***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[Nike Jordan]

 

[RIP sleazyy]

What countries are left on the "Pentagon destabilization list"? Just Syria and Iran right?

 

[dragicon]

Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona has signed into law sweeping changes in how state money can be used to educate students, making it easier for parents to enroll their children in private schooling at public expense.

The bill, which the State Legislature passed Thursday, makes all 1.1 million public school students in Arizona eligible for money from a program that until now was available only to some students, including those with disabilities and those in underperforming schools.

Under the law, parents who withdraw their children from public school can use their child’s share of state education funding to pay for private school tuition, home-schooling costs, tutoring and online education, as well as for therapies for the disabled.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/us/school-vouchers-arizona.html

 

[Belgium]

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/new-mexico-just-banned-gay-conversion-therapy-for-minors

It's a good start but non-medical professionals can still perform gay conversion "therapy" at the end of the day. All of those medical professionals who participated in those torture practices should have their medical license taken away 

 
New Mexico became the seventh state in the US Friday to place a ban on gay conversion therapy  for minors, officially prohibiting the controversial practice, AP reports.

Senate Bill 121, signed by Republican governor Susana Martinez, prohibits licensed doctors, nurses, psychologists, and other health practitioners from administering conversion therapy to those under 18. According to USA Today, the law would not apply to ministers or people who don't have a medical license. 

Gay conversion therapy covers a wide range of semi-psychoanalytic methods used to try to convince a person that they can rid themselves of homosexuality, often with a religious bent. A typical session might involve violent role-playing, shock therapy, or physical abuse, according to the New York Times  and Huffington Post.

"This is an incredible victory for LGBTQ youth in New Mexico," Sarah Warbelow, the Human Rights Campaign's legal director, told LGBT Weekly. "No child should be subjected to this dangerous practice that amounts to nothing more than child abuse."

The American Medical Association, American Psychological Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, and a host of other medical organizations have explicitly denounced gay conversion therapy. Aside from the fact that it treats homosexuality as if it were a "disease" that requires a "cure," conversion therapy is dangerous. Those subjected to it are eight times more likely to attempt suicide, and nearly six times as likely to report struggling with serious depression, according to the Human Rights Campaign. Minors are particularly vulnerable.

Jacob Candelaria, an openly gay New Mexico state senator who sponsored the bill, stressed to reporters  that protecting children from abuse "transcends party labels and ideological differences." He also thanked victims of conversion therapy for sharing what they went through to muster support for the bill.

"Their stories did not fall on deaf ears," Candelaria told LGBT Weekly.  "They turned their suffering into a force for good, and because of them, and for them, we have made history."

 

[iamdef]

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/us/school-vouchers-arizona.html

I'm trying so hard to fully understand this. So you take your kid's share of public funding as a scholarship from the school and apply it to a private school? In theory it sounds logical but once you stop thinking about your own kid and the entire school that your effecting it becomes less savory for me

 

[dragicon]

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/us/school-vouchers-arizona.html

I'm trying so hard to fully understand this. So you take your kid's share of public funding as a scholarship from the school and apply it to a private school? In theory it sounds logical but once you stop thinking about your own kid and the entire school that your effecting it becomes less savory for me

It's just the rich getting richer and more of the "why should I have to pay for something I don't use" sentiment. Nothing anymore is about the common good of the people. It is just greed.

School vouchers make me angry.

 

[noskey]

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/us/school-vouchers-arizona.html

I'm trying so hard to fully understand this. So you take your kid's share of public funding as a scholarship from the school and apply it to a private school? In theory it sounds logical but once you stop thinking about your own kid and the entire school that your effecting it becomes less savory for me

Yep. Taxes are going to fund private schools in Arizona So basically there's really no more separation of church and state.

 

[EddieDoyers]

Emphasis on privatization of schooling will just lead to less quality education for the working class

Gotta love Betsy Devos

 

[RustyShackleford]

I not like charter school in theory, I hate them in practice.

For them to work decently they have to be very well regulated, in many places they are not.

You send you kid to a charter school, the state assigns you kid a certain amount it takes to educate your child. The Charter school takes that money and they are now incentivized to educate your child for cheaper the amount the state gives them. Who are the cheapest kids to educate? Kids that really good students either naturally or from their parents investment in them. Any kid that has behavioral problems, doesn't get invested in at home a ton, or needs extra help is now looked at as an unnecessary expense.

So schools will suspend these kids more, adopt zero tolerance polices to get them expelled, and kicked back to the public system.

The finesse move is keep the ones tat are cheap to educate, and get rid of the ones that take too much effort. Furthermore school funding might be based on performance, if Charter school succeed in segregating the children good enough, they put themselves in a position to be the top ranking schools, and as a result get more money.

This is disgusting, even more disgusting is that there is a racial component to it because it is black and brown kids are in the cross hairs. Even if your black and live in a decent enough area to send your kid to a decent public school, Charter schools might be working against that.

Furthermore it incentivizes public schools to adopt harsher suspension and explosion policies to get rid of bad students which helps fuel the school to prison pipeline, and Charter schools are a way to break the back of public teacher unions.

Not saying they have not been success stories, they're have been, that is why they are so popular with some even in the left. But if they are no regulated and public school not protected, they are just another way to **** over kids that need the most help.

----------------

We need to go fully socialism when it come to education. Make sure we have well funded, well functioning public schools available to all families.

If rich folk want to send their kids to a private institution, welp god bless, it is your money.

 

[BIG LEEMELONE]

Rusty in my experience what I've seen is kind of the opposite. Rather than segregation, kids that struggle in the classroom are simply given passing grades that they haven't earned in the name of funding. It's another work around to the same problem tho

 

[RustyShackleford]

Rusty in my experience what I've seen is kind of the opposite. Rather than segregation, kids that struggle in the classroom are simply given passing grades that they haven't earned in the name of funding. It's another work around to the same problem tho

Yep heard about that too.

If you're not over there shoulders they can finesses from all angles.

 

[whywesteppin]

this is stupid.

the argument is usually that I'm paying taxes for the public school, so if I take my kid out and send them to private school I should get to use my tax dollars towards the private school education.

but most of us are paying taxes for public schools even though we don't have kids. which is how it should be.

not to mention all the societal fallout from not having well-funded public schools.

 

[gry60]

this is stupid.

the argument is usually that I'm paying taxes for the public school, so if I take my kid out and send them to private school I should get to use my tax dollars towards the private school education.

but most of us are paying taxes for public schools even though we don't have kids. which is how it should be.

not to mention all the societal fallout from not having well-funded public schools.

It's not going to be just social.

If I have to open a manufacturing facility where people can barely read, write, and count vs another place where I know people can do that, guess where I'm going.

Republicans are going to bring this country back to its agrarian days, and their base is cheering.

 

[frink85]

You want to send your kid to a private school, you need to foot the bill. Period.

 

[RustyShackleford]

BTW, I hate the way public schools are funded.

Stop tying it to property tax ****. I don't have an issue with property taxes themselves but don't make the schools funds depend on them. Again this leads to great public schools in rich areas (mainly white) and crappy public in more areas (mainly black, brown, etc.).Taxes should go into a pool and a share be spent on schools, all schools get the same level of funded/resources need depending on size.

That is why I am in favor of busing. Not just bussing black and brown kids into white schools, but bussing ALL kids out of there neighborhoods into another.

If rich white folk knew their kids where going to get sent to the run down black school across town, watch how quickly poor performing/low resource schools get fixed. Like within a damn summer.

 

[RustyShackleford]

this is stupid.

the argument is usually that I'm paying taxes for the public school, so if I take my kid out and send them to private school I should get to use my tax dollars towards the private school education.

but most of us are paying taxes for public schools even though we don't have kids. which is how it should be.

not to mention all the societal fallout from not having well-funded public schools.

It's not going to be just social.

If I have to open a manufacturing facility where people can barely read, write, and count vs another place where I know people can do that, guess where I'm going.

Republicans are going to bring this country back to its agrarian days, and their base is cheering.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/feat...oom-cheap-wages-little-training-crushed-limbs

Alabama has been trying on the nickname “New Detroit.” Its burgeoning auto parts industry employs 26,000 workers, who last year earned $1.3 billion in wages. Georgia and Mississippi have similar, though smaller, auto parts sectors. This factory growth, after the long, painful demise of the region’s textile industry, would seem to be just the kind of manufacturing renaissance President Donald Trump and his supporters are looking for.

Except that it also epitomizes the global economy’s race to the bottom. Parts suppliers in the American South compete for low-margin orders against suppliers in Mexico and Asia. They promise delivery schedules they can’t possibly meet and face ruinous penalties if they fall short. Employees work ungodly hours, six or seven days a week, for months on end. Pay is low, turnover is high, training is scant, and safety is an afterthought, usually after someone is badly hurt. Many of the same woes that typify work conditions at contract manufacturers across Asia now bedevil parts plants in the South.

“The supply chain isn’t going just to Bangladesh. It’s going to Alabama and Georgia,” says David Michaels, who ran OSHA for the last seven years of the Obama administration. Safety at the Southern car factories themselves is generally good, he says. The situation is much worse at parts suppliers, where workers earn about 70¢ for every dollar earned by auto parts workers in Michigan, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (Many plants in the North are unionized; only a few are in the South.

This is the future of manufacturing the GOP wants. Not the pro-union well trained, well compensated workforse of decades ago.

I remember warning Ninja about this, if manufacturing comes back, there going to places with less regulations so the can drive profits. The Sunbelt will get crappy manufacturing jobs, while the Rustbelt continues to rust.

 

[usdlaw]

this is stupid.

the argument is usually that I'm paying taxes for the public school, so if I take my kid out and send them to private school I should get to use my tax dollars towards the private school education.

but most of us are paying taxes for public schools even though we don't have kids. which is how it should be.

not to mention all the societal fallout from not having well-funded public schools.

I'm hoping that they overturn a previous ruling in which SCOTUS declared that school vouchers are constitutional because they are given to parents rather than schools. Thus, it doesn't violate the establishment clause. However, 97% of the funding went to religious schools in that case.

Currently, I find it almost impossible to overturn the case, given the SCOTUS will likely have a conservative lean. While Clinton did have her shortcomings, the biggest reason why I voted for her was because she would most likely pick a moderate to center left judge for the SCOTUS

 

[elpablo21]

Donald J. Trump‏ @realDonaldTrump
The reason you don't generally hit runways is that they are easy and inexpensive to quickly fix (fill in and top)

 

[aepps20]

^^^^^^

450D chess right there fellas. DA LIBBIES don't have a clue.

 

[Mark Antony]

What?

 

[frink85]

They didn't hit jets or control towers either apparently

 

[dragicon]

this is stupid.

the argument is usually that I'm paying taxes for the public school, so if I take my kid out and send them to private school I should get to use my tax dollars towards the private school education.

but most of us are paying taxes for public schools even though we don't have kids. which is how it should be.

not to mention all the societal fallout from not having well-funded public schools.

My mom volunteers on the local library board. You should have seen the amount of backlash that they got when they wanted to build a new library in the small city. So many people complained that money should not be spent on libraries because "nobody uses them anymore". Others complained that "we don't use the library, so why should we pay for it?"... I just don't understand how people cannot see the benefits of having a nice community that helps each other out.

 

[dragicon]

Donald J. Trump‏ @realDonaldTrump
The reason you don't generally hit runways is that they are easy and inexpensive to quickly fix (fill in and top)

I'd love to see the AF One pilots' reaction to that quote.

At our local airport out here, it took almost 8 months just for them to resurface the runway... not even build a new one.

 

[everysingletime]

Donald J. Trump‏ @realDonaldTrump
The reason you don't generally hit runways is that they are easy and inexpensive to quickly fix (fill in and top)

That quote would be a ninja thing to say lol

 

[rolaholic]

@thespectatorindex: BREAKING: The Carl Vinson strike group, which includes an aircraft carrier, will make its way from Singapore toward the Korean Peninsula

Sounds like dude just got a taste of war and wants some more