The Tea Party Thread - Page 2

And now Palin has just declared thousands of scientists to be either fraudulent or incompent. She has declared the results of climate study to be, and this is a quote, snake oil science. Do you think she knows she's lying, or is she too stupid?

^ Up there. Made me giggle like a loon. Best part -

Is it possible to have an intelligent conversation with liberals about the Tea Party movement, or is that simply impossible beyond all comprehension?
Is the entire liberal argument based on insults, snide comments, pure emotion and condescension?
For people are so much smarter than the fools who reside in America, why is this so damn hard to understand?
The liberal media takes the Tea Bag movement, and immediatly associates it with a sex act, maybe because the can't think on an intelligent response.
They label them as racist (I attended one to merely observe, there were black people there). They were funded by Republicans, started by Fox News, on and on.

I'm still waiting for a calm intelligent response to why they're wrong on an issue basis. For the supposed smartest people in the room and the country, why is that so damn hard?

The people who go to the Tea Parties are tired of not being represented by taxes, which was the purpose of the first Tea Party. Much of their anger is aimed at both Democrats and Republicans.
They're tired of seeing their tax dollars bailing out big businesses who either can't get their shit straight (bad businesses) to prop them up LONGER, or to keep the union's in power. Yes, unions have done some good, but the union bosses are more concerned about keeping the union in power than keeping the business in power that's funding them. That's why, for example, Hollywood movies are going to every state that offers tax incentives and has right to work laws, like Louisiana.

People have ALWAYS been fed up with wasteful government spending, and have decided to say something about it now that they see the government waste more than ever. Yet, critics aim at the crazies, and decide that's the ENTIRE movement - the crazy people make up every human being at the rallies. Many of those folks DON'T support Palin - I don't. She'd be a horrible president.

People are tired of too much government spending. They look at the sums of money being blown, and they think, "If you're going to blow that much cash, just give everyone in America $100,000 and let them pay their damn debts off." But a lot of that money goes to more government programs. That do not benefit them. How much money needs to be shoveled into education to make children learn better, while children years ago came out much smarter, with far less spending? Why not crack down on the teachers unions, get rid of the crappy teachers protected by those unions, and solve much of the problems there? But the knee jerk answer is "More money, just give the schools more money!" Would a quadrillion dollars help the education system?
How many after school programs are needed? At some point, parents may have to, I don't know, go back to raising their kids, instead of throwing them at the government to do it. I think people realize many parents won't raise their kids, so maybe more money will. Sadly, there is no answer to this growing problem. Dammit I know teachers. In okay schools and bad schools. On parent/teacher conference day, they could go bowling down the halls. The ONLY parents who show up, the 2 or 3, out of 20....don't need to be there, because their kids are the A and B students. How will tax money fix this situation? I can't.

Jesus christ here we go - nice first post mate.

For the record, I think you make some fair points about how Teacher's unions (and other unions) have a responsibility to hold up their end of the bargain in our economy.

That said, you're giving the "Tea-baggers" too much credit (I know it's immature to call them that, but it's far too fun for me to stop)

You can't deny that the Tea Party movement is being heavily orchestrated and stoked by the Glenn Becks / Sarah Palins of the world, who are motivated not by a real desire to reign in government spending, but rather to corral general populist rage into opposing everything Obama wants to do, for their own political gain. The Coal and Insurance industries have a lot to lose if Health Care Reform and Cap-'n-Trade are passed, so they're drumming up as much astro-turf opposition as they can manage. Even now, the same "too-big-to-fail" banks who got us into this economic mess are using the same tactics to try to avoid making any real changes.

So much of what you hear from the tea party movement is tapping into irrational fears and exaggerated, silly comparisons to Marx/Hitler, with a healthy dose of racism to boot. There's just not much in the way of honest, intelligent conversation coming from that direction. You're more than welcome to be an exception to that rule, sir.

When you're trying to constructively engage an interlocutor, launching a fusillade of insults aimed at the intelligence of your pool of potential interlocutors isn't exactly the best strategy.
I'd like to make a few points here:

1) The TEA Party "movement" coined the phrase "Teabagger" and used it constantly before they discovered that it was slang for a sex act. All the "liberal media" did was have a little fun with it. It's like the dork at the party who grabs two beers and uses the term "doublefisting" to describe it, he's just inviting himself to ridicule.

2) The organizations behind the "movement"--such as Freedom Works--are run by former and current power players in the GOP and funded by GOP funders. It's not a slur to say it's a movement funded and organized by the lobbying arms of corporations and the GOP players they have bought. It's a statement of fact.

3) Fox News sponsored the national TEA events and--leaked video from their own crews show this--they actually would lead cheers and manipulate the crowd prior to filming them to make the events look more organized and festive than they were.


There are plenty of reasons to be mad with the current status quo and the power structure behind it, but--I'm sorry--the claim you are being taxed without representation is just retarded.

The American Revolution was waged because all commerce in the colonies was tightly regulated by the British Empire. The American colonies literally did not have any representatives in parliament to argue for their interests, like being able to freely engage in commerce outside of the suppliers that the British Empire pre-approved.

It wasn't merely the case that they had representatives they did not like, which is the case here. We have a process to remove representative you do not like, it's called an "election,"

You realize that being against corporate welfare is a position you have in common with progressives, right?

If by "some good," you mean enacting child labor laws, a 40 hour work week, medical coverage, and laws that prevent an employer from firing you without cause, then, yes, they have done "some good."

Before I go on, I'd just like to point out that, in the first half of this paragraph, you come out against big business and then put forth pro-big business sentiments in the second half. That seems kind of contradictory.

Now, unions are not the problem. The problem business has with unions is that unionized labor is the one think that checks the Reaganomics practice of allocating nearly all the wealth in the country to the top 5% of earners, so the far right and big business use every economic emergency to try to crush what is left of unionized labor. You should be aware that, when yo ubuy into their line on unions, you're taking the side of the richest 5% of Americans--those making a quarter million a year or more--over the side of the other 95% of us. You're actually advocating against the taxpayers.

Have you asked yourself why these movements never cropped up in the last eight years or during the Reagan years, when both Presidents spent more than every other holder of the office combined? Doesn't it seem weird to you that this movement only sprang up once a Democrat was elected to office and Fox and Freedom Works got involved?

That would also be government spending. I agree that it would be better to give the poorest people bags of money, because they would injecti t striaght back into the economy buying goods and services to survive, but the conservatives on both sides of the aisles seem to think that's a horrible idea.

You realize that almost no federal money goes to public schools, right? We literally spend more money building a single plane in the Air Force than we do on the public school system in this country.

Again, almost no money is actually spent by the federal government on any of these things. Your state government, you county and municipal governments, and the property tax base in your community pays for these things.

If you actually want to improve the schools, you might want to argue for MORE federal spending, so that actually decent teachers are tempted to join the ranks of teachers and students actually ahve school supplies. Not many people with several thousand dollars of college debt want to work 60 hours a week for 20-30k a year in a school with ten year old textbooks and no pencils or paper.

Fuck the Tea Party.

Congratulations Cuchulain, you were far more patient with him than I would've been.

Yep. I may have my differences with you, Cuchulain, but that was nicely done.

Jesus, are you fucking kidding me?

http://gawker.com/5468936/captain-am...the-teabaggers

Also, I like Dale's use of "There were black people there". It's like the new "I have black friends!".

Let's see... You live in California?

California $58,240 (average)

Teacher's pay is based on education, experience and location.

http://theapple.monster.com/careers/...chers-by-state
Some averages.

source

Also, teachers get paid out of the local \ state level which is where things like property tax comes into play... as you said.

besides, teachers have some amazing fringe benefits they're almost guaranteed to land a wealthy guy \ gal trying to live out a childhood fetish.

ETA:

Also, the fed gives money to states for education.

For example...

California?

Subtotal, All Elementary/Secondary Level Programs
(Recovery Act) 8,851,236,990
(2009) 4,150,352,840
(2010) 4,178,356,620
(2011)4,037,629,859
source

Oh and by the way... cost of an F22 Raptor? US$142.6 million just a wee bit less then the fed spent on California Education alone...

Considering the stress, long hours, poor conditions, indifferent students and inconsiderate parents many teachers have to deal with, $58,000 doesn't seem like much of an incentive to a lot of them. And a lot of them go the entire summer without getting a paycheck, since school is out and they're not working.

Ah, now that it's much higher then 20K a year... we argue external factors.

So, let's see now.

Paid Lunch.
Paid Holidays (every single one of them)
Paid Springbreak.
Paid Christmas & New Year break.

PLUS they get personal and sick days.

Pension? yep.
Benefits? yep.
special access to credit unions not associated with a bank that will meltdown? yep.

Let's calculate that out.

50 hours a week (60 is more hyperbole, 7 AM - 3 PM is 8 hours w/ paid lunch and that includes prep time but we'll throw in extra hours at home grading papers)
9 months a year (we'll say 36 weeks for math sake since we deduct spring and christmas break)
1950 hours (also not taking into account the holiday's off and paid personal days etc..)

Normal jobs....
40 hours a week
52 weeks a year
= 2080 workable hours a year for an hourly employee

Not to mention they can work on their 3 months downtime to earn extra income (summer school) or they can go back to school to further their own education which will get them more money each year plus it is tax deductible as a work related expense if for some reason it isn't being paid for already through some governmental grant. Yep, teachers got it bad man. Horrible...

You're forgetting that the majority of teachers are retiring in the next few years. The average of their earned income is going to plummet. The entry-level pay for a teacher in a public school--who usually only has a BA or BS--still sucks, which goes to my point.

I never said they didn't, I said they gave almost nothing in proportion to what they spend on things like defense.

That's the cost of manufacturing a single unit. It's not factoring in the cost of R&D, the salary of the crew that maintains it, the pay of the pilot, the non-labor costs of maintenance, the lifetime fuel use of the plane, the cost of maintaining the weapons capability of the plane, or the fact that that the cost of merely cranking out a single unit--as you point out--represents roughly 25% of the investment we put into educating the youth of our most populated state. You only need four of those planes, without arming, fueling, manning, flying, housing or maintaining them, to match the entire amount of money we put into the state. A fleet of a single model usually consists of multiples of four.

...

money building a single plane......

pretty easy to interpret that statement... but go on.. try to change your already quoted words around.

ETA

that was billions of dollars California got, not millions.... notice commas. So for 2009 that would be about 24 Raptors. Honestly I think perhaps you need another cup of coffee and reread what I wrote.. I know it's early

I didn't say one single plane, I said a single plane, as in one type of plane. It's like saying that my favorite bird is the swallow or talking about the god, if I were a polytheist. In my experience, the military doesn't buy planes by the unit, they buy them by the order.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita.../f-22-cost.htm

OK, so then 20 billion over 20 years still is a fraction of what California got over 20 years in federal education dollars...

continue.. please...

ETA infact, that's what they're getting for 2009-2011.... if you add the numbers I listed for California.

I'm incredulous and a little sickened by the arguments being lobbed at teachers and public education. Do either of you have kids in public schools?

yt, you have to admit that theres a ton of room for improvement though.

I think that teachers have it ok in some areas but get penetrated in others.

I think I mentioned this about a year or so ago on this forum, but my older brother has his Masters, been teaching for about 5 years now, and probably pulls in maybe $38k AND has to pay for his own substitute if, God forbid, he ever needs to take a day off. That both sucks and swallows.

The true test would be comparing the cost of the order to what we spent on education during the same period of time--and comparing it to the average cost of an order, not one specific order--not comparing what we spent through the last two decades on one specific order to what we are projecting to spend in the next few years.

However, for the sake of argument, let's cede the ground to you and assume that 20bil is the average cost of an order for a plane in the military and we spent the same amount during the recession of the early nineties and the first half of this decade as we are in this economy. If that's the case, it still means that we spend roughly half as much on a single weapon over the course of a child's public school career as we do educating 14% of the children who attend school in this country. No matter how you cut that, it's a sign of horrible priorities and a sign that complaining about our spending on education is weird when you consider that's a single order for DOD, which isn't even a fraction of their budget. It's messed up no matter what way you cut it.

The Closer, there's a huge problem, I agree. But the teachers themselves, their salaries being too much or their union is not it. The teachers at my daughter's school have to buy their own supplies out-of-pocket in addition, and rent their own bus if God forbid they want their students to have a field trip.

I have a feeling that chipping away at teachers and public education are the latest target for all the think tanks and lobbyists and their PR firms, which is just disgusting to me.

My mother-in-law is a high school chemistry teacher. She's up at 4am every day so she can be at her classroom by 5 so she can get work done before class starts. She's there at least until 4 and sometimes 5 in the afternoon. And she does more work when she gets home. 60 hours a week is far from hyperbole.

Snaieke's railing against public education isn't surprising. Anyway, yes, they do get paid holidays and summers off, but this doesn't account for the substantial amount of off-hours work they spend writing lesson plans and grading papers. And "paid lunches?" Really? 25 minutes between bells? Ooh La La! One gets the feeling that Snaieke either didn't go to public school, or had a really unpleasant experience there.

Average salary doesn't mean much to a starting teacher. It's nice to think that at some point late in a 40-year career, you can be making almost as much as the starting salary of a Java programmer. In 2009, starting teacher salaries hover at around $30,000. There's very little incentive to get a degree and go into public education.

Actually, I just read we ordered 182 units of the Raptor at a program cost of 65 billion dollars. So, yeah, if we took the Raptor as an example, my point still holds. ETA: Total program cost here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/us...cs/10jets.html. I've been up all night and posted the wrong link.

And the thing is, the teachers who work hard and really give a damn don't make that much more than the ones who just show up and collect a check.

I don't think he was factoring in that most teachers in public schools have at least 4 periods a day with 30 students per period. That's 120 assignments to correct every single time they assign an assignment. Rounding the week to 50 hours for grading suggests a teacher would only assign one assignment per day and spend one minute correcting and grading each assignment.

My parents are HS teachers in Florida. Neither of them have had a class count of less than 40 since the '90s.

I dealt with the figure as if it were in billions, it's the reason that I was willing to cede the point to you until I checked an actual credible source on the cost of the Raptor.

Seriously, if you're going to put up second-hand sources that misconstrue the costs of a program and have a military bias while you're shitting on the public school system, the least you could do is not act like a smug asshole and treat me as charitably in the exchange as I've treated you.

You're the one that said A single plane. Don't come crying to me if you made a stupid statement and a weak argument. We spend a great deal of money in this country on education, well nearly a trillion dollars a year (around 500-600 billion for public primary and secondary education the rest for higher learning and adult learning centers) through local\state\federal tax dollars and that doesn't take into account what parents chip in through donations and what schools make through sports programs. The education system in this country gets quite a bit of pocket change, it's just very poorly managed. You want to know which schools are the best in the country? They're the ones that have good management usually through parental involvement in PTA \ school board make up. They make those hard decisions on choosing to fund a lacross team or an arts program.. and academically, it pays off.

Now I'm not complaining about our education spending I'm simply present facts to your horrible misconceptions about our education spending. Now I do agree that our education system sucks but it certainly isn't under-funded.

You know what, fuck you, welcome to my ignore list, you right-wing fucktard.

I am, in part of my working life, a teacher. Snaieke, your snide calculations of the work done by those of us who teach are both so incorrect and so offensive that the only response that they merit is a request that you can it until you know of what you speak.

"It’s a movement which claims millions but for which each member can deny every other member’s validity as a member per se, yet also make up that all those other people whose affirmative beliefs they deny in fact believe something else which reintegrates them back into the whole."

You asked for the cost of R&D.. 20 billion was the cost of R&D. 65 billion is the total cost of the entire program including the BUILDING of each single unit which I listed as $160(ish) million. If you actually read what I wrote, there was no deception but you keep changing your argument to try and out maneauver me, which won't work because you're wrong and numbers can't be swindled. No matter how you slice it, we spend more on education then on defense. If you break it down by program or if you include the entire defense budget and match that up against the entire US education system (including higher learning) we spend more on education. Now, that includes the local level and not federal dollars (which represents a small portion of education spending but that also doesn't include how you can deduct your property taxes from your federal filing and since the bulk of property taxes go to education... the Fed picks up a good chunk of change for education but in a roundabout way) but it's still money out of the American people's pocket.

So, now if you want to change your argument YET AGAIN because you still can't accept that you're wrong... let me hear it.

65 Billion dollars for A SINGLE PLANE (but you mean program including R&D AND the cost of each plane built etc...) is about what the government gave the education system in 2009! So one program that we've been working on for 20 years that cost a total of 65 BILLION DOLLARS is about one year of federal education dollars (admittingly, a high year thanks to the recovery act in 2009) or TWO years of regular old spending not including the $25+ billion a year that we spend on the GI Bill, since that's higher learning and comes out of the DEFENSE budget.

So, if I'm following the thread correctly, Cuchulain making a dodgy analogy completely justifies the Tea Baggers asinine view of government and justifies their temper tantrums because a person they don't like was elected.

Got it.

The way it looks to me is that Glenn Beck cried about fascism and a bunch of people believed him. Can't imagine why.

Normal Person: "Oh my god, that man seems to have been run over by a truck."

Snaieke: "Actually, judging by the wheel base and chassis, that appears to be more of a sports utility vehicle than a truck. Most major auto manufacturers consider them to be two different vehicles, but if you want to go ahead and use the wrong terminology, well, go ahead and be wrong."

Normal Person: "But that man is dying."

Snaieke: "So you say I'm wrong about the truck? Here's a chart from Ford's website showing vehicle profiles for the last ten years that clearly show that body type is not considered a truck."

Normal Person: "We need to get him some help."

Snaieke: "Fine, show me a factually supported argument that a major reputable manufacturer considers that to be a truck."

Normal Person: "Oh no, he's died."

Snaieke: "So you agree I was right about it not being a truck."

The problem is that you're looking for logic with snaeike. He's the anti-logic brigade. he just spouts whatever his radio tells him to spout like a good little neo-con.

I do know what I speak of; My parents have been best friends with teachers since before I was born and I'm friends with about 10 individuals who are teachers, one of them I've been best friends with since High School. One of my friends earns almost no money but squanders her breaks and has the same level of education as when she started teaching 20 years ago... she's not earning that much money. Another one of my friends has put the effort in and taken extra courses (pertaining to her job) every year she was a teacher and for the last five years she's been maxed out in pay compensation, drives a very nice car and lives in a gated community. Almost all of them work in public schools.

Do science teachers put in more work then a kindergartner teacher? you bet! but they also make more money and would be HIGHER then the "average" in terms of pay scale and on different pay scales (see the article I referenced)

As to argument (not yours) about 4 or 5 periods of classes, you guys must not know many teachers but they have a unique advantage nowadays of those bubble test forms that they just have to run through a machine or they have a cut out that they just hover over each test and it makes grading go like a snap. If a class requires more written homework then others, usually there is an aid in those classrooms who helps with grading papers or they're done just before a break and the teacher takes it home over the break to grade the papers. That doesn't mean language teachers or certain types of math teachers have it easy but I wasn't specifically refering to them.. God bless them! I was refering to 'averages'.

Heck, they did away with "parent teacher night" in most place and now they just close down school and have the parents come in during school hours.

Now, I'm not saying that some teachers don't have it hard but it certainly isn't some horrible profession that only the most altruistic go into.. they make decent money and they have some pretty damn good benefits and in this day and age, that sure seems like a damned good profession when most people will change careers two or three times before retirement.

There are plenty of teachers who wish they worked in this Shangri-La you describe.

I'm assuming that this place also has a Rock Candy Mountain and a Porno Tree.

lawlz

There are no good neo-cons.

It's about time someone stood up against these teachers. Close down the unions and clear out these yutz scan-tron pushers! I'm sure a teacher with a Master's degree will enjoy the challenge of teaching a class of 70. Erect a big tent out by the fucking freeway or something.

Just give everybody a high school diploma when they turn 18. That way we don't discriminate against anybody.

You know, I'd love to help out more with this pile-on, but I have back-to-back classes to teach. They're undergraduates who were underserved by underpaid, unsupported, disrespected primary and secondary school teachers, so now they need someone to help them learn not only basic research skills, but also basic classroom skills. Today, I'm going to give a brief talk on the importance of turning in assignments in a timely fashion. Some of them have never been introduced to this idea before. Then I'm going to specifically chat with the four young men in my class who are just out of the military and having a hard time readjusting to education, but, God love 'em, they're trying. After that, I'm going to go home and, for the second time this week, hand-grade 53 writing assignments. I would ask my TA to help, but he has both a second job and graduate school to consider, so I don't want to impose on his time. Anyway, he really only has enough funding to sit in on my lectures and help during hands-on time.

Really, what I'm trying to say here is that I have a Master's degree, I make less than minimum wage per hour of actual work, do not get benefits, this is what teaching at the university level tends to look like, and, oh my God, Snaieke, please, please get bent.

At what point am I standing up against teachers? I'm simply pointing out that they don't have it as bad as others. Paid holidays, getting to spend time with thier loved ones for Thanksgiving and Christmas, the option of going on an extended vacation over the summer.

You don't see the folks at Walmart getting that deal (or most retail employee's).

Why don't you just use a scan-tron? You sound like a glutton for punishment, Miss Z!!!

Are they black?

You're a turkey. Yeah, we went on family vacations every summer... to summer school, so my parents could pay bills.

No amount of ninnying around about planes or scan-trons will mask the fact that you have no clue what you're talking about.