President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

Not speaking to his credibility, but I’ve been rewatching The Goldbergs and Sirota went to school with the creator, Adam F Goldberg. This morning I watched the episode where Sirota was voted class clown in part for his goofy dancing the the hallways, which they had a clip of.

 

Oh, good, Hollywood is selling Qanon now.

 

The schools have enough money!

Ever look at how well the public schools are funded in Mississippi? Or Arkansas? Or Alabama?

Why don't you go read up on that and then come back to the grownups table and tell us what you've learned.

 

Exactly. That is just one way Alma's over-generalized, simplistic take on public schools is too ignorant to be taken seriously. Most importantly, there isn't just one system. There are 50 of them. That is both a bug and a feature of public schools in this country.

 

Your post assumes that you and I would agree on what's enough.

Understand: I could find an article or a post that suggests every state in the union doesn't have enough money.

 

I mean, yes it is a generalization. I'm sure there are schools that wouldn't fit my definition of enough. But that wouldn't disprove that most schools have enough money. When I say "the federal government functions pretty well" I'm not suggesting there are no flaws. Do I have to in order to make the point?

 

There'a a huge difference between "could use more money" and "really need more money." Massachusetts certainly has things it could use more money for, but it doesn't really have any urgent unmet public needs for which it requires more money right away. The most pressing need right now is that the T and other transportation infrastructure are decaying due to their advanced age. The money's there, just not the political will to divert it from other items that might be less pressing. Then again, we are one of the nation's most affluent states. If I lived in, oh, Alabama or New Mexico, my point of view would be different.
PS: Our schools are in the main very well funded and they are in the main performing better than their peers in similar locales in other states.

 

GOP used to be for law and order, the DOJ, the FBI
All that changed when their party
Got taken over by a criminal guy

 

Come to Birmingham, Al and look around. Better still, go tour the schools in the Black Belt in south Alabama. You want "beautiful, well conceived structures loaded with cool stuff"? They're easily found in all the little municipalities that surround Birmingham proper, suburban white flight bedroom communities which all have their own city council, mayor, police and fire and school districts. The city of Birmingham? Not so much. There are indeed some modern schools. There are also some crowded old crappy schools with window unit ACs and temporary classrooms (aka trailers in the parking lots).

The Black Belt is the area where the state/counties are being sued because of the decades long lack of sewage service resulting in pools of raw sewage in neighborhood yards.

I think we can both agree that in great part the problem isn't so much a lack of money so much as how those funds get spent, although I doubt that we'd agree on how they might be better spent.

I would add that the state's political and budget priorities have more than a little to do with the primary and secondary schools being consistently ranked between 40 and 45 out of 50.

 

Love the "theory" that Trump's charges only help him with the base - like he wasn't leading before the indictment and that the yahoos wouldn't say "See! I told you!" if the charges were withdrawn and then suddenly his lead would evaporate?

 

Jesus.