2nd American Revolution?

I have to agree with Razma here. Special interests often act regrettably, but limits we impose upon groups as to how they can band together and use resources to promote their message restrict speech. We can be bitter toward rich special interest groups for trying to promote agenda we don't like, but if we use the government to force them act in in certain ways or abridge their freedom, then we are going against our constitution.

For example, a few years back, Maryland tried to pass a tax law that only applied to Walmart in order to force Walmart to change their employee benefits. Why? Well, mainly because a lot of people hated Walmart in concept. Of course they still shopped there, but the would protest store openings and talk about how Walmart abused its employees. Government should not be used like this to attack a particular unpopular albeit large and powerful corporation that wasn't actually breaking the law.

Teachers' Unions too can't just be banned. The government can balk at their demands, pass right to work laws, and refuse to give them the contract they want for public schools, but I don't think it is right to just declare teachers' unions illegal. That infringes upon the teachers' rights to band together and collectively bargain.

Not to mention that wouldn't improve schools anyways. The reason for so many bad teachers is that one is required to get lots of expensive degrees and certifications in order to be allowed to teach and then not payed very well to teach compared to other career options requiring similar types of degrees and levels of study. Sure, tenure is ridiculous, but simply getting rid of tenure and firing a lot of bad teachers will do little unless there is a supply of better teachers to replace them. As it is, programs like KIPP that do try to aggressive improve education are relying largely on TFA and other things that rely essentially on charity to supply them with talent. To increase the supply of teachers, we need to either lower the entry requirements or provide greater financial incentives, especially in fields like math and science where analyst jobs pay very well. And you tend to get what you pay for.

Political spending is such a tough issue because money is power, but there's also an argument to be made that money is speech when used to advertise. Why should the government tell me how I can spend my own personal resources to broadcast a message?



Steele never wrote me back . . .

I agree with whitelion - you can't fire teacher unions or any special interest. They are these "little guys" you say don't matter anymore. They need to advocate on the behalf of teachers because everyone knows teachers get screwed money wise.

Yes there are bad special interest groups, yes their are bad teachers. But without groups like teachers unions get teachers higher pay, we're just going to be firing bad teachers and replacing them with another bad teacher until the people who would be right for the job think they are getting fairly paid.

And you say special interest are taking away are rights, but groups like the ACLU are a special interest group and they fight to PROTECT our freedom of speech and privacy (don't know about the freedom to bear arms though...).

BUT the NRA DOES protect our freedom to bear arms and THEY are a special interest group.

It is interesting to see someone claiming that the NRA protects your right to bear arms. While that is true, it is more accurate to say that NRA is protecting your right to BUY guns. Big arms companies are behind that organisation.

Idk the US is one of those nations that will avoid revolution at all costs so yeah Idk.

Not like what you're thinking. Not another fight the South/North (Depending on where you are) for "blank" reasons (enter word of your choosing) Now I personally think that while the system is a good idea in theory, and has worked quite well, there is some serious overhauling to be done. And honestly, I'm too tired to go into detail as to what I believe is broken.

But I'll be the first to admit some things are fuckin' wrong, and while the system's worked for us in the past, that doesn't mean it can't be improved.

OK. Here's a novel concept: Freedom is not absolute. Freedom can only extend as far as it can, without interfering the freedom of others...
...and right now you're telling me that the "right of a corporation" to profit outweighs the freedom of the workers for a safe working environment, that it outweighs the right of workers for just working hours?

It's a corporation for fuck's sake! It's not a person. It doesn't have a mother, a father, a spouse or children to support. It only has share holders who will abandon it at the slightest discomfort and leave it like the cheap hooker it is. (That's the way it's supposed to be. Corporation should die and be born to revitalize the economy). There is *no* *whatsoever* function of a corporation that would directly serve the public. It's sole purpose is to turn a profit.

Unless the people put down guidelines and exercise stringent control over them, corporations will break any and all standards of community for a greater profit margin... cause that's how they're made and a CEO who won't do so will be fired and replaced by one who does. Why? Because the later made the company more successful.



So it enforcing illegal working hours, abusing its employees by holding true to the letter of the law instead its spirit doesn't warrant *any* repercussions?

Beside how the fuck *are* we supposed to control and regulate corporations if not through the government? It's the government's fucking function: express our will, that is the will, "we the people".

Even if it isn't breaking the law if the public is outraged and finds their conduct appalling, then law makers should outlaw such conduct...

...except they won't since they've been bought with pocket money.



I have to agree, except no union or no single party can ransom... and they *do* have a collective responsibility for the sad state of education.



Funny thing is, most people *already* paid for an education. It's called *TAX*. It's a basic human right, not some privilege for the elite or wealthy.
It's also a cultural program, but don't tell me that the "no focken child left behind" program that impressed upon the schools and teachers the need to turn out satisfactory statistics - that they should rather pass a child through whatever means - than do their job and teach and prepare has *nothing* to do with the situation?



Because you're just a single person. However that's not an adequate answer. Here's one: 10% of the population owns 55% of all the wealth. That 10% is a minority. Yet they're controlling the policy making. That's why.

Rule by 10% through propaganda is not democracy. That's mobocracy of the worst sort, a plutocracy of the few.

@Whitelion & Neko-chan

Sorry, it's a long one.



@Flaser: Take some pills or a class. Every time I read your post I feel like Lewis Black is screaming in my face. Except he's not joking, just screaming.

@Flaser

1. Special interests and corporations cannot do whatever they want. They have to follow the laws and should be punished when they do. That being said, their legal responsibility to act a certain way ends there. Whether you think it is unethical or not, they can do whatever they want within the bounds of the law to try and make money. That is essentially the concept of a regulated free market. Perhaps some of the problems you cite indicate that we should have stricter laws protecting workers, but we cannot punish corporations or interests for practices that we might find unethical but are not illegal without first making them illegal. That being said, many such regulations have costs and have to be carefully considered before being enacted, at least in my opinion.

That being said, corporations and interests and the people that make them up can say and advocate for whatever they want. Even if minimum wage is required by law, corporations can advocate for repealing the policy and criticize it. They are just required to pay minimum wage to their employees, not like it. That's just basic free speech.

2. The problem with the Maryland law was that is was simply intended to punish Walmart because Walmart was unpopular. There was no related investigation in Walmart breaking laws, nor was this a widespread attempt at changing employee benefit requirements in the state that simply happen to affect Walmart, among others.

I also don't know how this law got through the legislature if Walmart managed to buy everyone. I think it goes to show that public opinion is very important to politicians, since they have to be reelected, and that a lot of the time corporations or interests are spending their resources trying to influence public opinion rather than simply funneling money to politicians or PACs, though they do that as well.

3. We spend on education on this country a small fraction of what we spend on such things as preemptive wars and the government saving for peoples' retirements for them. Perhaps it is not that we need to tax more, but that the government needs to reconsider its fiscal priorities. Of course, the bigger problem is that most of the money spent on education has been largely thrown at the problem without much strategy. If we buy everyone computers they will learn! Except they didnt . . .

4. If you read essays by the founding fathers, you can see writings in which they are wary of what you are proposing. That a larger group uses numbers to suppress a smaller group using the government. I agree that giving money to groups and individuals has to be regulated to guard against corruption, but I don't think you can tell someone that they can or cannot spend their own money buying TV advertisements to support a cause. The SC ruled that spending ones money in this way is a form of speech, and regardless, I think most people would agree that "The pursuit of happiness"(not strictly legal but part of the spirit of our democracy) entails being able to dispose of one's resources as one sees fit.

@Fpod - Individuals have the right to assemble into groups to collectively pursue a goal. They always have. Because of this, banning unions would infringe upon the rights of the individuals in those unions to assemble and collectively bargain. The right of the people to form a collective group guarantees that these collective groups have the right to exist. I don't really see how the distinction you are trying to make works. Our legal scholars would not consider it appropriate to ban a group such a political party.

The government absolutely can refuse the unions' demands though. If there is another source of teachers that can produce the same results as the union teachers(while many of our teachers may be bad, our teachers as a whole are still better at teaching than random people off the street), the government should absolutely refuse to work with the union. The problem is that their isn't. The government could play hardball and try to break the union despite strikes, or offer something in exchange for giving up tenure, and they do try these sometimes.

Still, the problem is that there are not enough good teachers. Offering to pay bad teachers more will not help if they are unwilling or incapable of improving. The lack of prestige and income associated with teacher when compared to professions requiring similar amounts of post-secondary study has created a shallow and poor talent pool of teachers. We want to fire bad teachers, yes, but first we need to improve the talent pool, which means we need to

a)provide more financial incentives for talented people to become teachers rather than economists or mathematical analysts. If you want the best talent in the field, you have to pay competitively for it,
b)better understand what makes good teachers good. Most of the things one might expect to correlate with teacher performance: advanced education degrees, graduate school, etc, don't correlate very strongly.
c) a consequence of b) is that our teacher education probably isn't teaching teachers the things they need to know to be good teachers. This is another area to work on

Or there's the alternative view that teaching is an inherent talent that largely cannot be taught so we should let anyone try to be a teacher, put them on the 3 year contract, fire the bad ones after the end of that first contract, and provide very high pay to anyone who makes it past the three year apprentice contract.

Again, rights belong to individuals not groups. Unions having the right to "collectively bargain" or as others would label as "extortion" counts as a union having rights that others do not have. Yes, people can come together on shared ideas but, that doesn't give them special rights. You and I can form a group and exercise our rights but, being a group doesn't give us extra rights than what we had before. Political parties can still exist and I'm not proposing we ban political parties or unions all together. I'm simply saying throw unions out of the public sector. They are inefficient at their jobs, constantly demand higher wages and benefits for less work and if their ransoms aren't paid they go on strike. Either bleeding a company dry for money or freezing a government service.
Keep unions in the private sector where they can vote themselves out of a job instead of extorting the rest of the country because they want a check for no work.



As if the Dems would ever conceive of doing that. The unions know democrats favor them, so the politicians do the unions favors in return for large campign donations. This is special interest it's where you and I get fucked. That is why the automakers got bailed out because the unions donated to Obama's campaign. I know you'll deny that your golden boy is just as corrupt as every other political hack from Illonois so skip it. Also to dismiss your usual rebuttal towards any criticism of Obama "fuck McCain" I wouldn't have voted for him either.

UAW "donations" and recipients.



I can solve all those problems. Break the monopolies. That means break the governmentsmonopoly of the industry and break the unions monopoly by allowing schools to exist without unions.

Get more schools and education models into the market. This means we split from the warehousing, sit down, face forward, shut the fuck up model we currently use.

Give parents the ability to choose what school their child (and tax money) goes to.

More schools, more models, more incentives for teachers, more choices.

Honestly, who would be against school choice? Oh wait, the

teachers

unions

certainly

[http://www.utea.org/newsEvents/publications/ueaAction/dec07/index.htm]wouldn't.[/url]

Edit; We're derailing the thread. If you wish to continue then make a thread.