Reaching Out Across the Aisle

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

On the Pro Life subject, the best way to prevent abortion is to make birth control as readily available and easy to get as possible. That's something I respect about my senator, Bob Casey. He is strongly opposed to abortion because of his Catholic faith and he supports progressive birth control policies towards that end.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Yeah it's too bad Tomi got cancelled for choosing women's rights.

[Nealithi]

As for schools?

Public. Schools. F******. SUCK.

And my anger here is directed wholly at the schools I've dealt with and seen personally.

The public grade school/elementary school I went to? One, MAYBE two teachers actually cared beyond the basics. The rest... didn't. One teacher, because I didn't do my homework, wouldn't call on me in class and eventually said "Well Nevix if you're not going to participate in class by doing your homework then I'm not going to let you participate in class by calling on you!"

One teacher arranged a Parent Teacher meeting, which my mother had to spend a day of vacation time to be able to attend, and then cancelled the meeting at the last minute.

During a field day, another teacher, after I GOT HIT IN THE FACE WITH A SOCCER BALL AND MIGHT HAVE HAD A CONCUSSION, told me to walk up a rather long flight of stone steps and find the vice principle ALONE.

F******. ALONE.

When I could have had a concussion and fallen on those stairs.

I was lucky that I got dizzy at the top of the stairs and was able to sit down there, waiting out the rest of the field day.


The high school in my hometown? The principle removed ALL special honors that the students gained, forcing every single student to LOOK the same.


I. Don't. Want. To. Fund. The. System. That. Creates. Schools. Like. That.



But setting aside my personal hatred of public schools:

Money hasn't fixed the problems of public schools. Many schools get over 10,000 per student, and still can't pay their teachers better or supply the students properly, and still end up with failing scores for students and kids falling through the gaps.

Charter schools ARE public schools, funded from the same source, but employing a different administration structure. And if public schools can't keep up, then we should just shut them and open more charter schools.

People line up for LOTTERIES so their kids MIGHT have a chance at a good education in a Charter School...

But various politicians get lobbied to block building new Charter Schools, despite the demand.

So it falls to dumb luck, instead of recognizing that the public schools are broken due to the bureaucracy, and using a new system that works.



EDIT: As an aside to the "Obama/Trump" voter musings/questionings:

The most common reason I have seen for people to switch from Obama to Trump is disappointment and disillusionment. They heard the promises that Barack Obama made, and were disappointed that he kept so few of them.

Geez, did you go to a south Jersey school? Because exchange concussion for broken arm and it sounds like me in school.
My issue on charter schools is all I have heard is they are publicly funded private schools. And the stories I have heard both in the media and from friends who went to private schools does not give me much hope for them. As they can be just as bad as a public school, but with even less oversight.

Others have stated that more money would logically include more oversight. Yet is has not. Schools got more money and gave bonuses to the principal and superintendents. While failing to address the issues the money was given to them for.
Others mentioned that leaking roofs and lack of school books can't be fixed without money. But my own example was there. They had the money, they just wanted more for pet projects that had nothing to do with teaching.

I mentioned the idea I put here about sending school taxes to the state for even distribution. An answer I got was it sounded like the idea behind bussing. The version the person who told it to me was there was a brief experiment. They took the students from a 'poor' city and bussed them to a wealthier neighborhood's school. And those students went to the city school. Apparently it was a disaster.

So in summation. I tend to agree with you. The system needs to be reworked before more funding is applied.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Others have stated that more money would logically include more oversight. Yet is has not. Schools got more money and gave bonuses to the principal and superintendents. While failing to address the issues the money was given to them for.
Others mentioned that leaking roofs and lack of school books can't be fixed without money. But my own example was there. They had the money, they just wanted more for pet projects that had nothing to do with teaching.

When Russia went to market capitalism their allocation for private bidding was largely corrupt and went to private interests over public.

[Draco Dracul]

I also feel that Christian values are fundamentally incompatible with capitalism, which by its very nature empowers the powerful and stomps on the meek.

"Capitalism" is freedom to buy, sell, and create as you want/need to, with the only restrictions needed being those prohibiting monopolies, worker abuse, and other such abuses of people.

It is not the free market itself that centers power, but the lack of enforcement of antitrust laws, and government regulations that choke off smaller businesses.

Capitalism is good as long as you arbitrarily declare the bad parts of capitalism to not be capitalism. Antitrust laws are by nature anti-free market as they represent restrictions on the market. Trusts and other forms of monopolies are the natural end state of the free market as when the economy is a competition eventually someone will be the undisputed champion.

Communism and socialism stifle freedom, giving people no choice but to obey the state.

That's a discription of authoritarianism, not communism or socialism. While there are authoritarian versions of both, like Stalinism, it is not inherent to the ideology. Additionally capitalism has a long history of propping up authoritarian regimes, not only have numerous south American democracies been overthrown by the demands of fruit corporations, but many american capitalists, most notably Henry Ford, where huge fans of the Nazis.

Cronyism (typically misnamed as "Crony Capitalism") has enough control and interference to undermine the free marker aspects, due to always having people who gain advantages because they're connected.

A wide variety of other systems are just variations on a free market system, with varying degrees of limited regulation and control.

Being able to buy a law is an example of the free market, not a perversion of it.

Free markets are the most compatible with Christianity.

Free markets are deeply incompatible with Christianity as they inherently advantage the followers of Mammon, drag down the the followers of Christ, and build a level of hypocrisy that wod put the pharisees to shame as you get alleged men of God squeezing their parishioners for money for a second private jet.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Others have stated that more money would logically include more oversight. Yet is has not. Schools got more money and gave bonuses to the principal and superintendents. While failing to address the issues the money was given to them for.
Others mentioned that leaking roofs and lack of school books can't be fixed without money. But my own example was there. They had the money, they just wanted more for pet projects that had nothing to do with teaching.

When Russia went to market capitalism their allocation for private bidding was largely corrupt and went to private interests over public.

I do not take your meaning, sir.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Nevix, please don't take offense at this but I have to ask, what is your stance on Kyle Rittenhouse?

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatization_in_Russia

In the later years of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev relaxed restrictions on private property and introduced initial market reforms. Privatization shifted Russia from the Soviet planned economy towards a market economy, and resulted in a dramatic rise in the level of economic inequality and a collapse in GDP and industrial output.[3]

Privatization facilitated the transfer of significant wealth to a relatively small group of business oligarchs and New Russians, particularly natural gas and oil executives.[4] This economic transition has been described as katastroika[5] (combination of catastrophe and the term perestroika) and as "the most cataclysmic peacetime economic collapse of an industrial country in history".[6]

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

On the Pro Life subject, the best way to prevent abortion is to make birth control as readily available and easy to get as possible. That's something I respect about my senator, Bob Casey. He is strongly opposed to abortion because of his Catholic faith and he supports progressive birth control policies towards that end.

Only proven way is abstinence.

[Beastro]

Others have stated that more money would logically include more oversight. Yet is has not. Schools got more money and gave bonuses to the principal and superintendents. While failing to address the issues the money was given to them for.
Others mentioned that leaking roofs and lack of school books can't be fixed without money. But my own example was there. They had the money, they just wanted more for pet projects that had nothing to do with teaching.

When Russia went to market capitalism their allocation for private bidding was largely corrupt and went to private interests over public.

A complicating issue here is that, whatever latent issues a system like the free market may have, a culture may simply not be suited for it.

Russians seem have an impaired view of things like personal responsibility and conduct where leaving things in people's hands without oversight leaves too many to see no reason to not act in bad ways. This is something that goes back centuries too and was observed with great frustration by Peter the Great in the Great Northern War. The old line "They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work" can be inverted and still apply.

I've seem many Russians online too criticize people for volunteerism and good civil conduct without the threat of punishment looming overhead. One guy I talked to once sneered at a German tourist who, upon seeing a motorcycle outside a bar fall over, went over a righted it before moving on. The crux of his criticism was that helping others like that is a fool's game; keep your head down and look after yourself.

Same goes for the streak in their culture that loves a "strong leader" and results in them being in a mutually abusive relationship with their government.

Looking back on the 90s, I see it more like Amish kids going to the city and running wild seeing a lack of restraint as license to do whatever you want.

And before people think this is simple generalization, all cultures have these darker aspects to their qualities. One can see the eye rolling quirks of America's Libertarian streak and the "I not only can but should do whatever the hell I want and fuck you for telling me when I'm wrong! Don't you dare try to control me!" going on with the virus problem.

In the later years of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev relaxed restrictions on private property and introduced initial market reforms. Privatization shifted Russia from the Soviet planned economy towards a market economy, and resulted in a dramatic rise in the level of economic inequality and a collapse in GDP and industrial output.[3]

Privatization facilitated the transfer of significant wealth to a relatively small group of business oligarchs and New Russians, particularly natural gas and oil executives.[4] This economic transition has been described as katastroika[5] (combination of catastrophe and the term perestroika) and as "the most cataclysmic peacetime economic collapse of an industrial country in history".[6]

The issue was the system as it was before then could no longer work and couldn't work any other way. The USSR was build on lies and his reforms sought to bring truth to the forefront.

The result was, unsurprisingly, the collapse of all the lies.

On the Pro Life subject, the best way to prevent abortion is to make birth control as readily available and easy to get as possible. That's something I respect about my senator, Bob Casey. He is strongly opposed to abortion because of his Catholic faith and he supports progressive birth control policies towards that end.

Only proven way is abstinence.

You know you're gonna get it for that.

Simple fact is people are dealing with titanic forces in themselves to both maintain stability in the changes of recent society (as in the couple centuries) and those that only care about keeping more people being born.

The issue I feel is unwinnable because it is beyond our control, however much we should exercise it in our lives.