US Politics Mega-thread - Page 7331

On April 13 2017 13:57 Yurie wrote:


It is an interesting subject on how to complete that goal though. Maybe enforced compulsory voting might be a decent idea for a few elections to promote the culture?

A way to do it without adding direct costs to the government could be to deny passports and social security or similar subsidies if not voting or submitting a reason of why one can not.

On April 13 2017 14:04 Karis Vas Ryaar wrote:
I'm all for automatic voter registration but thats not politically viable.

one thing maybe is more candidates who are younger.

On April 13 2017 11:28 zlefin wrote:

that's not gonna happen, it's far too uneven a trade. To get NK, you'd need to do something like give up taiwan.

On April 13 2017 14:10 GreenHorizons wrote:


We don't need compulsory voting. What we need is a nationwide Sudbury style makeover for our education system.

On April 13 2017 14:12 Sermokala wrote:

Tie voter registration to registering for the draft and a high school diploma or GED?


giveing up the bases in SK and maybe the new base in the philipines might be enough. The biggest reason why NK was proped back up in the first place was to give a buffer state on the single land route to its important parts.

GH above I have no idea what a sudberry makover means and googling didn't help please explain.

And below there will always be politicians like there will always be bankers or merchants. There are margins and the truely Human thing is to have someone to fill that margin.

A Sudbury school is a type of school, usually for the K-12 age range, where students have complete responsibility for their own education, and the school is run by direct democracy in which students and staff are equals.[1] Students individually decide what to do with their time, and tend to learn as a by-product of ordinary experience rather than through coursework. There is no predetermined educational syllabus, prescriptive curriculum or standardized instruction. This is a form of democratic education. Daniel Greenberg, one of the founders of the original Sudbury Model school, writes that the two things that distinguish a Sudbury Model school are that everyone - adults and children - are treated equally and that there is no authority other than that granted by the consent of the governed.[2]

While each Sudbury Model school operates independently and determines their own policies and procedures, they share a common culture.[3] The intended culture within a Sudbury school has been described with such words as freedom, trust, respect, responsibility and democracy.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Tuesday rolled back two Obama-era memos intended to help protect student loan borrowers.

Student loan contracts aren't serviced in-house by the Federal Student Aid Office. Instead, they are managed by third-party companies, which are awarded contracts by the government. Before the Obama memos, those contracts went to companies that were best at collecting debts.

Rather than rewarding companies that cashed in on debts, the now-rescinded Obama guidance incentivized a good track record and sought to award contracts to companies with a history of helping borrowers.

While the Obama memos sought to give borrowers more options, transparency and better services as a means to prevent them from defaulting on loans, DeVos said that withdrawing the memos is intended to limit "the cost to taxpayers" and "increase customer service and accountability."

DeVos' withdrawal memo cited "a lack of consistent objectives" as the reason for rescinding the previous administration's guidance.

The Department of Education did not immediately respond to NBC News' request for comment.

So what does DeVos' move mean for those who have loans?

Attorney Adam Minsky, who has dedicated his practice to helping those with student loans, said the withdrawal only creates more frustration for the borrowers.

"[The Obama memo] alerted servicers that how they deal with borrowers — the outcomes would be a factor in if they're awarded a contract," Minsky told NBC News. "[The memo said,] 'We're going to consider that.' And the idea there was to incentivize the servicers to work harder to help borrowers."

On April 13 2017 14:53 GreenHorizons wrote:


Basically:



Basically a school that prepares you to be a citizen as opposed to the school we currently have that prepares you to be... who fucking knows.

On April 13 2017 15:29 IgnE wrote:


do you know anyone who has been through a sudbury school?

On April 13 2017 14:05 Introvert wrote:
We complain about the ignorance of the American voter and yet want to force people who don't already vote to vote? Forget arguments about forcing participation, that doesn't make sense on its own.

On April 13 2017 15:34 GreenHorizons wrote:


Not yet, I just recently found out about them. I plan on speaking with some in the near future though. It wouldn't have to be exactly like any existing Sudbury school. At least the democratic aspect would help, even if you kept a lot of the structure we're used to .

On April 13 2017 14:13 biology]major wrote:
No amount of education is going to change the fact that a voter has to receive a highly diluted and simplified, catchy, and provocative message. We actually need more honest politicians who want to do good, which happens by removing money from politics OR having an extremely wealthy politicians who aren't as easily manipulated. It's 2017, most people have internet access. You've got it backwards. Our politicians are failures, and they are stuck in ideology, and in that sense, Trump is still the most reasonable one there.

On April 13 2017 16:47 Simberto wrote:


Before thinking about forcing people to vote, you should first make it easy for them to vote, nationwide. That means general access to voting locales in walking distance in cities / short drive distance if you are in bumfuck nowhere. Enough voting locales and staff so that you never have to wait for more than 30 minutes. And a legal right for time off to go vote on election day/just have elections on sundays.



That sounds pretty interesting, though i would like to see some studies on the results of that type of education. There are a lot of ideas for alternative school structures that sound good, but sadly produce subpar results in all categories.

Generally speaking, education reform is hard. There are a lot of conflicting views on how schools should look like, and it is really hard to actually test which work out well, as you have at least 10 years of lag between implementation and first results. Furthermore, you also put the students you experiment on at risk of receiving a subpar education. Then you have the problem of self-selection. The only students who attend such an institution are those where the parents choose that, which is probably a specific type of parent.

And to have some reasonable results, you probably need to run a few of the same type of experimental schools at a few different places to correct for local factors.

Then you have to figure out how what you have been doing in an experimental setting with lots of young, motivated teachers and specific students in a general school setting with half the money and some teachers who will retire in 5 years and refuse to change anything about their routine.

I am not saying that it is impossible or that we shouldn't work on school reform. But it is really hard to do, and for something with such wide-reaching effects, you really should not do it on ideology alone, instead you need to invest the time and the money to get good empirical data. Which is hard, but needs to be done before you can have a good school reform. Anything else is just rolling the dice with a generation of students.

On April 13 2017 13:49 GreenHorizons wrote:


That's a pretty unfavorable way to ask the question too. There was another poll out recently that had Republicans with a plurality in support.

It's pretty clear UHC is one of those things we want and our politicians don't for.... rea$on$.

On April 13 2017 17:32 Wegandi wrote:


I'm sure if you phrased the question honestly, "Do you support the Federal Government nationalizing Healthcare?", instead of calling it 'insurance' or 'universal health care' you'd get a significant difference in opinion. No one wants the VA to become the healthcare system and that's what "UHC" is. The Government can barely manage postage and you want to hand them healthcare?

On April 13 2017 17:32 Wegandi wrote:


I'm sure if you phrased the question honestly, "Do you support the Federal Government nationalizing Healthcare?", instead of calling it 'insurance' or 'universal health care' you'd get a significant difference in opinion. No one wants the VA to become the healthcare system and that's what "UHC" is. The Government can barely manage postage and you want to hand them healthcare?

On April 13 2017 14:13 biology]major wrote:


No amount of education is going to change the fact that a voter has to receive a highly diluted and simplified, catchy, and provocative message. We actually need more honest politicians who want to do good, which happens by removing money from politics OR having an extremely wealthy politicians who aren't as easily manipulated. It's 2017, most people have internet access. You've got it backwards. Our politicians are failures, and they are stuck in ideology, and in that sense, Trump is still the most reasonable one there.

Politician should not be a career.

On April 13 2017 18:49 Gorsameth wrote:

Didn't we just prove that the idea that 'extremely wealthy politicians cant be manipulated' is utter horseshit by electing Trump?

Rich people buy your politicians, so lets elect a rich person instead is not 'draining the swamp'. Its cutting out the middle man.
How many big business people are in Trumps cabinet?

On April 13 2017 17:32 Wegandi wrote:


I'm sure if you phrased the question honestly, "Do you support the Federal Government nationalizing Healthcare?", instead of calling it 'insurance' or 'universal health care' you'd get a significant difference in opinion. No one wants the VA to become the healthcare system and that's what "UHC" is. The Government can barely manage postage and you want to hand them healthcare?