US Politics, March 2018: Why do people leave the White House for good?

Not only are they underpaid, undervalued, and otherwise shit on by the GOP (I mean, they're shit on in blue states, too), the GOP is constantly angling to reduce their power, compel them to teach bullshit, and fund private alternative schools that further undercut their value and power. I heard a story on the radio about how HUD folks were demoralized to begin with, and the hiring of someone like Ben Carson just made them feel so much worse. I can only image that DeVos has done to teacher moral.

Anyway, good luck replacing 20,000 teachers in West Virginia. I hope the entire state of Oklahoma strikes, too. And probably Kansas, too. And likely Mississippi. And any place where the GOP has fucked with the schools so much that the fed-up teachers have no recourse.

Republican orthodoxy is, and has been for as long as I've been alive, that anybody who gets directly paid from the state coffers is a subhuman leech, unless they wear a uniform (cops, firefighters, the troops). Not contractors, btw - contractors are real people because a publicly traded company gets to skim off the payments from the state coffers first, THEN the workers get paid. That's why charter schools are good.

That WV Teacher Trike gofundme: $125,060 of $50,000 goal

xp I mean they've been saying this for 4+ decades. I don't get how anybody doesn't understand this is what they believe. It is as fundamental to their platform as criminalizing abortion.

Because too many parents treat public school like glorified daycare and take for granted the work teachers do? Even though the vast majority of those parents benefited from public school teachers themselves? Out of sight, out of mind. "My Timmy is doing fine, fuck your kid, if they don't like it they can move."

I meant the broader aspect of it, i.e. civil service should not be a job at all unless it's conducted by a privately owned company.

also, teachers are apparently simultaneously lazy and worthless, but also would-be heroes if someone would only give them a gun

(also, a significant chunk of Republican voters never benefited from public school teachers themselves and would be horrified of the thought of their kid ever going to public school, but are yet somehow experts on it and how it should be run)

a significant chunk of Republican voters never benefited from public school teachers themselves

what

a lot of Republican voters are rich people who either went to private schools or religious/Catholic schools that basically function as private schools

or not even "rich" per se, just upper-middle-class

I don't think you can support that with any kind of reliable statistics, I'm sorry

also a lot of people are so dumb that they don't realize how poor their evaluations of teachers are

Republican orthodoxy is, and has been for as long as I've been alive, that anybody who gets directly paid from the state coffers is a subhuman leech, unless they wear a uniform (cops, firefighters, the troops).

do they even care about firefighters though

I mean, school vouchers and similar programs effectively siphoning resources that would otherwise go toward public schools toward private schools are a plank of the Republican platform, which would not be the case if they didn't go there

your reasoning is that they wouldn't support privatizing schools if they hadn't been to private schools?

the GOP would hand the DoD to the likes of Erik Prince if the Army itself wasn't standing in the way, because no bureaucracy can be trusted with our precious debt, according to capital dogma

the enrollment in private schools tends to be A) religious and B) wealthy (stats: https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2015/demo/school-enrollment/2015-cps.html), which are two demographics that skew Republican. I don't know why this is controversial

I'd like to believe that at least someone stood up and booed when Trump "joked" about becoming president for life.

At this rate, Trump won't just be 45th of 45, but 90th of 90, if this nation lasts that long.

(the latter stat breaks it down by income level; religion is more complicated because not everyone who attends, say, Catholic schools is Catholic, although tuition is generally higher in the that case)

I disagree with the phrase "significant chunk" - I don't think it's that meaningful of a proportion. Most of them never did ten minutes in uniform but god forbid you discuss cutting the defense budget at one of their watering holes.

I mean, school vouchers and similar programs effectively siphoning resources that would otherwise go toward public schools toward private schools are a plank of the Republican platform, which would not be the case if they didn't go there

― algorithm is a dancer (katherine)

i think the goal is to please the small segment of people who own the private/charter schools (or subcontractors who benefit from them), not to please whatever amount of conservative voters have children who attend such schools.

i admit that opinion is mainly just because i view that as the primary goal of pretty much any conservative policy, even though it's never the stated goal

so the Xi comment...here's how it will play out

"The President was obviously joking"
"The President's comments were taken out of context"
"Though you know, the President is not wrong. We've been led afoul by some bad politicians. And the 22nd amendment was a bad piece of legislation, and even Barney Frank has advocated for its repeal"
"It would be easier to drain the swamp if there weren't so many redundant politicians gumming up the works - why not consolidate and streamline into one legislative body which just happens to be one person?"
"KNEEL BEFORE YOUR KING"

*trump chokes on KFC chicken bone and shuffles off this mortal coil*

the WV strike seems to have a decent chance of spreading to oklahoma

http://www.tulsaworld.com/homepagelatest/statewide-teacher-walkout-the-idea-is-gaining-traction-online-and/article_11c81ce5-e2fe-5051-be0d-bf7c8441bc3c.html

The Oklahoma teacher’s strike Facebook page now has more than 40,000 members. They’re fired up. pic.twitter.com/1e6h1bVRNO

— Matt Pearce 🦅 (@mattdpearce) March 4, 2018

Making it illegal to strike is yet another thing these fucked up GOP states have done to hurt their teachers.

who else in this country goes 10 years without a raise? Oh, I don't know, people who work at Veterans Affairs

El Tomboto: the South is weird. Here in New Orleans, anyone with remotely middle class aspirations, including plumbers and electricians, sends their kids to private schools. And without middle-class participation, the public schools are poorly funded and poorly administered. After some decades of this, in which even the physical state of the schools would embarrass a banana republic, the State took over running the local school district. The modern Republican party is dominated by politicians from the old South, where this is often the norm. It was totally foreign to my experience in a Texan suburb, and still further from the state of public schools saner parts of the country, like Minnesota or New York.

private schools should be illegal

i always feel very alienated when these things come up. there weren't any private secondary schools where i grew up (SE MO) (although there was a catholic elementary school). we all went to public school. it took me a long time to even figure out what people were talking about when they talked about private schools.

er, alienated is too strong. i guess i just don't how common it is to be in an area with no private option? seems like everyone else is always talking about private schools.

I didn't even know we had private schools where I grew up until I met one of my best friends in junior year, after she had been kicked out of her private school.

Re: Oklahoma, here's a quote for you, from a Tulsa teacher:

"If we strike, I double dare you to fire us. We'll just go to Texas; they're looking for new teachers," said Cagle.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/politics/texas/article/Record-885K-vote-in-Texas-primaries-12725903.php

Texas voters didn’t just set a record for early voting in a primary during a non-presidential election.

They obliterated the records.

More than 885,000 people voted in the Texas primaries through early voting or by mail in the state’s most populous counties, according the the Texas Secretary of State’s office. That is a 50 percent increase from the previous high of 592,000 in 2014, the last election cycle with the governor on the ballot.

For the first time in a decade more people voted in a Democratic Primary than a Republican Primary in the state’s largest counties. The last time Democrats beat Republicans was in 2008 when the battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton drove record turnout in the primary battle for president.

Nice.

I had to unfollow Ned on twitter for unironically RTing Joy Ann Reid, an unforgivable offense given what she tweeted recently about the striking WVA teachers

(still <3 u ned)

I dunno how many ILXers are products of private religious education (worth a thread?), but I am, and you can't understand the contempt that parents of those children have for The System.

commuting to private schools isn't unheard of either

OK I give you guys are right 49% of america went to private school

Good news about the Texas primaries! Hopefully they roll it into something meaningful in November. A few days before the primary, the strongly-worded nervous text of a 11th-hour GOP fundraising email was circulating on lefty FBs & Twitters. Heat is being felt, but I'm not ready to gloat.

Abbott is a lock. I don't even know who's really the front-runner against him, some lesbian ex-sheriff from DFW I think?. Good luck with that. FWIW, Abbot's ads focus on the basic achievements (business, schools) within Texas during the last several years. Seems like he won a coin toss, BECAUSE...

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick is doubling down on Trump. Two-Scoops' name is invoked as frequently (if not more) than Patrick's own. The Wall, Banning Sanctuary Cities, Liberal Agenda(s) are all discussed. Not sure who's running against him either, but he's really put out the ammo to any takers.*

I do feel Ted Cruz has something to worry about. Beto O'Rourke is really catching fire with progressives, and above all he was the reason Dem turnout was so high this time. Cruz still has the strength of running as a Republican in Texas, with the added bonus of being on the ticket alongside Abbot & Patrick. But what was once a cakewalk is now more like being the caboose to a partially loaded coal car and a steam engine. To my knowledge, Cruz hasn't started running ads.

*In a related story, Land Commissioner George P. Bush (aka "The Brown One") has been running ads boasting of an endorsement from Donald Trump (wait for it) JR. Said endorsement is a Tweet saying something along the lines "George P. Bush really helped us in Texas!". Yeah. Although I now read Two-Scoops has offered his own endorsement, possibly just to show up Jr. again.

you can't understand the contempt that parents of those children have for The System

counterpoint: those parents cannot understand the contempt that I hold for them

today I learned that when I said "a significant chunk of Republicans" I secretly meant every Republican in the world from now back to Abraham Lincoln

he was the first one, you know

freed the slaves

xposts

There are 33,619 private schools in the United States, serving 5.4 million PK-12 students. Private schools account for 25 percent of the nation's schools and enroll 10 percent of all PK-12 students. Most private school students (79 percent) attend religiously-affiliated schools

the URL has "facts" in it so you know it's right
http://www.capenet.org/facts.html

I do feel Ted Cruz has something to worry about.

He doesn't. Beto's awesome. Inspiring. He has zero chance of beating Cruz. I'm going to let myself get my hopes up anyway, because what could feel worse than what happened in 2016? Everyone hates Cruz. But Rs vote for the R, not the person. Soon, I expect to hear a bunch of Democrats start tearing O'Rourke apart, talking themselves into not voting for him. My prediction is Cruz beats O'Rourke 52-45. Close, for Texas.

...and Cruz is also quite possibly the luckiest motherfucker who ever lived.

well, yeah, he got to live in Texas

As in th UK, it’s not about the percentage of the general population who pay for/attend private schools, it’s about the percentage of the group who set policy/generally run things being privately educated (and how that affects attitudes toward and the shaping of public schools). The latter percentage is MUCH higher than that of gen pop, and the ideologues running down public schooling favour privatisation of education.

the URL has "facts" in it so you know it's right
http://www.capenet.org/facts.html

gonna not click on this and assume it's a Cape of Good Hope FAQ

latepass but

people don't buy american cars outside the US because, outside the amazon reviews for household gadgets written by people who are worried about "toxins", "made in the USA" is not a synonym for quality and hasn't been for 50+ years.

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Sunday, March 4, 2018 8:52 AM (eleven hours ago)

you guys actually bother to ever look stuff up?

This statistic illustrates the number of cars sold by Ford in the United Kingdom (UK) between January 2014 and December 2017. With more than 333 thousand units sold, Ford was the biggest car seller in the UK in 2015.In 2016, the sales numbers dropped from the previous year but Ford continued to perform as one of the strongest car manufacturer in the UK, selling more than 318 thousand cars etc etc

― It's not delivery, it's Adorno! (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Sunday, March 4, 2018 9:15 AM (eleven hours ago)

There are a couple of private schools where I live (which has a good school system and in particular a stellar high school and super high taxes that fund it) and the handful of nutballs who pay the high taxes and *still* send their kids to private school seem to do it for good (or at least, not terrible) reasons. I have two friends we've known since (Montessori) pre-school who helped establish further elementary classes there, so their kids have continued on in Montessori rather than pop into the public system (curiously, both have boys already in public middle school, so we get to watch the experiment play out in real time). The school is great and we loved it, too, and I'll be first to concede they are getting a great education, but the numbers bear out that when a private school or otherwise better prepared kid enters the public high school (which is their plan, since the high school is great), the numbers soon even themselves out. Other people we know going to private school, there's one family who felt their public school wasn't attentive to their gifted and talented super kid, so they send him to a neighboring village for a progressive private school. Same with friends with a transgender daughter, who tried in public school (where their other two kids are) but couldn't make it work out and decided to send her to the same very progressive private school, which is understandable.

The key is that all these folks are sucking it up and still paying the super high taxes while sending their kids out of the system, which really actually benefits the community, since the kids still live and participate here and the parents pay into a system they don't really use. On the other hand are some parents pushing lately for a charter school, which is some bullshit, because they think their kids are special enough that they need their own separate school (for various reasons, not all ill-intentioned) that nonetheless siphons public funds. Fuck that.

We have a Catholic school or two around here, but my understanding is that a lot of their students come from nearby elsewhere, and not where I live. I don't think I know anyone who sends their kids to Catholic school.