I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by SEC_Chick

Democrats also seem satisfied to pander to teacher's unions rather than take actions that improve student outcomes.

This criticism would have a lot more bite had we not just concluded that the proposed changes haven't been shown to work (and might actually hurt).

And more so if defunding public school wasn't a goal of some on the right in their its own right.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

If you care to, please share this single most useful paragraph in that piece. I thought it was a vast wasteland of resentment and agitprop.

A few...

"Never has there been so little diversity within America’s upper crust. Always, in America as elsewhere, some people have been wealthier and more powerful than others. But until our own time America’s upper crust was a mixture of people who had gained prominence in a variety of ways, who drew their money and status from different sources and were not predictably of one mind on any given matter. The Boston Brahmins, the New York financiers, the land barons of California, Texas, and Florida, the industrialists of Pittsburgh, the Southern aristocracy, and the hardscrabble politicians who made it big in Chicago or Memphis had little contact with one another. Few had much contact with government, and “bureaucrat” was a dirty word for all. So was “social engineering.” Nor had the schools and universities that formed yesterday’s upper crust imposed a single orthodoxy about the origins of man, about American history, and about how America should be governed. All that has changed.

Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters — speaking the “in” language — serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct. Many began their careers in government and leveraged their way into the private sector. Some, e.g., Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, never held a non-government job. Hence whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America’s ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats. It rules uneasily over the majority of Americans not oriented to government.
. . .

"Our ruling class’s agenda is power for itself. While it stakes its claim through intellectual-moral pretense, it holds power by one of the oldest and most prosaic of means: patronage and promises thereof. Like left-wing parties always and everywhere, it is a “machine,” that is, based on providing tangible rewards to its members. Such parties often provide rank-and-file activists with modest livelihoods and enhance mightily the upper levels’ wealth. Because this is so, whatever else such parties might accomplish, they must feed the machine by transferring money or jobs or privileges — civic as well as economic — to the party’s clients, directly or indirectly. This, incidentally, is close to Aristotle’s view of democracy. Hence our ruling class’s standard approach to any and all matters, its solution to any and all problems, is to increase the power of the government — meaning of those who run it, meaning themselves, to profit those who pay with political support for privileged jobs, contracts, etc. Hence more power for the ruling class has been our ruling class’s solution not just for economic downturns and social ills but also for hurricanes and tornadoes, global cooling and global warming. A priori, one might wonder whether enriching and empowering individuals of a certain kind can make Americans kinder and gentler, much less control the weather. But there can be no doubt that such power and money makes Americans ever more dependent on those who wield it.
. . .

"Beyond patronage, picking economic winners and losers redirects the American people’s energies to tasks that the political class deems more worthy than what Americans choose for themselves. John Kenneth Galbraith’s characterization of America as “private wealth amidst public squalor” (The Affluent Society, 1958) has ever encapsulated our best and brightest’s complaint: left to themselves, Americans use land inefficiently in suburbs and exurbs, making it necessary to use energy to transport them to jobs and shopping. Americans drive big cars, eat lots of meat as well as other unhealthy things, and go to the doctor whenever they feel like it. Americans think it justice to spend the money they earn to satisfy their private desires even though the ruling class knows that justice lies in improving the community and the planet. The ruling class knows that Americans must learn to live more densely and close to work, that they must drive smaller cars and change their lives to use less energy, that their dietary habits must improve, that they must accept limits in how much medical care they get, that they must divert more of their money to support people, cultural enterprises, and plans for the planet that the ruling class deems worthier. So, ever-greater taxes and intrusive regulations are the main wrenches by which the American people can be improved (and, yes, by which the ruling class feeds and grows)."

http://spectator.org/39326_americas-...ls-revolution/

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

A few...

"Never has there been so little diversity within America’s upper crust. Always, in America as elsewhere, some people have been wealthier and more powerful than others. But until our own time America’s upper crust was a mixture of people who had gained prominence in a variety of ways, who drew their money and status from different sources and were not predictably of one mind on any given matter. The Boston Brahmins, the New York financiers, the land barons of California, Texas, and Florida, the industrialists of Pittsburgh, the Southern aristocracy, and the hardscrabble politicians who made it big in Chicago or Memphis had little contact with one another. Few had much contact with government, and “bureaucrat” was a dirty word for all. So was “social engineering.” Nor had the schools and universities that formed yesterday’s upper crust imposed a single orthodoxy about the origins of man, about American history, and about how America should be governed. All that has changed.

Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters — speaking the “in” language — serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct. Many began their careers in government and leveraged their way into the private sector. Some, e.g., Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, never held a non-government job. Hence whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America’s ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats. It rules uneasily over the majority of Americans not oriented to government.
. . .

"Our ruling class’s agenda is power for itself. While it stakes its claim through intellectual-moral pretense, it holds power by one of the oldest and most prosaic of means: patronage and promises thereof. Like left-wing parties always and everywhere, it is a “machine,” that is, based on providing tangible rewards to its members. Such parties often provide rank-and-file activists with modest livelihoods and enhance mightily the upper levels’ wealth. Because this is so, whatever else such parties might accomplish, they must feed the machine by transferring money or jobs or privileges — civic as well as economic — to the party’s clients, directly or indirectly. This, incidentally, is close to Aristotle’s view of democracy. Hence our ruling class’s standard approach to any and all matters, its solution to any and all problems, is to increase the power of the government — meaning of those who run it, meaning themselves, to profit those who pay with political support for privileged jobs, contracts, etc. Hence more power for the ruling class has been our ruling class’s solution not just for economic downturns and social ills but also for hurricanes and tornadoes, global cooling and global warming. A priori, one might wonder whether enriching and empowering individuals of a certain kind can make Americans kinder and gentler, much less control the weather. But there can be no doubt that such power and money makes Americans ever more dependent on those who wield it.
. . .

"Beyond patronage, picking economic winners and losers redirects the American people’s energies to tasks that the political class deems more worthy than what Americans choose for themselves. John Kenneth Galbraith’s characterization of America as “private wealth amidst public squalor” (The Affluent Society, 1958) has ever encapsulated our best and brightest’s complaint: left to themselves, Americans use land inefficiently in suburbs and exurbs, making it necessary to use energy to transport them to jobs and shopping. Americans drive big cars, eat lots of meat as well as other unhealthy things, and go to the doctor whenever they feel like it. Americans think it justice to spend the money they earn to satisfy their private desires even though the ruling class knows that justice lies in improving the community and the planet. The ruling class knows that Americans must learn to live more densely and close to work, that they must drive smaller cars and change their lives to use less energy, that their dietary habits must improve, that they must accept limits in how much medical care they get, that they must divert more of their money to support people, cultural enterprises, and plans for the planet that the ruling class deems worthier. So, ever-greater taxes and intrusive regulations are the main wrenches by which the American people can be improved (and, yes, by which the ruling class feeds and grows)."

http://spectator.org/39326_americas-...ls-revolution/

What complete garbage.

Does this joker have any data to back up these claims?

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by SEC_Chick

Democrats also seem satisfied to pander to teacher's unions rather than take actions that improve student outcomes. And Democrats seem to be the most likely to just propose throwing more tax dollars down the toilet of a failing system than make any changes opposed by the unions.

Back to demonizing dems for ideological reasons.

So, I take it your prescription for education, that you claim will do more to help folks out of poverty than anything "da dems" have done, is (i) nonunion charter schools and (ii) vouchers. That's what I glean from your postings. Nothing more.

We've now got a fair bit of data on how much impact each kind of program has.

Meh. Not nothing, but meh.

I do think there is the potential for bipartisan solutions in education, more so than in other areas, but it requires that everyone recognize, involve and work with all constituencies in good faith. The only exception to that I'll make are the creationists and segregationists, who are simply idiots in one case and despicable unAmerican human beings in the other.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by SEC_Chick

I wouldn't be so smug. Your candidate is Hillary Clinton.

I will not hide my love for Hillary. I'm expecting her to bust a lot of balls in Washington, and looking forward to it.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Adder

Yup. Thus undermining the case for charter schools. And look, no evil union required!

Vouchers, charter schools, or whatever the right wants now are certainly a leg up for some kids in difficult circumstances, but only some, and probably those who were most likely to find success anyway.

Maybe that's worth doing, but doesn't appear to be scalable and thus isn't really a solution. ETA: And, as you suggest, may be actively harmful to those left behind.

I'm willing to defend charter schools on a number of grounds. They're better at innovating with curriculum than public schools, which are usually playing to the average and often have a lot of strictures formed by the expectation of the herd. Some put more emphasis on academics over sports than comparable public schools. They often can avoid some of the spoil-system mentality of hiring that you see in many public school systems.

I like them as a part of the solution and a part of a diverse approach to education.

Also, kids today don't learn enough about funk.

[SEC_Chick]

Originally Posted by Adder

This criticism would have a lot more bite had we not just concluded that the proposed changes haven't been shown to work (and might actually hurt).

And more so if defunding public school wasn't a goal of some on the right in their its own right.

But if the schools are going to suck whether we spend $9K/student or $24K/student like in Newark, is it not a better use of public resources for the schools to suck for less money?

It reminds me of a lady who tried to tell me that I was horribly selfish for sending my kids to Catholic school because the local district lost federal money for fewer students. She could not be persuaded that, despite the reduced federal money, the fact that I was paying many thousands per year to the local school district, and the fact that they weren't spending $30K/year to educate my kids more than made up for it, but whatever.

The problem is actually not the schools. The schools are already being asked to do too much that is not related to educating kids. If kids came to school ready to learn, that alone would be a huge improvement. The impact of a lack of parental responsibility and engagement cannot be overcome just by programs or actions in the public schools. It doesn't take a village, it takes parents with standards and expectations who give a crap about their kids. It's pretty hard to break the cycle of multi-generational dependency. But beyond that, it is almost impossible to help people who don't really want to change anything.

I am not a huge fan of Paul Ryan, but I support his ideas for reforming welfare and other benefits such that work is not as regressively punitive to the recipient and provides support to become independent, and doesn't just cut off so quickly that work is a net negative, making it harder to ever break free.

[taxwonk]

Originally Posted by Adder

Okay.



Huh? I think one probably wants to leave any group that they disagree with.

We're both Democrats. And I ain't goin' nowhere.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by SEC_Chick

I am not a huge fan of Paul Ryan, but I support his ideas for reforming welfare and other benefits such that work is not as regressively punitive to the recipient and provides support to become independent, and doesn't just cut off so quickly that work is a net negative, making it harder to ever break free.

Cool. I think undoing some of the welfare "reform" of the 90s like that would be a good thing. You do realize how hard republicans of another era fought to impose all those limits? Its good to see some admission that it went overboard.

[Pretty Little Flower]

Originally Posted by Not Bob

You, in contrast, are totally like the cousin who introduced me to weed and Frank Zappa ("Titties and Beer," IIRC) one fine summer afternoon in the Anvesteal Homeland.

Indeed. She don't say nothing, but baby make her blue jeans talk.

Anvesteal? Have you been hitting the single malt? It's not all peaty, you know. Avoid stuff from Islay (although not even all of those whiskies are peaty). Macallan is not the most adventurous scotch choice, but it is still damn good, and the 18 is ridiculously smooth. The 25 is probably wasted money for you if you are not a lover of single malt. Drop in an ice cube if you must, but not in public. Some people get offended by that shit.

I assume you are fucking with me with your Dr. Hook lyrics, which I had to Google because I don't really know anything about Dr. Hook.

The first time I saw Dr. John, I was 18 or 19 and I somehow talked myself into the bar in downtown Philly where he was playing and befriended some old dudes (early 20s) who bought me beer. Dr. John was in poor health and it was questionable whether he could even play. The process of helping him onto the stage and onto the piano stool was long and agonizingly slow. But once he was sitting in front of the piano, it was as if he was reborn, and although he was alone on stage with his piano, it was like the whole bar was filled with his playing and his singing. He did a long set of roots New Orleans music, including most of Gumbo (an album I was listening to obsessively at the time) and lots of old Professor Longhair classics. Fantastic show. Anyhoo, keeping with the New Orleans theme, here is the Meters version of another New Orleans standard that may get even more play than the various Iko variations. Fire on the Bayou is the Daily Dose:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phUTCsVAKXA

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by SEC_Chick

Democrats also seem satisfied to pander to teacher's unions rather than take actions that improve student outcomes.

There are plenty of Democrats, including much of the current Administration, that are willing to take on the teachers unions.

And Democrats seem to be the most likely to just propose throwing more tax dollars down the toilet of a failing system than make any changes opposed by the unions.

If, like me, you have kids in public schools, then you are less likely to see spending more money on the public schools as throwing it down the toilet. Lower teacher:student ratios are better. To get those lower ratios, you need to hire more teachers. Are there any Republicans who are willing to admit that spending money on a problem tends to help? I agree that money spent on public education should be spend well, but there are not a lot of Republicans willing to take the time to try to make government work better, at least at the higher levels. They want to starve it.

[Adder]

[QUOTE=sebastian_dangerfield;502372]A few...

Never has there been so little diversity within America’s upper crust.

There is absolutely no chance that this is true. The addition of (some) women and people of color at minimum make it highly implausible. Not to mention ever growing diversity of faiths.

The Boston Brahmins, the New York financiers, the land barons of California, Texas, and Florida, the industrialists of Pittsburgh, the Southern aristocracy, and the hardscrabble politicians who made it big in Chicago or Memphis had little contact with one another.

The Silicon Valley tech bros, the New York financiers (hm), Hollywood moguls, the Boston medtech millionaires, the Minnesota health insurance moguls, the bible thumpers who made it big in Ohio politics.

1. The groups of the past were far less diverse than this person seems to imagine. They are white protestant men. But sure, they were from different parts of the country and different industries.

2. There are still different parts of the country and different industries.

Few had much contact with government

Yes, the rich and powerful of the past had no contact with government No Roosevelts. No Washingtons. Heck, no Kennedys.

Nor had the schools and universities that formed yesterday’s upper crust

Jesus F. Christ. Does this person think Harvard and Yale were formed yesterday? Because those are the universities that formed yesterday's upper crust, and they date to the countries' beginnings.

imposed a single orthodoxy about the origins of man

Ah, so the lamented loss of "diversity" is really a lament about that the boundaries of scientific knowledge change over time as consensus emerges. That's really creepy.

about American history

So is that. Ah, if only we had more people thought slavery was great. We'd be the stronger for it!

and about how America should be governed.

That's a more interesting one. We've lost the true socialists, the communists and the anarchists and, we thought, the populists. So maybe there are fewer views about the role of government than in the past. But we've gained the libertarians and we've refined the disagreements among our liberals and conservatives.

Anyway, this one I will entertain as maybe relevant.

Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters — speaking the “in” language — serves as a badge of identity.

Which is no different than the badges of identity of that past, be they the right last name or religion, having gone to the right school, knowing which fork to use at a formal dinner or whatever. If anything, the manners required to be "in" these days are far simpler, more flexible and open to more people than the past.

America’s ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats.

This person sounds like they have never spent any time at all in Washington. Had they, the would know that arguably the exact opposite is true. Washington is a bland amalgamation of America. Sure, the underclass is under-represented, but the mentality of America's great innovation - the suburb - rules the day.

The tastes and habits of Washington are the tastes and habits of America. Which is why it isn't more interesting.

Our ruling class’s agenda is power for itself.

Hence more power for the ruling class has been our ruling class’s solution not just for economic downturns and social ills but also for hurricanes and tornadoes

If you ever find yourself believing that government aid in response to natural disasters is really about enhancing government power, you've lost the thread. That's absurd, and only a sick person would think it (there's at least one party of them out there).

Take a step back and ask yourself, what's the alternative? Leave those afflicted to fend for themselves, lest in helping we might accidently enhance government power? That's perverse. It replaces morality with ideological purity.

left to themselves, Americans use land inefficiently in suburbs and exurbs, making it necessary to use energy to transport them to jobs and shopping.

You've got to be kidding me. "left to themselves," like sprawling suburbs weren't an explicit - gasp - government policy built on the back of massive "patronage" in the form of federal road building dollars. (To say nothing of the absolutely massive expenditure of lives and resources attempting to maintain access to oil)

"Left to themselves" Americans lived in cities, clustered around transit. If anything, the fact that they don't anymore should be this person's number one example of the dangers of government power, which was used to tear up our transit systems, tear down our urban centers and build freeways through the neighborhood of the poor and the black.

But it's not, because the "conservative" position is to continue to pander to what's now "normal."

The ruling class knows that Americans must learn to live more densely and close to work, that they must drive smaller cars and change their lives to use less energy

The ruling class knows that life involves choices, policies and incentives and that if we want to avoid certain spectacularly bad outcomes, we must (1) admit that our current choices are the result of past policies and (2) change those policies.

that they must accept limits in how much medical care they get

And again, "conservatism" gets lost, because no one has asked you to accept limits on how much health care you pay for out of pocket. The question is whether "they" must accept limits on how much health care someone else is paying for. This person is not arguing seriously.

So, ever-greater taxes

This is just factually wrong.

I'm glad I didn't read the rest. Those quotes are abysmal.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

A few...

"Never has there been so little diversity within America’s upper crust. Always, in America as elsewhere, some people have been wealthier and more powerful than others. But until our own time America’s upper crust was a mixture of people who had gained prominence in a variety of ways, who drew their money and status from different sources and were not predictably of one mind on any given matter. The Boston Brahmins, the New York financiers, the land barons of California, Texas, and Florida, the industrialists of Pittsburgh, the Southern aristocracy, and the hardscrabble politicians who made it big in Chicago or Memphis had little contact with one another. Few had much contact with government, and “bureaucrat” was a dirty word for all. So was “social engineering.” Nor had the schools and universities that formed yesterday’s upper crust imposed a single orthodoxy about the origins of man, about American history, and about how America should be governed. All that has changed.

Come to Silicon Valley and you will see that this is absolute horseshit. There is some truth to the fact that different regions of the country seem less different because we have national media, but the first sentence could only be written by someone who is fascinated by the diversity between different white men and disinterested in the rest of humanity.

Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters — speaking the “in” language — serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct. Many began their careers in government and leveraged their way into the private sector. Some, e.g., Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, never held a non-government job. Hence whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America’s ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats. It rules uneasily over the majority of Americans not oriented to government.
. . .

Nothing in this strikes me as interesting or insightful in any way. Hard to tell who this "ruling class" is.

"Our ruling class’s agenda is power for itself. While it stakes its claim through intellectual-moral pretense, it holds power by one of the oldest and most prosaic of means: patronage and promises thereof. Like left-wing parties always and everywhere, it is a “machine,” that is, based on providing tangible rewards to its members. Such parties often provide rank-and-file activists with modest livelihoods and enhance mightily the upper levels’ wealth. Because this is so, whatever else such parties might accomplish, they must feed the machine by transferring money or jobs or privileges — civic as well as economic — to the party’s clients, directly or indirectly. This, incidentally, is close to Aristotle’s view of democracy. Hence our ruling class’s standard approach to any and all matters, its solution to any and all problems, is to increase the power of the government — meaning of those who run it, meaning themselves, to profit those who pay with political support for privileged jobs, contracts, etc. Hence more power for the ruling class has been our ruling class’s solution not just for economic downturns and social ills but also for hurricanes and tornadoes, global cooling and global warming. A priori, one might wonder whether enriching and empowering individuals of a certain kind can make Americans kinder and gentler, much less control the weather. But there can be no doubt that such power and money makes Americans ever more dependent on those who wield it.
. . .

Tripe.

"Beyond patronage, picking economic winners and losers redirects the American people’s energies to tasks that the political class deems more worthy than what Americans choose for themselves. John Kenneth Galbraith’s characterization of America as “private wealth amidst public squalor” (The Affluent Society, 1958) has ever encapsulated our best and brightest’s complaint: left to themselves, Americans use land inefficiently in suburbs and exurbs, making it necessary to use energy to transport them to jobs and shopping. Americans drive big cars, eat lots of meat as well as other unhealthy things, and go to the doctor whenever they feel like it. Americans think it justice to spend the money they earn to satisfy their private desires even though the ruling class knows that justice lies in improving the community and the planet. The ruling class knows that Americans must learn to live more densely and close to work, that they must drive smaller cars and change their lives to use less energy, that their dietary habits must improve, that they must accept limits in how much medical care they get, that they must divert more of their money to support people, cultural enterprises, and plans for the planet that the ruling class deems worthier. So, ever-greater taxes and intrusive regulations are the main wrenches by which the American people can be improved (and, yes, by which the ruling class feeds and grows)."

http://spectator.org/39326_americas-...ls-revolution/

This, too, is complete horseshit. (For example, land is used inefficiently in suburbs and exurbs because people use zoning to protect their property values and keep others out.)

Seriously, I can't believe you find this crap interesting. Ever-greater taxes and intrusive regulations? For whom? Do you know anyone who goes to the doctor whenever she feels like it? If so, she truly is a member of the ruling class.

[taxwonk]

Originally Posted by SEC_Chick

But if the schools are going to suck whether we spend $9K/student or $24K/student like in Newark, is it not a better use of public resources for the schools to suck for less money?

It reminds me of a lady who tried to tell me that I was horribly selfish for sending my kids to Catholic school because the local district lost federal money for fewer students. She could not be persuaded that, despite the reduced federal money, the fact that I was paying many thousands per year to the local school district, and the fact that they weren't spending $30K/year to educate my kids more than made up for it, but whatever.

The problem is actually not the schools. The schools are already being asked to do too much that is not related to educating kids. If kids came to school ready to learn, that alone would be a huge improvement. The impact of a lack of parental responsibility and engagement cannot be overcome just by programs or actions in the public schools. It doesn't take a village, it takes parents with standards and expectations who give a crap about their kids. It's pretty hard to break the cycle of multi-generational dependency. But beyond that, it is almost impossible to help people who don't really want to change anything.

I am not a huge fan of Paul Ryan, but I support his ideas for reforming welfare and other benefits such that work is not as regressively punitive to the recipient and provides support to become independent, and doesn't just cut off so quickly that work is a net negative, making it harder to ever break free.

I agree with you wholeheartedly that the most important single improvement we could make in our schools is have the kids show up ready to learn. If all the money that is currently devoted to policing, feeding, and babysitting could be poured into teaching it would be a wonderful thing.

But I have yet to hear of any realistic method of achieving that. Parental involvement requires not just parental concern, but also parental ability.

As for Paul Ryan, he keeps talking about how wonderful life would be if we de-incentivized welfare dependence, but it's just talk. A negative flat income tax and an estate tax that was written only to affect the largest estates would accomplish that. But that would require Ryan's biggest fans to actually pay their share of tax, so it will never be put in place.

[SEC_Chick]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

There are plenty of Democrats, including much of the current Administration, that are willing to take on the teachers unions.



If, like me, you have kids in public schools, then you are less likely to see spending more money on the public schools as throwing it down the toilet. Lower teacher:student ratios are better. To get those lower ratios, you need to hire more teachers. Are there any Republicans who are willing to admit that spending money on a problem tends to help? I agree that money spent on public education should be spend well, but there are not a lot of Republicans willing to take the time to try to make government work better, at least at the higher levels. They want to starve it.

Perhaps it is my conservative news media bias showing, but are there studies that show that money improves outcomes? I am aware of many failures, but am receptive to stories of success.

I went to a public school that was pretty highly subsidized by the federal government at the time, due to special circumstances, and had many highly educated teachers with advanced degrees from Ivies (mainly because they had social science degrees and were otherwise unemployable in the town), but for many reasons my personal experience with public education is not likely to be replicated anywhere else.