doesn't make stuff up as much as it combines truths and partially truths in particular ways, while leaving out important counter-truths and context, in order to lead the reader towards a specific conclusion. It then repeats the conclusions of this piece over and over again, using any incident no matter how minor as a chance to repeat it's basic themes. This kind of thing is hardly new, but what made it so powerful in this instance was how isolated it’s readership was within the Breitbart media bubble. Readers never read an alternative source of media to give a different point of view, making the repetition tactic so much more effective.
One of the most powerful effects of this hyper-partisan media bubble was its effect on more normal media coverage. Sentence level analysis of stories in the media shows that the two key components of Trump’s agenda came to dominate all media coverage – immigration and attacks on Clinton. In discussing Clinton, the three most covered elements were her emails, then her Foundation, then Benghazi. In contrast, Trump’s immigration rhetoric, as well as jobs and trade all received more coverage than his scandals. Breitbart and other aligned media sites were able to drive the conversation in conventional media.
Finally, the data in to this bubble shows that while it provides all or almost all news for a dedicated following, the majority of Americans still get their news from traditional news sites that follow professional journalistic practices, and who cross-reference what they read across a range of media sites.
It's a really interesting piece that makes a lot of good points beyond the ones I summarised above. There's also lots more chart porn. So please click on the link.
sebster editorial – Breitbart and the other hyper-partisan sites are clearly a problem, not because they’re biased, not even because they’re dishonest, but because they are clearly motivated by immediate political ends. But Breitbart in itself is only so big, and its readership is so far outside the political norm that in and of itself it can’t impact elections. If it was just these sites and their credulous readership then it would be an issue but a tolerable one. The problem comes from how stories invented by Breitbart and other sites bleed in to mainstream media. Dishonest speculation and commentary by Breitbart is somehow legitimised by the high number of clicks from the loyal readers, which gives these bs stories a level of merit within real media coverage.
So the real issue now is for normal media outlets to understand the game played by Breitbart, and make sure it stops falling for it. In the 2016 campaign the NYT employed 20 staffers each to look in to Clinton and Trump. The Trump investigators swung from one Trump scandal to next almost daily, while the Clinton investigators found nothing, and so were often reduced to just repeating the insane bs coming from Breitbart. Incredibly, the claims against Clinton were more clearly understood by voters, reality didn’t matter but repetition did, and Breitbart is very good at repeating the same lies over and over again.
The greater media has a responsibility to understand the impact this dishonest, hyper-partisan right wing bubble can have. To the extent that any of the crazy coming out of it needs to be covered by real media sources, it needs to ensure that any allegations made that are unfounded or factually wrong are clearly stated as such.
This message was edited 5 times. Last update was at 2017/03/07 04:12:17
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
Yep, much like Scientology declares psychiatrists as enemy number 1 to stop their members getting some information and viewpoints that might chip away at their beliefs, so Breitbart constantly attacks all media outside their hyper-partisan bubble, for the exact same cynical end.
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whembly wrote: And some public schools are fething gakholes and more money isn't going to do gak.
Most really bad schools are shitholes because of greater social disfunction in the community. This is not a problem that vouchers can solve.
And for the rare case of a bad school in an area without major social disfuction, you can reform that school. The argument you gave that you either throw more money at the school or move to vouchers is clearly a false dilemma.
The idea is to create a society where there are multiple choices for students in the same region. Those choices ought to create incentives for both entities to compete for those kids.
Holy fething gak no. I'm not even opposed to school vouchers, and am sending my kids to private school, but holy fething gak this is so wrong. The free market is not a solution for anything in education. Education is incredibly complex, and its value and outcomes are barely understood by parents. The fact that so much of the rhetoric boils down to idiotic nonsense like 'its a good school' or 'its a bad school', without any consideration of the complexity of outcomes and vast differences in student in take should show you how poorly understood education outcomes are made.
And the one thing that everyone should know about economics is that when the consumer doesn't understand the product, there can be no mechanism to drive greater market performance.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2017/03/07 04:31:15
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
CJR reviewed 1.25 million stories over the election period, looking at facebook shares and retweets to establish the links between different media outlets. It found a media environment consisting of one large, diverse media block, and then a secondary, insulated media group centred around Breitbart.
This can be shown by looking at the number of Clinton and Trump supporters following each site, and noticing the disappearance of centre right media sites, that is sites which drew more Trump supporters that Clinton supporters but still a fairly even number of each. Sites like NY Post, WSJ and The Daily Mail leaned to Trump but had a mix of Clinton and Trump supporters that was pretty close to even, but looking right of them there is almost nothing more partisan than that until you reach the hyperpartisan Breitbart bubble of 90%+ Trump supporters.
This finding counters to common myth that technology alone has produced our partisan media. If it was merely a product of technology then the impact would be assymetric, we would have a left wing news bubble just as large and isolated as Breitbart’s Trump bubble. But we see no such bubble on the left. So there must be other factors at play driving this creation of a right wing bubble, whether it’s the nature of Republican/Trump supporters, or some kind of political/business plan is unsure, but technology is merely a facilitator of something else going on in right wing politics.
One interesting element of this new right wing bubble is how new its media outlets are. Looking at every single site that had a majority of Trump supporters, only the NY Post existed before Reagan’s election in 1980. This didn’t change much through to the mid-90s (Washington Times, Limbaugh, and finally FOX News started up). Since then this bubble has grown exponentially. A majority of its sites were created after 2008.
Another feature of this media is that isn’t simply politically biased, but media with a clear political engagement and support for specific candidates. The targets of the Breitbart weren’t necessarily based on ideological difference, but their rivalry with Trump. When Rubio or Jeb Bush were Trump’s primary opponents they were also the primary targets of the Breitbart media bubble (alongside Clinton). When FOX News was critical of Trump, it was also attacked by Breitbart and it’s closely aligned sites.
To achieve these political ends the Breitbart bubble contructs media stories better described as disinformation rather than fake news. In fact the article says ‘fake news’ is not an appropriate description of what is happening at all. Fake news best describes people looking to make some cash from facebook ad dollars, and is typically apolitical, making up whatever stories give the best rate of clicks. Rather, Breitbart doesn't make stuff up as much as it combines truths and partially truths in particular ways, while leaving out important counter-truths and context, in order to lead the reader towards a specific conclusion. It then repeats the conclusions of this piece over and over again, using any incident no matter how minor as a chance to repeat it's basic themes. This kind of thing is hardly new, but what made it so powerful in this instance was how isolated it’s readership was within the Breitbart media bubble. Readers never read an alternative source of media to give a different point of view, making the repetition tactic so much more effective.
One of the most powerful effects of this hyper-partisan media bubble was its effect on more normal media coverage. Sentence level analysis of stories in the media shows that the two key components of Trump’s agenda came to dominate all media coverage – immigration and attacks on Clinton. In discussing Clinton, the three most covered elements were her emails, then her Foundation, then Benghazi. In contrast, Trump’s immigration rhetoric, as well as jobs and trade all received more coverage than his scandals. Breitbart and other aligned media sites were able to drive the conversation in conventional media.
Finally, the data in to this bubble shows that while it provides all or almost all news for a dedicated following, the majority of Americans still get their news from traditional news sites that follow professional journalistic practices, and who cross-reference what they read across a range of media sites.
It's a really interesting piece that makes a lot of good points beyond the ones I summarised above. There's also lots more chart porn. So please click on the link.
sebster editorial – Breitbart and the other hyper-partisan sites are clearly a problem, not because they’re biased, not even because they’re dishonest, but because they are clearly motivated by immediate political ends. But Breitbart in itself is only so big, and its readership is so far outside the political norm that in and of itself it can’t impact elections. If it was just these sites and their credulous readership then it would be an issue but a tolerable one. The problem comes from how stories invented by Breitbart and other sites bleed in to mainstream media. Dishonest speculation and commentary by Breitbart is somehow legitimised by the high number of clicks from the loyal readers, which gives these bs stories a level of merit within real media coverage.
So the real issue now is for normal media outlets to understand the game played by Breitbart, and make sure it stops falling for it. In the 2016 campaign the NYT employed 20 staffers each to look in to Clinton and Trump. The Trump investigators swung from one Trump scandal to next almost daily, while the Clinton investigators found nothing, and so were often reduced to just repeating the insane bs coming from Breitbart. Incredibly, the claims against Clinton were more clearly understood by voters, reality didn’t matter but repetition did, and Breitbart is very good at repeating the same lies over and over again.
The greater media has a responsibility to understand the impact this dishonest, hyper-partisan right wing bubble can have. To the extent that any of the crazy coming out of it needs to be covered by real media sources, it needs to ensure that any allegations made that are unfounded or factually wrong are clearly stated as such.
I think this article sheds a lot of light on the activity happening within the machinations driving the right's news manipulation and dissemination.
The problem with that, is that they won't be able to overcome a Democratic filibuster in the Senate for a full repeal.
Here's a crazy idea... write up the "better" replacement before going for the repeal. Use it to negotiate... Since you, any so many other people are of the view that Team R is better than Team D, prove it by putting forth an idea, and have honest debate on the issue.
Repeal first. Then let's get together and negotiate.
Seriously, if this is it, expect many GOP'ers getting primaried at mid-term.
That is really really dumb, lets get rid of the thing that covers millions of people and THEN write up and negotiate a new one which could take a long time leaving people without coverage
No... what you do, is repeal it on a sunset date. (ie, effective on Dec. 31st, 2017 or 18).
Then, that pits the House/Senate to negotiate with an actual deadline.
and the last time something like this was tried we got sequestration and an eventual government shutdown. In no way does this idea make sense in the current political climate. Without something in hand there is no point in repealing the ACA aside from just scoring political brownie points. It also puts the initiative squarely in the hands of the GOP, giving them a far stronger negotiating position for something which they abhor the fundamental concept of.
This is how we get government failures.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/03/07 06:46:21
IRON WITHIN, IRON WITHOUT.
New Heavy Gear Log! Also...Grey Knights! The correct pronunciation is Imperial Guard and Stormtroopers, "Astra Militarum" and "Tempestus Scions" are something you'll find at Hogwarts.
I've mentioned it before, but it bears repeating: we tried the proposed school system in Sweden (DeVos has even mentioned that it's what they were looking at for inspiration). The result was schools becoming more segregated among socioeconomic lines. At the same time our results in international comparisons plunged, only now, 10 years later, starting to recover somewhat (correlation does not imply causation, but there's been studies on the link, I'll try to find them later).
It's a gakky idea being pushed entirely for ideological reasons by people wholly unqualified to make the decisions they're making. We tried, it didn't work as promised. Learn from us!
Besides, there's an argument to be made that education is a matter of national security. We really can't afford to have charlatans and fraudsters screwing people over for life.
For thirteen years I had a dog with fur the darkest black. For thirteen years he was my friend, oh how I want him back.
I've been through the House Republican replacement for ACA. A lot of people are saying it's basically ACA version 2.0. It isn't, its more like ACA 0.5, the rough draft you have while you're fleshing out the concept, before you've done the hard work to actually make the thing work.
Because it's still got the nice stuff from ACA, extended coverage for kids, and no ability to cancel people for pre-existing conditions. But after 7 fething years of droning about how the ACA death spiral was going to happen any fething day now just you wait, the House Republican plan has a chronic death spiral problem. Because there's no individual mandate at all, instead the only penalty for having no insurance while you're young and healthy, and then getting insurance when you get sick is a 30% premium hike. There is not a sane human being on this planet who thinks that won't produce a death spiral. Probably most of the House Republicans understand that as well.
Almost as bad is the weird age based component to tax subsidies. Ryan's original idea was to dump income based subsidies entirely and replace them with subsidies based on age, so that as you got older you got bigger subsidies. They got a bit skittish about giving billionaires the same credit that they'd give anyone on social security, so this latest version adds an income element to the age element, bringing it back in to something like ACA lite. It's a very weird plan, because older people are already encouraged to get insurance, on account of them having a pretty good expectation that they need healthcare to avoid dying. Unless Republicans are planning to remove the ACA limits on the premium you can charge older people, in which case they'd need large subsidies to make sure that elderly people could afford the much higher premiums, and the subsidies are capped at $4,000. So this part of the plan is either utterly weird beyond belief, or a lot less weird but absolutely certain to leave elderly people unable to afford insurance. Either way tip top job Mr Ryan.
So it's basically more or less like Obamacare, except it they broke a lot of it.
whembly wrote: No... what you do, is repeal it on a sunset date. (ie, effective on Dec. 31st, 2017 or 18).
Then, that pits the House/Senate to negotiate with an actual deadline.
I wrote about this when the plan to set a timeline on killing ACA and replacing it with something else to be decided at a later date first picked up serious consideration, a couple of weeks after Trump's original win. It's a fething horrible idea. Because if Republicans had a plan that was better than ACA then they would have just developed that, or even if they didn't have such a plan but were confident that they could develop such a thing then they'd just buckle down and write it. It's only if you have no better plan and no belief that you could actually develop such a plan that you would need to resort to a stunt like this.
So the idea then is because Republicans had seven years to come up with a plan that was better than ACA and produced nothing, if we put a two or three year timer before healthcare implodes, then they're bound to come up with something. Note that by then that something wouldn't have to be better than ACA, it would just have to be better than healthcare exploding.
Everyone understand the con now?
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
I'm importing this over from Imgur because it's surprisingly poignant;
Spoiler:
This is a map of all the waterways in PA and WV (coal country) that have been polluted by mining practices.
This is what they look like;
These waterways are dead. The acid, lead, and cadmium content is so high nothing can survive. Drink that and you get instant heavy metal poisoning assuming you don't vomit it right back up first (then get heavy metal poisoning). This is completely illegal under EPA regulations, but mining companies have more lawyers than the US government and don't give a gak.
And for everyone who says they care about the little guy, here's what happens when these waterways inevitably flood;
But I'm sure if he pulls his bootstraps hard enough he'll be just fine.
And for anyone who has forgotten, Flint Michigan hasn't had clean drinking water in its pipes for two and half years now.
But to hey maybe if we destroy the EPA, we can get to work on proposing a replacement right away. Right?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/03/07 08:13:43
LordofHats wrote: I'm importing this over from Imgur because it's surprisingly poignant;
Spoiler:
This is a map of all the waterways in PA and WV (coal country) that have been polluted by mining practices.
This is what they look like;
These waterways are dead. The acid, lead, and cadmium content is so high nothing can survive. Drink that and you get instant heavy metal poisoning assuming you don't vomit it right back up first (then get heavy metal poisoning). This is completely illegal under EPA regulations, but mining companies have more lawyers than the US government and don't give a gak.
And for everyone who says they care about the little guy, here's what happens when these waterways inevitably flood;
But I'm sure if he pulls his bootstraps hard enough he'll be just fine.
And for anyone who has forgotten, Flint Michigan hasn't had clean drinking water in its pipes for two and half years now.
But to hey maybe if we destroy the EPA, we can get to work on proposing a replacement right away. Right?
America, taking that third world dictatorship model and running with it. The end of exceptionalism.
LordofHats wrote: People don't need a market economy for schools. They need good schools period. The private market doesn't market itself as "the alternative" it markets itself as "go here to have your kids learn about god" or "go here to have your kids get a good education on the back of the public schools we're mooching money from so your rich douches can get out the system we're sabotaging to make our own look better even as we set lower standards."
It's worth remembering that the religious right first got involved in politics because of school desegregation. People think it was Roe v Wade but that actually took a long time to become a driving issue for religious conservatives. What actually got the religious right fired up in the first place was the IRS decision to Bob Jones university a tax exempt status because it had racial selection criteria. For the christian colleges that drive much of the intellectual debate in religious conservatism, this was a direct threat to their freedoms. Paul Weyrich was one of the key drivers of the rise of the moral majority and he is still a leader today, albeit on a much smaller profile. He commented in an interview in the early 90s, “I was trying to get those people interested in those issues and I utterly failed. What changed their mind was Jimmy Carter’s intervention against the Christian schools, trying to deny them tax-exempt status on the basis of so-called de facto segregation.”
So this move with school vouchers has sat there in the background, for decades now. Where this becomes really weird is that wanting racially segregated schools isn't even part of the motivation any more. In fact, if you wanted to run an independent racially segregated school then this ruling will only make that harder, because now as well as having no tax exempt status, you also have to compete with independent schools that get voucher support because they aren't racist.
So what we're actually seeing is this very strange idea of school freedom that has left behind its original motivation, but somehow managed to remain something Republicans want. It morphed in to this other thing, a vague notion of market economics that make zero sense, and of course liberty uber alles.
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
It's worth remembering that the religious right first got involved in politics because of school desegregation.
Oh it's even older than that. Way back when some Protestants got real uppity about Catholic schools providing strong educations to everyone who paid the fees. They didn't even teach Catholic dogma. They just taught math and gak (go figure right? The Catholics were the ones running schools and not teach religion). Well the Protestants decided "feth no clearly this 'algebra' thing is just a mask for teach our kids catechism and convert them to that dirty non-Reformation Christianity." Que Christian groups across the US pushing for public education, mandatory attendance laws, and attempts to shut down private schools (unless you were rich and Protestant).
Boy how the times change eh?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/03/07 10:09:00
whembly wrote: Again, the bias against these schools is remarkable.
I don't have a problem with private schools or a bias against them, I'm sending my kids to one. And hey funny story, there's actually federal dollars underwriting the fees, because the federal government considers every kid in private school to be one less kid they have to fully fund in the public system. It isn't quite the voucher program but the two are pretty closely related.
But I will tell you one thing - the school my kids are in still meet state and federal curriculum standards, and the school's performance is measured in comparison to all other public and private schools.
Compare this to DeVos, who's only comment on testing or analysis of schools in the voucher program is to avoid any answer on the question. She isn't avoiding that question because she doesn't want to talk about all the reviews of voucher schools she wants to do.
So what we are talking about is federal money given in voucher programs to schools with minimal review of how and what those schools are teaching kids. That isn't just a waste of federal tax money, it's also a waste of the lives of young kids who's parents were given no information about the real quality of the school they're being put in.
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Dreadwinter wrote: I am confused by this education debate. Whembly is saying that people need more choices, but everybody should want to put their kids in the very best school possible. How is making more choices going to do this?
There is actually an argument for diversity in education. The best for one child might not be the best for another. For instance one kid might be very bright, so what he wants is a school that will push him and give him high level classes. Another kid might have a unique talent in music, so he wants a school that will ensure he gets a good education while also putting a lot of resources in to his music. Another kid might just a battler, not stupid but not a high achiever, and with no obvious singular talent - what that kid needs is a supportive school that makes sure he doesn't fall behind and can get as good a grades as possible.
By the nature of institutions, not all schools can be all things to all people. A school with lots of resources in extra curricular stuff means less resources for other kids. And a school with a strong culture of academic excellence can ignore or leave unsupported any kid that isn't performing at an award winning level.
So in that sense choice is good. But of course, this issue is well and truly drowned out by the dollars.
Think of if like buying a car. There's a wide range of cars suited to the needs of every driver, performance, size, looks, electronics, fuel economy is all catered for so each driver can get the car for their needs. But while that choice sounds ideal, most people end up driving Elantras and Camrys because that's what we can afford, while the supercars go tearing past us down the freeway.
So choice is good, but there is also an inherent issue of opening up choice also means accepting soem kids will go to simply better schools than other kids. It's not an unresolvable problem, but it's a problem that this administration doesn't even seem to realise could possibly be an issue.
And of course, there's also the issue how these schools are monitored for their performance. Everything we've seen so far says the monitoring will be as minimal as possible. So imagine you've got all that choice in car, but you can't actually know anything about the performance of any of them. The fuel economy is whatever the dealership tells you, there's no objective measure to tell what it actually is. That's the environment you will go in to when trying to pick a kid for your school.
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LordofHats wrote: Oh it's even older than that. Way back when some Protestants got real uppity about Catholic schools providing strong educations to everyone who paid the fees. They didn't even teach Catholic dogma. They just taught math and gak (go figure right? The Catholics were the ones running schools and not teach religion). Well the Protestants decided "feth no clearly this 'algebra' thing is just a mask for teach our kids catechism and convert them to that dirty non-Reformation Christianity." Que Christian groups across the US pushing for public education, mandatory attendance laws, and attempts to shut down private schools (unless you were rich and Protestant).
Boy how the times change eh?
The more things change, the more they stay the same. You now, for a country with freedom of religion right fething there in your constitution, you sure have a long history of people fighting for religious dominance.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2017/03/07 10:29:14
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
whembly wrote: The idea is to create a society where there are multiple choices for students in the same region. Those choices ought to create incentives for both entities to compete for those kids.
There are already multiple choices. Private schools are legal and are free to compete for students. What vouchers are actually about is using tax money to subsidize private schools and give increased profits to their owners, usually in cases where private schools are failing to compete in the market. That isn't free-market competition, it's more of the corporate welfare that wealthy conservatives keep trying to give themselves. And DeVos stands as a perfect example, with her personal financial interest in directing tax money to her education business.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2017/03/07 11:02:55
There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices.
I'll read it in depth later (Congresscritter speak is pain on my eyes), I just looked at a summary at the moment, and honestly I'm apalled.
...This new health care thing (can we call it Republicare?) appears to me like an ungodly abomination of a rushed repeal of a bill that's hated for little to no reason, mixed with an attempt to reach into the pockets of the poor and grab a big chunk to add to the bloated coffers of the rich.
Removal of the individual mandate is the first horror in this carnival, allowing many people to go uninsured, and raising premiums. The 130% hike isn't an incentive to get insured, it's the complete lack of incentive, an Alternative Incentive, if you will. So the bill encourages healthy people not paying in. I know that I wouldn't get insured under this thing, too expensive.
The way it's structured forces insurers to abandon part of the market, due to being difficult to fund, again due to the fact that healthy people won't be buying into this. So anyone with a pre-existing condition is going to get dumped into that high-risk pool.
Also, there's a 1% tax cut for the wealthy in the bill (removal of 0.9% medicare tax) and planned parenthood gets defunded, with no replacement. Additionally, insurance provided under this bill can't be used for abortions. On my scale, this is about on the level of organized plans to kill poor people.
Peregrine - If you like the army buy it, and don't worry about what one random person on the internet thinks.
Verviedi wrote: Removal of the individual mandate is the first horror in this carnival, allowing many people to go uninsured, and raising premiums. The 130% hike isn't an incentive to get insured, it's the complete lack of incentive, an Alternative Incentive, if you will. So the bill encourages healthy people not paying in. I know that I wouldn't get insured under this thing, too expensive.
Yep. The big idea House Republicans have is to drop the penalty that encouaged healthy people to get insurance, and instead have a penalty that discourages sick people from getting insurance.
So ACA pushed people to get insurance. The genius Republican plan pushes people to not buy insurance, unless they get sick.
This is from people who spent 7 years claiming they were sure a death spiral was coming. Now they've gone and proposed a replacement bill that removes the incentive for healthy people to get insurance, and put in a disincentive for healthy people to get insurance if a policy lapses. The incompetence is staggering.
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
whembly wrote: No... what you do, is repeal it on a sunset date. (ie, effective on Dec. 31st, 2017 or 18).
Then, that pits the House/Senate to negotiate with an actual deadline.
I wrote about this when the plan to set a timeline on killing ACA and replacing it with something else to be decided at a later date first picked up serious consideration, a couple of weeks after Trump's original win. It's a fething horrible idea. Because if Republicans had a plan that was better than ACA then they would have just developed that, or even if they didn't have such a plan but were confident that they could develop such a thing then they'd just buckle down and write it. It's only if you have no better plan and no belief that you could actually develop such a plan that you would need to resort to a stunt like this.
So the idea then is because Republicans had seven years to come up with a plan that was better than ACA and produced nothing, if we put a two or three year timer before healthcare implodes, then they're bound to come up with something. Note that by then that something wouldn't have to be better than ACA, it would just have to be better than healthcare exploding.
Everyone understand the con now?
Oh, c'mon, Congress actually has a consistent track record when it comes to meeting its own self-imposed deadlines. Just look at the federal budget every year. Every year it gets put off by months and ends up being crap.
"Through the darkness of future past, the magician longs to see.
One chants out between two worlds: Fire, walk with me." - Twin Peaks
"You listen to me. While I will admit to a certain cynicism, the fact is that I am a naysayer and hatchetman in the fight against violence. I pride myself in taking a punch and I'll gladly take another because I choose to live my life in the company of Gandhi and King. My concerns are global. I reject absolutely revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method... is love. I love you Sheriff Truman." - Twin Peaks
-"Wait a minute.....who is that Frazz is talking to in the gallery? Hmmm something is going on here.....Oh.... it seems there is some dispute over video taping of some sort......Frazz is really upset now..........wait a minute......whats he go there.......is it? Can it be?....Frazz has just unleashed his hidden weiner dog from his mini bag, while quoting shakespeares "Let slip the dogs the war!!" GG
-"Don't mind Frazzled. He's just Dakka's crazy old dude locked in the attic. He's harmless. Mostly."
-TBone the Magnificent 1999-2014, Long Live the King!
Everybody has the right to the best schools for their kids. You get that by working with the school to make it the best school possible, not by dividing the resources between more schools, then infusing one of them with private funding to make it better that the schools that just had funding removed.
Simple stuff really.
And since repealing something before replacing it is the best way to fix something, we should use the technique to fix bloated and wasteful defense spending. We have to moonlight all enlistements and commissions by Dec 31, 2020 and decommission our naval fleet on that date. Start 2021 without any military whatsoever unless congress passes laws for a reformed military. That will fix everything.
China has said it will take unspecified measures against a U.S. missile system being deployed in S. Korea, and warned that Washington and Seoul will bear the consequences.
A Foreign Ministry spokesman said at a regular briefing Tuesday that China "firmly opposes" the deployment of the missile defense system, after U.S. missile launchers and other equipment needed for it arrived in South Korea.
Geng Shuang said China will "definitely be taking necessary measures to safeguard our own security interest."
Geng added that "all consequences" resulting from that will be borne by the U.S. and South Korea.
The equipment arrived Tuesday, a day after North Korea test-launched four ballistic missiles into the ocean near Japan.
...........
can't wait for this to unfurl :
MINE IS BEST MISSILE CRISIS HAS BIGLY MISSILES OTHER MISSILE CRISISES NOT AS GOOD. SAD!
HEARD OBAMA TOOK EXPLOSIVES OUT OF OUR MISSILES. #FAKEBOMB.
It's worrying when you consider that every trouble and issue Trump has had so far have been entirely self inflicted and not due to outside agencies.. like a foreign power.
Bodes well eh ?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/03/07 14:39:37
The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all
We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.
"the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king,
I worked on THAAD. So they think they got it working eh. interesting.
-"Wait a minute.....who is that Frazz is talking to in the gallery? Hmmm something is going on here.....Oh.... it seems there is some dispute over video taping of some sort......Frazz is really upset now..........wait a minute......whats he go there.......is it? Can it be?....Frazz has just unleashed his hidden weiner dog from his mini bag, while quoting shakespeares "Let slip the dogs the war!!" GG
-"Don't mind Frazzled. He's just Dakka's crazy old dude locked in the attic. He's harmless. Mostly."
-TBone the Magnificent 1999-2014, Long Live the King!
Verviedi wrote: Removal of the individual mandate is the first horror in this carnival, allowing many people to go uninsured, and raising premiums. The 130% hike isn't an incentive to get insured, it's the complete lack of incentive, an Alternative Incentive, if you will. So the bill encourages healthy people not paying in. I know that I wouldn't get insured under this thing, too expensive.
Yep. The big idea House Republicans have is to drop the penalty that encouaged healthy people to get insurance, and instead have a penalty that discourages sick people from getting insurance.
So ACA pushed people to get insurance. The genius Republican plan pushes people to not buy insurance, unless they get sick.
This is from people who spent 7 years claiming they were sure a death spiral was coming. Now they've gone and proposed a replacement bill that removes the incentive for healthy people to get insurance, and put in a disincentive for healthy people to get insurance if a policy lapses. The incompetence is staggering.
"If you don't implement this plan, your plan is doomed to death spiral!"
"But your plan death spirals even harder than mine..."
"FAKE NEWS! Republicare will never fail!"
I suggest an alternative plan. It's called the Trickle Down Guns, Jesus, America, and Freedom plus Increased Military Spending Act. It contains single payer health care and a new law that requires the installation of a giant shark tank underneath the Capitol building. And a rider that necessitates fish-slapping Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan every hour, on the hour.
Peregrine - If you like the army buy it, and don't worry about what one random person on the internet thinks.
LordofHats wrote: Oh it's even older than that. Way back when some Protestants got real uppity about Catholic schools providing strong educations to everyone who paid the fees. They didn't even teach Catholic dogma. They just taught math and gak (go figure right? The Catholics were the ones running schools and not teach religion). Well the Protestants decided "feth no clearly this 'algebra' thing is just a mask for teach our kids catechism and convert them to that dirty non-Reformation Christianity." Que Christian groups across the US pushing for public education, mandatory attendance laws, and attempts to shut down private schools (unless you were rich and Protestant).
Boy how the times change eh?
The more things change, the more they stay the same. You now, for a country with freedom of religion right fething there in your constitution, you sure have a long history of people fighting for religious dominance.
Yep... Since the current governmental body was established, we've had religious movements push for an essential end to that 1st Amendment right every 30-50 years or so. There was a bit of a lull from the 1920s (when the Assemblies of God denomination was founded) to the 1970s, but from the late 70s through to today, we've had a weirdly sustained religious movement. And the results have not been good for the rest of us.
See if we actually did that, I wouldn't have to spend a decade explaining how "state's rights" is a bunch of bull gak 3-4 times a year because everyone would already have figured out that "States Rights" was invented first to defend slavery, and second to rehabilitate the Confederacy, systematic racism, and Jim Crow discrimination. People should have already learned that in high school cause it's really basic stuff. The only guy who still really makes arguments against it is a Marxist (historically and politically, a rare double whammy combo!). To which comes my second point; that these things only exist as an argument on behalf of modern American Nativism, namely Anglo-Christian White Protestant Americana to which some people interpret any deviation a "corruption" of our culture.
My kid is learning about the American Civil War in her school, and they brought in a bunch of speakers and guess what they were talking about.... State's Rights. I live in one of the "Unionist" of union states too.
We had to sit down and have a serious conversation about it. I loathe Southern Apologists for the Civil War.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/03/07 19:11:32
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thing, too expensive.
