Ten oz

To my knowledge I have never stated, implied, alluded to, or advanced such a notion. It is possible I may have posted something about mass shootings specifically. You either have me confused with another poster or read something I posted out of context. Crime is down and that is a statistical fact I am well aware of.

I live in Washington DC. I spent most of my adult life living in Oakland CA and San Diego Ca but grew up in a San Francisco CA surburbs.I would say about 60% of more of all my classmates were asian (Indian, Chinese, and Korean mostly). As an adult I have preferred living in large Metro areas. I grew up watching my parents commute multiple hours a day and that just isn't for me. Currently I am able to walk to work and that is a beautiful thing. In Oakalnd and San Diego I use to bike to work which was also really awesome. Yes, Oakland, San Diego, and DC all have "bad" areas. However they all also have average areas, upscale areas, and out of this world wealthy areas. As a general rule I have found that crime is seldom a random thing. More often than not people are murdered, molested, robbed, and etc by people they know. The notion that there are nurmerous neighborhoods around the country that one cannot safely navigate is a bit of fiction. Unless one is involved in nefarious activity they are unlikely to be assualted merely walking down the street. Sadly most women are victimized by a spouse, boyfriend, family member etc. Most children are abused by a parent, family member, or etc. People who believe Trump's rhetoric project their fears outward too much. Crime is current very low. Statistically low as it has been on over 6 decades. Murder was double the rate it currently is today when I was in grade school. When you say there is "still a lot of crime"; relative to what? The Robbery rate per 100k people in 1990 was 250 per and now it is down to 100 per. Significantly better! The murder rate too has been cut is half. It is important to keep in mind crime will never be zero. There will always be crime for politicians to demagogue. http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm Fear of immigrants and fear of big city crime shouldn't shape the choices we make in educating the next generation.

*the following is what I though of while reading your post and not something I am implying you alluded to. Urban sprawl and the focus on class size as an educational benchmark has exacerbated the problem. As mentioned early in the thread the town I grew up in had 4 High Schools. Five if we include the adult school. None of the schools were very nice facility wise. Portable units on fields, dirt tracks, gravel parking lots, etc. The city had to divide up its money. There were 3 towns surrounding mine all with roughly the same population but a little older. Their schools hadn't been built up as a result of real estate market boon and culture shifting sprawl. Despite the town I lived in having higher home values (thus higher property taxes to pay for schools) the schools in the surrounding towns were far larger and facilities far superior. Rather than 4 high school they all had one each. The cities could provide all resources to them. Larger student population with larger class sizes , yes, but they also had real science labs, all weather tracks, indoor pools, brick & motar class rooms, and etc. Of course that isn't always true. In many areas too many families have left the metro and that hurts the larger schools. A school structured fo a few thousand doesn't operate well, especially budget wise, with half the amount of student on campus. I think class size as a gold standard hasn't served us well. When families leave metro areas in search for smaller schools with smaller class sizes it lessons the money everyone has to go around. A high school of a couple hundred students unless centered in a very affluent area simply isn't going to have the money to build the facilities that a school of a few thousand would. Meanwhile a school of a few thousand is never going to be able to reduce the class size to the levels a school with just a couple hundred can. Parents are trading away educational infastructure for the warm and fuzzies they get from schools where they know every faculty member by name. There are countries with higher average class size that out perform us and there are others which don't. I think to an extent many have used class size as both a scape goat and silver bullet. When I was real estate shopping last year every open house my wife and I attended there was information available on the the teacher to student ratio of the surrounding schools. It is a marketing point for real estate. https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/11/class-size-around-the-world/ Of course the rhetoric of our current govt isn't helping. Trump promotes an image of a crime riddled country where immigrants and gang members are hiding in the bushes outside of school waiting to eat children. Rape, murder, and drugs in the world parents muust navigate to raise their chilren. Who wouldn't want private schools and more school choice in a U.S. where crime is worse than ever and people can't even walk down the street without being shot. We are "basically like a 3rd world country" the President said. Keeping ones children alive and away from "Mexicans Rapists", "Muslims Terrorists", and "The Blacks" takes priority over learning biology, geometry, civics, and etc. That is the environment Betsy Devos and her policies are rooted in. We can mock them but they are impacting the decisions being made.

That is a theory which even your link pionts out have been rejected by College officials. I don't see how it is helpful to this conversation? I am sure you are familiar with studies that show that facualty take long to respond to emails sent by students with ethic seeming names. Such material is probably better suited for its own thread. It this case the matter is not nearly as straight for as you presented it. In general this this is a bit futile less we address actual policy proposals less you want this to be a perfect world thread where we day dream about best case situations to distract us from the reality of Betsy Devos.

I agree but we are currently moving in the opposite direction sadly.

Which in one of the reasons why we should work to have no underfunded schools. In addition to that childcare for working parents is a serious issue that various politicians flirt with tackling but never seem to get it on to the main stage of actionable policies.

I wasn't referring to college nor was I saying parents shouldn't do all they can for their kids. Rather I was saying we, as a society, should admit that how much is done for kids matters and try to have basic standards for all. As for the handicaps you are describing I don't know what you are talking about. Obviously private institutions have different policies and different states have different policies. Do you have a citiation for what you are specific referencing?

Over 4 trillion and at about 3.7 trillion of it is all stuff like DOD, Soc Sec, and medicare which no wants to cut. Meanwhile the EPA accounts for less than half of a single percent of the budget. Cuts aren't going to get it done. We need more money. We pay over 400 billion in interest towards debt per year and every deficit we run only increases that amount. People's refusal/displeasure with paying taxes often complicates their own lives and makes conditions less desirable. I was raised in California. I currently live in Washington DC. Everytime I leave the Capital and venture out I am amazed by all the tolls on the highway. It is somethings feeways in cali don't have. There are tolls physically on the highways and depending on the highway tolls at every exit. The infastructure for the tolls is enormous. It must cost a significant percentage of the toll money collected just to finance to system of collection. It would be far more simple for the state to just tax citizens and pay for the darn roads than it is to interrupt traffic and maintain an industry of toll collection. Just taxing people via their pay would be more cost effective and it would improve traffic. Instead everyone is stuck stop for tolls and coughing up cash as they go. Far more inconvenient and for worse service. I guess some would argue that it is a jobs program but the effort put into toll collection could easily be redirected to road improvement. Believe me, Virgina and Maryland could have much nicer roads. That is just one example. We see it all over another example would be cities with police dept. that have aggressive citation writing campaigns because it is revenue source. It would be easier if we could all just pony up they money via taxes instead of constantly pushing for tax cuts which result in govts just find some other way to get the money they need to function.

They get tax credits for sending their kids to private schools.

In this case choice as it has been applied is very self serving. Not just that but it is cynical and contradictory towards the principle most share with regards to everyone being able to succeed on their own efforts. We say success is about hardwork and personal effort yet many parents bend over backwards to get their child every possible benefit and perk while purposely pushing back other peoples children. Despite hardwork and anybody can do anything rhetoric many parents by their actions seem convinced that there are only so many "good" jobs to go around and the competition of capitalism starts at preschool. We do not have a nation of citizens who mutually desire a national core curriculum that services everybody. Many prefer the system we have that allows one to pay for better, segregate out undesirables, and prompt ones self interests above that of others.

I meant deficit spending (borrowing) is more expensive; it must be paid back with interest. Better to just tax the amount needed.

One big problem I see with nearly all tax proposals is tha the numbers are arbitrary. Come up with because they seem fair. The country already has responsibilities. We already have bills. Taxes are where we get the money to pay those bills. We can't just arbitrarily round off tax numbers to make them seem more suitable. Any change in tax policy needs to still produce the minimum dollars to allow our govt to pay its bills. Those are tough numbers to crunch and people haven't been willing to crunch them which is one of the reasons why we perpetually run deficits which ultimately are more expensive.

You haven't purposed a new party much as listed policy positions. Each of those positions can be debated (most are) within the structure we currently have. We already have politicians on both side who only want military use for protection and nothing else. Already want to cut DOD's budget, change tax rates, and etc. All of our systems (education, military, infastructure, etc) has been built by our 2 party system. I think a new political party needs to re-imagine those things to an extent and not merely snip around the edges as outlined by the major parties. Currently the Libertarian party does that. Not that I agree with their platform, I do not! But they do take a different appoarch.

I am not a parent. I do not have grade school children. My view is from the outside looking in and not vice versa. The biggest problem I see with K-12 education is parental interference over subject matter. You have parents who don't feel sex education should be taught, that evolution must be countered by intelligent design, teach a foriegn lanuage is unpatriotic, history promotes white guilt, and etc, etc, etc. There is not universal standard accepted that our educational systems have to build a syllabus for each grade level from. Too many parents are more concerned with controlling what their children know than they are with the extent that their children know. No amount of standardized testing can get around the daily manipulation parents have over the system. Parents also manipulate the money. Parents seek out neighborhoods that have "better" schools. Even going to city and county meets to have zoning altered to include or exclude specific addresses. This manipulation impacts home values and the amount of money individual schools receive. For example, the town I grew up in had 4 High Schools. All 4 were basically the same. They were all cookie cutter builds and basically identical is size and etc. One of the 4 was in a very well to do neighborhood. That school had the least number of students. During the housing collaspe the city needed money so it decided to close the High School in the well to do neighborhood. It made sense to close that one because it had the least students. The parents complained to the school board. After a protracted fight the city agreed to close the High School in the worst part of town and leave the well to do school. Initially the claim was that the half empty school in the nicer neighborhood had better facilities and would be better at accommodating new students. Then the following year th city, at the request of residents in the neighborhood, rezoned the commercial sections around the well to do High School. That created vehical restrictions, limited thru traffic ability, and commercial vehicle (buses) access around the school. As a result the city was unable to move any additional student to the school. So the other High Schools in town had to take all the overflow students from the close school. It was a dirty trick. They kept their school on the promise they'd take students and then logistically made it impossible to take new students once the school was off the chopping block. So to improve education, in my opinion, we need to change the culture of parenting.

We have a 2 party system but both parties evolve. Obama's policies were more in line with Nixon and Eisenhower than are Trump's despite party affiliation. To create new parties what groups have done is sought to hijack/exploit one of the 2 major parties. The Tea Party (faux grassroots movement) successfully took over the Republican Party. There success has been root in singular isues that sharply divide people based on identity racial and religious. Reagan gave amnesty to millions of undocumented immigrants, Bush 43 sought to pass a guess worker program, but now Trump wants to deport millions and build a wall. We also saw it on the left why a strong group supporting Sanders (himself a registered independent) sought to take the nomination and shape the direction of the party. How success their efforts were or will be has yet to be determined. It has been bad for the Country and the 2 parties inmy opinion. Because rather than revitalizing political debate with fresh ideas the attempts to reshape the parties over time have made the parties less diverse. The republican party increasingly serves an ever shrinking group of people (white christian males with money) while the Democratic party is being pulled into the false choice of either being universally moderate or transformationally progressive. So the answer to your question is that people have to first stop going for the homerun of taking over one of the 2 mojor parties. A "new" party should be new and not merely an attempt to reband something else. That way the party is free to bring in new ideas. It order to make that possible people need to feel they aren't throwing away voting for something other than the two major parties. We need rank choice voting. Rather than voting for a single candidate one ranks a couple. If a person's #1 pick doesn't win their vote goes to their #2 choice. If people could exercise choice without it merely being a protest vote I think new party would spring up.

I am of the belief that it is sport. Most Deniers, the anti abortion crowd, and etc are knowing just arguing for the sake of gamesmanship. Trump is a perfect example. Do you believe any of his supporters by the line "no one loves the Bible more than me"? They don't care. Many of them are closet athiests too. It is about cultural identity for many of them. Remember the poster in this thread, Tar. He know climate change was real, wasn't particularly religious, and understood Trump was a liar but voted Trump anyway. He made no bones about. Proud said he was voted Trump cause he was voting his team. They are lonesome people in my opinion.

Many Conservatives seem to have huge egos. Many assume they will be wealthy one day. So by supporting loophole for the rich now they are somehow priming the pump for when they finally make their first 10 million.

It will only get worse. Groups are now creating personality profiles of people via social media and using their personalized feeds to micro target them with unique news. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/opinion/the-secret-agenda-of-a-facebook-quiz.amp.html Trump's campaign used this during the Election. They would run stories on people's Facebook pages micro targeting them personally with ads tailor made for their personality profile. Ads other people didn't see. That is partly why he is able to say crazy made up this GS that leave most scratching our heads but his supporters cheering. They got the memo and we didn't. All media is ala carte now. The majority of society use to all watch the same handful of TV stations. Even when cable tv came with hundreds of channels most people in any given area had similar service. Not today. Now some people have cable while others just use Netflix's, Amazon, Hulu, YouTube, and etc. For news it is worse. Some people what CNN or FoxNews while other just read alerts sent by Facebook, Google, or Yahoo, etc. Very little continuity out there between users. People are creating their own spheres and as a result we all don't have a true north for reality. As for which way different media's "lean", I find that discussion passe. People set their alerts to the news they want, set their smart TVs to the shows they want, and only consume what they choose. No one is watching Rachel Maddow or Sean Hannity because they are the only thing on and as a result being indoctrinated by left or right leaning programs. How a person leans determines what they consume.

Poor people pay much higher percentages of their income towards taxes than wealthy people do our have. 91% seems extreme but the reality is wealthy people don't get the majority of their wealth from salary. They get from returns on property, inheritence, stocks, and etc. They also have tremdous write offs. People often complain about all the various tax laws but the reality is everything that applies to a basic salary earning family would fit in a small handbook. The rest are for wealthy people. And when they can't write off they typically expense to a business. Trump charged his own campaign for office space and rooms at his own properties for example. Wealthy people do not pay anywhere near the advertised top marginal rate. They take their salary and put in directly into long term investment accounts which have separate tax rates (retirement accounts, health insurance accounts, etc) and use their capital gains as spending cash when they can't just expense something. Even before becoming POTUS Trump didn't pay out of pocket for anything. Everything he did we a business expense. If he flew to Miami for the went he'd bill his resort company andjust say he was in Miami for business scouting new locations or whatever. If he went to a fancy diner samething. Just charge it to one of his businesses and then claim the diner was business related because he was considering buying the place or something. And not just Trump all super wealthy people. Us regular type that can only spend our own money and live primarily off our salaries and not inheritence, interest, stocks, etc pay the full marginal rate of the bracket we are in. Additional we pay tax on almost everything we buy and nearly nothing we buy can be written off as a business expense.

I was born and raised in California. Spent most of my life there. Have been heard my whole life about how California is on it way down. How businesses are fleeing the state Because of taxes and regulation. Meanwhile California has continued to have the countries largest economy. More than its largest economy California leads the country is key industries like agriculture, technology, and media. Google, Facebook, Apple, Tesla and etc sure could save money if they moved their campus centers to Montana. They could buy land for nothing, get huge tax breaks, pay all their employees less because the cost of living in so low, and etc. They don't leave however because critical infrastructure and networking is more important. Who built and continues to build the roads that allow Uber, U-Haul, UPS, Domino's Pizza delivery, McDonald's drive thru, Hertz rental, and etc in business? Who builds Airports which support Fed-Ex, Hilton hotels, taxi services, luggage manufacturers (gotten fit the overhead), and etc? Who pays for the water treatment facility that makes development viable for construction companies in the first place? A thriving economy is a team effort and there is no I in team (corny but true). Wealthy people do not get there without help. Would Donald Trump be a wealthy man today without bankruptcies protection? What if the 6 times his companies went bankrupt banks just took his mansions and other businesses as payment? The team protected Trump from those losses. And what is the thanks, Trump feels smart people don't pay taxes (support the team). So how do we get the tax money in a equitable manner; topics questions. I think capital gains tax needs to be changed. The richest 10% amongst us own 90% of all stock. Capital gains tax is significantly lower than income tax. The thought being that it is best to motive people to investigate. However many wealthy people take advantage of this buy accepting stock options rather than salary. We should change to tax. First million in collective capital gains reduced to 10%. That would help people's 401k's, IRA's, Mutual funds, and etc. Everything above a million, regardless of type of account, should be treated as income and taxes at that appropriate rate.

While I agree what you describe should be the mutual point of society it isn't. Slaves and indentured servants were brought to the U.S. and forced to build infrastructure. Roads and railways constructed so that the wealth could come conduct business. Police forces were initially stood up to catch runaway slaves. The whole point on the society on a plantation was to serve the ambitions and culture of the owner. The whole point of society turn of the century industrialist described so well by Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" was to server the wealth and ambitions of the industrialists. Unfortunately most large components of society do little to serve society. Why that is, tough question to answer. There seems to be a certain portion of the population that whether through conditioning or mental condition from birth lack a sympathy, empathy, or the ability to love something which isn't their own. These people aren't driven exclusively by greed but rather a lack of appreciation for others or society as a whole.

WASHINGTON — Senior White House adviser Kellyanne Conway says the government has many options available to conduct surveillance against citizens beyond wiretapping. In an interview with the Bergen County Record published Sunday, Conway had said that people should think beyond wiretapping in terms of monitoring individuals, saying “there are many ways to surveil each other.” Conway told the Bergen County Record, “You can surveil someone through their phones, certainly through their television sets — any number of ways.” Conway told ABC’s “Good Morning America” Monday that “of course I have no evidence for this,” saying that’s why there’s a need for an investigation. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/conway-suggests-surveillance-of-trump-went-beyond-phones/2017/03/13/63308044-07d5-11e7-bd19-fd3afa0f7e2a_story.html?utm_term=.869d63af0751 Trump is over the FBI, CIA, NSA, DIA, and etc. Trump could order an internal review. Trump could fire all the directors of the agency and hire news. Trump could order all programs and surveillance made public. These agencies report to him! Yet he is asking Congress to investigate. His spokes people are claiming TV surveillance and etc. Trump is both accusing his own agencies (and himself by default) of spying on private citizens but then refusing to do anything to stop it while asking Congress to look into it.

All children are tell about the world by those who raise them. Donald Trump's old man indoctrinated him into the real estate and racism. As an adult Donald Trump is responsible for Donald Trump. Adults who choose to read alternative studies funded by the Koch bros and have Sean Hannity explain Science to them through their TVs are willful idiots. Perhaps raised to be willful idiots but willful idiots all the same. Doesn't take a solid background in meteorology to know Sean Hannity isn't a climate expert. Doesn't take a degree in political science to know a man like Scott Pruitt shouldn't be in charge of an agency he disrespects. It is akin to hiring a vegan to create the menu for a steakhouse franchise.

GOP leaders preach to the choir. They don't indoctrinate the innocent.

People who deny climate are obviously invested enough to argue against it. Invested enough to invent alternative theories. Scott Pruitt, for example, is head of the EPA. There are teams of scientists who would spend much time as needed answering every doubt he has. Lack of access or the ability to understand research is not what's preventing Mr. Pruitt from understanding climate change. You ask how many people read peer reviewed research; hopefully everyone that invests the time to argue about the topic in the first place. I am an Electrician. It has taken a long time for me to learn all I know about electricity. That said I did not come into the field as a electricty denier because all answers weren't known to me. I didn't start off saying that until I knew everything it was impossible to know anything. I also deal with people on a regular basis who know nothing about electricity yet accept electrical theory implicitly. Insisting an all or nothing attitude toward understanding an issue only ever applies towards those things we pick and choose to apply it towards. But fine lets say a person can't wrap their minds around how CO2 is transparent to solar radiation but opaque to thermal radiation which causes the atmosphere to absorb and re-radiate some of the thermal radiation. Lets say all greenhouse analogies are too complicated despite centuries of humans using greenhouses. The fact the 9 of the 10 hottest years on record have all happened since the millennial is clear evidence of a trend. The decline in global ice, rising ocean temps, and etc are all clear indicators of a changing climate that doesn't require a person to understand chemistry. There are numerous indicators which are plain to see. Couple that with the fact the experts in the field, globally, all agree climate change is real and one must be very stubborn to insist otherwise.