College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
(OP)
Here is an interesting article on Salon.com...
College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
--
JHG





RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
Another favorite it the idea of a 'flat tax', again, without thinking, many people just think it's a great idea without any introspection as to exactly how are the shortfalls caused by a flat-tax would have to be made-up. By definition, it would not be on incomes, but rather on sales and other consumption taxes which are the most regressive that there is. And while we're at it, the idea of a national sales tax is often supported by individuals who have no idea how this would shift the tax burden onto people just like themselves and off the backs of the rich who tend to spend their money where it would not be subject to taxes like that either because they've managed to buy enough influence in Washington that any tax law changes will ultimately benefit themselves and others in similar financial positions or they would simply spend it overseas where they could avoid any Washington or locally imposed taxes, like they are aren't already doing it now.
What many people fail to understand is what Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr so clearly stated:
"Taxes are what we pay for civilized society, including the chance to insure" the same.
I fear that failure to acknowledge this by both the citizens and the leaders of our nation will eventually spell the end of our society as we know it.
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RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
I suspect that the "leaders" are well-aware of this and are using it to their full advantage. It's pretty clear that there is a sizable portion of the 1% that absolutely intend to maintain the current status quo.
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RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
That's not true. One proposal for a flat tax is based entirely on income. And that is separate and distinct from the idea of a national sales tax.
==> but rather on sales and other consumption taxes which are the most regressive that there is.
Also not true. A regressive tax is one where the tax rate decreases as the amount being taxed increases. In a flat tax, the tax rate is constant; therefore, it is neither a regressive tax nor a progressive tax. It's a flat tax.
That being said, it's true that flat taxes would likely place a higher tax burdens on those with less spending power - because a higher percentage of their overall spending power goes towards taxes - that doesn't make the tax regressive.
Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
At this point someone always says "what about the activities that you would eliminate?". My response is that nothing ever seems to get eliminated, needed functions just move to a different level. Eliminate the Department of Education (please)? Education becomes a state/county/city/school district function and improves. Every federal mandate in education has hurt some segment of students. Good deeds just don't go unpunished. Make the pain retail instead of wholesale. Let it vary from state to state, county to county, school to school. Same with federal unemployment, same with health care, same with energy, transportation, Indian affairs, and welfare.
Flat tax does not even begin to solve the Unconstitutional run-away spending by the Federal Government. The only reason that there are Loopholes that let John Kerry avoid most taxes is that our beloved Congress passed laws that provided those loopholes.
David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering
Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle of injustice Frédéric Bastiat
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
But the effect would be exactly the same as if it were.
And let's not overlook what I wrote right after the part of my post that you did quote:
"...the idea of a national sales tax is often supported by individuals who have no idea how this would shift the tax burden onto people just like themselves and off the backs of the rich who tend to spend their money where it would not be subject to taxes like that either because they've managed to buy enough influence in Washington that any tax law changes will ultimately benefit themselves and others in similar financial positions..."
With things like the 'Citizens United' decision or the upcoming case of 'McCutcheon v. FEC', which has the potenital to be even more destructive to our democracy as it would allow people like the Koch brothers and the Sheldon Adelson's of the world to spend ten's, if not hundred's, of millions to DIRECTLY influence elections at all levels of our society, there is no way that these people will ever allow meaningful tax reform to take place that does not have them coming out even further ahead than they are now or would eventually be, if the status quo was maintained. That's why the SECOND part of that Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr quote is so important and yet is so often overlooked or people being aware that it was even said, and that it that we not only need to support the achieving of a "civilized society", but that we must also "insure" that it be maintained. With the current wealth inequity as it stands today and how it's only getting worse, we are headed toward disaster as a free society. And getting back to those low-information voters, particularly those who only get their 'news' from places Faux News and/or who listen to only the Hannity's or Limbough's of the world, they have been convinced that IF the wealthy in this country are allowed to hang-on to just a BIT MORE of their money, that it will somehow miraculously trickle-down to them and their children. But the reality is that you don't want to look up as that 'trickle' is really nothing more than a 'tinkle' and that's all that you're ever going to get from the 1%.
John R. Baker, P.E.
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RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
2013 Federal spending = $3.5T --> 20.8% of GDP
"as it would allow people like the Koch brothers and the Sheldon Adelson's of the world to spend ten's, if not hundred's, of millions to DIRECTLY influence elections at all levels of our society"
BTDT:
http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2013/11/americans-...
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/11/charts...
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RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
I don't think this is the America that the Founding Fathers had in mind nor the thousands of Americans who've given their lives in defence of the Constitution and the freedom and liberty that it promised our citizens.
John R. Baker, P.E.
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RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
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RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
on a different note, why is it wrong for he Koch Brothers to donate to political causes but OK for George Soros and similar ilk to do the same? Oh that's right, George Soros is a progressive; that makes everything OK.
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
==> I don't think this is the America that the Founding Fathers had in mind nor the thousands of Americans who've given their lives in defence of the Constitution and the freedom and liberty that it promised our citizens.
==> But we have the best government money can buy
I agree with both points. However, if were to scale back the federal government in scope, reach, and power back to what it was and only doing those things as designed by the Founding Fathers, there wouldn't be such a great desire to buy it. We're the ones to blame for that. We've given up so much power, authority, reach, and control to the government that we've made the government an asset worth buying precisely because of its power, authority, reach, and control. The more control the government has, the less freedoms the people have.
Rather than further limiting the freedoms of the people by telling them what they can buy and how much they can spend, take that power and control away from the government and give it back to the people. Scale the government back to it's fundamental design and roles envisioned by those very same Founding Fathers. Restricting the government to only its Constitutional obligations while fully honoring all the Constitutional restrictions over the government makes the government far less worth buying.
I don't expect anyone who prefers big powerful centralized governments to agree, but it's not hard to recognize that the more power and control you yield to an institution, the more inviting you make that institution to corruption. And if you're being honest, you'll see that the corruption is fully rampant on both sides of the isle.
Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
But if you think that we should simply allow the states to take care of everything, how long do you really think that we would remain the UNITED States of America?
John R. Baker, P.E.
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RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
Did you even read Cajun's post or did you just skip to a a recognizable sound byte and attack it? Everyone benefits from shifting government activities to the smallest entity that can handle them. Education is only ever facilitated by individual teachers--community oversight makes sense, Federal oversight makes zero sense, state oversight is kind of a gray area. Assistance to the "underprivilaged" (whatever that means) is best provided by community organizations. The Federal Government does all of these things horribly. Nothing in those statements even remotely implies that one is looking for "a single religion, we all had the same ethnic and racial backgrounds, ..." That is in no way required. The diversity of our country is its greatest strength.
The point of those of us that truly want the Federal Government scaled back to only those functions that can be found to have been authorized by the Constitution is to encourage the diversity of America to flourish. If Massachusetts feels that it is appropriate for the state to provide health care and I was to agree that that is a crucial service then I could move to Massachusetts (if too many people do that then jobs get scarce and other issues begin controlling the discourse). If Wyoming feels that the tax payer is better served by keeping their money and acquiring health care on their own if they feel they need it and I were to agree with that position then I could move to Wyoming. If New Mexico has a health care system that I don't like and changing it is important to me and I live in New Mexico then I should become politically active on the subject and try to change the law. Choice. The current federal government is so big, so entrenched, and so corrupt that grassroots efforts are simply mud on the thieves boots.
Moving these functions to states, counties, cities, communities doesn't remove the potential for graft, but it certainly lowers the magnitude. Nobody can steal a trillion dollars at one time from a billion dollar budget. Nobody can steal a billion dollars at one time from a million dollar budget. It no longer makes economic sense to spend $200 million fighting for a house seat when you probably can't steal enough in 2 years to recover your expenditures. Scaling back the Federal Government simply converts the graft from wholesale to retail.
David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering
Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle of injustice Frédéric Bastiat
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
I didn't say we should allow the states to take care of everything. I said nothing of the sort. What it my post are you trying to spin to claim that what's I said?
==> how long do you really think that we would remain the UNITED States of America?
For quite a while - much, much longer than we're going to last on our present increasingly divisive course.
Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
We're already an oligarchy, and yes it is getting worse. It's not going to get any better as long as we continue to centralize power. To reverse the trend, decentralize power. Oligarchies don't work when power is distributed.
Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
This would be the path to utter incongruity in education, since almost no one wants to teach the same core subjects to the same level, without being forced to. While localization might have been plausible even as late as the 1960's, today's mobile society demands that someone with a high school education in, say, Georgia, will have gotten the same education from, say, California.
SAT, ACT, AP, and IB are all national or international standards that everyone has been forced to adhere to, just so that they can make semi-plausible comparisons between college applicants from anywhere in the world. The end result of this is that an AP Physics student in Georgia gets roughly the same level of physics as someone in California.
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RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
Lincoln was a great believer in subsidiarity: Solving problems at the level closest to the problem. As a society we're losing sight of this, which explains why we can't solve many of our social and financial problems. Unfortunately the current resident of Illinois who resides at 1600 doesn't put much stock in subsidiarity; unlike two other presidents from that state.
So if you donate $50 dollars to you favorite candidate and the Koch brothers contribute a million... Then George Soros will counter with $2 Million.
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
That's just as bad. Make it so that the value of what Soros or Koch wants to buy is not worth $2M. They won't spend it if it's not worth it.
Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
The SAT and AP are both development by and administered by the College Board, which is a non-profit membership association consisting of thousands of education institutions. It is not, nor ever has been, part of the federal government. The ACT is begun by a U of Iowa professor and today is a non-profit organization which also is not part of the federal government. The IB education network was built from a group of educators out of Geneva. They're not part of the federal government either.
They're living proof of how well education standards can be created, administered, and managed by professional educator and education institutions without any help or interference from the government.
Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
That is the standard answer. Has been since the Great Society in the 1960's. It was wrong then. It is wrong now. Federal money in education simply increases spending on administration, spending on facilities, and spending on oversight--none of which improves my granddaughter's access to information. My granddaughter gets educated by an individual. That individual has knowledge, resources, motivation--all of which can only be attributed to a person, not a corporate entity. With our current system, the teacher is held accountable for a minimum standard and is punished for exceeding that standard (because a portion of her class does worse than the the established norms due to time "wasted" on exploring topics that the class finds interesting while the portion that was going to exceed the minimums still does). Every teacher I know despises the watered-down curriculum, the common-core standards, and the mandated testing that they are required to teach to. When I was in primary school before the Great Society if a teacher sensed an interest and desire from the class to go deeper into a facet of a subject they had the latitude to do it. Today that side trip costs you his standing in the hierarchy because what the students learned does not translate to achievement on the standardized tests.
Efforts that have been under way to remove the "utter incongruity" in education for the last 50 years have succeeded in increasing the indoctrination of the students (e.g., Common Core Civics teaches that the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution simply authorizes states to form militias), without improving their ability to compete. There is always incongruity in education. My oldest son went into the first grade able to read books designated for teen age children, he entered the 2nd grade unable to read at a first grade level due to the actions of his teacher. My youngest son had about the same reading ability on entering first grade, had a great first grade teacher that encouraged him and his reading ability improved over that year. Same school. Same Administration. Same state and federal mandates. Different teacher.
Teacher's facilitate learning. They create an atmosphere for exploration and discovery. Or they don't. A child learns. Or they don't. No one except the child can control that. I went to a horrible school in the second poorest county in the US. I completed that sorry excuse for an education with a grade point average under 1.0 (it was not 0.0 only because no one wanted to see me there for another year). In spite of a horrible school and a total lack of motivation, I've done very well for myself. A friend of my youngest son took all AP courses in high school with excellent grades, got a BS from MIT, is working at the Geek Squad at Best Buy 6 years out of college.
Federal mandates make life intolerable for the very best teachers and creates a warm and fuzzy place for the worst among us. Most of the above is anecdotes which I hope will illuminate the discussion. It is not intended to be a rigorous statistical analysis because in this subject (like most human interaction subjects) rigorous statistical analysis is simple bullshit. A person goes to class, or they don't. That person gains knowledge from their participation, or they don't. One person's success at becoming educated does not in any way imply that the next person in the same class with the same resources and the same teacher will have similar success. Don't give me "incongruity". We will have that no matter what. Eliminating Federal participation in education simple shifts decision making to a level that has a (remote) chance of being held accountable for their actions instead of keeping it at a level with zero accountability.
David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering
Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle of injustice Frédéric Bastiat
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
The good Sisters were dedicated teachers, but, that's not to say teachers today are less dedicated. A big difference then versus today is parental involvement. My parents as well as the parents of my classmates stressed the need for a good education. Many of them realized that college was the key to the American Dream. Back then, it was rare for someone to have a parent who attended college, let alone graduated from one. An adult, particularly a man, with high school diploma was one who had achieved a major accomplishment. Today, we read and hear in the media how parents have gone MIA with respect to their children's education. Tragically, we have to a degree allowed public schools to become surrogate parents. Last month the NYC mayor was criticized for keeping schools open during a snow storm, his reply (excuse?) was "we needed to provide them with lunch."
What puzzles me about Common Core is why do we need it? Is the curriculum completely different in each state? We regularly hear teachers complaining that most of their time is preparing students for exams? Why? That's ludicrous! In grammar school we had NY state standardized reading and math tests, but no one made a big deal about them. Typically, we didn't know about them until the day before. Similarly, to attend a Catholic High School or one the five specialized NYC High Schools there was an entrance exam; again it wasn't a big deal. (As an aside, I attended one of the NYC specialized high schools. One day a kid on my block (who attended public school) said "I heard you got in to -------- ----; you must be really smart." I said "All twenty of us made it." He was shocked and told me only 2 or 3 kids from his school got in.)
Perhaps in the 60's there was less controversy in school. Self-esteem was earned; there were no participation trophies; life had winners and losers; you had to take responsibility for your actions; teachers weren't promoting class warfare or political and social ideologies; although we did learn the true meaning of "Social Justice". When it came to politics in the class room the only thing said was: Communism = Evil; America = Good. Every day we said the Pledge of Allegiance and sang the National Anthem or America, or America the Beautiful, or God Bless America . Perhaps the closest thing to political ideology was in 8th Grade - Sr. Jude Miriam made us memorize JFK's inaugural address (then again, it's obvious).
The best of all: We could play rough games at lunch time like: ring-o-leevio, manhunt, and koko professor (in ascending order of roughness).
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
The driving force behind the differences from 50 years ago and today is a perceived need for homogeneity. In the 60's the curriculum was controlled by the school district, state testing (in those few states that had it) was seen as a novel experiment that no one took very seriously (I was on the opposite coast in primary school in the 60's and California had them too, but most states didn't). When I moved from California to Arkansas in the 8th grade I never saw a standardized test again. My wife took them in Texas, but not in Washington. Looking back, it is pretty amazing that going from the Long Beach Unified School District (one of the largest in the country) to Madison County Arkansas (probably two dozen schools with 200 to 1,000 students/school) I wasn't really very far ahead or behind where I should have been. I had had California history in the 7th grade. My classmates in Arkansas had had Arkansas history in the 7th grade. I took Algebra in the 8th grade and I would have taken Algebra in the 8th grade in California. Civics in the 9th grade in both places. Pledge of Allegiance every morning in both places. Certainly not "utter incongruity in education".
As to parents being MIA. When my kids started elementary school (the 90's) parents were welcome in classrooms and my wife spent a lot of time helping out with projects and field trips for both our boys. Our grandson is going to elementary school 2 blocks from our house and my wife has offered to do the same thing for his class. She was not so politely refused with "he needs to learn to get along without Grammy". She is a bit of a conspiracy nut, but I don't think she's wrong when she says the agenda is indoctrination to the welfare-state, anti-industry, global-warming, liberal agenda. One of our granddaughters in another state called last year and asked me why I "wanted her to die". I was pretty shook up and asked her where that was coming from and she said that her teacher had told the class that "greedy oil companies were rapidly making the planet uninhabitable and that all humanity was going to die out in a couple of generations because of our greed". The agenda is mostly more subtle than that particular zealot, but everything from learning to multiply by drawing circles to "teaching" the Constitution with a bit of spin, to discouraging family from participating in the classroom, to steps afoot to ban home schooling is all piling up to spell "indoctrination" to me. Common core is the transport mechanism for that indoctrination.
David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering
Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle of injustice Frédéric Bastiat
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
I had NY state history in the 7th grade and algebra in the 8th grade. We had Common Core back then and didn't know it
Similarly in the 90's my wife stayed home while I worked & she volunteered at our daughter's school. Now, our daughter has a teaching degree but no teaching job (other than no-paying work teaching ESL and Sunday school.) I don't disagree with you that schools are promoting a "welfare-state, anti-industry, global-warming, liberal agenda." What you refer to as a "perceived need for homogeneity" is similar to how I see the education system: "A false sense of fairness: No winners or losers." For example, in NYC public schools are doing away with programs for gifted children for a variety of reasons, most often cited is that it's unfair to those not in the programs and in some cases racial disparity. Also, there are some in NY who want to do away with entrance exams for specialized high schools. They claim it's unfair to children from non-affluent families. Their parents can't afford to send them programs to help them prepare for the entrance exam. I remember the day my classmates and took the entrance exam: We had school in the morning then we were excused at 11:30 to take the exam at 1:30 PM.
Don't get me started with "Zero Tolerance" policies. To me, that's a way fro teachers and administrators to punt away decision making. It's sad that we live in a country that put men on the moon and brought them back safely several times, in an age where the technology was primitive by today's standards. We know so much more than we did then but we don't seemed to have gained wisdom.
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
Given the growing disparity between rich and poor, I'm not sure that chopping the public sector compensation levels is the right way to solve this. Rather, I'd like to see corporations and the top 10% of earners paying more- less to fund the public sector salaries and more to fill in the massive infrastructure deficit that has been growing over the past two decades or more.
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
And that's the pat answer from the other side. I put two of my kids through a private school for a while. $10 K/yr, with the result that my elder son struggled in high school pre-calc because the so-called Algebra 2 that they taught was woefully inadequate, and the younger struggled through middle school and now, high school, math, because he needs more than what they gave him. The current level in public school for the same grades runs about $7.5 K/yr. So, assuming that public school is so inefficient that only $5 K/yr is going to education, then I paid and extra $5 K/yr and essentially got nothing useful out of that.
So, while there is this notion that "individual teachers, etc., etc.," why do we need API standards, and ISO standards; why do we need structural codes? Why not "Engineering is only ever facilitated by individual engineers?" So why do we, as a society, expend any money to create and enforce codes? The simple answer is that there is a greater wisdom, and there is a minimum acceptable standard for design. Why are there governmental bodies tasked with enforcing PE laws? Why are we spending state tax money badgering engineers; shouldn't we just let engineers do their engineering and leave them be?
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RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
There should be standards, but, once again the Federal government is butting in where it doesn't belong. Let's use your example of engineering codes: AASHTO is a national standard for bridge design. However, many if not all states have the modifications to AASHTO. This country is spending more and more on education at all levels of government but test scores aren't improving. Obviously money isn't the answer. In NYC the mayor is making a major issue out of creating universal pre-K. What for? There are studies indicating that it doesn't enhance education but the jury's still out. It's just another example of liberals who think government should replace the family.
There was in a column in Time Magazine recently by Leon Botstein, president of Bard College, in which he stated that the SAT is BS; he said it doesn't prove anything; he said it's just a money maker for the college board and a way for elite colleges to make more money. Dr. Botstein is a liberal! (although he's a liberal in the classical sense, which is why I respect his opinions.)
While I'm ranting, let's take a look at the Great Society and "The War on Poverty". After 50 years and untold trillions of dollars, we have a higher percentage of the population living in poverty now than in 1964. Obliviously money isn't the answer.
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
Of course, it is; money has been well spent in creating and environment where the bottom 80% have less than 5% of the wealth, so obviously, money applied effectively is the answer. It's simply a question of whose money won out.
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RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
Right premise, but wrong conclusions. Obviously, government isn't the answer.
Money is required, but the mistake is first filtering that money through the federal government.
Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
Please share your data. It looks to me like we're at a very similar rate to 1965 (which was lower than 1964) - and we had a bump up of several percentage points due to the recession.
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
Governments that are accountable and the proper use of money would go a long way.
We elect our government, so if we do not like them, do not vote for them.
If we complain about how the government uses the money, we should also look at how individuals use money. Debt issues are not exclusive to governments.
I am not a big fan of extra government intervention on any scale, but when the local (or states) cannot do it in an equitable and/or just way, then the federal (or state) government has to step in to make it happen.
While I agree the federal government has gone past its constitutional constraints, we have to remember the first government of our post Revolutionary War land failed because the federal government was too weak and the state governments were too powerful.
I am too young to remember it, but wasn't it the federal government that stepped in when Gov Wallace would not allow for desegregation in the schools. If that had not happened, would we have segregated schools today.
And how many times has a state government had to step in when a local government has not done what it should.
We can all pontificate about how the government is bad and how control should be given to the individual, but history has shown that individuals are not much better at doing the right thing when they have no restraints imposed on them from their government.
I think it is called anarchy.
There must be a balance.
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
I don't. People keep getting elected. Absolutely baffling.
I brought it up in another thread of a similar vain so I won't go nutty into the details, but
the mathematics of our voting system are fundamentally broken. (Speaking of the US system).
I am convinced the root cause of all of our government's disfunction can be distilled to this maxim.
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
CajunCenturion - I should have worded my earlier statement a little; more on the order of: government and money make a bad combination.
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
And Supreme Court Rulings like 'Citizens United', and potentially 'McCutcheon vs FEC', are going a long ways to make it a disastrous combination. If the Supremes rule in favor of McCutcheon, we can all but kiss our representative democracy goodbye.
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
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Siemens PLM:
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To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
No, we wouldn't. At most, the state of Alabama would have segregated schools for at least the duration of Gov Wallace's term in office. It was a federal court that stepped in because Gov Wallace's actions would have violated the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. And that IS the job of the federal judiciary - to ensure that federal, state, and local governments do not over-reach Constitutional limitations.
==> Governments that are accountable and the proper use of money would go a long way.
And the closer the government is to the people, the more accountable they are. As suggested earlier, the federal government is not so much accountable to the people as it is to a select privileged few - on both sides of the isle. In order to reduce the influence of the selected few, reduce the power and scope over those they influence. And to increase the accountability of government, bring it closer to the people.
==> And how many times has a state government had to step in when a local government has not done what it should.
As it should. I have no problem with a state government doing what it should. I may not agree with the state's action, but it is the state's action to take. My problem is with the federal government exercising powers that have been reserved to the states.
==> We can all pontificate about how the government is bad and how control should be given to the individual,
I don't hear anyone saying that. I don't hear calls for no government; I hear calls for limited and distributed government.
==> we have to remember the first government of our post Revolutionary War land failed because the federal government was too weak and the state governments were too powerful.
Failed? By what measure?
What is true is that between 1776 and 1789, while operating under the Articles of Confederation, there was considerable debate between the Federalist and the Anti-Federalists about finding the right balance between the powers that the federal government should have and those that should remain with the states. Those debates led to the Constitution which defined that balance by alloted certain powers to the federal government, leaving the rest to the states and the people.
==> [i]While I agree the federal government has gone past its constitutional constraints,
Indeed it has. We no longer honor that balance called for in the Constitution.
Good Luck
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As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
Sometimes (maybe too ofen) the federal government has to step into the state's business when the state is not doing what it should, i.e. the desegregation issue. But I agree, the federal government has poked its nose into too much and needs to back off.
I just do not want the pendulum to swing too far the other way.
Balance is good.
Finding the balance is difficult because of the inherent human capacity for only wanting to do what I want to do and nobody else can tell me what to do, an inherent resistance to submitting to authority. It expands on up the ladder of government.
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
It is VERY easy for a small group of people to affect the curriculum of public education to render it a means for indoctrination into a private ideology. It is far harder for such a local bias to slip into a Federally or state/province-wide curriculum. You may not like the bias you see in the curriculum, but what you're really saying is that you don't like what your society has become. That's a fair point, but it's not a criticism of education per se.
Want to indoctrinate your own kids in your own private ideology? No problem- home-school them- it's your right. But public education has to be on the basis of a broader public consensus.
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
Agreed. However, the scope and influence of that corruption is restricted to the domain of just that government. Also, it's far easier to replace state officials than it is to replace federal officials, i.e., there is more accountability at the state level.
==> It is VERY easy for a small group of people to affect the curriculum of public education to render it a means for indoctrination into a private ideology. It is far harder for such a local bias to slip into a Federally or state/province-wide curriculum.
I'm not sure it's VERY easy as you suggest. And on the flip side, doing so at a federal level makes it easier to institutionalize such a bias, as is suggested by many in the current federal plan of Common Core (discussing the Common Core itself is probably better left to it's own thread). I'm not sure many people will jump and claim that No Child Left Behind was a roaring success either. Further, it's a lot harder to replace officials at the federal level than it is to replace those at state levels.
I'd also like to point out that the US Dept of Education (DOE) wasn't created until in 1979. Yes, 1979 - just 34 years ago. The SAT national standard had been in use for over 75 years prior to the existence of the US DOE. The ACT standard also predates the US DOE by over a decade. As far as I can tell, those who went through public education in the USA prior to 1980, without the help or interference of the federal government, did just fine, nor were unduly influenced by local indoctrination. I think this group is a fairly well educated group and of those in the USA, many of us through public education without any involvement of the federal government. Does anyone want to claim that public education in the USA has gotten substantially, or even incrementally, better since the creation of the DOE? Or has it gotten worse?
Good Luck
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As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
As for federal involvement in education,
http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/role.html
seems to tell a different, albeit maybe biased story.
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
Yes I have, and there are always fringe elements trying to push their way and exert influence. That influence is almost always very short-term and ends up being nothing but a blip. They're very easy for the mainstream to marginalize at the local level.
Good Luck
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As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
In the past, the evolutionary view point was the "fringe" group and look how far that has gotten since Scopes. This not meant to start an evolution/creation topic, merely a historic occurence where a fringe group was not marginalized by mainstream.
Desegregation was a fringe group.
Sometimes the fringe group has the correct viewpoint. That is often how good change occurs.
Often the majority is wrong.
If there is not a group (state or federal) to enforce change, it will not happen due to inertia of ideas.
Also, as a designer of school PMET systems, I am typically surpised at the resistance to such things as air conditioning/audio-visual equipment/etc. among some mainstream groups in school districts. A common statement, "we didn't have AC (or computers, etc.) in our schools when we were kids, so why should our kids?"
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
Polling indicates that evolution is still close to being the fringe concept, with only 37% of those polled believing that only evolution should be taught in schools.
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RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/poverty-line-grow...
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
Why is it that money spent trying to help the less fortunate in our society is always questioned and debated to the finest level of granularity with constant micromanaging by people who have no subject-matter expertise at all, read Congressmen and media whores, yet we're willing to literally write blank-checks when it comes to the latest military weapon system or when we're asked to invade a country that had not attacked us nor who presented a clear and present danger to our national well being?
As they say, it's all a matter of priorities.
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
Here’s the problem with evolution, intelligent design, creationism, or whatever you call it: Science, philosophy, and theology are all thrown into the same mix. In actuality they shouldn’t be in conflict. For example a question such as “how was the universe created” is not a question for theology, it is a question for science. The question “why was the universe created, or was the universe created to begin with” is a question for philosophy, not for science, possibly for theology. The question “who am I in relation to God, who is God in relation to me, what does God offer if anything, is God personal, etc.” is a question for theology, not science, not philosophy. None of this is to say that we can’t utilize the information gained from each of the three disciplines in order to understand our reality better. Society needs to get a handle on what each of the three disciplines are specifically equipped to handle.
Does evolution disprove God’s existence? Does it threaten belief in God, or somehow undermine Christianity? No and no. Theology is not equipped to answer the questions of science, and science is not equipped to answer questions of theology.
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
Let's look at the referenced article. The Wikipedia article states:That shows that 84% want evolution to be taught, with considerable variance about where and how creationism should be in play.
==> Sometimes the fringe group has the correct viewpoint. That is often how good change occurs.
I agree, that is how the normal process. And it's true that resistance to change is natural and normal, but it can be overcome. And when that's needed, the fringe group grows and works it's way into the mainstream, at the same time, moving the older used to be mainstream position to the fringe. It can, and usually does, take time for the momentum to build, but if it the position is right, then it will build. That process, too, happens more quickly at the local and state levels than it does at the federal levels.
Evolution/Creation (not wanting to open that debate) is a good example. The process is working and on-going as creationism continues to be pushed aside as a science in favor of evolution as the mainstream science.
==> Also, as a designer of school PMET systems,
PMET being?
I applaud you for being part of the education process. Do you work at the local, state, or federal level?
Good Luck
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As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering
Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle of injustice Frédéric Bastiat
RE: College-educated professionals could doom progressive politics
There should be no variance. That's like saying having 84% of some mythical poll population wanting astrology to be taught as part of an astrophysics curriculum is OK. Creationism is not science. The fact that 84% of people think "belief" should be taught in a science curriculum definitely puts pure science in a fringe position.
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