On October 09 2012 09:51 sam!zdat wrote: This whole 47% Romney scandal thing is absurd. It is a perfect example of ideological blinders. Romney is caught saying something secretly that is supposed to be scandalous, but in fact EVERYBODY KNOWS ALREADY that both candidates write off their opponents' bases and work on a) mobilizing their bases by vilifying that of their opponent and b) pandering to those swing state voters too stupid to yet have an opinion or too marginal to belong to either base.
There is nothing scandalous about what Romney said. In fact, the very way that our system is constructed DEMANDS that he hold this opinion - it is a strategic necessity. If he did not, he would lose to a candidate who did. It is only when something that everybody already knows is the case, but represses ideologically, is brought to light that the "scandal" appears.
It is not Romney's comments that are scandalous - it is the system itself! Everybody already knows that he thinks this! The "scandal" is only a symptom!
There's actually a statement in the video that he makes that is arguably worse ... He admits in the video that he believes the economy will improve, even without any changes to economic policy.
It's basically a tacit admission that he believes his own candidacy is irrelevant to economy. I'm surprised that that hasn't exploded over the internet.
That's because serious people know the point isn't the economy "recovering" but how fast and how strong. While Obama is bragging about 4 million jobs in the last few years those of us actually paying attention know we should be at twice that at least.
Recoveries after recessions:
Actually if you look at the more recent economic downturns, you'll notice the recovery rate is similar. This is called "Jobless recovery", a recent economic phenomenon, perhaps caused by automation.
On October 09 2012 09:51 sam!zdat wrote: This whole 47% Romney scandal thing is absurd. It is a perfect example of ideological blinders. Romney is caught saying something secretly that is supposed to be scandalous, but in fact EVERYBODY KNOWS ALREADY that both candidates write off their opponents' bases and work on a) mobilizing their bases by vilifying that of their opponent and b) pandering to those swing state voters too stupid to yet have an opinion or too marginal to belong to either base.
There is nothing scandalous about what Romney said. In fact, the very way that our system is constructed DEMANDS that he hold this opinion - it is a strategic necessity. If he did not, he would lose to a candidate who did. It is only when something that everybody already knows is the case, but represses ideologically, is brought to light and forces a confrontation with the repressed Real that the "scandal" appears.
It is not Romney's comments that are scandalous - it is the system itself! Everybody already knows that he thinks this! The "scandal" is only a symptom!
Jeezes dude. He wasn't just writing off Democrats, he was writing off Republicans as well. Poor people don't only vote Democrat. A huge chunk of them vote Republican. That's one reason why it was so bad.
Yeah, that's part of the ideology.
edit: which is to say, I claim that everybody already knows that republican ideology is about making people vote against their own interests. The scandal of "many of these people vote republican" is already part of the ideology
Republicanism is not about making people vote against their self-interests. It just happens to be that way right now.
Do you mean republicanism in some classical sense?
It is not what it is "about", so I should modify my language. It is already part of what it does, which is far more interesting than what it is about (which always the case with any ideology - you don't look at what it is about, you look at what it does)
I have seen many liberals say that republican voters often vote against policies that would help them. The typical caricature of this is to imagine poor redneck hicks in red states voting against policies that would give them more government money and social programs. I think people who see the world this way really don't understand conservatives or the conservative worldview at all.
One of the main virtues of conservatism is self-reliance. Republicans generally want to rely on themselves. They don't want the government to take someone else's money and give it to them. Liberals have a hard time understanding this I suppose but I don't see why it's hard to understand. There is a certain pride in supporting yourself and your family without any handouts.
So you might want to open your mind to the idea that these republican voters simply don't want government handouts, even if they would benefit them!
On October 09 2012 10:18 Bigtony wrote: So actually what happened was that their work load increased approximately 20% and they also are paying ~10% of their salary for their benefits. They are doing more work for less pay.
And?
tl;dr - I'm all for unions and school districts bargaining on fair footing, but if the school had better funding or was managed better, they'd be better off. I'm glad that they were able to negotiate a fair deal for health insurance, but whose fault was it that they made that deal in the first place? Unions are not to blame when school boards are corrupt and stupid, the school boards and the parents in the community they represent are.
Nice to push the blame on everyone else. I'm all for better management. (So is Mitt!) As for funding...
On October 09 2012 09:24 Souma wrote: Irrelevant. Romney said he wouldn't cut teachers when he actually said we did need to cut back on teachers. It's the undeniable truth.
Once again you can try to spin stuff with your strawman arguments and red herrings but I'm not so easily distracted.
rogzardo October 09 2012 09:21. Posts 577 PM Profile Blog Quote # You posted that graph as a response to the Romney video which clearly shows him being on both sides of the issues at different times. The graph did nothing to dispute his obvious flip flopping.
Romney is against throwing money at the problem. He is not for firing people randomly but for improving the structure so you end up with more teachers. But again, people like you two are why politics is in such bad shape. You don't care about any actual policy. You simply want to take two sentences from two speeches and attack. It's as enlightening as me getting a soundbyte of Artosis calling MVP "MKP" and saying he clearly knows nothing about the game and can't tell the two players apart.
I just want to reply to the article you linked and point out how absofuckinglutely insane it is for the author to make the claim that 'it's getting better already' as if in 1 year problems will manifest:
Then there are work rules. "In the collective bargaining agreement, high school teachers only had to teach five periods a day, out of seven," says Arnoldussen. "Now, they're going to teach six." In addition, the collective bargaining agreement specified that teachers had to be in the school 37 1/2 hours a week. Now, it will be 40 hours.
5/7 -> 6/7 is a 20% increase in workload.
Teachers' salaries will stay "relatively the same," Arnoldussen says, except for higher pension and health care payments.
So actually what happened was that their work load increased approximately 20% and they also are paying ~10% of their salary for their benefits. They are doing more work for less pay.
(The top salary is around $80,000 per year, with about $35,000 in additional benefits, for 184 days of work per year -- summers off.) Finally, the money saved will be used to hire a few more teachers and institute merit pay.
The TOP salary is 80k/year; in most school districts it takes 15 YEARS to hit the top of the salary scale. Even if you give full value to their benefits, 100k/year is a fair salary for someone with 15 years experience in most fields. Merit pay, for which there exists no objective metric on which to evaluate teachers and is ultimately a gigantic scam to cut salaries.
tl;dr - I'm all for unions and school districts bargaining on fair footing, but if the school had better funding or was managed better, they'd be better off. I'm glad that they were able to negotiate a fair deal for health insurance, but whose fault was it that they made that deal in the first place? Unions are not to blame when school boards are corrupt and stupid, the school boards and the parents in the community they represent are.
The California Teachers Association spends hundreds of millions of dollars influencing the politics of the state. This election on Prop 32 alone they have spent over $18,000,000. And from wiki, "The CTA alone has spent more money in California politics than Chevron, AT&T, Philip Morris and Western States Petroleum Association combined."
Sorry if I don't have much respect for the unions hardships and their fight for a "fair" salary. If the same exact people were in the private sector they would see a massive across the board cut in pay, despite your claim that they deserve 100k+ a year. They spend millions corrupting the politics and contributing to the bankrupting of the state, and then tell parents they don't have money for supplies due to "budget cuts." They cut sports and music and whatever else they can to manipulate parents into fighting on their behalf.
You call this bargaining on a "fair" footing. lol.
OF COURSE they spend money on politics. Do you expect them to just roll over and die? Labor unions are outmatched by businesses 15:1 in terms of political spending. The sad part is that teachers even have to allocate their money to politics. It blows my mind how people can trust corporations more than they do teachers. Prop 32 is a good example of that and a great cause to fight against.
15:1? That's bullshit. I just told you they are the biggest spender in ALL of California politics.
If they are outnumbered so terribly, then why does Prop 32 have $9 million in support funding and $45.6 million in opposition?
If they are outnumbered how did they manage to defeat 100% of Schwarzenegger's ballot propositions trying to save this state from bankruptcy?
Their spending must REALLY be paying off if people manage to see them as a victim instead of the single largest and most powerful special interest in the state...
The broadest classification of political donors separates them into business, labor, or ideological interests. Whatever slice you look at, business interests dominate, with an overall advantage over organized labor of about 15-to-1.
Even among PACs - the favored means of delivering funds by labor unions - business has a more than 3-to-1 fundraising advantage. In soft money, the ratio is nearly 17-to-1.
As for Prop 32, EVERYONE on the left is devoting many of their resources to fighting against it because it's a giant shotgun pointed at unions. If it passes unions pretty much die. How do you not understand that? Corporations are riding this shit and teachers have no choice to fight back. Do you honestly think teachers just want to throw money at campaigns for the sake of doing so? Hell no. Wake the hell up.
Unions are pretty much dead already in the private sector. I don't think there's many corporations out there that would care one way or another about new union laws.
Which brings up an important point - business interests are not monolithic. The 'businesses outspend unions 15:1' is meaningless since businesses may be on both sides of a particular law.
First of all: Word, BlueBird. Word. Thanks for sharing.
On October 09 2012 11:01 ziggurat wrote: One of the main virtues of conservatism is self-reliance. Republicans generally want to rely on themselves. They don't want the government to take someone else's money and give it to them. Liberals have a hard time understanding this I suppose but I don't see why it's hard to understand. There is a certain pride in supporting yourself and your family without any handouts.
So you might want to open your mind to the idea that these republican voters simply don't want government handouts, even if they would benefit them!
this is precisely the ideology, thanks for illustrating. Ideology takes what is prima facie a laudable virtue, and makes it into an instrument of class warfare
(I'm not a liberal [edit: in either sense] and I don't think the ultimate answer is massive national-scale welfare programs, so I don't have much bone in this particular fight. the point is precisely to use government to create such self-contained communities. Republicans don't want to do that, they want to open them up to be raped by capital)
On October 09 2012 09:24 Souma wrote: Irrelevant. Romney said he wouldn't cut teachers when he actually said we did need to cut back on teachers. It's the undeniable truth.
Once again you can try to spin stuff with your strawman arguments and red herrings but I'm not so easily distracted.
rogzardo October 09 2012 09:21. Posts 577 PM Profile Blog Quote # You posted that graph as a response to the Romney video which clearly shows him being on both sides of the issues at different times. The graph did nothing to dispute his obvious flip flopping.
Romney is against throwing money at the problem. He is not for firing people randomly but for improving the structure so you end up with more teachers. But again, people like you two are why politics is in such bad shape. You don't care about any actual policy. You simply want to take two sentences from two speeches and attack. It's as enlightening as me getting a soundbyte of Artosis calling MVP "MKP" and saying he clearly knows nothing about the game and can't tell the two players apart.
I just want to reply to the article you linked and point out how absofuckinglutely insane it is for the author to make the claim that 'it's getting better already' as if in 1 year problems will manifest:
Then there are work rules. "In the collective bargaining agreement, high school teachers only had to teach five periods a day, out of seven," says Arnoldussen. "Now, they're going to teach six." In addition, the collective bargaining agreement specified that teachers had to be in the school 37 1/2 hours a week. Now, it will be 40 hours.
5/7 -> 6/7 is a 20% increase in workload.
Teachers' salaries will stay "relatively the same," Arnoldussen says, except for higher pension and health care payments.
So actually what happened was that their work load increased approximately 20% and they also are paying ~10% of their salary for their benefits. They are doing more work for less pay.
(The top salary is around $80,000 per year, with about $35,000 in additional benefits, for 184 days of work per year -- summers off.) Finally, the money saved will be used to hire a few more teachers and institute merit pay.
The TOP salary is 80k/year; in most school districts it takes 15 YEARS to hit the top of the salary scale. Even if you give full value to their benefits, 100k/year is a fair salary for someone with 15 years experience in most fields. Merit pay, for which there exists no objective metric on which to evaluate teachers and is ultimately a gigantic scam to cut salaries.
tl;dr - I'm all for unions and school districts bargaining on fair footing, but if the school had better funding or was managed better, they'd be better off. I'm glad that they were able to negotiate a fair deal for health insurance, but whose fault was it that they made that deal in the first place? Unions are not to blame when school boards are corrupt and stupid, the school boards and the parents in the community they represent are.
The California Teachers Association spends hundreds of millions of dollars influencing the politics of the state. This election on Prop 32 alone they have spent over $18,000,000. And from wiki, "The CTA alone has spent more money in California politics than Chevron, AT&T, Philip Morris and Western States Petroleum Association combined."
Sorry if I don't have much respect for the unions hardships and their fight for a "fair" salary. If the same exact people were in the private sector they would see a massive across the board cut in pay, despite your claim that they deserve 100k+ a year. They spend millions corrupting the politics and contributing to the bankrupting of the state, and then tell parents they don't have money for supplies due to "budget cuts." They cut sports and music and whatever else they can to manipulate parents into fighting on their behalf.
You call this bargaining on a "fair" footing. lol.
OF COURSE they spend money on politics. Do you expect them to just roll over and die? Labor unions are outmatched by businesses 15:1 in terms of political spending. The sad part is that teachers even have to allocate their money to politics. It blows my mind how people can trust corporations more than they do teachers. Prop 32 is a good example of that and a great cause to fight against.
15:1? That's bullshit. I just told you they are the biggest spender in ALL of California politics.
If they are outnumbered so terribly, then why does Prop 32 have $9 million in support funding and $45.6 million in opposition?
If they are outnumbered how did they manage to defeat 100% of Schwarzenegger's ballot propositions trying to save this state from bankruptcy?
Their spending must REALLY be paying off if people manage to see them as a victim instead of the single largest and most powerful special interest in the state...
The broadest classification of political donors separates them into business, labor, or ideological interests. Whatever slice you look at, business interests dominate, with an overall advantage over organized labor of about 15-to-1.
Even among PACs - the favored means of delivering funds by labor unions - business has a more than 3-to-1 fundraising advantage. In soft money, the ratio is nearly 17-to-1.
As for Prop 32, EVERYONE on the left is devoting many of their resources to fighting against it because it's a giant shotgun pointed at unions. If it passes unions pretty much die. How do you not understand that? Corporations are riding this shit and teachers have no choice to fight back. Do you honestly think teachers just want to throw money at campaigns for the sake of doing so? Hell no. Wake the hell up.
Unions are pretty much dead already in the private sector. I don't think there's many corporations out there that would care one way or another about new union laws.
Which brings up an important point - business interests are not monolithic. The 'businesses outspend unions 15:1' is meaningless since businesses may be on both sides of a particular law.
It's actually not meaningless when you can just take a look at the likes of the Koch brothers or Sheldon Adelson. And yeah, unions have been getting crushed. And you wonder why these teachers are trying to fight for survival. Absolutely pathetic. This whole premise that teachers are evil and corporations are God's greatest gift to Earth is absolutely cringe-worthy.
Can't wait for Biden-Ryan! Biden never fails to disappoint when he adlibs and Ryan ... is Ryan. I've seen him doing the bulldog bit on capital hill when budgets are the topic, now a chance to see how he manages in a debate on foreign affairs.
I like how your response to the guy explaining the context and details of Romney's positions is to simply repeat your attack. For example, Romney wants to cut tax rates but limit deductions and exemptions to get a fairer, simpler, more honest, more competitive tax code and everyone on the left just continues chanting "tax cuts for millionaires".
Yeah, except, no. While you can attempt to spin your way out of the tax cut flip-flop, there's no breaking out of the other blatant flip-flops.
Teachers - the difference is between more and better teachers in a better education system (a la Romney) compared to simply spending more money on what we have now (a la Wisconsin and Chicago's failed teacher union gambits)
The health care issue as I understand it and explained earlier, he supports being able to change insurance with pre-existing conditions.
1. Lol at that graph proving anything.
Are you disputing the giant rise in education spending in the United States? Do you believe American students are far and away better at reading, riting, and rithmetic than ever before? Enlighten us!
Irrelevant. Romney said he wouldn't cut teachers when he actually said we did need to cut back on teachers. It's the undeniable truth.
Once again you can try to spin stuff with your strawman arguments and red herrings but I'm not so easily distracted.
Romney never said we need to cut back on teachers. Here is the full quote:
he wants another stimulus, he wants to hire more government workers. He says we need more fireman, more policeman, more teachers. Did he not get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did. It’s time for us to cut back on government and help the American people.
he is opposing a stimulus, not the act of hiring more teachers. at the most, you could say that he is not being accurate in this quote. he clearly means that "more teachers" is not a good enough excuse for another stimulus. only a completely biased point of view could perceive this statement as being inconsistent with his debate statement.
Stop it. The mere suggestion that a highly edited video off the internet isn't giving me the whole, truthful story is turning my world upside down.
Point taken. Still, it is impossible to argue that Romney hasn't flopped 180 degrees on many issues. That isn't bias, that's just reality.
i'm not even saying that this isn't true. i would just like a couple of examples of it.
Romney's plan does cover pre-exisitng conditions. first, let's take his debate quote:
Let — well, actually — actually it's — it's — it's a lengthy description, but number one, pre-existing conditions are covered under my plan.
the obama argument is that Romney's plan doesn't cover pre-existing conditions, so he must be "flip-flopping". well, that isn't accurate. his plan maintains current protections for people with pre-existing conditions. he also reforms the system so as to deal with the people who have pre-existing conditions but are not currently or continuously insured. this article explains it all in better detail that i can:
Well, first, I love great schools. Massachusetts, our schools are ranked number one of all 50 states. And the key to great schools: great teachers. So I reject the idea that I don't believe in great teachers or more teachers. Every school district, every state should make that decision on their own.
now let's take his other quote:
(Obama) wants another stimulus, he wants to hire more government workers. He says we need more fireman, more policeman, more teachers. Did he not get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did. It’s time for us to cut back on government and help the American people.
in this quote he is clearly opposing the stimulus, and not the act of hiring more teachers.
On October 09 2012 09:24 Souma wrote: Irrelevant. Romney said he wouldn't cut teachers when he actually said we did need to cut back on teachers. It's the undeniable truth.
Once again you can try to spin stuff with your strawman arguments and red herrings but I'm not so easily distracted.
rogzardo October 09 2012 09:21. Posts 577 PM Profile Blog Quote # You posted that graph as a response to the Romney video which clearly shows him being on both sides of the issues at different times. The graph did nothing to dispute his obvious flip flopping.
Romney is against throwing money at the problem. He is not for firing people randomly but for improving the structure so you end up with more teachers. But again, people like you two are why politics is in such bad shape. You don't care about any actual policy. You simply want to take two sentences from two speeches and attack. It's as enlightening as me getting a soundbyte of Artosis calling MVP "MKP" and saying he clearly knows nothing about the game and can't tell the two players apart.
I just want to reply to the article you linked and point out how absofuckinglutely insane it is for the author to make the claim that 'it's getting better already' as if in 1 year problems will manifest:
Then there are work rules. "In the collective bargaining agreement, high school teachers only had to teach five periods a day, out of seven," says Arnoldussen. "Now, they're going to teach six." In addition, the collective bargaining agreement specified that teachers had to be in the school 37 1/2 hours a week. Now, it will be 40 hours.
5/7 -> 6/7 is a 20% increase in workload.
Teachers' salaries will stay "relatively the same," Arnoldussen says, except for higher pension and health care payments.
So actually what happened was that their work load increased approximately 20% and they also are paying ~10% of their salary for their benefits. They are doing more work for less pay.
(The top salary is around $80,000 per year, with about $35,000 in additional benefits, for 184 days of work per year -- summers off.) Finally, the money saved will be used to hire a few more teachers and institute merit pay.
The TOP salary is 80k/year; in most school districts it takes 15 YEARS to hit the top of the salary scale. Even if you give full value to their benefits, 100k/year is a fair salary for someone with 15 years experience in most fields. Merit pay, for which there exists no objective metric on which to evaluate teachers and is ultimately a gigantic scam to cut salaries.
tl;dr - I'm all for unions and school districts bargaining on fair footing, but if the school had better funding or was managed better, they'd be better off. I'm glad that they were able to negotiate a fair deal for health insurance, but whose fault was it that they made that deal in the first place? Unions are not to blame when school boards are corrupt and stupid, the school boards and the parents in the community they represent are.
The California Teachers Association spends hundreds of millions of dollars influencing the politics of the state. This election on Prop 32 alone they have spent over $18,000,000. And from wiki, "The CTA alone has spent more money in California politics than Chevron, AT&T, Philip Morris and Western States Petroleum Association combined."
Sorry if I don't have much respect for the unions hardships and their fight for a "fair" salary. If the same exact people were in the private sector they would see a massive across the board cut in pay, despite your claim that they deserve 100k+ a year. They spend millions corrupting the politics and contributing to the bankrupting of the state, and then tell parents they don't have money for supplies due to "budget cuts." They cut sports and music and whatever else they can to manipulate parents into fighting on their behalf.
You call this bargaining on a "fair" footing. lol.
OF COURSE they spend money on politics. Do you expect them to just roll over and die? Labor unions are outmatched by businesses 15:1 in terms of political spending. The sad part is that teachers even have to allocate their money to politics. It blows my mind how people can trust corporations more than they do teachers. Prop 32 is a good example of that and a great cause to fight against.
15:1? That's bullshit. I just told you they are the biggest spender in ALL of California politics.
If they are outnumbered so terribly, then why does Prop 32 have $9 million in support funding and $45.6 million in opposition?
If they are outnumbered how did they manage to defeat 100% of Schwarzenegger's ballot propositions trying to save this state from bankruptcy?
Their spending must REALLY be paying off if people manage to see them as a victim instead of the single largest and most powerful special interest in the state...
The broadest classification of political donors separates them into business, labor, or ideological interests. Whatever slice you look at, business interests dominate, with an overall advantage over organized labor of about 15-to-1.
Even among PACs - the favored means of delivering funds by labor unions - business has a more than 3-to-1 fundraising advantage. In soft money, the ratio is nearly 17-to-1.
As for Prop 32, EVERYONE on the left is devoting many of their resources to fighting against it because it's a giant shotgun pointed at unions. If it passes unions pretty much die. How do you not understand that? Corporations are riding this shit and teachers have no choice to fight back. Do you honestly think teachers just want to throw money at campaigns for the sake of doing so? Hell no. Wake the hell up.
Unions are pretty much dead already in the private sector. I don't think there's many corporations out there that would care one way or another about new union laws.
Which brings up an important point - business interests are not monolithic. The 'businesses outspend unions 15:1' is meaningless since businesses may be on both sides of a particular law.
It's actually not meaningless when you can just take a look at the likes of the Koch brothers or Sheldon Adelson. And yeah, unions have been getting crushed. And you wonder why these teachers are trying to fight for survival. Absolutely pathetic. This whole premise that teachers are evil and corporations are God's greatest gift to Earth is absolutely cringe-worthy.
It is quite funny in my head because wouldn't unions be the market's answer to labor disputes vs actual law and regulation, after all the payers of the unions are the workers themselves but then again that means more power held by the avg worker and companies don't like that.
On October 09 2012 10:18 Bigtony wrote: So actually what happened was that their work load increased approximately 20% and they also are paying ~10% of their salary for their benefits. They are doing more work for less pay.
tl;dr - I'm all for unions and school districts bargaining on fair footing, but if the school had better funding or was managed better, they'd be better off. I'm glad that they were able to negotiate a fair deal for health insurance, but whose fault was it that they made that deal in the first place? Unions are not to blame when school boards are corrupt and stupid, the school boards and the parents in the community they represent are.
Nice to push the blame on everyone else. I'm all for better management. (So is Mitt!) As for funding...
And doing 20% more work for 30% less pay...good for the teachers and students m i rite?
This will certainly attract highly skilled, educated, trustworthy, motivated people to the profession.
Giving teachers more work and less resources will surely raise test scores and student achievement.
Whoops, it will do the exact opposite of those things. Short term thinking they will 'save money.' Long term, no one will want to teach at their schools.
As for pushing the blame...:
1. Fact - the school board is 100% responsible for everything that goes on within their school district.
2. Fact - the school board is elected by the community.
No more facts required. If they negotiate a shitty contract for their district, then whose fault is that?
PS: I doubt your graph includes the insane amount of money we spend on special education and the greater number of students from low socioeconomic status in the system as compared to 1970, but hey, why would we trust professionals who do this shit for a living when we can listen to politicians who do nothing but lie so that they can get elected?
Sorry if I don't have much respect for the unions hardships and their fight for a "fair" salary. If the same exact people were in the private sector they would see a massive across the board cut in pay, despite your claim that they deserve 100k+ a year. They spend millions corrupting the politics and contributing to the bankrupting of the state, and then tell parents they don't have money for supplies due to "budget cuts." They cut sports and music and whatever else they can to manipulate parents into fighting on their behalf.
You call this bargaining on a "fair" footing. lol.
1. See above. Is it the fault of teachers that politicians are corrupt? No.
2. If the same people were in the private sector, their jobs wouldn't be added and cut at the whim of some bullshit fucktard politicians who don't know two shits about education, and probably couldn't teach a dog to shit outside, let alone teach children how to be productive members of society. You're delusional if you think that teachers wouldn't make more money in the private sector, not less.
Pew's polls in the past have tended to favor Obama just as Rasmussen's tend to favor Romney because of their respective methodologies.
New Pew Poll done after the debate shows Romney making huge gains in almost every category, but dominating among independents and also strong on the Economy, Jobs, being the Candidate of New Ideas, and on the Deficit. Obama still ahead on foreign policy.
Some images:
Question is, is this a permanent new trend or just a temporary bump...
That poll has a +5 advantage to republicans in the sample size, which I believe is in line with Rasmussen's voter composition numbers. Goes to show that the samples matter (duh).
So, let me ask the obvious: are we really going to believe that much has changed over the past couple weeks or is it more likely that the previous polls with large democrat samples were bullshit?
lol wut.
So you're alleging that either that there was a liberal conspiracy or survey methods that favored liberals, and that this conspiracy suddenly stopped after the debate? But there's been no change in methodology.
Or maybe it's just the debates? Ever think that might move polls? Occam's razor?
No, the polls before aren't bullshit, anymore than the polls now are bullshit.
The pollsters do not target liberals. The % of democrats in the sample before the debates is a response variable, just like it is with this new poll. What you said shows that more people after the debate call themselves republican and would vote for Romney as a result.
It doesn't prove a leftest conspiracy that has, for no reason, swung the other way now.
I think Occam's Razor favors my explanation. I really don't think that the debate generated a 12-point swing for Romney as this Pew Poll purports to show. That said, I am highly amused by liberals like Andrew Sullivan who are absolutely flipping out over what has happened.
Bluebird: you story is a sobering reminder of one of the more fundamental questions of this election, which is, "What kind of country do Americans want to live in?"
The idea that Americans can have their life destroyed simply because they are in between jobs and get sick is just depressing.
Pew's polls in the past have tended to favor Obama just as Rasmussen's tend to favor Romney because of their respective methodologies.
New Pew Poll done after the debate shows Romney making huge gains in almost every category, but dominating among independents and also strong on the Economy, Jobs, being the Candidate of New Ideas, and on the Deficit. Obama still ahead on foreign policy.
Some images:
Question is, is this a permanent new trend or just a temporary bump...
That poll has a +5 advantage to republicans in the sample size, which I believe is in line with Rasmussen's voter composition numbers. Goes to show that the samples matter (duh).
So, let me ask the obvious: are we really going to believe that much has changed over the past couple weeks or is it more likely that the previous polls with large democrat samples were bullshit?
lol wut.
So you're alleging that either that there was a liberal conspiracy or survey methods that favored liberals, and that this conspiracy suddenly stopped after the debate? But there's been no change in methodology.
Or maybe it's just the debates? Ever think that might move polls? Occam's razor?
No, the polls before aren't bullshit, anymore than the polls now are bullshit.
The pollsters do not target liberals. The % of democrats in the sample before the debates is a response variable, just like it is with this new poll. What you said shows that more people after the debate call themselves republican and would vote for Romney as a result.
It doesn't prove a leftest conspiracy that has, for no reason, swung the other way now.
I think Occam's Razor favors my explanation. I really don't think that the debate generated a 12-point swing for Romney as this Pew Poll purports to show. That said, I am highly amused by liberals like Andrew Sullivan who are absolutely flipping out over what has happened.
Oh yeah, Sullivan is fucking having a nuclear meltdown. You do know that Sullivan was conservative, right?
On October 09 2012 09:24 Souma wrote: Irrelevant. Romney said he wouldn't cut teachers when he actually said we did need to cut back on teachers. It's the undeniable truth.
Once again you can try to spin stuff with your strawman arguments and red herrings but I'm not so easily distracted.
rogzardo October 09 2012 09:21. Posts 577 PM Profile Blog Quote # You posted that graph as a response to the Romney video which clearly shows him being on both sides of the issues at different times. The graph did nothing to dispute his obvious flip flopping.
Romney is against throwing money at the problem. He is not for firing people randomly but for improving the structure so you end up with more teachers. But again, people like you two are why politics is in such bad shape. You don't care about any actual policy. You simply want to take two sentences from two speeches and attack. It's as enlightening as me getting a soundbyte of Artosis calling MVP "MKP" and saying he clearly knows nothing about the game and can't tell the two players apart.
I just want to reply to the article you linked and point out how absofuckinglutely insane it is for the author to make the claim that 'it's getting better already' as if in 1 year problems will manifest:
Then there are work rules. "In the collective bargaining agreement, high school teachers only had to teach five periods a day, out of seven," says Arnoldussen. "Now, they're going to teach six." In addition, the collective bargaining agreement specified that teachers had to be in the school 37 1/2 hours a week. Now, it will be 40 hours.
5/7 -> 6/7 is a 20% increase in workload.
Teachers' salaries will stay "relatively the same," Arnoldussen says, except for higher pension and health care payments.
So actually what happened was that their work load increased approximately 20% and they also are paying ~10% of their salary for their benefits. They are doing more work for less pay.
(The top salary is around $80,000 per year, with about $35,000 in additional benefits, for 184 days of work per year -- summers off.) Finally, the money saved will be used to hire a few more teachers and institute merit pay.
The TOP salary is 80k/year; in most school districts it takes 15 YEARS to hit the top of the salary scale. Even if you give full value to their benefits, 100k/year is a fair salary for someone with 15 years experience in most fields. Merit pay, for which there exists no objective metric on which to evaluate teachers and is ultimately a gigantic scam to cut salaries.
tl;dr - I'm all for unions and school districts bargaining on fair footing, but if the school had better funding or was managed better, they'd be better off. I'm glad that they were able to negotiate a fair deal for health insurance, but whose fault was it that they made that deal in the first place? Unions are not to blame when school boards are corrupt and stupid, the school boards and the parents in the community they represent are.
The California Teachers Association spends hundreds of millions of dollars influencing the politics of the state. This election on Prop 32 alone they have spent over $18,000,000. And from wiki, "The CTA alone has spent more money in California politics than Chevron, AT&T, Philip Morris and Western States Petroleum Association combined."
Sorry if I don't have much respect for the unions hardships and their fight for a "fair" salary. If the same exact people were in the private sector they would see a massive across the board cut in pay, despite your claim that they deserve 100k+ a year. They spend millions corrupting the politics and contributing to the bankrupting of the state, and then tell parents they don't have money for supplies due to "budget cuts." They cut sports and music and whatever else they can to manipulate parents into fighting on their behalf.
You call this bargaining on a "fair" footing. lol.
OF COURSE they spend money on politics. Do you expect them to just roll over and die? Labor unions are outmatched by businesses 15:1 in terms of political spending. The sad part is that teachers even have to allocate their money to politics. It blows my mind how people can trust corporations more than they do teachers. Prop 32 is a good example of that and a great cause to fight against.
15:1? That's bullshit. I just told you they are the biggest spender in ALL of California politics.
If they are outnumbered so terribly, then why does Prop 32 have $9 million in support funding and $45.6 million in opposition?
If they are outnumbered how did they manage to defeat 100% of Schwarzenegger's ballot propositions trying to save this state from bankruptcy?
Their spending must REALLY be paying off if people manage to see them as a victim instead of the single largest and most powerful special interest in the state...
The broadest classification of political donors separates them into business, labor, or ideological interests. Whatever slice you look at, business interests dominate, with an overall advantage over organized labor of about 15-to-1.
Even among PACs - the favored means of delivering funds by labor unions - business has a more than 3-to-1 fundraising advantage. In soft money, the ratio is nearly 17-to-1.
As for Prop 32, EVERYONE on the left is devoting many of their resources to fighting against it because it's a giant shotgun pointed at unions. If it passes unions pretty much die. How do you not understand that? Corporations are riding this shit and teachers have no choice to fight back. Do you honestly think teachers just want to throw money at campaigns for the sake of doing so? Hell no. Wake the hell up.
Unions are pretty much dead already in the private sector. I don't think there's many corporations out there that would care one way or another about new union laws.
Which brings up an important point - business interests are not monolithic. The 'businesses outspend unions 15:1' is meaningless since businesses may be on both sides of a particular law.
It's actually not meaningless when you can just take a look at the likes of the Koch brothers or Sheldon Adelson. And yeah, unions have been getting crushed. And you wonder why these teachers are trying to fight for survival. Absolutely pathetic. This whole premise that teachers are evil and corporations are God's greatest gift to Earth is absolutely cringe-worthy.
I've never heard anyone ever in my whole life say that teachers are evil. Everyone loves teachers. My wife is a teacher! Now teachers' unions on the other hand a lot of people have a problem with ...
But I strongly believe that teachers should be evaluated and promoted based on performance. So should principals and so should schools overall. If teachers are not effective they should get training and help and eventually, if they can't improve, they should be fired. If schools for whatever reason can't teach kids, they should eventually be closed. The idea that teachers can never be fired is extremely harmful to any education system.
On October 09 2012 08:01 dvorakftw wrote: [quote] I like how your response to the guy explaining the context and details of Romney's positions is to simply repeat your attack. For example, Romney wants to cut tax rates but limit deductions and exemptions to get a fairer, simpler, more honest, more competitive tax code and everyone on the left just continues chanting "tax cuts for millionaires".
Yeah, except, no. While you can attempt to spin your way out of the tax cut flip-flop, there's no breaking out of the other blatant flip-flops.
Teachers - the difference is between more and better teachers in a better education system (a la Romney) compared to simply spending more money on what we have now (a la Wisconsin and Chicago's failed teacher union gambits)
The health care issue as I understand it and explained earlier, he supports being able to change insurance with pre-existing conditions.
1. Lol at that graph proving anything.
Are you disputing the giant rise in education spending in the United States? Do you believe American students are far and away better at reading, riting, and rithmetic than ever before? Enlighten us!
Irrelevant. Romney said he wouldn't cut teachers when he actually said we did need to cut back on teachers. It's the undeniable truth.
Once again you can try to spin stuff with your strawman arguments and red herrings but I'm not so easily distracted.
Romney never said we need to cut back on teachers. Here is the full quote:
he wants another stimulus, he wants to hire more government workers. He says we need more fireman, more policeman, more teachers. Did he not get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did. It’s time for us to cut back on government and help the American people.
he is opposing a stimulus, not the act of hiring more teachers. at the most, you could say that he is not being accurate in this quote. he clearly means that "more teachers" is not a good enough excuse for another stimulus. only a completely biased point of view could perceive this statement as being inconsistent with his debate statement.
Stop it. The mere suggestion that a highly edited video off the internet isn't giving me the whole, truthful story is turning my world upside down.
Point taken. Still, it is impossible to argue that Romney hasn't flopped 180 degrees on many issues. That isn't bias, that's just reality.
i'm not even saying that this isn't true. i would just like a couple of examples of it.
Romney's plan does cover pre-exisitng conditions. first, let's take his debate quote:
Let — well, actually — actually it's — it's — it's a lengthy description, but number one, pre-existing conditions are covered under my plan.
the obama argument is that Romney's plan doesn't cover pre-existing conditions, so he must be "flip-flopping". well, that isn't accurate. his plan maintains current protections for people with pre-existing conditions. he also reforms the system so as to deal with the people who have pre-existing conditions but are not currently or continuously insured. this article explains it all in better detail that i can:
Well, first, I love great schools. Massachusetts, our schools are ranked number one of all 50 states. And the key to great schools: great teachers. So I reject the idea that I don't believe in great teachers or more teachers. Every school district, every state should make that decision on their own.
now let's take his other quote:
(Obama) wants another stimulus, he wants to hire more government workers. He says we need more fireman, more policeman, more teachers. Did he not get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did. It’s time for us to cut back on government and help the American people.
in this quote he is clearly opposing the stimulus, and not the act of hiring more teachers.
EPT![[image loading]](http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2012-03-12-recessionrecovery.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1331565714849)
![[image loading]](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mdu356WGDA4/TknR6JaiMYI/AAAAAAAAECk/0aNrymveUiM/s400/education+spending+vs+test+scores.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.economicnoise.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/education-cato.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.people-press.org/files/2012/10/10-8-12-1.png)
![[image loading]](http://www.people-press.org/files/2012/10/10-8-12-2.png)
![[image loading]](http://www.people-press.org/files/2012/10/10-8-12-8.png)
![[image loading]](http://www.people-press.org/files/2012/10/10-8-12-horserace.gif)
