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On October 09 2012 10:44 Risen wrote:
Those recessions weren't nearly as large/impactful. Nice try with misleading people. This is why most people can't take the right seriously. Can't you see you're not helping fiscal conservatism with this? You make us look bad :/
You say "us" as though you are a fiscal conservative? So I should follow your example to make "us" look good by saying things like
In last night's debate Obama showed his major weakness in my mind that has haunted his entire first administration, the inability to call out the opposition for their lies/misrepresentations. I wish he would grow a backbone. It's like choosing between a liar and a wimp. Obviously, I'm going to choose the wimp, but this sucks.
Edit: This makes it seem like the debate was going to influence my vote. It wasn't. Social issues are more important to me than economic ones. Obama was always getting my vote unless the Republican Party laid down its bible.
If you want to vote for yearly trillion dollar deficits because of an irrational fear of Christians, that's your right but to do so you give up your right to lecture others about fiscal conservatism.
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On October 09 2012 11:16 sc2superfan101 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2012 11:12 Bigtony wrote:
You're delusional if you think that teachers wouldn't make more money in the private sector, not less. then why do they make less money in the private sector?
Because some of the money has to be paid to the shareholders of edu-corp or what have you, thereby taking some money out of the system that could otherwise be paid to teachers or used for other things?
edit: Still, I was under the impression private schools pay teachers better anyways, am I wrong?
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On October 09 2012 11:16 sc2superfan101 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2012 11:12 Bigtony wrote:
You're delusional if you think that teachers wouldn't make more money in the private sector, not less. then why do they make less money in the private sector?
LOL!!! I didn't see that sentence he wrote. And he's calling OTHER people delusional, my god.
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On October 09 2012 11:21 rogzardo wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2012 11:12 jdseemoreglass wrote:On October 09 2012 11:07 rogzardo wrote:
I've said it before, I'll say it again. All this debate is pointless. The argument is:
I want to pay more in taxes so everybody can have food, health care, education, etc.
OR
I don't want to pay more in taxes so everybody can have food, health care, education, etc.
Both sides have merit. All the details are semantics. I'm part of the 47%. I don't pay taxes. I don't want people who do pay taxes to pay more. I don't fall into your dichotomy. And the details are not semantics, they are the crux of the argument. Not everyone thinks in your simple-minded "what about my money" mentality. You do. It's about money. If it was solely about big vs. little government, you couldn't agree with right social views.
I don't think he does
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On October 09 2012 11:16 Defacer wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2012 11:12 xDaunt wrote:On October 09 2012 09:37 paralleluniverse wrote:On October 09 2012 08:58 xDaunt wrote:On October 09 2012 08:43 Savio wrote:Terrible, Terrible poll for Obama out from Pew. http://www.people-press.org/2012/10/08/romneys-strong-debate-performance-erases-obamas-lead/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: ![[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) 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?
Not all conservatives are as awesome as I am.
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On October 09 2012 11:14 Defacer wrote:
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.
Yeah I agree, I've heard some reasonable arguments from the other side, and as I've mentioned in the thread before I'm voting third party, not democrat.
I mean we have turned things around now as a family, not completely destroyed, we aren't living in the streets if that's what you think, don't want it to sound like a total downer  , the economy crashing at the same time all this happened did not help either, but the fact that we are not as bad off as we could be is some pretty awful silver lining.
I have heard much worse stories as I mentioned. I would say my step father was destroyed though, he had the mentality that so many men do that if you can't care for your family then you aren't a complete person, so he was super depressed (on top of being sick) etc. This is actually a big cultural problem, not really a government problem, with unemployed men in the country  , we value them so high on their work, and the food and roofs they put over our head, when they aren't working they don't feel like they are worth anything.
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I frankly don't like either of them very much. I agree with Romney that health care and other forms of social wellfare are better left to the states to administer, but his promise not to cut the defense budget at the expense of education is suicidal. Furthermore I don't like the ethnocentric and homophobic overtone to the Republican Party. On the other hand, I don't like Obama's economic policy. Attempts to stimulate the economy by getting everyone to spend more money isn't economically sound. In order to grow the economy the government should be encouraging households to save money. Savings, either through investments or through loans by banks, are what provide businesses, large and small, with the financial capital to expand.
I'll be voting for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate.
Free markets, strong civil liberties, and military non-interventionism ftw
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On October 09 2012 11:22 BlueBird. wrote:This is actually a big cultural problem, not really a government problem, with unemployed men in the country , we value them so high on their work, and the food and roofs they put over our head, when they aren't working they don't feel like they are worth anything.
Now we are talking about something useful!
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On October 09 2012 11:21 rogzardo wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2012 11:12 jdseemoreglass wrote:On October 09 2012 11:07 rogzardo wrote:
I've said it before, I'll say it again. All this debate is pointless. The argument is:
I want to pay more in taxes so everybody can have food, health care, education, etc.
OR
I don't want to pay more in taxes so everybody can have food, health care, education, etc.
Both sides have merit. All the details are semantics. I'm part of the 47%. I don't pay taxes. I don't want people who do pay taxes to pay more. I don't fall into your dichotomy. And the details are not semantics, they are the crux of the argument. Not everyone thinks in your simple-minded "what about my money" mentality. You do. It's about money. If it was solely about big vs. little government, you couldn't agree with right social views. EDIT: Both sides have a point. I like my money. I don't like seeing it wasted.
Who said I agree with right social views? What are you even saying?
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On October 09 2012 11:22 BlueBird. wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2012 11:14 Defacer wrote:
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.
Yeah I agree, I've heard some reasonable arguments from the other side, and as I've mentioned in the thread before I'm voting third party, not democrat. I mean we have turned things around now as a family, not completely destroyed, we aren't living in the streets if that's what you think, don't want it to sound like a total downer , the economy crashing at the same time all this happened did not help either, but the fact that we are not as bad off as we could be is some pretty awful silver lining. I have heard much worse stories as I mentioned. I would say my step father was destroyed though, he had the mentality that so many men do that if you can't care for your family then you aren't a complete person, so he was super depressed (on top of being sick) etc. This is actually a big cultural problem, not really a government problem, with unemployed men in the country , we value them so high on their work, and the food and roofs they put over our head, when they aren't working they don't feel like they are worth anything.
This is going to be the opposite of your scenario, and not going to be of any comfort to you or other Americans. But to illustrate the contrast: my father was diagnosed and died of kidney cancer when I was 14. This was a hardworking, but healthy, athletic man that got blindsided by life when he was 43. My family struggled mightily the years after his death, but over the past 14 years, me and my brother managed to get our shit together and live middle class lives.
I can't imagine where we would be without socialized medicine. The debt that his treatment and death would have cost us would have been enormous. Me and my brother probably wouldn't have been able to go the college. We might not even have graduated high school.
It's why whenever someone has the audacity to criticize Canadian healthcare -- especially other Canadians -- I have a conniption. It saved my family from poverty and we contribute much more to society than we would have if we didn't have it.
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On October 09 2012 10:44 sam!zdat wrote:
How can one expect to learn anything about the real world by staring at a graph of one little piece of something and trying to divine some trajectory of how things SHOULD be if the line is nice and behaves in some ideal fashion as though the world were the same as it was 30 years ago and economics should behave in the same way? Like, what does that even mean, how many jobs he "should" have created? As if what a "job" was were not in a constant state of flux, that being the entire problem in the first place!
Might as well poke around in entrails, for all the good these graphs do anybody
Those who don't learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them and then shrug their shoulders and say "Hey you don't know it could have been worse" when they know their economic record stinks.
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I was reading Mitt Romney's foreign policy speech and it reaffirmed my belief that Mitt Romney has all the ingredients needed to be the greatest president the United States has ever had.
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On October 09 2012 11:26 dvorakftw wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2012 10:44 sam!zdat wrote:
How can one expect to learn anything about the real world by staring at a graph of one little piece of something and trying to divine some trajectory of how things SHOULD be if the line is nice and behaves in some ideal fashion as though the world were the same as it was 30 years ago and economics should behave in the same way? Like, what does that even mean, how many jobs he "should" have created? As if what a "job" was were not in a constant state of flux, that being the entire problem in the first place!
Might as well poke around in entrails, for all the good these graphs do anybody Those who don't learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them and then shrug their shoulders and say "Hey you don't know it could have been worse" when they know their economic record stinks.
And so those who assume that the future will always look just like the past, without even attempting to think historically or consider the dynamics of the changes in the mode of production which is fueling all of this crisis are any better?
Please. This graphs business is just a fetish. think about the world!
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On October 09 2012 11:24 jdseemoreglass wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2012 11:21 rogzardo wrote:On October 09 2012 11:12 jdseemoreglass wrote:On October 09 2012 11:07 rogzardo wrote:
I've said it before, I'll say it again. All this debate is pointless. The argument is:
I want to pay more in taxes so everybody can have food, health care, education, etc.
OR
I don't want to pay more in taxes so everybody can have food, health care, education, etc.
Both sides have merit. All the details are semantics. I'm part of the 47%. I don't pay taxes. I don't want people who do pay taxes to pay more. I don't fall into your dichotomy. And the details are not semantics, they are the crux of the argument. Not everyone thinks in your simple-minded "what about my money" mentality. You do. It's about money. If it was solely about big vs. little government, you couldn't agree with right social views. EDIT: Both sides have a point. I like my money. I don't like seeing it wasted. Who said I agree with right social views? What are you even saying?
The debate between the right and the left is about big vs. small government. That means money, and social issues. The right wants small fiscal government, and big government regarding the social issues. The left is the opposite.
But really its just money. It's how you spend it, and how you think others should be obligated to spend it.
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On October 09 2012 11:21 dvorakftw wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2012 10:44 Risen wrote:
Those recessions weren't nearly as large/impactful. Nice try with misleading people. This is why most people can't take the right seriously. Can't you see you're not helping fiscal conservatism with this? You make us look bad :/ You say "us" as though you are a fiscal conservative? So I should follow your example to make "us" look good by saying things likeShow nested quote +In last night's debate Obama showed his major weakness in my mind that has haunted his entire first administration, the inability to call out the opposition for their lies/misrepresentations. I wish he would grow a backbone. It's like choosing between a liar and a wimp. Obviously, I'm going to choose the wimp, but this sucks.
Edit: This makes it seem like the debate was going to influence my vote. It wasn't. Social issues are more important to me than economic ones. Obama was always getting my vote unless the Republican Party laid down its bible. If you want to vote for yearly trillion dollar deficits because of an irrational fear of Christians, that's your right but to do so you give up your right to lecture others about fiscal conservatism.
I'm not allowed to be a fiscal conservative that values the social rights of others more than my own economic gains? That's news to me.
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2nd Worst City in CA8938 Posts
On October 09 2012 11:18 ziggurat wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2012 11:06 Souma wrote:On October 09 2012 11:02 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On October 09 2012 10:56 Souma wrote:On October 09 2012 10:51 jdseemoreglass wrote:On October 09 2012 10:46 Souma wrote:On October 09 2012 10:42 jdseemoreglass wrote:On October 09 2012 10:18 Bigtony wrote:On October 09 2012 09:48 dvorakftw wrote: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... I was talking on a national level. http://www.opensecrets.org/overview/blio.phpThe 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.
I agree with that actually. Teachers should be evaluated in some kind of way. The way they should be evaluated is largely up for debate though. Tenure is iffy but teachers with tenure can still be fired if there's sufficient reason.
Anyway, in case you're wondering why the California Teacher's union is spending so much money on politics, California is:
46th in the country for K-12 spending per student.
47th for K-12 spending relative to personal income.
50th in numbers of teachers per student.
49th for guidance counselors per student.
50th for librarians per student.
46th for administrators per student.
Couple that with the mere fact that California obviously has the most teachers overall in the country (highest population by far), thus the unions have more money overall, and you get the picture. The Governator SCREWED our education system. The more affluent neighborhoods are doing fine because they get tons of private donations, but everywhere else is a bungling wastehole. It's going to take us a lot of time to get out of this mess, and trying to destroy unions and blaming teachers gets us nowhere.
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On October 09 2012 11:28 rogzardo wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2012 11:24 jdseemoreglass wrote:On October 09 2012 11:21 rogzardo wrote:On October 09 2012 11:12 jdseemoreglass wrote:On October 09 2012 11:07 rogzardo wrote:
I've said it before, I'll say it again. All this debate is pointless. The argument is:
I want to pay more in taxes so everybody can have food, health care, education, etc.
OR
I don't want to pay more in taxes so everybody can have food, health care, education, etc.
Both sides have merit. All the details are semantics. I'm part of the 47%. I don't pay taxes. I don't want people who do pay taxes to pay more. I don't fall into your dichotomy. And the details are not semantics, they are the crux of the argument. Not everyone thinks in your simple-minded "what about my money" mentality. You do. It's about money. If it was solely about big vs. little government, you couldn't agree with right social views. EDIT: Both sides have a point. I like my money. I don't like seeing it wasted. Who said I agree with right social views? What are you even saying? The debate between the right and the left is about big vs. small government. That means money, and social issues. The right wants small fiscal government, and big government regarding the social issues. The left is the opposite. But really its just money. It's how you spend it, and how you think others should be obligated to spend it.
Your foot is in your mouth. The dude is like the most hardline libertarian you'll ever meet
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On October 09 2012 11:10 semantics wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2012 11:06 Souma wrote:On October 09 2012 11:02 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On October 09 2012 10:56 Souma wrote:On October 09 2012 10:51 jdseemoreglass wrote:On October 09 2012 10:46 Souma wrote:On October 09 2012 10:42 jdseemoreglass wrote:On October 09 2012 10:18 Bigtony wrote:On October 09 2012 09:48 dvorakftw wrote: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... I was talking on a national level. http://www.opensecrets.org/overview/blio.phpThe 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.
Part of the problem are the laws and regulations surrounding the union / business relationship. The rules encourage an adversarial relationship and too often that leads to detrimental outcomes.
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On October 09 2012 11:27 Darknat wrote:
I was reading Mitt Romney's foreign policy speech and it reaffirmed my belief that Mitt Romney has all the ingredients needed to be the greatest president the United States has ever had.
We found him. We found the man in the US who is actually excited and enthusiastic about Mitt Romney. Someone get Fox News on the phone immediately.
On a serious note, are you just a troll poster, or you really believe this?
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On October 09 2012 11:30 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2012 11:10 semantics wrote:On October 09 2012 11:06 Souma wrote:On October 09 2012 11:02 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On October 09 2012 10:56 Souma wrote:On October 09 2012 10:51 jdseemoreglass wrote:On October 09 2012 10:46 Souma wrote:On October 09 2012 10:42 jdseemoreglass wrote:On October 09 2012 10:18 Bigtony wrote:On October 09 2012 09:48 dvorakftw wrote:[quote] [quote] 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... I was talking on a national level. http://www.opensecrets.org/overview/blio.phpThe 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. Part of the problem are the laws and regulations surrounding the union / business relationship. The rules encourage an adversarial relationship and too often that leads to detrimental outcomes.
The adversarial relationship is already there
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EPT
