US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1493

On November 28 2014 05:49 Millitron wrote:

Tell that to the completely innocent people killed in SWAT no-knock raids.

GENEVA (AP) — Police brutality, military interrogations and prisons were among the top concerns of a U.N. panel's report Friday that found the United States to be falling short of full compliance with an international anti-torture treaty.

The report by the U.N. Committee Against Torture, its first such review of the U.S. record since 2006, expressed concerns about allegations of police brutality and excessive use of force by law enforcement officials, particularly the Chicago Police Department's treatment of blacks and Latinos. It also called for restricting the use of taser weapons by police to life-threatening situations. But it had no specific recommendation or reaction to a grand jury's decision not to indict the white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri who fatally shot a black and unarmed teenager.

The report also criticizes the U.S. record on military interrogations, maximum security prisons, illegal migrants and solitary confinement while calling for tougher federal laws to define and outlaw torture, including with detainees at Guantanamo Bay and in Yemen. It also called for abolishing interrogation techniques that rely on sleep or sensory deprivation "aimed at prolonging the sense of capture."

On November 29 2014 00:55 BallinWitStalin wrote:
I'm.....highly skeptical of this claim.

It's one of those things that sounds so outlandishly wrong that it "must" be true, otherwise the person claiming would sound ridiculous.

Not necessarily saying you're wrong, but could you back that up a bit with relevant per-capita spending information? Including things like welfare, direct social services, public healthcare, education, state run pensions, etc....

Edit: Crap, I forgot to quote the specific statement. I was questioning the claim johnny made that America spends similar amounts on social programs relative to european countries.

On November 29 2014 02:30 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

You can find some answers in the OECD report I linked to a couple pages back. The data is largely in percent of GDP terms. I don't think education is included in the numbers. For that the US spends the almost the most per capita (only Switzerland tops us) for non-tertiary education and for all education as a percent of GDP we are well above average (source).

On November 29 2014 02:35 Gorsameth wrote:

meaning you spend the money wrong instead of not spending enough. Still a problem.

On November 29 2014 02:35 Gorsameth wrote:

meaning you spend the money wrong instead of not spending enough. Still a problem.

On November 29 2014 02:49 farvacola wrote:

Haha, of course they have, like when the Republican base refused to vote GW back into office after he implemented one of the most wasteful and ill-conceived national education programs in the history of government....oh wait....

But by all means, don't let reality stop you from pretending that meaningful education reform is a cornerstone aspect of the Republican agenda, given that one equates meaningful education reform with across the board budget cuts and performing fellatio on the private interests begging to get a taste of state-legislature mismanaged education funding. Lets just not mention the fact that Republican strongholds like Texas and Georgia continue to waste money changing curriculums and ordering textbooks that practically refer to the Civil Rights Movement as "trouble ahead."

It's funny what yelling "Common Core! Duck and cover!" will let one get away with.

On November 29 2014 02:49 farvacola wrote:

Haha, of course they have, like when the Republican base refused to vote GW back into office after he implemented one of the most wasteful and ill-conceived national education programs in the history of government....oh wait....

But by all means, don't let reality stop you from pretending that meaningful education reform is a cornerstone aspect of the Republican agenda, given that one equates meaningful education reform with across the board budget cuts and performing fellatio on the private interests begging to get a taste of state-legislature mismanaged education funding. Lets just not mention the fact that Republican strongholds like Texas and Georgia continue to waste money changing curriculums and ordering textbooks that practically refer to the Civil Rights Movement as "trouble ahead."

It's funny what yelling "Common Core! Duck and cover!" will let one get away with.

On November 29 2014 03:04 xDaunt wrote:

As if democrats are demonstrably better? Their larger education reform platform basically amounts to throwing more money onto the fire that fuels the public teachers' unions corruption train. Of course, it's "all in the name of the children."

On November 29 2014 03:27 farvacola wrote:
In suggesting that Republicans did not take issue with NCLB enough to hold GW accountable, I'm not suggesting that Democrats were not equally acquiescent to the program, rather that both sides continue to overlook crucial issues of implementation and splintered budgetary authority when confronted with education reform. Democrats are liable to simply increase the budget where they can get away with it, whereas Republicans will do the same with budget cuts. In reality, both sides need to reevaluate the consequences of ignoring the possibility of changing our archaic levy system instead of blindly attempting to force through legislation, cuts, or increases.

On November 29 2014 03:31 GreenHorizons wrote:


Looking at the poorest performing states in education, it seems that most of the worst performers voted republican and most of the best voted Democratic in 2012 (the same goes for their houses) Of course it matters what metrics you are using. But the same states are pretty consistently listed.

As much as you hate the California educational system it's doing better than plenty of Republican controlled state's when it comes to performance of their students.

Why do you think so many Republican controlled states are some of the worst performers when it comes to educating their youth? Surely it's not them being so supportive of teachers unions...?

Source
Source
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Riquetti now helps run Providence Talks, the city's ambitious effort to change this so-called word gap that researchers discovered two decades ago. They found that professional parents tend to chat away to their children, using sophisticated language even before kids are old enough to understand, while low-income parents tend to speak far less and use more directives: "Do this, don't do that."

On November 29 2014 03:10 farvacola wrote:
Sure, there are plenty of Democrats who make similar errors for opposite reasons, but that's why a bit of nuance is required in discussing how the two parties collectively deal with education reform. The states that are most imitable when it comes to education inevitably include ideas and involvement from both sides of the aisle, such as Massachusetts or Virginia. Admitting so won't kill your conservative cred, I promise.

On November 29 2014 03:49 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Education reform isn't easy, particularly at the Federal level since education is mainly a state / local function.

The funding system is an overblown issue. Poor areas get additional state and federal funding already. Poor Detroit schools spend more per student than the state average.


Red states tend to have worse education systems for a wide variety of reasons. In the deep south you have a black population with a very short history of receiving good public education. In many rural states the local economy doesn't support education very well and so there isn't much emphasis on education. To give an example, coal miners aren't too concerned with their kid's education, software engineers are.

If you look at Massachusetts, education has a long, positive history. Colleges like Amherst were founded a long time ago, and from an economic standpoint we faced de-industrialization well before the nation as a whole, and were among the first to turn to education as a way out.

On the union point, MA has been slowly reducing tenure protections for a while now, at least since the early 90's.

On November 29 2014 06:29 oneofthem wrote:
again, social spendign is not the same as social investment. social spending in the U.S. is heavily tilted towards (wasteful) healthcare and standard social security pension, which is not even properly spending but social savings.

in the social investment category, we would have things like education, rehabilitation of prison population, adult training, the part of health spending that increases...health as an aspect of human capital. stuff like childcare, municipal infrastructure and poverty alleviation are very efficient investments in terms of expected social return on the dollar spent, but there's been decline in focus on these matters.

leaving out cmoparison with europe which is itself fucking up hugely in this respect with the austerity stuff, social investment is a problem in the U.S. just based on our piss poor outcome and system alone. there is no reason to feel good about this.

On November 29 2014 04:02 xDaunt wrote:

Yes, nuance is required, but it is fairly clear that republicans are correct in that spending more money per capita on students is not the solution, which is a concept that is more or less lost on democrats at every level of politics (gotta have dat union money!). The issue is one of better marshaling the funds that are already available through a more equitable distribution of property tax proceeds, neutering administrative largesse, promoting administrative decentralization, and then promoting community outreach programs to reduce the extent to which students are being hampered by shitty home life factors. That last factor is the biggest as far as I am concerned. You can put a bunch of kids in a shitty school, and the ones with parents who actively engage their children vis a vis their education will still do fine.

On November 29 2014 10:02 Danglars wrote:
You missed neutering union failing teacher immunities. There's nothing better than having no way to remove teachers that can't or won't teach. It kind of goes hand in hand with administrative decentralization--making teachers more responsible to localities that know if their kids are getting taught. I can't think of good efforts to improve shitty home life regarding education, then back to shitty school life regarding educators.