Except what will happen is that the school will become internally stratified -- AP programs, etc. Because say what you will about equality of opportunity, you will never have 100% of children performing at the same academic level. Then it becomes a situation where the rich kids are in the AP programs, and everybody else is taking "normal class".
It wouldn't fix anything.
Firstly, you have confused equality with equity. Nobody has said that all students should perform at the same academic level; the point is that they have the same OPPORTUNITY to.
Secondly, just because we can't achieve total and complete equity doesn't mean we should therefore abandon all attempts to achieve any semblance of it.
Rich children would, most assuredly, not fit into AP classes unless they were bonafide smart. At least, not in my AP classes.
If anything we need tiered classes for students that are smarter. Throwing smarter kids in with the dumber kids isn't going to bring the whole class up, I mean I guess average scores will show improvement but most of the time the dumb kids end up dragging the smart kids down. Doubly so if it's a group project not graded individually.
I spent a lot of time with teachers after school because my grades would be brought done by group work. I was a weird kid in grammar school.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Notice in this case there is a $5k "voluntary donation". How much do you want to bet that a child whose parents didn't make the "voluntary donation" is going to get in? Because if you say the same as the rest.... I got a bridge in Brooklyn I would like to sell you.
Isn't the difference between a charter school and a private school that charter schools get goverment money?
Kipling217 on
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
If the ban is only on the collecting of money to fund education then religious instruction can definitely still exist. It simply must be entirely voluntary.
That'd be like saying, we're not banning a newspaper's right to free speech if we make it illegal to buy printing ink. Or, we're not hurting your right to counsel if we make it illegal for you to spend money on a lawyer to defend you in a criminal trial.
Except that religious groups would still be able to provide as much religious instruction as they wanted, there just wouldn't be a religious exemption to public school attendance, much like there isn't a religious exemption for individuals when it comes to paying taxes or obeying other laws.
I still think abolishing homeschooling and private schools is complete overkill, and would have definite Constitutional issues, but those issues are not as cut and dry as you suggest.
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VanguardBut now the dream is over. And the insect is awake.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
edited November 2011
None of that has anything to do with Occupy Wall Street.
In the wake of raids on Occupy Wall Street encampments in multiple cities, some, like AlterNet, have wondered whether federal law enforcement spent time and resources coordinating with local authorities to crackdown on the protests.
On Tuesday, The Examiner published a story quoting an anonymous Justice Department official who said local police agencies "had received tactical and planning advice from national agencies" including the FBI and Homeland Security.
That assertion was denied by the FBI in an official response sent to The Huffington Post.
Also, should I go ahead and take up the task of making an awesome OP?
Edit: Fuck. I'm jailed. I think I get out tomorrow though.
In the wake of raids on Occupy Wall Street encampments in multiple cities, some, like AlterNet, have wondered whether federal law enforcement spent time and resources coordinating with local authorities to crackdown on the protests.
On Tuesday, The Examiner published a story quoting an anonymous Justice Department official who said local police agencies "had received tactical and planning advice from national agencies" including the FBI and Homeland Security.
That assertion was denied by the FBI in an official response sent to The Huffington Post.
Also, should I go ahead and take up the task of making an awesome OP?
I would take anything the Examiner reports with a wheelbarrow of salt.
They're notorious for making shit up and reporting it from "anonymous sources"
edit: just to be clear, I'm entirely faithful that it was a coordinated effort. Entirely. And that sucks
That'd be like saying, we're not banning a newspaper's right to free speech if we make it illegal to buy printing ink. Or, we're not hurting your right to counsel if we make it illegal for you to spend money on a lawyer to defend you in a criminal trial.
This already exists today. You get free legal representation...but not in civil court, which is where most companies operate today. You also have the right to free speech...but no right to counteract barriers of cost to make speech effective and no right to make use of the right to assemble to make that speech more effective.
People could donate land, desks, materials, time, etc? Parents are free to instruct their kids and do this today. Merely making such instruction a strictly voluntary institution that can't collect fees or pay wages allows it to be funded strictly on the belief that it is necessary and important.
All you're doing is allowing people to pick and chose what they want. The issue right now is public schools both suffer problems of funding, mismanagement of funds (cutting art classes to buy a new football stadium), and problems of process (not trying to allow divergent and new methods of education, enforcing strict standardization, etc.)
Allowing voluntary religious schools ensures that children can still receive religious instruction just as freely as public education but allows the quality of either institution to speak for itself. If you want to argue that nobody would ever donate that much that freely to just form a voluntary religious school, well that begs the question of why no one would feel it was that important? Can a strong case not be made for religious inclusion in public schools? I mean if you want to teach your kids that the earth is only 6,000 years old that's fine, but the problem comes when you're using unequal economic incentives to create circumstances where you're indoctrinating youth in things that may or may not be useful. It's your right to teach your kids whatever you want, it is not however your right as a parent to force them to believe whatever you want them to believe. If your ideas are not at all convincing and require an entire institutional process of indoctrination that requires high levels of economic incentives to function at all, then that makes a strong case that you're using that money as a coercive tool to support a bankrupt idea or ideology that would go extinct in an equal marketplace of ideas.
Obviously I wouldn't do the above right away, not until we'd figured out better methods of education. But in the long run allowing private schooling of any kind is a tool asking to be gamed by the wealthy to deny quality education to others. Even allowing a religious exemption will simply allow the wealthy an avenue to game the system by presenting quasi-religious functions but then later instructing the children not to believe in it, to merely present the image of religious belief to others.
If the best you can come up with against someone who's patently ignorant is to yell back at him, "Yeah? Well there's BOOKS, and they say you're WRONG!"
Then honestly you're not coming out of this looking great either.
Yeah I've yet to see any actual proof that the feds were involved in any way, and I've seen multiple police agencies deny that claim for themselves. So...I'm thinking it's a red herring that people also hope would shift some of the blame back to our socialist-communist-foreign-born president.
What's hilarious though, is consider this. Say it WERE definitively true, I can bet you a lot of the people that were cheering the parks getting cleared out, will then denounce the brutality the moment a portion of that blame can be thrown at Obama's administration.
Yeah I've yet to see any actual proof that the feds were involved in any way, and I've seen multiple police agencies deny that claim for themselves. So...I'm thinking it's a red herring that people also hope would shift some of the blame back to our socialist-communist-foreign-born president.
What's hilarious though, is consider this. Say it WERE definitively true, I can bet you a lot of the people that were cheering the parks getting cleared out, will then denounce the brutality the moment a portion of that blame can be thrown at Obama's administration.
When asking yourself what a nutter would do, ask yourself this. Which would be considerably more painful for them? To agree that the entire group were not dirty, stink-filled, commie-hippies that hate America? Or making a lone exemption for a good use of the patriot act, signed by bush, and the DHS, created by Bush?
If the best you can come up with against someone who's patently ignorant is to yell back at him, "Yeah? Well there's BOOKS, and they say you're WRONG!"
Then honestly you're not coming out of this looking great either.
Yeah I've yet to see any actual proof that the feds were involved in any way, and I've seen multiple police agencies deny that claim for themselves. So...I'm thinking it's a red herring that people also hope would shift some of the blame back to our socialist-communist-foreign-born president.
What's hilarious though, is consider this. Say it WERE definitively true, I can bet you a lot of the people that were cheering the parks getting cleared out, will then denounce the brutality the moment a portion of that blame can be thrown at Obama's administration.
When asking yourself what a nutter would do, ask yourself this. Which would be considerably more painful for them? To agree that the entire group were not dirty, stink-filled, commie-hippies that hate America? Or making a lone exemption for a good use of the patriot act, signed by bush, and the DHS, created by Bush?
They could easily pin the actions of the police on Obama without giving any validation to Occupy. Obama Orders Police Brutality? Too good of an opportunity for them to pass up. I think you're underestimating the ability of certain ideological groups to twist absolutely everything into a glorification of themselves and their policies, or an attack on opponents.
They could easily pin the actions of the police on Obama without giving any validation to Occupy. Obama Orders Police Brutality? Too good of an opportunity for them to pass up. I think you're underestimating the ability of certain ideological groups to twist absolutely everything into a glorification of themselves and their policies, or an attack on opponents.
Well, maybe it's just me, but I think it's easier to say that this happened independent of Obama (See: Osama's Death) rather than ignore that it was used to justify vicious beatdowns on people they would love to see suffer vicious beatdowns over and over again.
If the best you can come up with against someone who's patently ignorant is to yell back at him, "Yeah? Well there's BOOKS, and they say you're WRONG!"
Then honestly you're not coming out of this looking great either.
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VanguardBut now the dream is over. And the insect is awake.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
If the best you can come up with against someone who's patently ignorant is to yell back at him, "Yeah? Well there's BOOKS, and they say you're WRONG!"
Then honestly you're not coming out of this looking great either.
It's not hard to believe that multiple city PDs all decided to run crackdowns on the same day that OWS was organizing extra activity...
Well the DHS and FBI involvement is questionable, but we do have reports that mayors of many occupy cities were on conference calls just before the violent evictions began. At the very least it suggests the mayors wanted the protests on Oakland, NY, San Francisco, Portland, etc. Gone, post haste, and were coordinating ways to get it done.
If the best you can come up with against someone who's patently ignorant is to yell back at him, "Yeah? Well there's BOOKS, and they say you're WRONG!"
Then honestly you're not coming out of this looking great either.
It's not hard to believe that multiple city PDs all decided to run crackdowns on the same day that OWS was organizing extra activity...
Well its not like the OWS people were quiet about their aspirations either. Never blame on conspiracy what can be attributed to stupidity.
It was stupidity that they organized it the way they did? I don't think the word conspiracy even applies here, folks from various cities have openly admitted that there was some group mayoral effort to coordinate this.
Do you want the country to go to hell, hippies? Let me break it down for you-
Vote for Obama=
The Left gets some of what it wants. Certainly better than nothing. DOMA and the healthcare act have been alright so far.
Vote for Ron Paul/Mitt Romney/don't vote at all because all the politicians are the same, man=
The Right gets what it wants. And not the good Nixon/Eisenhower Right either. The crazy people with signs you see on the sidewalk that hate "the queers". That Right.
Yes, it sucks that Obama isn't the second coming of FDR, and on occasion he's had less spine than a bowl of oatmeal. However, he's done a good job so far, certainly on foreign policy.
Do you want the country to go to hell, hippies? Let me break it down for you-
Vote for Obama=
The Left gets some of what it wants. Certainly better than nothing. DOMA and the healthcare act have been alright so far.
Vote for Ron Paul/Mitt Romney/don't vote at all because all the politicians are the same, man=
The Right gets what it wants. And not the good Nixon/Eisenhower Right either. The crazy people with signs you see on the sidewalk that hate "the queers". That Right.
Yes, it sucks that Obama isn't the second coming of FDR, and on occasion he's had less spine than a bowl of oatmeal. However, he's done a good job so far, certainly on foreign policy.
Can you provide a guaranteed method to Get Obama to go far left? By guarantee I mean a way that would offer him a choice so unpalatable, much like left voters are feeling now, that if he were not to go farther left he would be so profoundly harmed in some way as to make it unthinkable for him to do otherwise? Much like would happen if "The Republican" won? Because if not there's really not an even-handed way to offer people what they want. They're being told to hold their nose and vote as if it will guarantee a difference.
Talking about working our way up from the local races is great, but that's also making a huge amount of assumptions and projections into the future about the ability to create a generational shift in the Democratic party. We know how bad it is to even project the budget out more than what, five years? How can you tell people with a straight face to do this as if it will really produce the results they want? That doesn't mean they shouldn't vote, but without offering voters a way to guarantee that what they do will assuredly matter in making things the way they want it's really hard to sell them on Obama at this point.
If the best you can come up with against someone who's patently ignorant is to yell back at him, "Yeah? Well there's BOOKS, and they say you're WRONG!"
Then honestly you're not coming out of this looking great either.
Do you want the country to go to hell, hippies? Let me break it down for you-
Vote for Obama=
The Left gets some of what it wants. Certainly better than nothing. DOMA and the healthcare act have been alright so far.
Vote for Ron Paul/Mitt Romney/don't vote at all because all the politicians are the same, man=
The Right gets what it wants. And not the good Nixon/Eisenhower Right either. The crazy people with signs you see on the sidewalk that hate "the queers". That Right.
Yes, it sucks that Obama isn't the second coming of FDR, and on occasion he's had less spine than a bowl of oatmeal. However, he's done a good job so far, certainly on foreign policy.
DADT not DOMA. DOMA is the next one they are going after.
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Captain Marcusnow arrives the hour of actionRegistered Userregular
Can you provide a guaranteed method to Get Obama to go far left? By guarantee I mean a way that would offer him a choice so unpalatable, much like left voters are feeling now, that if he were not to go farther left he would be so profoundly harmed in some way as to make it unthinkable for him to do otherwise? Much like would happen if "The Republican" won? Because if not there's really not an even-handed way to offer people what they want. They're being told to hold their nose and vote as if it will guarantee a difference.
Talking about working our way up from the local races is great, but that's also making a huge amount of assumptions and projections into the future about the ability to create a generational shift in the Democratic party. We know how bad it is to even project the budget out more than what, five years? How can you tell people with a straight face to do this as if it will really produce the results they want? That doesn't mean they shouldn't vote, but without offering voters a way to guarantee that what they do will assuredly matter in making things the way they want it's really hard to sell them on Obama at this point.
Why are you assuming I want Obama to go far left? I'm quite happy with the way he is, except he's a wuss on certain things.
So no, I'm afraid I cannot offer a way to move our president Left.
And "it's really hard to sell them on Obama"? The president does some Left things. He does some of them. You want him to do all left things. He's not going to do this. He's not that kind of guy.
However, the Right will do no left things. None. Zero. Zip. Their primary candidates (with the possible exception of Huntsman) are all insane in one way or another.
Voting for a third party is lunacy- given the way our election narratives are framed and debates run, you'd be luck to end up with ten thousand people voting your way.
Maybe if you want Obama to be more left-ish you should join OWS and help swing politics back toward the center? I don't know.
This isn't the place for this though, but I'd be happy to talk with you via PM.
Well I understand the choices, I was more making a rhetorical argument since it sounded like you were trying to say people should vote Obama "Because Republicans!" I'm just saying that's not a convincing argument to the disaffected left who would be the people you'd want to be getting to the polls for Obama.
Anyway, not my argument I was just pointing out what I thought was a strategic misstep, sorry if I misunderstood the intent of your post. ^_^;;
If the best you can come up with against someone who's patently ignorant is to yell back at him, "Yeah? Well there's BOOKS, and they say you're WRONG!"
Then honestly you're not coming out of this looking great either.
Well, if you vote for a Democrat, you're telling him his current positions are what he needs to get elected.
If you vote against/don't vote for a Democrat, you're telling him that he needs to move more to the Right to get voters.
At this point, I'm pretty sure the only way to move a Democrat Left is to find some magical group of non-voters and get them all voting for a 3rd Left Party in enough numbers that the Democrat is enticed to try and capture that demographic.
Anyone got any large magical non-voters and a plan to get them to the polls in a desperate and failed bid that will probably leave them disenfranchised anyway?
Can you provide a guaranteed method to Get Obama to go far left? By guarantee I mean a way that would offer him a choice so unpalatable, much like left voters are feeling now, that if he were not to go farther left he would be so profoundly harmed in some way as to make it unthinkable for him to do otherwise? Much like would happen if "The Republican" won? Because if not there's really not an even-handed way to offer people what they want. They're being told to hold their nose and vote as if it will guarantee a difference.
Guarantee? George W. Bush was a moderate candidate whose specialty was being a milquetoast fundy instead of Al Gore's Milquetoast environmentalist. A lot of people didn't vote because they didn't CARE about the election or voted green to needle Gore for not being leftist enough. The only reason Dubya became Eliphas the Inheritor is because first, the normally unreliable evangelical vote really turned out for him and won him Florida, and second, 9/11 turned him from barely-relevant Reagan wannabe to a dark combination of Reagan's dire incompetence and Nixon's psychotic power-trips. There are no guarantees, except that not voting guarantees you will goosing lose.
Try to remember the deck is pretty freaking stacked. The media's corporate, unions have been withering and dying for years, major donors are almost all supply-siders, and in terms of social progress quite a lot of progress has been made, even if we're still lagging and dragging.
You want more? Here's a tactic that's risky but might reward: Undermine pulpit freedom Sunday. Fighting Fundies are flaunting the law, try and get the ACLU to attack their tax exemptions. It would mean bad press by the liars of Fox News, but it would also hurt the pulpit campaigning.
Well, if you vote for a Democrat, you're telling him his current positions are what he needs to get elected.
If you vote against/don't vote for a Democrat, you're telling him that he needs to move more to the Right to get voters.
At this point, I'm pretty sure the only way to move a Democrat Left is to find some magical group of non-voters and get them all voting for a 3rd Left Party in enough numbers that the Democrat is enticed to try and capture that demographic.
Anyone got any large magical non-voters and a plan to get them to the polls in a desperate and failed bid that will probably leave them disenfranchised anyway?
Actually what you need to do is send letters, vote in primaries and do all that other stuff that politicians look at to decide what their position on issues should be.
Can you provide a guaranteed method to Get Obama to go far left?
Vote for him. At the end of the day what matters is the median voter. If you're to the left of the median voter and not voting then your act of not voting moves the median voter to the right.
Vote for him. At the end of the day what matters is the median voter. If you're to the left of the median voter and not voting then your act of not voting moves the median voter to the right.
Seems kind of like a first-mover problem though, voters on the left don't feel like anyone they vote for will represent them if they vote, so they stay home. Just because Obama's been moderately left in office doesn't work as a compelling case because that's what they expected him to be anyway. So especially given 2008 turnout it feels like "Yeah, that's the best we can get? Why should I go, again?"
Which admittedly Obama could've really railed against congress and his luke-warm treatment of Occupy feels really slimy and politically motivated (he's espousing populist stuff, but won't embrace a populist movement and he also condemns brutality abroad yet remains silent about police brutality at home?) So it feels like as a President, especially one who's such a good orator, could've really wielded the bully Pulpit better during his term and made more addresses to the public even though there wasn't much in the way of policy he could've affected.
It creates this chasm of belief, to cross it there needs to be a definitive argument that voting will guarantee action, because right now I think the left feels like he'll still play to the same center when back in office even if he might turn up his populism on the campaign trail.
If the best you can come up with against someone who's patently ignorant is to yell back at him, "Yeah? Well there's BOOKS, and they say you're WRONG!"
Then honestly you're not coming out of this looking great either.
Except that religious groups would still be able to provide as much religious instruction as they wanted, there just wouldn't be a religious exemption to public school attendance, much like there isn't a religious exemption for individuals when it comes to paying taxes or obeying other laws.
Actually, yes, there is a religious exemption for individuals when it comes to obeying many laws.
Three lines of plaintext:
obsolete signature form
replaced by JPEGs.
Yeah I'm incredibly disappointed with Obama but there is no fucking way in hell any of those Republicans electable. Seriously, try to imagine Herman Cain running this country. It just doesn't compute, brains literally don't work that way.
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OtakuD00DCan I hit the exploding rocks?San DiegoRegistered Userregular
Well, if you vote for a Democrat, you're telling him his current positions are what he needs to get elected.
If you vote against/don't vote for a Democrat, you're telling him that he needs to move more to the Right to get voters.
At this point, I'm pretty sure the only way to move a Democrat Left is to find some magical group of non-voters and get them all voting for a 3rd Left Party in enough numbers that the Democrat is enticed to try and capture that demographic.
Anyone got any large magical non-voters and a plan to get them to the polls in a desperate and failed bid that will probably leave them disenfranchised anyway?
With the way the electoral college is set up, doing that is a complete waste of time. The most we can do is find some good Left Democrats and vote them into congress. When enough of them get in there, then we can get things going. They exist. We just need to vote enough of them in to start changing things.
Well, if you vote for a Democrat, you're telling him his current positions are what he needs to get elected.
If you want to move the Democrats to the left you have to give the left critical mass so that they can't lose to the republicans if the left-leaning vote is split evenly between two candidates. If 67%+ people vote for one of two leftist candidates, then you can avoid getting the exact opposite of what you wanted.
Until you can guarantee that the right can't win you're going to have a bugger of a time going left without risking going right.
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
I'd like to see people start realizing third parties are a viable choice, but I guess that's a century too soon.
Also, I respect the movement, but I have a hard time honestly seeing what this is going to accomplish in the long run. The collaborative efforts that law enforcement are bringing against these protests is more than a little scary.
I'd like to see people start realizing third parties are a viable choice, but I guess that's a century too soon.
Also, I respect the movement, but I have a hard time honestly seeing what this is going to accomplish in the long run. The collaborative efforts that law enforcement are bringing against these protests is more than a little scary.
Actually in your electoral system they're not. They are completely worthless until one side is winning by large margins.
Get rid of first past the post, replace with preferences, and then they'll be viable.
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
Yeah, sad but true. My vote in 2004 was pretty much a wasted one, but I had to try. (I voted Nader at the time, because he was the only one who sounded like he was talking from personal convictions.)
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Firstly, you have confused equality with equity. Nobody has said that all students should perform at the same academic level; the point is that they have the same OPPORTUNITY to.
Secondly, just because we can't achieve total and complete equity doesn't mean we should therefore abandon all attempts to achieve any semblance of it.
If anything we need tiered classes for students that are smarter. Throwing smarter kids in with the dumber kids isn't going to bring the whole class up, I mean I guess average scores will show improvement but most of the time the dumb kids end up dragging the smart kids down. Doubly so if it's a group project not graded individually.
I spent a lot of time with teachers after school because my grades would be brought done by group work. I was a weird kid in grammar school.
Isn't the difference between a charter school and a private school that charter schools get goverment money?
Except that religious groups would still be able to provide as much religious instruction as they wanted, there just wouldn't be a religious exemption to public school attendance, much like there isn't a religious exemption for individuals when it comes to paying taxes or obeying other laws.
I still think abolishing homeschooling and private schools is complete overkill, and would have definite Constitutional issues, but those issues are not as cut and dry as you suggest.
This, however, does. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/18/occupy-wall-street-crackdowns_n_1101685.html?ref=new-york
Also, should I go ahead and take up the task of making an awesome OP?
Edit: Fuck. I'm jailed. I think I get out tomorrow though.
I would take anything the Examiner reports with a wheelbarrow of salt.
They're notorious for making shit up and reporting it from "anonymous sources"
edit: just to be clear, I'm entirely faithful that it was a coordinated effort. Entirely. And that sucks
I'm just saying the Examiner is full of shit.
This already exists today. You get free legal representation...but not in civil court, which is where most companies operate today. You also have the right to free speech...but no right to counteract barriers of cost to make speech effective and no right to make use of the right to assemble to make that speech more effective.
People could donate land, desks, materials, time, etc? Parents are free to instruct their kids and do this today. Merely making such instruction a strictly voluntary institution that can't collect fees or pay wages allows it to be funded strictly on the belief that it is necessary and important.
All you're doing is allowing people to pick and chose what they want. The issue right now is public schools both suffer problems of funding, mismanagement of funds (cutting art classes to buy a new football stadium), and problems of process (not trying to allow divergent and new methods of education, enforcing strict standardization, etc.)
Allowing voluntary religious schools ensures that children can still receive religious instruction just as freely as public education but allows the quality of either institution to speak for itself. If you want to argue that nobody would ever donate that much that freely to just form a voluntary religious school, well that begs the question of why no one would feel it was that important? Can a strong case not be made for religious inclusion in public schools? I mean if you want to teach your kids that the earth is only 6,000 years old that's fine, but the problem comes when you're using unequal economic incentives to create circumstances where you're indoctrinating youth in things that may or may not be useful. It's your right to teach your kids whatever you want, it is not however your right as a parent to force them to believe whatever you want them to believe. If your ideas are not at all convincing and require an entire institutional process of indoctrination that requires high levels of economic incentives to function at all, then that makes a strong case that you're using that money as a coercive tool to support a bankrupt idea or ideology that would go extinct in an equal marketplace of ideas.
Obviously I wouldn't do the above right away, not until we'd figured out better methods of education. But in the long run allowing private schooling of any kind is a tool asking to be gamed by the wealthy to deny quality education to others. Even allowing a religious exemption will simply allow the wealthy an avenue to game the system by presenting quasi-religious functions but then later instructing the children not to believe in it, to merely present the image of religious belief to others.
What's hilarious though, is consider this. Say it WERE definitively true, I can bet you a lot of the people that were cheering the parks getting cleared out, will then denounce the brutality the moment a portion of that blame can be thrown at Obama's administration.
When asking yourself what a nutter would do, ask yourself this. Which would be considerably more painful for them? To agree that the entire group were not dirty, stink-filled, commie-hippies that hate America? Or making a lone exemption for a good use of the patriot act, signed by bush, and the DHS, created by Bush?
They could easily pin the actions of the police on Obama without giving any validation to Occupy. Obama Orders Police Brutality? Too good of an opportunity for them to pass up. I think you're underestimating the ability of certain ideological groups to twist absolutely everything into a glorification of themselves and their policies, or an attack on opponents.
Well, maybe it's just me, but I think it's easier to say that this happened independent of Obama (See: Osama's Death) rather than ignore that it was used to justify vicious beatdowns on people they would love to see suffer vicious beatdowns over and over again.
http://gawker.com/5860148/wall-street-protesters-now-occupy-an-office
Well the DHS and FBI involvement is questionable, but we do have reports that mayors of many occupy cities were on conference calls just before the violent evictions began. At the very least it suggests the mayors wanted the protests on Oakland, NY, San Francisco, Portland, etc. Gone, post haste, and were coordinating ways to get it done.
Well its not like the OWS people were quiet about their aspirations either. Never blame on conspiracy what can be attributed to stupidity.
pleasepaypreacher.net
It was stupidity that they organized it the way they did? I don't think the word conspiracy even applies here, folks from various cities have openly admitted that there was some group mayoral effort to coordinate this.
Incredible.
http://whatinthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com/
Do you want the country to go to hell, hippies? Let me break it down for you-
Vote for Obama=
The Left gets some of what it wants. Certainly better than nothing. DOMA and the healthcare act have been alright so far.
Vote for Ron Paul/Mitt Romney/don't vote at all because all the politicians are the same, man=
The Right gets what it wants. And not the good Nixon/Eisenhower Right either. The crazy people with signs you see on the sidewalk that hate "the queers". That Right.
Yes, it sucks that Obama isn't the second coming of FDR, and on occasion he's had less spine than a bowl of oatmeal. However, he's done a good job so far, certainly on foreign policy.
Here is some
OWS news
Can you provide a guaranteed method to Get Obama to go far left? By guarantee I mean a way that would offer him a choice so unpalatable, much like left voters are feeling now, that if he were not to go farther left he would be so profoundly harmed in some way as to make it unthinkable for him to do otherwise? Much like would happen if "The Republican" won? Because if not there's really not an even-handed way to offer people what they want. They're being told to hold their nose and vote as if it will guarantee a difference.
Talking about working our way up from the local races is great, but that's also making a huge amount of assumptions and projections into the future about the ability to create a generational shift in the Democratic party. We know how bad it is to even project the budget out more than what, five years? How can you tell people with a straight face to do this as if it will really produce the results they want? That doesn't mean they shouldn't vote, but without offering voters a way to guarantee that what they do will assuredly matter in making things the way they want it's really hard to sell them on Obama at this point.
DADT not DOMA. DOMA is the next one they are going after.
Why are you assuming I want Obama to go far left? I'm quite happy with the way he is, except he's a wuss on certain things.
So no, I'm afraid I cannot offer a way to move our president Left.
And "it's really hard to sell them on Obama"? The president does some Left things. He does some of them. You want him to do all left things. He's not going to do this. He's not that kind of guy.
However, the Right will do no left things. None. Zero. Zip. Their primary candidates (with the possible exception of Huntsman) are all insane in one way or another.
Voting for a third party is lunacy- given the way our election narratives are framed and debates run, you'd be luck to end up with ten thousand people voting your way.
Maybe if you want Obama to be more left-ish you should join OWS and help swing politics back toward the center? I don't know.
This isn't the place for this though, but I'd be happy to talk with you via PM.
edit- Thank you shryke! My bad.
Anyway, not my argument I was just pointing out what I thought was a strategic misstep, sorry if I misunderstood the intent of your post. ^_^;;
If you vote against/don't vote for a Democrat, you're telling him that he needs to move more to the Right to get voters.
At this point, I'm pretty sure the only way to move a Democrat Left is to find some magical group of non-voters and get them all voting for a 3rd Left Party in enough numbers that the Democrat is enticed to try and capture that demographic.
Anyone got any large magical non-voters and a plan to get them to the polls in a desperate and failed bid that will probably leave them disenfranchised anyway?
Guarantee? George W. Bush was a moderate candidate whose specialty was being a milquetoast fundy instead of Al Gore's Milquetoast environmentalist. A lot of people didn't vote because they didn't CARE about the election or voted green to needle Gore for not being leftist enough. The only reason Dubya became Eliphas the Inheritor is because first, the normally unreliable evangelical vote really turned out for him and won him Florida, and second, 9/11 turned him from barely-relevant Reagan wannabe to a dark combination of Reagan's dire incompetence and Nixon's psychotic power-trips. There are no guarantees, except that not voting guarantees you will goosing lose.
Try to remember the deck is pretty freaking stacked. The media's corporate, unions have been withering and dying for years, major donors are almost all supply-siders, and in terms of social progress quite a lot of progress has been made, even if we're still lagging and dragging.
You want more? Here's a tactic that's risky but might reward: Undermine pulpit freedom Sunday. Fighting Fundies are flaunting the law, try and get the ACLU to attack their tax exemptions. It would mean bad press by the liars of Fox News, but it would also hurt the pulpit campaigning.
Actually what you need to do is send letters, vote in primaries and do all that other stuff that politicians look at to decide what their position on issues should be.
Vote for him. At the end of the day what matters is the median voter. If you're to the left of the median voter and not voting then your act of not voting moves the median voter to the right.
Seems kind of like a first-mover problem though, voters on the left don't feel like anyone they vote for will represent them if they vote, so they stay home. Just because Obama's been moderately left in office doesn't work as a compelling case because that's what they expected him to be anyway. So especially given 2008 turnout it feels like "Yeah, that's the best we can get? Why should I go, again?"
Which admittedly Obama could've really railed against congress and his luke-warm treatment of Occupy feels really slimy and politically motivated (he's espousing populist stuff, but won't embrace a populist movement and he also condemns brutality abroad yet remains silent about police brutality at home?) So it feels like as a President, especially one who's such a good orator, could've really wielded the bully Pulpit better during his term and made more addresses to the public even though there wasn't much in the way of policy he could've affected.
It creates this chasm of belief, to cross it there needs to be a definitive argument that voting will guarantee action, because right now I think the left feels like he'll still play to the same center when back in office even if he might turn up his populism on the campaign trail.
Actually, yes, there is a religious exemption for individuals when it comes to obeying many laws.
obsolete signature form
replaced by JPEGs.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2011/nov/18/occupy-oakland-veteran-beaten-police-video
If you want to move the Democrats to the left you have to give the left critical mass so that they can't lose to the republicans if the left-leaning vote is split evenly between two candidates. If 67%+ people vote for one of two leftist candidates, then you can avoid getting the exact opposite of what you wanted.
Until you can guarantee that the right can't win you're going to have a bugger of a time going left without risking going right.
Also, I respect the movement, but I have a hard time honestly seeing what this is going to accomplish in the long run. The collaborative efforts that law enforcement are bringing against these protests is more than a little scary.
Actually in your electoral system they're not. They are completely worthless until one side is winning by large margins.
Get rid of first past the post, replace with preferences, and then they'll be viable.