Senate confirms DeVos with tie-breaking vote by Pence
150 replies, posted
[QUOTE=Crazy Ivan;51790083]I wanted to go look up those 'deaths' because of how ridiculously far-fetched that sounded, and this was at the top of [URL="http://fusion.net/story/384129/mike-hager-mother-dies-denied-entry-iraq-trump/"]this article.[/URL]
So?
I guess we need real deaths maybe? Or deaths people care about? Or maybe we need to lie about more deaths to create the illusion of more damage before real damage is done?
I don't know.
We probably shouldn't go crazy over imagined damages, in particular when people are actively fabricating damages though. That's my take away.[/QUOTE]
Hadn't heard about the update but it doesn't surprise me much either. I'd only read about it in passing.
I'm just of a mind that at this point, this administration doesn't care about like... anything? Except money and power.
Like it would take something colossal for them to say "you know what, maybe this isn't such a good idea". But I'm afraid of whatever that thing might be.
[editline]7th February 2017[/editline]
[QUOTE=Raidyr;51790084]I've talked about this before but the truly scary part about all of this is that the existing partisan divide between the left and the right in America that has been growing steadily over the years has grown enormously in the past year or so. Trump's victory and subsequent bashing of the "lugenprasse" is driving a wedge between reality and the rights' interpretation of reality. We have come to the point where as a democratic society we can't even reach a consensus on the facts anymore. Even assuming Trump is a great president that creates more wealth and stability for the country, I fear for the long term consequences of his and his supporters "the means justify the ends" strategy of slash and burn politics.[/QUOTE]
This is sort of why I've remained independent. My ideas are a little more in line with democrats but after what they did this election I can't align myself with them entirely either. They have the capacity to be just as dumb.
It's really unfortunate.
[QUOTE=Pascall;51790116]Hadn't heard about the update but it doesn't surprise me much either. I'd only read about it in passing.
I'm just of a mind that at this point, this administration doesn't care about like... anything? Except money and power.
Like it would take something colossal for them to say "you know what, maybe this isn't such a good idea". But I'm afraid of whatever that thing might be.
[editline]7th February 2017[/editline]
This is sort of why I've remained independent. My ideas are a little more in line with democrats but after what they did this election I can't align myself with them entirely either. They have the capacity to be just as dumb.
It's really unfortunate.[/QUOTE]
This was the election that made me realize the Democratic party doesn't serve my interests. I'm an independent. That awkward limbo where nobody suits us.
[QUOTE=Pascall;51790116]Hadn't heard about the update but it doesn't surprise me much either. I'd only read about it in passing.
I'm just of a mind that at this point, this administration doesn't care about like... anything? Except money and power.
Like it would take something colossal for them to say "you know what, maybe this isn't such a good idea". But I'm afraid of whatever that thing might be.[/QUOTE]
Sure, and I totally agree. 100%
However, we cannot let ourselves become wrapped up in some fear-hyperbole, and just feed fear with more fear.
This 'death' story, in conjunction with the [I]silly[/I] story about 'aides can't turn on the lights in the white house' are kind of my point.
We're already spinning DeVos's appointment out of control, that she, singlehandedly, will lead to the retardation-by-indoctrination of ten thousand years of students!
She probably won't, probably.
She probably [I]will[/I] cause real damage. She probably will do bad things. We will probably be cleaning up the mess from her turn in the seat for about 5 to 30 years, if the Reagan administration is anything to go by. I mean, even if she does 'real lasting damage,' someone was going to. American education has been on a steady nose-dive of for-profit underfunded nonsense that's been going ever since No Child Left Behind, more than ten years ago now.
However, as the Carter and Reagan administrations showed (and the Nixon administration, and the Grant administration), no matter how inept and greedy and shortsighted and wordswordwords 'those guys' are, they probably won't [I]absolutely[/I] fuck things up.
The whole reason I posted is just because of how illustrative it is that you're saying, "Donald Trump's policies are already actively killing people!" when, in reality, they're really just bad policies made by greedy, shortsighted people, as if that has literally never happened before in the U.S. But, in spite of that, we're looking for every excuse and justification to say, "it's never been this bad, and it's only getting worse, someone somewhere said so, and I agree with them."
Meanwhile, we all sort of happily memory dump every possible failing of the last, what, 12? 20? 32? years of presidential administrations, ranging from Bush's economic fuckups, to Obama's [I]actual extrajudicial killings[/I] by the widespread use of the Drone program, to Bill Clinton's blatant 'time to make money' deregulation of Mass Media.
Trump's bad. DeVos is unqualified. I don't like either of them. But they aren't literally jamming the self-destruct button in the White House ready room that Biden set up as a prank. They're just kind of ineptly flopping around, seeking to earn money, and hopefully the next administrations will help us recover from the damages they do, which probably won't be world ending damages.
[QUOTE=Pascall;51790171]I mean I was too young and not invested in politics to be able to excuse what Bush or Obama did when they had their terms but I'd be 100% not on board with that either.
But I get what you mean.[/QUOTE]
I was, and most of us I think were, too. I'm just sort of pointing out, we have lots of things to be concerned about, things that past saddled us with, but we'd rather somehow say the debts left to use by those mistakes, those failings, are 'the current guys' faults, not the past's.
Democrats are wusses and republicans are manipulative sociopaths (I don't mean the voters)
[QUOTE=Crazy Ivan;51790160]Sure, and I totally agree. 100%
However, we cannot let ourselves become wrapped up in some fear-hyperbole, and just feed fear with more fear.
This 'death' story, in conjunction with the [I]silly[/I] story about 'aides can't turn on the lights in the white house' are kind of my point.
We're already spinning DeVos's appointment out of control, that she, singlehandedly, will lead to the retardation-by-indoctrination of ten thousand years of students!
She probably won't, probably.
She probably [I]will[/I] cause real damage. She probably will do bad things. We will probably be cleaning up the mess from her turn in the seat for about 5 to 30 years, if the Reagan administration is anything to go by. I mean, even if she does 'real lasting damage,' someone was going to. American education has been on a steady nose-dive of for-profit underfunded nonsense that's been going ever since No Child Left Behind, more than ten years ago now.
However, as the Carter and Reagan administrations showed (and the Nixon administration, and the Grant administration), no matter how inept and greedy and shortsighted and wordswordwords 'those guys' are, they probably won't [I]absolutely[/I] fuck things up.
The whole reason I posted is just because of how illustrative it is that you're saying, "Donald Trump's policies are already actively killing people!" when, in reality, they're really just bad policies made by greedy, shortsighted people, as if that has literally never happened before in the U.S. But, in spite of that, we're looking for every excuse and justification to say, "it's never been this bad, and it's only getting worse, someone somewhere said so, and I agree with them."
Meanwhile, we all sort of happily memory dump every possible failing of the last, what, 12? 20? 32? years of presidential administrations, ranging from Bush's economic fuckups, to Obama's [I]actual extrajudicial killings[/I] by the widespread use of the Drone program, to Bill Clinton's blatant 'time to make money' deregulation of Mass Media.
Trump's bad. DeVos is unqualified. I don't like either of them. But they aren't literally jamming the self-destruct button in the White House ready room that Biden set up as a prank. They're just kind of ineptly flopping around, seeking to earn money, and hopefully the next administrations will help us recover from the damages they do, which probably won't be world ending damages.[/QUOTE]
I mean I was too young and not invested in politics to be able to excuse what Bush or Obama did when they had their terms but I'd be 100% not on board with that either.
But I get what you mean.
[QUOTE=Crazy Ivan;51790160]snip for length[/QUOTE]
Yeah a lot of problems were caused by the previous administrations that were never really fixed. I don't think anybody's ever going to forget Bush and the Iraq War, and the economic fuckups, at least.
Only sort of offtopic--I'm astounded by all the procedural firsts that have occurred since Trump took office. These are exciting times.
[QUOTE=Chonch;51790259]Only sort of offtopic--I'm astounded by all the procedural firsts that have occurred since Trump took office. These are exciting times.[/QUOTE]
Exciting is a word for it I suppose. Would have been nice if the decisive vote was made on a nominee that was even remotely qualified but it probably wouldn't have been 50/50 at that point anyway.
[QUOTE=Llamaguy;51789655]Boy I can't wait for disabled students to be fucked over![/QUOTE]
Disabled? Try every student coming from a family making less than six figures.
To any Republicans who have young kids going through school. Hope you are happy with how you voted. You voted for the worst possible education for your children.
Pantz can't respond but I still can't let this go.
[QUOTE=Pantz Master;51789787]She supports [B]charter schools which consistently outperform public schools[/B] on testing.
She isn't beholden to teachers unions.[/QUOTE]
[URL="http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/07/06/growing-evidence-charter-schools-are-failing"]Ha. Ha. No.[/URL]
[QUOTE]The inadequacies of charter schools have been confirmed by other recent studies, one of them by CREDO itself, which found that in comparison to traditional public schools "students in Ohio charter schools perform worse in both reading and mathematics." Another recent CREDO study of California schools reached mixed results, with charters showing higher scores in reading but lower scores in math.
In a study of Chicago's public schools, the University of Minnesota Law School determined that "Sadly the charter schools, which on average score lower that the Chicago public schools, have not improved the Chicago school system, but perhaps made it even weaker."[/QUOTE]
New Orleans is considered a "success story" for charter schools after the [I]entire[/I] education staff was fired after Katrina, [URL="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/what-new-orleans-can-teach-betsy-devos-about-charter-schools-214610"]but there's another side to it.[/URL]
[QUOTE]In contrast to some other states with big charter sectors—notably Michigan, [B]where DeVos just helped kill a proposed state law that would have made it easier to close failing charter schools[/B]—Louisiana has been relatively aggressive in shaping the available options, repeatedly closing charters that underperform.
[...]
For a while, the state’s Recovery School District—eerily, it was given that name before Katrina and referred only to academic “recovery”—ran a set of traditional schools alongside a growing charter sector. Test scores started improving almost immediately, with the charters leading the way.
And almost immediately there were questions about why. For some reason, the percentage of students designated as having “special needs” remained persistently lower in the charter schools. The Southern Poverty Law Center accused some of the schools of shunning or kicking out the hardest to serve students and filed a lawsuit against the district, which eventually resulted in a consent decree requiring stepped-up oversight. The extent to which this practice actually went on or had an impact on test scores is still a matter of debate. But there were certainly some bad actors. In a separate study, Tulane’s Research Alliance interviewed principals anonymously on enrollment practices, and the results in some cases were almost comical.[B] A few principals seemed flatly unaware of the law, which says that charters must take anyone who lives in the city. One principal said she regularly interviewed family members of prospective students to make sure they were the “right fit for our institution.” In one recent case, the state shut down a school that had encouraged special needs students to go elsewhere and had failed to provide services, often more expensive than for regular students, for those who did attend. One teacher I interviewed described how the school’s leaders hastily arranged what was meant to look like a special-needs classroom for the benefit of state investigators.[/B][/QUOTE]
[URL="http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2015/05/report_slams_louisiana_charter.html"]Expecting the watchers to watch themselves doesn't work, either.[/URL]
[QUOTE]Louisiana understaffs its charter schools oversight offices and, instead of proactively investigating these schools, relies on charters' own reports and whistleblowers to uncover problems, according to a report released Tuesday (May 12) by the Center for Popular Democracy and the Coalition for Community Schools. That allows theft, cheating and mismanagement to happen, such as the $26,000 stolen from Lake Area New Tech High [B]and the years of special education violations alleged at Lagniappe Academies. [/B][/QUOTE]
Devos proved she was specifically unaware that special needs students must be accomodated under federal programs - programs she wants to be up to the states to decide how and if they participate while still collecting the federal money from them.
Charter schools outperform public schools on testing only if you ignore who they're neglecting.
[URL="http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/01/creationism_in_public_schools_mapped_where_tax_money_supports_alternatives.html"]And that's ignoring the charter school systems who have used taxpayer subsidies on teaching Creationism[/URL] as a replacement for the natural theories of the creation of life on Earth and the theory of evolution. [URL="http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/hundreds-of-voucher-schools-teach-creationism-in-science-classes/"]At least 300 schools across ten states, with the majority concentrated in Florida, taught Creationism instead of science as of a few years ago.[/URL]
[QUOTE]Harrison Christian School, in Harrison, Ohio, says, “We believe all things in the universe were created by God in six literal days of the creation week (Genesis 1:1-2:3, Exodus 20:8-11) and that the biblical record of primeval earth history in Genesis 1-11 is fully historical.”[/QUOTE]
Something something church and state.
[IMG]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C4FFvc7VYAAlPiO.jpg[/IMG]
ten months till 2018 now y'know
I am ashamed to be part of the same species as Republicans
this country continues to amaze me at how easily it is to ruin a country in the span of only weeks. with every passing day there comes a headline that shows yet another thing our country is fucking up somehow.
like okay, our education has always been a joke, but let's bring on this piece of work to head the DOE, we will surely fix our problematic and horrible education system right? jesus christ....
[QUOTE=Chonch;51790259]Only sort of offtopic--I'm astounded by all the procedural firsts that have occurred since Trump took office. These are exciting times.[/QUOTE]
How is any of this exciting unless you enjoy chaos
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;51790543]How is any of this exciting unless you enjoy chaos[/QUOTE]
I mean, it's the old curse. "May you live in interesting times."
2017 sure has gotten off to an interesting start.
[QUOTE=Rocko's;51790528]this country continues to amaze me at how easily it is to ruin a country in the span of only weeks. with every passing day there comes a headline that shows yet another thing our country is fucking up somehow.
like okay, our education has always been a joke, but let's bring on this piece of work to head the DOE, we will surely fix our problematic and horrible education system right? jesus christ....[/QUOTE]
Republicans don't care about bettering the country. They were paid $200m to appoint her. This is something that I hope is crystal-fucking-clear to everyone here: Republicans don't value humans, they only care about money. This has been the case since Teddy Roosevelt split off from them.
how many more "historic" moments do we need to call trump the worst president ever and fuck all the baby boomers that say its not as bad as 1968
Would this affect disabled students in university? I have documented hearing and vision disabilities and I will not be happy if I can't get anymore help due to this cunt
Anyone, [I]anyone[/I] who voted for Trump is a fucking idiot and deserves every bad thing that is happening. Truth hurts.
[QUOTE=Pantz Master;51789646]This is a good day for America. Sessions will be another step up.
[highlight](User was banned for this post ("Still taking the piss huh?" - Craptasket))[/highlight][/QUOTE]
[URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MAEVD27zfs"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MAEVD27zfs[/URL]
[URL="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqiacmVX4VM"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqiacmVX4VM[/URL]
[URL="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ld6k2b-AEfU"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ld6k2b-AEfU[/URL]
[URL="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jhec9r5movw"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jhec9r5movw[/URL]
Yea, just gonna place those there, seems like you've never seen these before cause of what you're spouting.
[QUOTE=Chonch;51790259]Only sort of offtopic--I'm astounded by all the procedural firsts that have occurred since Trump took office. These are exciting times.[/QUOTE]
First =/= good. It's hardly anything to be excited about.
School choice is a sham. Private schools are no better than public schools, those days are a gone by era. Louisiana had a voucher program for poor students and it backfired spectacularly. [url]https://www.brookings.edu/research/when-winners-are-losers-private-school-vouchers-in-louisiana/[/url]
[url]https://www.brookings.edu/research/on-negative-effects-of-vouchers/[/url]
[QUOTE=froztshock;51789651]You're fucking kidding me right?[/QUOTE]
Well look at his ban history.
[QUOTE=Megadave;51792691]Well look at his ban history.[/QUOTE]
It's funny because he acts like his ban reasons are for "having a different opinion".
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