1. Yes, there are dumb Democrats that vote against school referendums. But organized efforts to vote down school referendums are always brought by no-new-taxes Republicans. They don’t like the taxes.

2. Public schools have no competition. There is a big, fat, huge difference between public and private schools that you are glossing over. Public schools have to accept everybody. The poorest, the most handicapped (or whatever the PC word is), those without support at home. Public schools don’t get to pick and choose. Also please note that private schools are expensive! Money seems to help just fine for private schools like Blake. Who the hell says that money won’t provide for a better education, of course it does.

Do a little test. Force all private schools to accept all applicants. Then see how well they “compete”.

3. Public schools don’t need competition. Competition implies winners and losers. In markets, some do well and some close up shop. We can’t close up shop. We need schools everywhere. Failure is not an option. Competition is the wrong way to think about education. Schools are not markets. They shouldn’t be markets.

4. Being anti-teacher is just retarded. Teachers are where the rubber meets the road. It’s like being anti-doctor. Teacher’s unions are a force for good in the world. Teachers are a force for good. You’ve met these people. They are good people. Not perfect but good, way better than average. You should be ashamed to be anything but pro-teacher. You are not pro-teacher if you are anti-teacher’s union.

5. School vouchers are the dumbest idea ever put forward by Righties. Here’s an idea, I have private security company that provides security at my house. (I don’t really, but bear with me.) So I don’t need the police. Plus the police need competition, right? Let’s take $100/month out of the police budget and give it to me, in a voucher, to offset my expenses with my private security company. Isn’t that a great idea? OF COURSE NOT. If you are rich enough to afford private security you don’t need a voucher from public money. Same goes for education. The Righties lie to us and say that school vouchers allow non-rich people to send their kids to private schools, too. That is completely false. A) the vouchers aren’t nearly enough money and B) private schools can just raise their rates by the same amount to keep the status quo. Plus, as I said, private schools can deny anybody they want. They have no constitutional mandate. They are an entirely different animal.

I hope I never have to send my kids to a private school. I am the son of public school teachers and I want us, the people, to provide high-quality education to every single child, period and without exception. If people choose to send their kids to private schools, fine, I don’t care. But do it on your own dime.

Like I said at the beginning, the correct way to address any problems in the public education system is to fix them. There is no other option and taking money out of the public education system and giving it to private schools is perhaps the dumbest “solution” I have ever heard.

I heard a man on the radio a while ago now who was from the GAO. He summed up the answer to the health care problem succinctly. The government should cover preventative health care and catastrophic health care. People should be left to take care of themselves in between. This could include having no insurance or being covered by traditional health insurance.

The economics of this are obvious. Preventative health care pays for itself by reducing the cost of future care. Catastrophic situations are where you want to spread the risk out among the largest base possible.

Now of course doing this is not free even if it results in a huge savings. The amount of money spent on health care and health insurance now is enormous. Companies and families are paying tons of money into the system. There is plenty of money in the system. The problem is the Medicas and the Blue Crosses fuck it completely up in the middle. They add no value, in most cases they take value away, and they live fat off the proceeds. Everyone is hassled by the insurance companies, doctors and patients and they both get nothing in return.

We could have a government-sponsored health insurance program that let patients go to any doctor for preventative or catastrophic care. The bill is paid with taxpayer money. Well-off individuals could choose whatever additional health insurance they wanted. No one would be forced into the system.

The other great thing with this is that it takes health insurance back out of the workplace. Companies spend a lot of time and money fucking around with it. There is no reason that employers should be in the loop. Again, if companies want to add extra insurance, fine, whatever, but every employee you hire will already be covered with preventative and catastrophic insurance. That is a huge benefit to businesses.

So, yes, we gotta tax someone for it. Businesses are paying money now. Individuals are paying money now. Paying it into a national health insurance system makes more sense than paying it to Blue Cross. I think we can deliver better coverage cheaper and cover everybody.

To be crystal clear to the Righties out there, we shouldn’t socialize medicine. We should socialize health insurance. It is the fiscally conservative thing to do.

Krugman exposes the Right for the bunch of lying bandwagoneers that they are.

1. As much as possible, live peacefully with other nations.
2. Keep church and state entirely separate.
3. Be good stewards to the environment, even if it hurts the economy.
4. Let people do what they will provided they are not hurting or infringing on the rights of others.
5. Let markets run free with a watchful eye towards fairness.
6. Enforce the same rules for everybody.
7. Be fiscally conservative. Spend less than we bring in.
8. Eliminate poverty.
9. Accept reality — do not govern by wishful thinking.
10. Provide security and strong defense to the people.

This seems obvious to me. It’s probably just a start on what we agree that government should do.

Just to illustrate a point, Bush does not, apparently, believe in #1, #2, #3, #4, #6, #7, #8 or #9. The facts on the ground would not give you reason to believe that those are in his platform.

We can agree on stuff. We can govern based on that agreement. We aren’t doing that.

micadelic said:

I have had many problems with Mr. Bush but one thing I have always believed about him, his motives are noble, at least to him. You may disagree but he’s not out to fuck anybodies children dood.

Bush noble? You really believe that? Even prior to being President he has proved himself to be an inept opportunist. As President his leadership has been abysmal. He has shut out voices of opposition and ignored the insights of 50% of this country not to mention scientists such as the Surgeon General.

He is out to fuck the children. In his mind he calls it fancy words like “capitalism” and “free markets” but he knows, and you know, that the private sector will not do the right thing when it comes to taking care of those in poverty. They do some things, and there are a lot of great NGOs doing good things. But in the land of equal opportunity, the government has a very important role in doing what the private sector cannot or will not do.

Are market forces going to insure children living in poverty? Or does government have to do that? Helping children living in poverty does not create poverty. It just gets medicine to kids would wouldn’t otherwise get it.

I think Bush has demonstrated repeatedly that he is a man without principle. Now is the saddest time of all — when he could be doing unifying things he instead is a far-Right lapdog to the end. I think Bush will prove to be an embarrassment in the history books.

Brad points out someone else who pointed out that Fox News, during the recent hearings with Gen. Petraeus, cut away during questions by Democrats and put on Ann Coulter! After Coulter calls Democrats and the media treasonous the Fox-tards say she nicely punctuated the major themes.

Coulter is too stupid to discuss anymore. But Fox News should be fairly and accurately renamed to the Bush Can Do No Wrong News Network.

2 Focus Inn lead me to this Right Wing blog. The author seems to me to be a libertarian style conservative and a Republican. So he’s wrong, in my opinion, about 95% of the time. I do agree with libertarians on some things. I also agree with conservatives on some things, although usually with a liberal twist that they find disagreeable.

Ironically, in the comments to a post called Get The Government Out Of The Bathroom we ended up in a discussion about same-sex marriage. It quickly deteriorated into a hog pile on yours truly by the righties. One individual, HG, brings it to clear focus for us:

Just the shame associated with homosexual behavior ought to speak volumes. It is completely unbecoming and unnatural for a male to act like a female in order to bed another male. It is completely unnatural to spend hours training one’s self to speak with a lisp. It is completely unnatural for a rectum to be used as a vagina. Homosexuality is disgusting and repugnant and made a mockery by most of society. We laugh and ridicule homosexuality for its completely unnatural characteristics. –HG

And later:

The next time any of you gentlemen have the misfortune of having a queer speak to you with a lisp… you know the combination of the three consonants “sth”, (my last experience was the McDonald’s drive thru), just let your countenance reflect your attitude. You know the attitude… “How dare you speak queer to me!” So that when he says to you “What kinda sthausthe would you like wisth sthat?” Just look at him with that attitude, make eye contact and say “WHAT?!?!” (you know, like “What the hell did you say to me?”) And watch how quickly that phony lisp vanishes. It is hilarious. –HG

This is the unashamed agenda of the Right — to vilify and demean gay people because they think it is immoral. Says one commenter:

He did say through His Apostle Paul in Roman’s, Chapter One and in several other places throughout Holy Writ that He condemns homosexual behavior, and He alone will judge those that engage in such behavior on Judgment Day. So, if you do not like people of faith speaking against homosexual conduct, your argument is with Christ and you must condemn Him for saying something objectionable, most Christians are only repeating what Christ has said in His Word. That is not to say that homosexuals cannot repent, turn to Christ and be saved and healed; only that if they do not they will suffer at the Hand of the Father because they have chosen to reject His merciful offer of Salvation in and through His Son. — Neiman

So God said so. Plus, they are the majority! They have no need of people like me:

Your secular humanist opinion of our more moderate values is of no concern, nor should it be. –Bat One

They have the votes so we “secular humanists” can just go to hell, literally, preferably.

My question is: how long are backwards-ass theocratic bigots like this going to be in the majority and what are you doing to speed up their decline?

Karl Rove to Resign At the End of August

Karl Rove, President Bush’s longtime political adviser, is resigning as White House deputy chief of staff effective Aug. 31.

I’m sure it’s because things are going so well.

The bridge collapse in Minneapolis was not an act of God. It was the inaction of Man.

From the Star Tribune:

More than a year before the Interstate 35W bridge collapsed, a consulting firm advised the state of Minnesota that the aging bridge should be reinforced with steel plating.

Instead of following that advice, state officials asked the firm to come up with other options.

Six months later, the URS Corp. did just that.

It repeated its recommendation for steel plates, but offered an alternative described as “most cost efficient”…

I just heard Tim Pawlenty on the radio talking about how he will do whatever it takes. Does that include raising taxes, Tim? Do you think we would have fixed that bridge if money wasn’t an issue? Do you think you can whittle away government funding year after year, always drive every decision by the bottom line and complain, complain, complain about how the worst possible place for a dollar to go is the government and still look us in the eye and say you did whatever it took to prevent this?

It’s not as easy as blaming the governor. I know that. Still, the Republican notion that taxes are bad and that Democrats are picking people’s pockets when they raise spending leads to institutionalized failure. Under the Conservative philosophy, resources will always be a problem.

We put Pawlenty in charge of the system and the system allowed this to happen. We need the opposite philosophy from our governor. We’ll do the right thing first and worry about cash, check or charge later.

Don’t tell me I’m “politicizing” the issue. This is politics. Who makes decisions that affect public safety is a political issue. How they do it and with what funding is a political issue.

Yes, I know, you can’t ignore financial realities. But you can put your pocket book where you mouth is. You want good things? Reliable things? Pay for them.