Posts tagged politics
The Incomplete Cynic
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School Choice: It’s not a conservative issue or a liberal issue, Republican or Democrat. Ensuring that our children have the best education possible is an American issue, and it’s one that the country should get behind.
(Source: foundry.org, via evilteabagger)
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After all, Race to the Top — a competition that has states vie for federal funds by promising to implement reforms championed by the Education Department — does, in fact, extend NCLB’s obsession with standardized testing. How? By requiring that teacher evaluation be in part measured by the scores students get on these exams. There is no concrete evidence that any of the Race to the Top reforms actually improve student achievement, but when has education policy paid attention to research?
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The rationale for the Occupy movement is that all of this has been under successful attack by the right wing, which has an opposing principle, that democracy is about citizens only taking care of themselves, about personal and not social responsibility. According to right-wing morality, the successful are by definition the moral; the one percent are taken to be the most moral. The country and the world should be ruled by such a “moral” hierarchy. Except for national security, the Public should disappear through lack of funding. The nation and the world should be ruled for private profit alone — and by force.
George Lakoff: Occupy Elections, With a Simple Message
That’s a hell of a leap from “personal responsibility” to individuals only taking care of themselves, and that success = morality. The sad thing is that people take this kind of rhetoric seriously.
By any objective standard it is an absurdly bad piece, a poorly written, juvenile rant against Occupy Wall Street that reeks of smug ignorance. While I understand how that might appeal to right-wingers like yourself and Miller, its promotion tells me that either Miller promoted the piece because of its author’s skin color — the way right-wingers promote Herman Cain because they think it insulates them and their racist policies from charges of racism — or Miller’s standards for promoting posts are ludicrously low. The fact remains: It had no business being promoted, and it’s just the latest example of why all of Tumblr’s right-wing editors should be replaced by right-wingers of a higher caliber… unless you pathetic lot are the best Tumblr has to offer, in which case I look forward to mocking you all some more. — Ryking
I’ll start by pointing out a couple of things: (a) The post was obviously intended as a “juvenile rant”, the smugness was intentional also; (b) I pointed this out in a follow up to your critique yesterday, yet you ignored that, and instead are debating its merit with someone who had nothing to do with its writing or promotion. Is it because I’m black?
Look, the post was not intended to be taken seriously. It wasn’t conceived of seriously, it wasn’t written seriously. As a result, the quality of the writing wasn’t high. But have you read the Occupy Dallas statement calling for the General Strike? If you want to honestly discuss writing of a “ludicrously low” quality being promoted inappropriately, you’ll need to include it.
If you want to keep trashing my post, that’s fine. I didn’t put enough effort into it to be offended. But address me directly when you do it, and be specific about what was so “absurdly bad.”
(Source: holeycynicism)
Occupy My Living Room
A woman I work with is really dedicated to the Occupy movement. She works some evenings and weekends so that she can be involved there during the week, and she talks about it effusively at the office. I hadn’t thought the movement, from what I’d seen and heard, was worth my attention, but she’s a nice lady. I decided to look into it. Turns out I was right in the first place…
Here’s what I found:
Statistics Fail: The first link on occupywallst.org today promised to explain how the Bush tax cuts “only benefit the richest 1% of Americans in any kind of significant way.” That was a big fat lie.
It links to a lovely graph that show the average tax cut for the “richest 1%” compared to the “poorest 60%”. First, who in their right mind would consider the guy at the top of that “poorest 60%”, the one who makes more money than 59.9% of all Americans, “poor”? Second, the average savings for the 60% was about $500. That’s a lot of money to most of us. President Obama even wanted praise for securing a tax cut of just $400 for us last year. Third, in 2008 40% of wage-earners paid no federal income taxes. So 2/3 of the entries used to come up with the average savings for the bottom 60% were zeroes! Think that drove the number down a bit?
But those aren’t the real problem…significance is relative. $500 is significant to me, and I think it is to most of the people in the “poorest 60%”.
I’m sorry, what? Occupy Dallas is calling for a General Strike. After reading their manifesto (?), I started to think that these people have no idea what the world is like. And they definitely don’t know anything about what the world was. And whatever group of people got together to write this - with their extensive use of “whereas”, “consensus” and present participles - stopped going to English class after 8th grade.
Enjoy this smattering of phrases:
The Occupy movement represents those that feel disenfranchised from the current socioeconomic system because of policy passed by our political institutions and the actions of those in control of the unprecedented consolidation of wealth.
Translation: “We’re sensitive and you’re mean!”
Whereas by consensus we view that for the first time in American history, current generations will not be as prosperous as preceding generations. This denial of the American Dream is at the heart of Occupy Movement.
I have great confidence in your consensus opinion. I love the way you can stare in the face of great historical trends and not even care. “What? The prices of durable goods, clothing, and food have been falling steadily for 250 years? Well, it’s all over now! Head for the bunker!”
Whereas by consensus we view that the social system has become tilted against us by:
This is gonna be great…I can feel it…
1. Unfair treatment and discrimination against individuals based on Gender, Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, Race, National Origin, Physical Ability or any other factor that minimizes any person’s individual worth
“Become tilted”? Can someone point out a time or place in history where people of different national origins, races, religions, and sexual orientations so freely participated in a society, both politically and economically? Can a group of people be so historically illiterate and presently unaware, yet still believe themselves to be forward-thinking?
2. The commoditization of individual privacy
What does this even mean?
3. Profit driven news sources with individual agendas
Again, “become”?
4. Narrow definitions of what constitutes a family
Back to #1, the definition of family is about as broad as it’s ever been. That was the end of that list, thankfully.
Jeopardizing the future of social security through investiture and privatization schemes
Um, I think the future of Social Security is a giant empty hole, slowing being filled in with the hopes and dreams of those of us who are paying for it, but will never receive it. Just sayin…
By reducing funding to our education system our future generations are provided a lesser education that previous generations received because of increased class size and reduced resources.
This, along with the complaint about high student loan debt, makes me think these people never figured out that there’s no such thing as a money tree. Look, college is expensive. It costs a lot of money to maintain those facilities, to keep hold of professors who could double their money if they went to work for pharmaceutical companies or hedge funds. It costs more money to maintain money-losing athletic programs (thanks Title IX), and even more to provide discounted tuition to every person in the state who manages to pull off a B average in high school. Now add in community colleges. Where’s the state supposed to get money for the bureaucratic monstrosity that makes up public K12 schooling? God only knows. The problem isn’t that we aren’t spending enough money, it’s that we have no restraint, and no direction. But I can see that the Occupy movement isn’t going to be any help in those areas.
The rest of the document is a whining rant about not getting things like paid sick and maternity leave, defined benefit pensions, and health insurance, and some vague statements about “unethical business practices”. I’ve decided I know all I need to about Occupy whatever. Now I’m going to peacefully occupy my living room.
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Those Boring Politics: Why are you a libertarian? Reblog with your answer!
I’m a libertarian because I’m white, male and I hate minorities and the poor.
I was a socialist but I started to realize that socialism was more about punishing the rich than creating more opportunities for the poor and…
I’m black and lower middle class, and I hate myself and my people. I do crazy things like go to grad school vote not-Democrat.
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Obama Gets a Blank Check for Endless War
The Obama administration is on pace to have more American soldiers killed in casualties related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan than the George W. Bush administration did in its first term.
Already, hundreds more American troops have been killed in Afghanistan during the less than three years of the Obama administration than during the eight years of the George W. Bush administration. According to the iCasualties.org Web site, whose count more or less tracks that of other sites devoted to these statistics, 630 American soldiers died in the Afghanistan operation in the years 2001 through 2008, when Mr. Bush was president, while 1097 American soldiers have died in the years 2009, 2010, and 2011. Even if you allocate the 30 or so American soldiers killed in January 2009 entirely to Mr. Bush, who was president until the January 20 inauguration, it is quite a record.
Include Iraq, and the comparison tells a similar story: about 1,300 Americans killed in operations related to Iraq and Afghanistan combined during the first two and a half or so years we’ve had of the Obama administration, versus less than 600 American casualties in the first full three years of the George W. Bush administration.
It all raises at least two related questions. First, where are the antiwar protests? And second, where is the press?
Whatever happened to the “Daily Body Count” in all the dailies? They were always there, even if they didn’t change.
(Source: laliberty)
Reblogging this for a few things.
One, it was tagged under taxes. I can’t see the word taxes in this quote at all so I’m confused as to how a quote on voluntary, charitable giving got misconstrued into a quote to support theft and violence.
Two, I do notice the word should. Should is different than must in that it urges someone to do something, apart from threatening wealth redistribution with threats of force or imprisonment. Philanthropy can’t be forced.
Something tells me this is the only thing the economically illiterate left have actually read by Adam Smith.
Two other things: first, the obvious fact that our system of progressive taxation guarantees that the rich will be paying something more than an equal proportion of their revenue. Not only that, our system has reached a point where only half of income earners paid income taxes last year. In case you’re curious, that is most certainly the bottom half. So, if anyone’s not paying their “fair share” it’s me, the father of two who’s been in the workforce since I was 16 and never not gotten a refund.
Second, and slightly less obvious: to say something is “not very unreasonable” is not the same as saying it’s the right thing to do. There are most certainly other solutions. Of course, we’ve already chosen this one, unfortunately, a bunch of people who pay no taxes or something like 8% after credits and deductions, think it’s a travesty that someone who earns more only has to give up 30%. If that’s you’re idea of “in proportion to their revenue”, then we are, as a society, well and truly screwed.
So I’ve seen this chart on a million progressive blogs the last few days, and like just about every chart you see on a political blog, it’s not exactly right. Which is a gentle way of saying it’s wrong.
There are the obvious defects, of course, like the omission of any spending by Obama on Iraq and Afghanistan, and I’m pretty sure Libya isn’t free. Bush started the first two, but Obama increased our Afghanistan involvement, so he should get some credit for its cost.
But the biggest problem is the chart’s treatment of tax cuts. Bush’s tax cuts had an expiration date. During his campaign, Obama announced his own tax plan, which would keep the tax levels in place for 95% of American. He believed that only the “rich” needed to pay more. The cost of this extension of tax cuts over a decade is $3 trillion dollars. Why isn’t that on Obama’s side of the chart? I think it’s missing because it would make Obama look bad. That’s a pretty bad reason to leave something off a chart.
Something else seems off on the chart. Oh, yeah … Obamacare. The CBO put the cost at $1 trillion. And that was based upon accounting gimmicks. Democrats think they’ll pay for this with taxes. Businessmen think otherwise, warning about potential revenue hits. We’ll see.
Let’s not forget the ridiculous assumption that Obama wouldn’t come up with any new ways to spend money in the remaining five years of a theoretical second term.
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Thought Provoking Question of the Day: Would Bill Maher Give Up His Show to Reduce His Carbon Footprint?
This would be more significant if it extended a few seconds past the question to see his full reaction.
(Source: evilteabagger)
