Saluting Samuel Clemens and Setanta, for the good reminder.
But, but, isent this unamerican. Perhaps we should remove Mark Twains books from all the librarys and have a good old fashioned book burning.
Actually, that was done a long time ago, because the word n!gger appears in his work . . .
It has been a well known fact that "Dixiecrats" have behaved like republicans for decades. Were it not for Huey Long they probably would call themselves Republicans outright.
New Yorkers like the jelly-spined Mr. Koch are not dissimilar.
From where I sit Joe Lieberman is a couple of notches to the right of Jake Javits who called himself a Republican.
The special stumbling block for the Dixiecrat is that somewhere in the memory of the white south is the great depression a the realization that there still is collective interest in human society.
I like the sound of Mr. Kerry speaking of bringing the troops back home. I doubt Bush is going to do as well with absentee ballots among vets as was claimed last time.
It seems to me the whole Bush agenda is lacking in dough. There isn't enough dough left to make pretzels, much less donkey or elephant animal crackers.
Piffka wrote:
The most insidious form is when these Republicans say that they cannot afford to help the "poor" (those lazy bastards) because it would be too costly... they cannot afford to help them have good schools (so let's have vouchers so we can have privatized special schools for ourselves), they cannot afford to help them have medical care. Let's all show our empty pockets while hiding wealth in all sorts of other orifices. Meanwhile, let's be sure and keep those wonderful tax breaks for all sorts of good capitalistic plots, let's allow wealth to flow out of this country and into offshore accounts, let's make laws that benefit people who already have more than enough for themselves to spend and spend and spend.
...
If I saw that these laws were doing good for the benefit of all, I wouldn't mind so much. If I thought trickle-down economics worked, I wouldn't fuss. But it isn't happening. What is happening is that the rich are insulating themselves more and more from the hoi polloi. I detest gated communities. I detest elitism and I detest this manhandled form of "capitalism" which encourages the wealthy to go through no end of gyrations -- tax-wise, ownership-wise, estate-wise, to legally do whatever it take in order to keep their wealth. ...
I believe there are several misperceptions at work here.
Republicans are proposing to empower poor families with public vouchers to enable poor parents to remove their children from failing schools and get a better education to enable them to lead richer lives. They are opposed in this by Democrats who are led by an education elite composed of the NEA, Teachers unions, and professional education bureaucrats who want only more public money and less accountability for their failures.
Republicans are attempting to lower the tax burden on earned income to help people on the lower and middle rungs of the economic ladder keep more of their earnings and produce more for the benefit of all. As Piffka implied the very rich (including Theresa Heinz-Kerry) have their inherited money in tax exempt municipal bonds and other like instruments - they pay almost no tax, and they produce nothing at all. The very rich who do no work tend to be Democrats - and to favor taxes on earned income - wonder why?
Does George live in the US. He dosent seem to know much about life in small towns and the ghetto.
Setanta wrote:
Quote:Actually, that was done a long time ago, because the word n!gger appears in his work . . .
Ain't it the truth........but good ole Sam decided he'd just go to hell.
Can you believe it? I've never read a book more anti-racism than Huckleberry Finn..........some people just don't understand analogy......and it's a sadder world for it.
rabel22 wrote:
Quote:Does George live in the US. He dosent seem to know much about life in small towns and the ghetto.
It's a sad story about georgeob. He cracked his front tooth on his silver spoon and hasn't been able to think straight since.
Talk about jingoism! That tired ole class warfare isn't applicable everywhere you try to insert it, Piffka.
The Republicans have thrown just as much money--if not more --than the Dems at the public educational system. A clue: It hasn't worked!
The Republicans neither said or believed that the voucher system is for an exodus of whites to better schools--it is primarily FOR blacks, who need a way to get their children in better schools. The schools aren't bad for lack of money--but lack of good educators, administrators and teachers, who for whatever reason, accumilate in poorer neighborhoods.
The vouchers are to give them an option. And when the vouchers were instituted, blacks who used them benefitted and praised it. Because Democrats have tried to paint this as another class division, people like you buy it lock, stock and barrel. Why investigate how it has been used, and who it benefitted when you can just parrot the Dem talking point?
Would you like to examine the reality of school vouchers, and how much money has been thrown at education?
No amount of money can fix a school with crappy administrators, teachers who can't or won't teach and no accountability for teachers.
My mother and sister (Teacher of the Year at her school this year) know what the problems are.
You mistake a confidence in my opinion, based on fact with a high horse.
well, what we should do in order to not leave a child behind is have more tests, more paper work for teachers to do........that'll fix it, I'll say
Interesting aside--
It is the PC police, who force on Setanta the same injustice that befell Clemons' books.
Scared to say the word, even when you're referring to it?
The right was guilty the first time--now it is the left.
I don't think it was the left that wanted to ban Huck Finn. I think it was a group of conservative blacks. But I may be wrong.
From the governments own figures, voucher schools are doing worse than public schools. I'll look for the data on that, released about two or three weeks ago
the right and the left remain guilty. status quo equals entrophy. The words are cheap for both sides of the aisle to do nothing but crank out the platitudes. some of my best friends are black (as long as they come in using the backdoor). Airplane liberals are no worse than seen the light conservatives.
Nope. You must've misunderstood what I said.
I said it was the right that burned the books--and the left that is impeding speech now.
---------
and...
Supreme Court School Voucher Decision
Uncovers Deep Schism Among Blacks
Earl Ofari Hutchinson
In an impassioned opinion backing the U.S. Supreme Court's majority ruling-endorsing school vouchers, Clarence Thomas called vouchers the path to educational emancipation for poor and minority parents. Thomas drove his point home by evoking the revered name of black abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
Thomas's over the top comparison of vouchers to the titanic anti-slavery battle drew the ire of established civil rights groups. They have been virtually unanimous in condemning vouchers. But many black parents agree with Thomas. They regard vouchers as their children's ticket out of miserably failing public schools.
The massive chasm among blacks on public education is yet another example of how mainstream black leaders often march to a far different tune than poor and working class blacks. These leaders are mostly liberal, middle-class business and professionals. Their kids are safely nestled in private schools and escape the ravages of bad public schools. Poor and working class blacks have no such luxury.
(damn straight)
In a national survey in 2000, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a black Washington D.C. think tank, found that a majority of black parents want vouchers, and a whopping ninety percent of younger blacks want them the most. They are the ones who are the most likely to have children attending public schools.
The gaping divide among blacks on vouchers first publicly exploded in Milwaukee. In 1990, when the mostly black, and failing Milwaukee public schools authorized vouchers for private schools, the stampede by black parents to grab the money and dash their children into private or parochial schools was so great, school officials had to have a lottery to decide who received a voucher. To the shock of black leaders many black activists instead of denouncing vouchers as a right-wing threat to public schools denounced black leaders for opposing them. The activists saw vouchers as a weapon against an insensitive, stagnant, often racist educational bureaucracy that systematically victimizes black children, and as a steppingstone toward community empowerment. The pro-voucher sentiment among many blacks is so strong that several black Congressional Democrats have broken ranks with the NAACP, Urban League and their own Congressional Black Caucus to publicly support President Bush's much touted federal school voucher program, even if that includes doling out public monies to religious schools. In California in 2000, some black ministers and community leaders were among the most vocal supporters of a statewide initiative to institute vouchers. Voters decisively defeated the initiative.
Many black parents don't scream for vouchers to rebel against civil rights leaders, because they are sudden converts to Bush and Republican politics, or because they want to wreck public education. They are simply fed up with the decaying, crime-ridden schools, terrible teachers, indifferent administrators that their students are dumped into. Reading and math test scores in the Cleveland schools, for instance, have chronically wallowed among the lowest in the nation. The parents that cheered the Court's decision are desperate to put their children into schools that teach them how to read, write, spell, add and subtract. They want their sons and daughters to have a decent chance at a career or profession and not become prison fodder or candidates for early graves. They want and demand the right to pick and choose the schools that offer the best deal in education for their children. While no one should quibble over their right to make that choice, the question is, are vouchers the best choice to improve their children's education? Despite the Court's decision, the jury is way out on that question. Conservatives and black leaders trot out a handful of studies and experts to prove that vouchers are a smashing success or abject failure. But neither side has mustered a convincing case for or against them, mostly because voucher programs are still not widespread enough in school districts nationally. No cities other than Milwaukee and Cleveland offer them, and Florida is the only state that offers vouchers. And there aren't enough children in their programs to tell whether they work or not. Even in the Milwaukee schools, which have had the longest running school voucher program, limited funds, and a shortage of classroom space in private schools, enable only a tiny percentage of the school district's low-income students to use vouchers to attend private schools. The best that the voucher combatants can do is parrot anecdotal homilies such as "the parents love them" or "the schools are getting better." Civil rights leaders will continue to plead with black parents that tax dollars for vouchers subsidize religious schools, leave the poorest of poor students behind in even poorer and more racially isolated schools which further perpetuate the cycle of educational neglect, and are a scheme by cons ervatives to torpedo public education. Their plea will fall on deaf ears until public schools educate poor black kids the same way they educate kids in the suburbs.
All rights reserved.
now dys, let's not get carried away....don't be talking bad about your friends.
i had a friend, like a mink you know!
and was that mink smiling?
http://www.edweek.org/context/topics/issuespage.cfm?id=30
Vouchers-- Recent findings.
The news is good. The only dissenters can't point to any substantitive negative results; only criticisms of what MAY happen.
I never thought a liberal would want to take choice from poor people to better themselves. How did the Dems wind up on that side of this issue?
